In this insightful B2B Growth Show, Paul Slack is joined by Lauren Glover and special guest Jen Allen-Knuth of DemandJen for a candid, no-fluff conversation about one of B2B’s oldest and still most painful problems: sales and marketing alignment.
The session digs into why deals are stalling, why engaged buyers often fail to turn into pipeline, and why getting into the C-suite is harder than ever. Drawing from attendee survey responses and Jen’s deep experience in modern B2B selling, the discussion reframes alignment around one central idea: sales and marketing are not separate teams fighting for green dashboards. They are partners in helping buyers move from uncertainty to confident action.
Key Takeaways:
- Sales and marketing teams are often misaligned because both sides are optimizing for their own metrics instead of the buyer’s experience.
- Deals frequently stall between discovery and consensus because curiosity does not equal buying intent.
- Marketing-generated engagement needs context before it gets handed to sales.
- C-suite conversations fail when sellers bring product-level messaging to business-level buyers.
- Trust is the missing ingredient in modern pipeline growth, especially as buyers become more skeptical of vendor claims.
- AI has increased market noise, making human insight, specificity, and credibility more important than ever.
- Marketing must stop treating the website as the only place signals happen and start thinking of the buyer’s feed as the new homepage.
- Sales and marketing need a shared system for activating audiences, establishing authority, nurturing relationships, and supporting growth.
Practical Guidance You Can Apply
The session provides practical guidance on:
- Identifying where sales and marketing alignment breaks down in the buyer journey.
- Turning engagement into meaningful next steps without rushing to the pitch.
- Creating more relevant buyer education that builds confidence before conversion.
- Using audience signals from LinkedIn, webinars, events, and content engagement.
- Building trust through ongoing thought leadership instead of one-off campaigns.
- Helping sellers have more strategic conversations with senior executives.
- Creating nurture programs based on what buyers are actually learning about.
- Aligning sales and marketing around Vende’s pipeline growth framework, including planning, signals, audience activation, authority, nurture, retention, and growth.
Whether you’re a B2B marketer tired of throwing leads over the fence, a sales leader struggling to turn interest into pipeline, or a revenue leader trying to get both teams rowing in the same direction, this session offers a practical, buyer-first way to rethink sales and marketing alignment.
Catch the next B2B Growth Show live by registering here.