Andrei Zinkevich

Fullfunnel.io

I live and breathe B2B marketing since 2006. 

Before launching Fullfunnel.io, I spent 8 years in the enterprise segment working for Kimberly Clark and Biosphere Corporation.

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows. 

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc). 

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge. 

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

Co-founder

Trenches - B2B marketing community

Trenches — a community created by B2B marketers for B2B marketers who are in the trenches every day getting their hands dirty in growing B2B companies with high ACV and long sales cycles. 

We talk about ABM (account-based marketing), marketing-sourced pipeline, demand generation, lead nurturing, GTM strategy, buyer’s journey, and all other hot topics that are ignored in the sales communities. 

Community is FOREVER FREE.

Founder

Split Tech City

Split Tech City is a community for tech companies that operate, live, plan to launch a business or simply love the Mediterranean seaside. 

Whether you want to find a local tech partner, access the tech talent pool, relocate to Split, or find a job in the tech space, Split Tech City is for you. 

Learn more and sign up for upcoming events here: https://en.split-techcity.com

Strategic Advisor

Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Podcast

The System B2B Marketing Show is a weekly podcast hosted by Andrei Zinkevich. 

Every week with B2B marketing professionals we dive deeply into topics as a B2B marketing strategy, full-funnel marketing, inbound lead generation, lead nurturing, sales and marketing alignment, sales and marketing automation, content marketing and account-based marketing (ABM). 

Our goal is to help B2B marketers, founders, CMO, and head of growth teams implement system B2B marketing and increase their sales pipeline, scale revenue, and customer growth.

Visit our podcast page: https://getleado.com/the-system-b2b-marketing-show/ and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes (for iOS users) or on Stitcher (for Android).

Host

ROIplan

ROIPlan's mission is to empower B2B marketing teams and help them to create revenue-driven marketing plans. 

I started my career as a sales rep and, after five years in sales, switched to marketing. Another eight years, I worked as a CMO and B2B marketing consultant with 50+ B2B Companies from Europe and North America.

Every company I joined, I saw the same problem: 

Stakeholders and B2B sales teams didn't believe marketing and didn't believe in marketing. They didn't see the marketing impact on revenue.

One of the biggest problems is that marketers don't know how to present a marketing plan for executives and sales teams. Board members don't see a direct positive impact on revenue and decline plan and budget.

Besides this, there are lots of challenges that marketers face when working on marketing plans:

- Find history and the reports of the experiments in the past
- Allocate marketing budget in the most efficient way
- Prepare executive reports that show the ROI of the campaigns
- Orchestrate and align marketing campaigns with the sales team
- Prioritize experiments and focus on those that might generate the highest possible ROI
- Align non-lead generation campaigns with business goals and evaluate success criteria
- Managing lots of Google Sheets and project management tools to plan, present and execute a marketing plan

All this led to the idea of creating a marketing planning software that will simplify marketers preparing revenue-driving plans and get executive approval.

-> Create revenue-driving marketing plans and get executive approval in ROIplan:
-> Identify the top priority campaigns and experiments
-> Allocate your marketing budget most efficiently by channels and experiments
-> See what experiments generated the highest ROI in the past and what performed poorly
-> Get your campaigns and budget approved by the supervisor or your client 

Try ROIplan for free by clicking the image below.

Co-Founder

B2B Marketers & Founders

Are you skilled B2B marketer or Founder? Do you agree with 2 principles

1) Quality over quantity
2) Strategy and process before tactics and growth hacks?

If you've answered "Yes" to all 2 questions, you’ve got into the right place. 

WHOM YOU'LL GET ACQUAINTED WITH?

You'll get acquainted with other awesome and skilled B2B Marketers & Founders from the whole world who love to learn, share and grow. 

Amongst them Sujan Patel, Ben lee, Gilles De Clerck, Stapho Thienpont, Guillaume Moubeche, Juraj Zamborsky, and many others.

There are no "internet marketing" and "funnel gurus" who teach you about "money making machine" or "get rich quick" schemes. Only real business.

Ad.Wize

I help middle&enterprise businesses to launch my flagship consulting methodology called "Integrated marketing system". This system consists of 7 phases, creates steady streams of target leads and helps to retain existing customers. 

As well I help FMCG manufacturers with distribution development, entering new markets and increasing sales.

My background:

+ 11 years in marketing&sales 
+ Working with customers from 13 countries
+ My consulting methodology is working in 19 different markets
+ I've worked and helped with distribution development 12 FMCG manufacturers from whole Europe 

My Specialities:

• Integrated Marketing
• Business Growth
• Lead Generation
• Inbound marketing
• Distribution development

Want to work with me? Shoot me an email at andrei@getleado.com.

Founder & CEO

Biosphere Corporation

In 2012 I became a national key account manager and was responsible for increasing sales and customer growth.

Key Account Manager (National Chains)

Via GmbH

I became a marketing director of VIA GmbH company and was responsible for account-based marketing and acquiring big distributors and the biggest supermarket chains of Ukraine. As well, I was responsible for helping European manufacturers to enter the Ukrainian market and increase sales there.

Marketing Director

Kimberly-Clark

I’ve started my marketing career in 2006 as a sales rep at Kimberly Clark Corporation. I was promoted to area sales manager, regional sales manager, and regional trade marketing coordinator and then switched to marketing in 2011

Area Sales Manager and trade marketing coordinator

Co-founder @Fullfunnel.io| ABM & full-funnel marketing for B2B tech companies with high ACV and long sales cycle

We transform B2B Tech and Service-based companies from siloed sales and marketing to full-funnel account-based marketing and demand generation. 

We help your team develop an ABM strategy, launch pilot programs, operationalize and scale the programs without ramping up budget or depending on external agencies.

Here is how.

1. ABM STRATEGY.

We go together through a 3-week initial strategy sprint that includes: 

- Deep assessment of current marketing and sales processes
- Challenges both teams face and the root reasons behind them
- Revenue and channel analysis to identify focus markets and ICP for the ABM campaigns
- Custom ABM strategy development including detailed:
- Marketing and sales alignment with ICP, strategy and playbooks

2. LAUNCH PILOT ABM PROGRAM.

Within a single quarter, we’ll work with a pilot team to implement a minimal viable full-funnel program, without pausing existing processes. The pilot team usually consists of one marketer and one sales development rep.  

When we hit the target KPIs, we move to the operationalization and scaling stage.

3.DEVELOPING FULL-FUNNEL ABM FUNCTION.

At this stage we combine ABM with demand generation function to create a holistic model that creates awareness, generates demand and activates accounts that are already engaged across the full funnel.

SPRINTS INCLUDE:

-> Account-Based Marketing

-> LinkedIn demand generation and social selling

-> GTM strategy

-> Sales enablement

-> Demand generation and accounts warm-up

Why Work With FullFunnel.io?

1. 30+ years of niche experience

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge.

2. Knowledge transfer.

Your team gets consistent support and training, including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack, and process maps.

3. Revenue alignment.

We align marketing and sales teams around revenue, ideal customer profile, target accounts and lead scoring criteria which helps to consistently hit your revenue quota and operate as one Revenue Operations team.

OUR CASE STUDIES INCLUDE

- $300k from a pilot ABM campaign with a software development company

- 9 qualified sales opportunities and 3 new contracts, 10x ACV from an account-based demand generation campaign with AdTech development company

- 7 sales-qualified opportunities from a pilot ABM campaign in the Nordics region with a cloud solutions vendor

- 76% response rate, 36% accounts engaged, 5 opportunities from a pilot ABM campaign

At Fullfunnel.io we are growing B2B companies with long and complex sales cycles since 2006.

We were and still are “in trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, and bring to the table our 30+ years of combined experience and knowledge. 

I live and breathe B2B marketing since 2006. 

Before launching Fullfunnel.io, I spent 8 years in the enterprise segment working for Kimberly Clark and Biosphere Corporation.

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows. 

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc). 

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge. 

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

No VP of Sales said: "I expect marketing to orchestrate our engagement playbooks". Yet this is what often happens with ABM:

Marketing:

- Creates multiple sales playbooks & engagement sequences
- Designs timeline
- Add best practices

Then, marketing shares with sales 87-pages deck and asks to implement.
One month later: "Sales doesn't use our playbooks and content".

This year I've interviewed 9 enterprise B2B Saas VP of Sales to dive deeper into the challenges they want to solve with ABM and get marketing hands-on help (check our roundup: https://lnkd.in/dXi5M6wc)

Here are 5 core areas:

1. AWARENESS AMONG STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS.

Awareness is not created by running more ads, drip personalized nurturing and outbound cadences.

Awareness is not created by creating more AI content nobody is going to read.

Awareness is created through the engagement with ICP ecocystem:

-High-quality thought leadership program with SMEs and executives
-Top-notch events
-Collaborations and direct engagement with the target accounts.
-Constant engagement with the communities and thought leaders

2.  CHANGE MANAGEMENT CONTENT.

Modern B2B buyers don't need one more "How to cut your costs" whitepaper. Modern buyers want to see:

-Industry trends and stats
-Concrete practical examples and best practices: dashboards, workflows, templates
-How to challenge an internal inertia and status quo

In most cases, sales don't use marketing content because it doesn't fall in any of these categories. 

3.  COMPLETE ACCOUNT ENGAGEMENT.

Most organizations use lead handoff as a default function:

MQL generated -> assign to SDR.
Webinar signed up -> Assign to SDR

In 2026 to cut through the noise you need to have a holistic visibility:

- Who engaged with what content and ads
- What were historical interactions
- When was a spike in high-intent page visits
- Which events buying committee members has attended

This way sales move from desperate pitching to meaningful 1-1 account planning.

4. BUYER ENABLEMENT.

You don't win deals with fancy pitch decks. You win when your Champion can sell your product at the next internal meeting.

Sales can create business cases showing challenges, cost of inaction, and recommended solutions.

But they need marketing's help with:

- Product screenshots that address specific buyer questions
- Relevant customer testimonials and references
- Data snapshots

We dive deeper here: https://lnkd.in/d2QqTTeh

5. CLEAR MESSAGING.

Nothing frustrates sales more than prospects asking: "But what exactly does your product do?"

Anthony Pierri and Rob Kaminski have tons of great templates on how to fix it.

---
Tomorrow we'll go live with Vladimir Blagojević to share simple solutions to fix marketing and sales collaboration.

Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/duEsttZ2

B2B marketing plans often fail because of one reason: 
Lack of clarity.


Bad plans include vague activities that are usually misunderstood by leadership and sales.

Brand awareness is not about running ads for ungated content.

ABM is not about making a wish list of accounts, running display ads and automated emails.

Lead nurturing is not about setting up an automated sequence of emails to push the discovery call.

But yet most plans just mention these programs without any clarification.

If sales and leadership don't support these plans, it's not because they don't get marketing.

It's because they:

-Don't see the impact of these programs on the bottom line
-Don't expect it to be a cross-functional motion and expect marketing to run everything without sales involvement.

Good marketing plans are:

1. BALANCED.

-80%: always-on programs that work historically
-10%: short-term cross-functional campaigns co-created with sales
-10%: experiments

2. DETAILED AND FOCUSED

All programs have clear:

-Detailed timeline
-Goals and expectations
-Success and failure criteria
-Resources involvement
-Leading and lagging indicators to track program efficiency
-Forecast
-Weekly planning and review meetings (see an example: https://lnkd.in/dN_hMyfQ)
-Campaign visual outline (or deck) to show how it impacts the pipeline and revenue

Our template: https://lnkd.in/dSmufFht

3. INTERCONNECTED AND CROSS-FUNCTIONAL.

Every program impacts another, avoiding siloed execution.

Thought leadership ads to strategic accounts generate 1st-party engagement signals sales use for further engagement.

Webinars are tailored to a specific use case, buyer persona, and subset of accounts. They repurpose thought leadership content, and are repurposed later as market research.

4. INFLUENCING THE ENTIRE BUYER JOURNEY.

Marketing plans shouldn't be "brand awareness vs demand capture", "new pipeline vs expansion". 

If you focus on brand only, your sales process will struggle. We saw several MarTech companies generating buzz around them but struggling to convert brand into demand.

If you focus on demand capture, you'll miss the majority of the market.

Good marketing plans generate revenue while creating future pipeline, growing share of wallet, and preventing churn.

5. BACKED BY DATA.

Marketing plans based on gut feelings or broad data always fail.

Plans that include revenue trends and sales pipeline velocity across markets, segments, use cases (clusters) help to make smart bets.
---
This Wednesday, we've invited to Full-Funnel Live the head of marketing at Aligned, Ashley Lewin, to share her approach to marketing planning with GTM focus cycles.

Save your spot here: https://lnkd.in/dCS6t6MK

Marketing and sales planning often looks like this:

Marketing: We'll run this webinar. You'll get a list of MQLs.

Sales: Here is our target accounts list we want to get you in front of. And, by the way, we need a new product deck.

Here is how to fix a broken marketing and sales planning...

Define a pilot team (ideally, VP of Marketing and VP of Sales) who will run the initial analysis of 4 areas.

1. SALES PIPELINE VELOCITY ACROSS

- Markets
- Verticals
- Products or use cases

Analyze the revenue metrics:

- Win rates
- # of sales opps
- Sales cycle length
- ACV

Then, answer the following questions:

- Where should we focus? What are the lowest-hanging fruits? Where should we double down on our efforts? Where should we pay attention?

- How can we improve our revenue metrics in target markets/verticals/clusters?

- Why are some of our revenue metrics low/declining? What are the root reasons?

2. GO-TO-MARKET.

Review together:

- ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): Who are our best customers? Why do they buy our product? Who is involved in the buying process?

- Message: How can we make our message more relevant to them?

- Customer research: What do we need to know about our target accounts to create a relevant message, nurturing content, and offer?

- Buyer Journey: How do they buy? What triggers their buying process? What should they be educated about to consider your product? What change management should happen? How can we influence their buyer journey and nurture them across these different stages?

3. MOTIONS.

Plan together playbooks for generating new logos and running expansion programs. 

- What are the best accounts to focus on?
- How many accounts do you need to target across these motions?

4. LISTS.

Define criteria for selecting accounts for 2 lists.

a) Active focus list:

- Current pipeline -> accelerate deals
- Expansion -> upsell/cross-sell
- High-intent new logos -> generating sales opportunities

b) Future pipeline list: Accounts with a low intent/no engagement that fit your ICP and are qualified.

Plan together:

- How can you create awareness among these accounts? 
- How can we create awareness and demand in a selected market/vertical/cluster to expand the pool of these accounts?
- How and where can we connect with them?
- How can we nurture them?
- How can we collect the necessary information to understand if they have a potential need for our product? If yes, where are they in the buying journey?
---
Marketing and sales planning usually happens in silos, which frustrates both teams.

Sales don't understand how marketing programs lead to revenue. 

Marketing desperately tries to generate a marketing-sourced pipeline targeting wish lists while taking design and content orders from sales.

Make sure both teams understand how the company grows, what is the current GTM status and how they can work together to drive revenue.

This is the only way to stop being aligned in theory but not doing anything together in practice.

Here is our buyer enablement cheat sheet:
https://lnkd.in/dVhSwK5i

GUIDES

-Account-based content: How to influence accounts at different stages of their buyer journey
-Buyer Enablement: How to help your B2B buyers to BUY from you
-How to match touchpoints with different buyer journey stages and use personalization to nurture target accounts
-How to Use a Mutual Action Plan
-How to Write, Think, and Talk like an Executive (to Get Big Deals Done)

TEMPLATES

-Business case template (feat. Nate Nasralla)
-Mutual action plan (feat. Gal Aga)

STACK

- Aligned: digital rooms & content hubs: https://lnkd.in/d9g84yq9
- Granola: AI-notetaking and summaries of the calls without joining the calls
- Claude: Extracting customer quotes and anecdotes about the challenges, goals and needs

Let me know which resource was the most helpful and which one you'd like us to add.

AI agents are the new Tamagotchi of 2025. Everybody talks about it. Some cool kids show sophisticated dashboards. And rarely a B2B enterprise organization really adopt it.

We've interviewed 46 enterprise B2B marketing leaders about how they use AI (swipe the deck), and what challenges they face. And, boy, it seems that all that glitters is not gold.

Here is the reality of adopting AI outside the LinkedIn bubble, with quotes from CMOs.

1. LACK OF AI STRATEGY.

There's pressure to bolt on AI everywhere, but often no clarity on why or what success looks like. Without that, AI risks becoming a shiny toy that creates more noise than results. But AI is only effective when plugged into a clear revenue strategy - otherwise it just fuels the hamster wheel, and you end up flaunting the toy for the sake of not being accused of lagging behind your peers.

2. EXPECTATION GAPS.

C-suite often hears 'AI' and assumes instant results/lower costs, but in reality, it still requires quality data, strategic direction, and human judgment. 

3. DATA QUALITY & CRM READINESS.

Hands down, data readiness. We've got a messy CRM. This includes weak labeling of wins, losses, and revenue. We've also got too many disconnected systems. It's a challenge getting info pulled into our MAP and CRM.

4. SILOED IMPLEMENTATION.

Beyond technical and security limitations that restrict integrations and data flow, the bigger challenge I've seen is the siloed approach to AI. Different teams are running their own AI initiatives without connecting them across the full funnel — marketing, SDRs, sales, and post-sales. Instead of improving alignment, we risk creating more disconnect, with teams moving at different speeds and on disconnected systems."

5. QUALITY CONTROL & REVIEWS.

AI has made it easier to produce content, but that just shifts the pressure to senior reviewers - myself included.  Reviewing the output takes twice as long. Ultimately, I still don't think what LLMs are producing is good enough in terms of tone of voice, angle, and approach.

6. TRUST & ACCURACY.

The biggest challenge with AI is trust. It is hard to trust how secure it is, but I have also found in many scenarios that incorrect information finds its way into the responses.

7. LEARNING CURVE & INTEGRATION.

The biggest challenge is learning tools, integrating them into workflows, and choosing what's worth our time to implement with so many tools and resources available. All while pipeline and revenue targets remain unchanged. 

TLDR;

Before you'll buy in the next shiny AI object, think about these challenges, and look at real examples of how AI is used.

Big thanks to everybody who contributed to the research:

Sam, ♜ Arthur, Elena, Hanna, Briana, 🌱 Allison, Aurelien, Giorgia, Samantha, Mindy, Sara, Stuart, 👨🏻‍💻 Dipak, Jamie, Rafael, Amelia, Holly, Holly, Kathleen, Justin, Nick, Connie, Jonathan, Tim, Tarek, Sophie, Kayleigh, Sheri, Nicole and many more whom I can't tag due to the limit of characters :)

fullfunnelio

trenches-b2b-marketing-community

roiplan

systemb2bmarketing

the-hour-a-day-linkedin-allbound-sales-machine

ad.wize-sp.-z-o.o.

bootstrapped-startup-founders-with-andrei-and-stefan

Talks about #fullfunnel, #gtmstrategy, #b2bmarketing, and #accountbasedmarketing

VP of Marketing @ Loxo, the #1 Talent Intelligence Platform and global leader in recruiting software | Weekly newsletter: samkuehnle.com

Go-to-market WITH your market | Modernizing B2B go-to-market strategy | Founder ModernGTM

Head of Marketing | B2B SaaS & Cybersecurity Marketing | Marketing Automation | Content Marketing

B2B Marketing @ Aritma (like Zapier for finance)

Marketing Leader in B2B Tech | Marketing Strategy | Demand Gen | Digital Marketing

Chief Marketing & Ecosystem Officer @ Vena

B2B SaaS Marketing Leader • GTM Strategist • CSR/Sustainability Advocate • INSEAD Global Executive MBA

Head of Growth Marketing @ UpSlide | B2B Tech | Branding, Positioning, Growth Marketing

4X Marketing Vice President │ Data, Analytics & AI Solutions │ B2B Healthcare │ Brand Marketing │ Product Marketing │ Growth Marketing

Revenue Marketing Leader | Driving Pipeline Through ABM, Demand Gen & Field Marketing

B2B Marketing Leader & Advisor | Content marketing & GTM | Writing & building @The Workflow | Top 20 🇨🇭 LinkedIn creators

Marketing & Commercial Leader | Driving GTM Strategy, Sales Alignment & Customer Growth

Making Deals Happen! 😊 | Marketing Leader @ Dealfront | Full-time Backpacker 🎒 | International Speaker 🎤| Vibe Coding and Chill 👨🏻‍💻

Building a brand & content engine @ Dealfront | Director of Brand & Content | Asana Ambassador

Head of Growth & Marketing | SaaS & PLG Strategy | Driving User Acquisition & Free-to-Paid Conversions | UrbanTech • ClimateTech • ProtTech | Accelerating Growth Sustainably

Driving Growth Through Strategic Sales, Partner Ecosystems & Relevant Content | Turning Relationships into Revenue & Conversations into Conversions

Strategic Marketing & Brand Leader | Producer of What The FTE!? Podcast

Head of Marketing @ MaxInfo l Start Ups l Catastrophe Risk l Insurance l Humanitarian Aid

VP Marketing @ Sequel.io 💜 the webinar solution for data-driven marketers

Founder & CEO @ Impactable | B2B LinkedIn Ads Partners | Paid Ads + Demand Gen + AI + Audiences + Automation + Strategy |

15+ Year B2B Marketing Leader Turned Founder | ABM, Field Marketing & Events, Influencer Marketing & More | DM Me to Learn More

Trade Promotion Management, | TPO | Strategy Consulting | Business& Shopper Insights | Category Management | Sales Strategy | Vice President Strategy @ PSignite/CPGvision

Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands (HIRING)

CMO at Backbase | The AI-powered Banking Platform

Growth Manager

Leading the SAS ABM Strategy for the European Institutions | Driving Growth and Innovation in the Public Sector on Global/NE & SWEE level through Strategic Marketing Programs. Opinions are my own.

Growth Architect | Pipeline Powerhouse | Demand Generator | ABM Alchemist | Dog spoiler | Turning cold leads into warm handshakes

Content Marketing Strategist | Former HubSpot | Demand Creation | Thought Leadership Enablement for Business Leaders | Founder of FixMyEmail.ai

VP Growth Marketing @ Varonis | Top 30 Growth Voice to Follow

46 AI practices in enterprise B2B marketing

Mohammed Nouri

I was genuinely interested to discover the root reasons why marketing faces pushback from sales, and interviewed 20+ Enterprise AEs, SDRs and VPs of sales. Here are 5 reasons they've shared:

1. THE PROTECTIVE MINDSET.

You know the story. You ask to interview a strategic account for a case study. Sales immediately says: "No, these are my contacts. We don't need to bother them."

The root cause is usually the "credit issue" - sales wants to prove they're the irreplaceable relationship owner, that deals happen purely because of them.

This is a part of a way bigger problem, where you have two choices: immediately trigger the change management and conversations with your leadership or find a new job.

2. THE DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE GAP.

One team I worked with had a marketer creating programs for technical buyers (software engineers) without any technical background. The content and messaging completely missed the mark.

You can’t gain the sales trust until you fix the domain knowledge gap and start involving (or working closely) with subject-matter experts. Here is an example: https://lnkd.in/dsUf7RFM

3. MISUNDERSTANDING SALES CHALLENGES.

You present a solution to sales that solves a problem you think they have. They push back. Why? Because you never actually asked what their real priorities and challenges are.

If you don't understand their day-to-day reality, you're solving imaginary problems.

Ashley Lewin shared her case last week: https://lnkd.in/dSQ4eT_d

When she started at Aligned, she heard a recurring complaint: the lead handoff process between marketing and sales was broken. She sat down with a sales leader, defined how the broken handoff process impacts revenue, and co-created a simple battle plan.

This approach immediately demonstrated marketing’s commitment to solving sales problems, and building the necessary relationship to run bigger initiatives together.

4. DIFFERENT INCENTIVES.

Sales is measured on revenue. Marketing is often measured on... MQLs? Traffic? Brand awareness metrics that don't connect to revenue?

I've heard multiple times about this case: Marketing comes to the board meeting celebrating improved traffic, better LLM visibility, hitting MQL targets. Meanwhile, sales is missing revenue targets.

From the sales perspective: "These guys are getting celebrated while we're drowning. And now they want to tell us what to do?"

5. NAIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT.

You create a playbook and tell sales: "This is what you should do." You expect them to follow it.

People don't change just because you ask them to. Change requires understanding their motivations, addressing their concerns, showing early wins, and getting their buy-in during the creation process - not after.
---
The good news?

There are quick tactical fixes to go from misaligned, siloed functions to revenue teams. Read tomorrow on our Substack: https://lnkd.in/dSje9cKc

Head of Marketing at Aligned

The fundamental enterprise marketing mismatch: engaging accounts with 2-week personalized cadences while the enterprise sales cycle is 9–12 months...

At FullFunnel.io, our typical sales cycle is 9-12 months with 80-100 touchpoints across the buying committee (way beyond 12 emails over two weeks) :)

Our buyer's journey typically starts when they see our LinkedIn thought leadership content. 

Other touchpoints are happening later through:

- Weekly newsletter diving into ABM and GTM strategy
- Live weekly podcast where buyers can ask questions
- Quarterly webinars
- Content hubs tailored to specific challenges and solutions (launching pilot ABM, initiating change management, etc)
- 1-1 conversations on LinkedIn
- Content co-creation

Before we generate a sales opportunity, we help our buyers to:

- Identify the root reasons for their challenges and the solutions in strategy sessions
- Build a business case to get stakeholder buy-in
- Design pilot programs with clear metrics, resources and timeline

It's not ad-hoc and not optional. This is how the enterprise buyer journey is happening.

The trap I see most B2B companies fall down is focusing on the volume and scalability instead of focusing on future pipeline creation and thorough account development to land enterprise deals.

They try to replicate what works for SMB / low-size deals:

- Developing target lists from ZoomInfo / Apollo / Clay
- Set up personalized outreach sequences Outreach / lemlist
- Run air cover to the same set of accounts

The SMB playbook is optimized for fast pipeline creation with minimal human involvement.

While enterprise playbook requires:

- In-depth account research and thorough account mapping
- Constant engagement with 5+ buying committee members across the entire sales cycle (9-12 months): power users, champions, stakeholders
- Personalized activities and content per account

You can't fix it with technology.

You can fix it only with setting up cross-functional teams that are focused on continuous account development and quarter milestone metrics for 12-month sales cycle:

Q1: X engaged buyers, initial conversations, account penetration
Q2: Discovery calls
Q3: Business case creation
Q4: Sales opportunities

Horizontal sales are killing marketing in B2B tech companies. Here is what I repeatedly observe:

The sales team has a horizontal setup:
Team A (horizontal hunters) finds new logos across ANY industry, ANY product
Team B (solution architects acting as account executives) closes the deals

The idea is simple: maximum coverage and scalable setup optimized for volume.

The reality? 

A $250K+ product with 10+ distinct use cases trying to sell to everyone is like a lottery man moving around the city trying to sell lottery tickets.

This setup makes marketing doomed by default.

Marketing is supposed to create a generic content masked as "industry thought leadership", prepare "one-size-fits-all" messaging and run campaigns nobody engages with.

And when marketing suggests changing the approach, "we know our business better" meets "I don't think put anything that is not a typical lead gen_is what we need".

We are in 2026 where generic marketing and sales are cracking like peanuts.
Nobody is going to read your "Why you need to buy this..." PDF.

We must stop this harmful thinking that our buyers are not aware of their challenges and potential solutions. Generic content and messaging was neutraly perceived a decade ago, but today it hurts your brand.

My honest take:

You can't run a good B2B marketing with a horizontal sales structure optimized for volume. You can't create compelling narratives when your ICP is "anyone who might need our product."

The fix isn't working harder. It's making hard choices:

Prioritizing use cases
Defining verticals where these use cases have strongest demand
Develop account qualification characteristics
Define primary buyer persona
Forming dedicated (even if small) cross-functional teams that own those accounts end-to-end: from awareness creation to expansion
Update your messaging and create content that appeals to the interests of that buyer persona and is created by a subject-matter expert, not Chatgpt

We are now in an era where volume is available for everybody, enabled AI. But I firmly believe that in this period the growth will come from things that are considered non-scalable:

-Expert content tailored to a specific ICP
-Great distribution
-Manual engagement with the target buyers
-Clear messaging

taplio

Andrei Zinkevich's Linkedin Analytics