The B2B buying cycle has always been notoriously complex, but recently, it has started to feel like a completely different beast. With buying committees expanding to include finance, procurement, and the board, decisions are taking longer. Yet, marketing and sales teams are often still operating in silos, speaking different languages, and incentivised by different metrics. Marketing celebrates a spike in volume, while sales struggles to close leads that simply aren't ready to buy.  

To address this growing friction, we recently hosted a B2B Breakfast in Stockholm, bringing together leaders who are actively solving this disconnect. The panel featured Anders Lykke (CEO of B2B at Precis), Aoife Murphy (Director Corporate, Nordics & Benelux at HubSpot), Johanna Fagerstedt (CMO at Mentimeter), Frida Ahrenby (CMO at Rillion), and Matias Roth (VP Marketing at Scrive). By sharing their own wake-up calls and operational shifts, they provided an unfiltered look at what it actually takes to get commercial teams pulling in the same direction.  

The conversation made one thing abundantly clear: bridging the gap requires moving from volume to revenue signals, building a unified customer view, and establishing rigorous service-level agreements between teams.  

Volume is vanity, revenue is the only signal that matters

One of the most honest moments of the morning came from Johanna Fagerstedt, who recalled a quarter where marketing hit high lead counts while the company missed its overall sales targets by 20%. It is a scenario that plays out in almost every growing B2B business. When marketing goals are decoupled from revenue, teams end up optimising for vanity metrics rather than business impact.  

Aoife Murphy echoed this, noting that marketing must stop celebrating sheer volume if those leads consistently fail to close. Instead, the focus must shift entirely to pipeline health. For brands that do not have the enterprise scale or budget of a global software provider, the logic remains exactly the same: agree on a targeted account list and share the responsibility for revenue outcomes. If the lead does not convert, it is a shared commercial problem, not just a sales failure.  

A single source of truth is a non-negotiable foundation

You cannot align teams if they are looking at completely different dashboards. Anders Lykke highlighted that internal misalignment is a nearly universal challenge, one that requires active investment in revenue operations and data hygiene rather than quick tactical fixes. By democratising commercial performance data, businesses can create common incentives.  

Frida Ahrenby stressed that even with a sales background, marketing leaders will struggle to move past basic lead discussions if the business still views marketing solely as a cost centre. The antidote is visibility. Frida reviews inbound numbers every Sunday and maintains weekly check-ins with her sales peers to discuss conversion deviations. When everyone looks at the same CRM data, you can pivot based on real-world context rather than assumptions.  

Answer Engine Optimisation is changing early-stage discovery

Buyers are arriving at the first sales conversation more educated than ever, often preferring self-serve or touchless purchase options. Aoife highlighted a major shift for 2026: the rise of Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).  

What is AEO and how does it relate to SEO? While traditional SEO focuses on ranking web pages in search engine results, AEO ensures your brand's content is structured to be synthesised and quoted by AI-driven search interfaces. With buyer journeys increasingly starting in AI agents, ranking in these synthesised answers is critical. Interestingly, while the initial discovery phase might take longer, leads generated through AEO are currently closing three times faster.  

Alignment requires shared frameworks and uncomfortable transparency

Alignment is not just about shared goals; it is about shared operational realities. Matias Roth shared a cautionary tale of a ten-person account-based marketing project built around a specific sales list, only for the sales team to pivot their focus entirely without notifying marketing. It is a perfect example of what happens when communication breaks down mid-campaign.  

To prevent this, the panel advocated for a strict three-step framework: handshake on the target account list, clearly define lead scoring criteria, and align on a service-level agreement for outreach. Johanna operates in a "revenue trio" alongside the CSO and CPO, meeting bi-weekly to review trends. Marketing must adopt the language of sales and be ruthlessly transparent about which channels are failing to deliver actual business impact.  

Key Takeaways

• Ask yourself whether your marketing team is celebrating metrics that have zero correlation to closed-won revenue.  
• Establish a weekly feedback loop between marketing and sales to discuss conversion deviations, rather than waiting for quarterly reviews.  
• Implement a strict three-step agreement: agree on the target account list, define exact lead scoring criteria, and build a service-level agreement for sales outreach.  
• Assess whether your current search strategy accounts for Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) to capture buyers who start their journey in AI interfaces.  
• Ensure your CRM provides a single, unified customer view that both marketing and sales rely on daily.  

If marketing and sales are still arguing over lead quality, you do not have a lead problem – you have an alignment problem.  

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