How Behavioural Training for Sales Team Bridges Marketing Gaps?
How can two groups of people, equally intelligent and equally hardworking, fail to understand each other simply because they have never truly experienced what it feels like to be in one another’s position? That is where the gap begins. Not from bad intentions, but from a distance in lived experience. A distance that can only be bridged when both teams genuinely step into each other’s world through the behavioural training team.
The Data That Might Shock You
According to Demand Gen Report, as many as 84% of marketing and sales teams feel misaligned due to ongoing miscommunication and confusion. Only 16% believe they are fully aligned in their goals and strategies.
In other words, 8 out of 10 companies still struggle with this divide, with marketing focusing on awareness and sales chasing their targets.
A study by Invoca (2024) found that 90% of B2C leaders recognise the importance of alignment, yet only 10% feel their teams are truly in sync in daily operations.
Meanwhile, within small and medium-sized businesses, 58% of professionals (Outfunnel, 2022) admit that coordination between the two departments is still far from ideal. This lack of alignment often leads to weaker performance and missed revenue opportunities.
But here is the truth. These two teams can work in harmony once both sides learn to see things from each other’s perspective and adjust their approach.
Think about it. Have you ever, as part of a marketing team, found yourself saying:
“We have sent them plenty of leads, but why are they not closing any? Are they even following up properly?”
Or perhaps, from the sales side:
“What kind of leads are these? None of them is ready to make a purchase. It feels like a waste of our time. What exactly does marketing even do?”
These remarks may seem harmless initially, but over time, they create a barrier between two teams pursuing the same objective. The core issue lies in misunderstandings and confusion about where marketing ends and sales begin, and this is where we need to examine more closely what truly causes the gap.
Facing the Real Problem: Misperception and Role Confusion
Let’s start with the assumption that marketing and sales share the same job description. At first glance, they might look similar, but in reality, their functions and responsibilities are worlds apart. Beyond that, their workflows and goals differ too, even though both share the same vision: driving revenue growth for your business. And this is where miscommunication often begins.
Marketing is all about long-term goals and perception.
Its focus is on building awareness. Especially for new brands, you cannot expect to jump straight into selling because people need to recognise you first. What is the impression your audience remembers? What kind of story stays in their minds? Success in marketing is measured through interest, reach, and engagement for this year, and by the next, it is about creating a distinctive presence that people recall. It is not just about sales numbers.
Sales, on the other hand, is about immediate and tangible results.
This team stands at the front line, dealing directly with potential customers. They work hard to turn uncertainty into confidence, to persuade someone who initially is not interested into saying yes. Their key metric is clear: how many leads can they convert into loyal customers?
Visual representation of how marketing and sales share interconnected goals and concepts in driving business growth.
But how do these different mindsets affect teamwork?
They often create distance. Marketing tends to look at brand lift and lead quality, while sales focuses on closing rates. Two different languages, right? And when these languages are forced to align without proper understanding, it can cause more harm than good.
Then comes the “blame game”
Marketing feels their hard work goes to waste when leads never get converted. Sales feels misunderstood because marketing does not grasp the real pressure of dealing with prospects who seem promising but never close. Two teams that should be working together toward the same goal end up moving in opposite directions.
All because there is no safe space for open dialogue, no cross-role understanding, and no genuine opportunity to walk in each other’s shoes.
The Gap Between Them: Look & Learn Their Skill and Experience
After looking at their differences in perspective, communication, and goals, it is time to look deeper into what truly separates the two teams. The real gap lies in their skills and working experience.
Statistics show that only around ten per cent of companies have a coordinated training team between Marketing and Sales (ATD/Corporate Visions). This means many organisations, perhaps even yours, still have teams that learn, grow, and operate in completely separate worlds.
An image representing the disconnect and communication challenges between marketing and sales teams.
Two Roles, Two Skillsets
Marketing is trained to think strategically, to read data, build brand narratives, and design the customer journey. Sales learns through real-world experience, meeting clients face-to-face, reading situations, and responding quickly to change.
Both skill sets are equally important, yet rarely developed together. Imagine the impact on revenue growth if both teams could learn and practise these skills side by side.
The Experience Divide
If you work in marketing, you probably operate in a world of structured plans and measurable outcomes. Meanwhile, your colleagues in sales live in a space full of uncertainty and constant targets.
Marketing rarely faces daily or weekly pressure to hit numbers, while Sales often works under strict targets but rarely sees how branding messages are developed through endless discussions and late-night brainstorming sessions.
This difference in experience shapes how both teams define effectiveness. One speaks about reach and awareness, while the other fights for closing and conversion. Without shared experiences, coordination becomes difficult.
Marketing feels their message is strong enough, while Sales sees it as irrelevant in real-life situations. That is where the friction begins, not from a difference in intent, but from the frustration that grows each time they try to understand each other’s way of working, yet never quite meet in the middle.
Real Conflict in The Workplace
Have the Marketing and Sales teams ever experienced real conflict, whether in small or large meetings? Take a look and you will probably hear someone say, “Oh my, this really happens at my office.”
A real scene from a weekly meeting
Marketing presents a new campaign with great enthusiasm.
Sales responds, “Another new campaign? Does this actually help us sell anything? It just makes things more complicated.”
The emotional moment
Marketing feels their creative efforts are not valued, as if their hard work is irrelevant or wasted.
Sales feels unheard, believing that Marketing never considers the realities of the field.
Gradually, both teams start to withdraw, limiting communication to formalities only.
A realistic scene of conflict between marketing and sales teams in the workplace, a common struggle that often stems from misaligned goals and communication gaps.
What is at the heart of the conflict?
It is no longer about skill, mindset, or work pressure, but about trust and empathy that are lacking or fading.
When one team stops trying to understand the other, the gap between them only widens.
The long-term domino effect
Meetings between the two teams become dull and less productive.
Coordination happens only because it is necessary, not because anyone genuinely wants it.
Great ideas fail to be executed due to a lack of cross-team support.
At this point, something is needed to reignite curiosity and empathy between the teams. Not through theory or a handbook, but through direct experience (immersive experiential learning) that allows them to see things from each other’s perspective.
Finding the Solution Through Immersive Workshop Behavioural Training TEAM
What is immersive experiential learning? It is not merely about understanding different perspectives, but about directly experiencing behaviours and learning how to develop them so that teams can empathise and collaborate more effectively.
Key principles to keep in mind when starting the behavioural training team
Experiential learning: participants directly experience the roles and challenges of the other team.
Behavioural focus: training activities are designed to foster habits of two-way communication, encourage the sharing of ideas, and enable effective collaboration.
Reflection & feedback: each session concludes with a reflection to ensure that the insights gained are fully internalised.
Workshop formats that complement each other
Role exchange: the marketing team follows the workflow of the sales team and vice versa, cultivating empathy and mutual understanding across teams.
Collaborative campaign sprint: both teams develop strategies based on real data, practising open communication and collective decision-making.
Story-based selling workshop: participants refine their storytelling skills to ensure brand messages are relevant and aligned across functions.
Micro-reflection and follow-up: participants consolidate the training team experience to ensure behavioural changes are applied in real work situations and consistently maintained.
After the behavioural training team, marketing and sales teams can finally collaborate with mutual understanding, turning past conflicts into productive teamwork.
From these workshop formats, participants are expected to transform the way they communicate, think, act, and collaborate at work. As a result, marketing and sales teams no longer operate in isolation, but grow together, enabling the company to achieve revenue growth that is potentially twice as high or prevent it from stagnating at the same level.
“Teams often struggle not because of different objectives, but because they haven’t walked in each other’s shoes.”
Consider immersive Sidestream training as a long-term investment in your teams, not just an annual event. Book a free call today or contact us.
