Descending the steps of a monastery, a young monk in training quizzes his master: “What are the differences between Heaven and Hell?”
“There are no material differences,” replies the old monk.
“None at all?” probes the trainee.
“Yes. Both Heaven and Hell look the same. However, each diner must use a pair of meter-long chopsticks to eat. In the case of Hell, people are always starved because no matter how hard they try, they fail to get food into their own mouths. In heaven, however, everyone is satiated because they feed the person sitting opposite them at the table.That’s the difference.”
So how is this parable relevant to lead generation and surviving a crisis?
For a lot of B2B companies, revenue plunged during COVID-19.
Small businesses either struggled financially or preserved cash until the crisis was over. This means fewer leads are coming through the door. Of the leads that were acquired, many of them had less budget to spend.
The result was a new sales landscape that is objectively more difficult than before.
In order for B2B companies to adapt, survive, and succeed in it, marketing and sales teams must take a page out of the zen playbook: To support themselves, they should first strengthen the team seated across them at the table.
Ahead, I’ll break down how marketing and sales teams can align unique insights, skills, and resources to generate leads and survive a crisis.
Why sales-marketing alignment matters more during crises
When business conditions are favorable, misalignment between sales and marketing is costly but survivable. During challenging times, it can be fatal.
The numbers tell a stark story. Organizations with strong sales and marketing alignment achieve 208% higher marketing revenue than those with poor alignment. They’re 67% more efficient at closing deals and enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates. Yet only 8% of companies have achieved true alignment between these critical departments.
The cost of getting this wrong? Misalignment between sales and marketing costs businesses an estimated $1 trillion annually in lost productivity and wasted marketing spend. During periods of economic stress or crisis, this waste becomes unsustainable.
Here’s what changes when challenges hit:
Buyer behavior becomes more complex. Decision cycles lengthen, more stakeholders get involved, and risk aversion increases. Marketing needs real-time intelligence from sales about shifting objections and concerns. Sales needs marketing to create content that addresses emerging anxieties and proves ROI more convincingly.
Resources become scarcer. Budgets tighten, hiring freezes kick in, and teams must do more with less. Duplicated efforts, conflicting messages, and poor lead handoffs—tolerable inefficiencies in good times—become deal-breakers when every opportunity counts.
Speed matters more than perfection. When conditions shift rapidly, the team that can adapt messaging, refine targeting, and adjust strategy fastest wins. This requires constant communication, shared data, and mutual trust between sales and marketing.
The companies that emerge stronger from difficult periods aren’t necessarily those with the best products or deepest pockets. They’re the ones where sales and marketing operate as a unified revenue team, sharing insights freely and supporting each other’s success.
Lead with empathy—but make sure it’s genuine
“Show empathy.”
The well-intended advice is becoming an ethereal platitude in modern business, parroted by marketing and sales teams everywhere.
Unfortunately, it’s also damaging the reputation of brands that broadcast “fake empathy.”
Take 2020, for example. The viral video “Every Covid-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same” features a montage of big brands whose superficial “empathy marketing” backfired spectacularly. They even used the same somber background music!
Instead of resonating with customers, aloof, artificial-looking empathy triggered an uproar of comical aversion.
Delayed or inauthentic empathy causes more reputational damage than saying nothing at all. When organizations wait too long to respond during a crisis or lead with corporate-speak instead of genuine concern, trust erodes rapidly.
To avoid hollow empathy and actually connect with leads during challenging periods, here are practical ways for sales and marketing teams to help each other step into a buyer’s shoes:
Marketing: Create a report for sales reps that breaks down your buyer’s emerging problems and priorities. Depending on your resources, this can start with researching “How [Prospect’s Job Title] are being affected by changing economic conditions” or, it could involve a detailed survey.
Sales: Interview current customers and prospects on how they’re responding to the changes in their business environment. Then, pass this data on to marketing so they can create relevant content and accurate ads.
Sales: Discuss recent CRM data from high-value accounts. Is one persona more active than another? Is a select product or service skyrocketing in demand? Your CRM data contains key information that marketers can use to fine-tune messaging and tweak strategies.
Sales and Marketing: Sit down with support and listen to a customer’s frustrations. Support teams hear unfiltered customer concerns first. For both sales and marketing teams, this is an opportunity to understand how buyers are coping.
Empathy is more than acknowledging that “times are hard.” It’s not trumpeting your corporate story and tying it to the fact that “we’re all in this together.”
Empathy is about answering the all-important question: “What are my prospect’s biggest priorities and problems right now, and how does my product/service help them?”
During periods of economic uncertainty or crisis, buyer behavior shifts dramatically. Most buyers take longer to make purchasing decisions during challenging times, and many operate with tighter budgets.
For sales and marketing teams—whose dynamic roles are demanding under normal circumstances—crises render old playbooks ineffective at best.
The first step for marketing, sales, and C-suite teams is to clear the fog of uncertainty by grasping the “new normal” and how they’ll adapt. This means coming together to:
1) Draw support ideas from team members in all departments
However, senior executives eventually came around. And today, the PlayStation is the best-selling console of all time.
A breakthrough insight that’s obvious to some may seem obscure and far-fetched to others. So invite observations and ideas from all departments, not just sales and marketing. Gather your team, survey your surroundings, and plan how sales and marketing will help each other over potential hurdles on the horizon.
Once there’s a substantial list of observations, marketing and sales can discuss solutions and prioritize the ones that are most likely to bear fruit.
2) Find ways for each team to sharpen the other’s saw
With the expected challenges and changes listed out for both teams, necessary adaptations start to reveal themselves…
If reps aren’t trained on inside or digital sales, it’s time for them to learn. If the marketing team is yet to host webinars and remote events, now’s the time to start.
But those are obvious and reactive changes that each team instinctively knows are necessary, right?
In order for marketing and sales to actually support each other, they can’t just acknowledge looming challenges. They need to agree on how they’ll sharpen each other’s saws in order to overcome those challenges.
For example, with fewer events and in-person meetups, marketing might predict a spike in digital advertising costs and competition. To continue reaching leads, they can ask sales to find out how customers are struggling.
Based on the data gathered by reps, marketing can potentially answer real-time problems that customers face with relevant content that attracts leads into the funnel.
Sales, on the other hand, might foresee defensive, risk-averse buyers with stronger objections to the sale due to shrinking budgets.
To defuse doubts and lighten the fears that might be weighing on a prospect’s shoulders, they can ask marketing to supply reports, case studies, and social proof that prove ROI.
3) Update baseline metrics and KPIs
In recent surveys of business leaders, only a minority of sales professionals have reported that sales and marketing are strongly aligned in their organizations. This misalignment becomes especially costly during challenging periods when every opportunity counts.
Data shows that companies with poor alignment experience a 4% revenue decline, while those with strong alignment grow 19% faster and are 15% more profitable.
Adapting to a new normal means updating baseline metrics and KPIs. This can be a bitter, but necessary pill to swallow for some.
💡 Pro tip: Data doesn’t always alert you to brewing changes immediately. To stay abreast of major disruptions, regularly review front-facing metrics such as:
Your crisis-countering plan might not be a silver bullet that solves your revenue problems right away. But, having an aligned action plan will give your sales and marketing teams a single playbook to work from, which provides focus and boosts morale.
Remember, action always beats analysis.
Get your plan in writing, then encourage your team to adjust and update it with fresh data and observations as the sales landscape develops.
Tag team on highly-targeted content
According to Salesforce research from 2024, 84% of sales reps didn’t meet their quota in the previous year—largely due to longer sales cycles, more stakeholders in buying decisions, and increased buyer caution.
A key driver of this performance gap is content relevance. When sales and marketing collaborate effectively on content creation, the result is material that actually resonates with buyers’ current challenges rather than generic thought leadership that gathers digital dust.
Counter defensive buyers by reinforcing credibility
B2B buyers were already worried about a 2020 recession before COVID-19.
With buyers now feeling the quake of an unstable economy and shifting environment, the suspicion of, and aversion to risk is rising rapidly. Budgets are being forced under the microscope and purchase decisions interrogated.
To ease the pressure on decision-makers, marketers should equip sales reps with relevant whitepapers, case studies, reviews, and referrals from customers who match the accounts that reps are targeting.
This will help reps overcome objections, establish trust, and prove ROI to risk-averse prospects under financial pressure.
Real-world success story: How alignment drives results
Theory is valuable, but results speak louder. Here’s how one company transformed its business by prioritizing sales and marketing alignment during a challenging period:
SAP’s mid-market expansion challenge
When SAP decided to enter the mid-market space in 2023-2024, they faced a significant obstacle: their sales and marketing teams operated in silos. The disconnect made it nearly impossible to build volume at scale or deliver the digital-first customer experiences that mid-market buyers expected.
With disjointed teams, unclear handoffs, and no unified approach to account-based marketing, SAP struggled to differentiate itself from competitors in a crowded market. The company needed a solution that could help them create cohesive messaging, streamline lead qualification, and ensure marketing efforts actually translated into sales opportunities.
The alignment transformation
SAP committed to breaking down the walls between sales and marketing. They implemented:
Shared account-based marketing strategies where both teams collaborated on target account selection and engagement
Unified marketing automation that gave sales visibility into prospect engagement and behavior
Regular cross-functional meetings where sales shared customer insights and marketing shared campaign performance
Standardized lead definitions and qualification criteria that both teams agreed upon
Joint goal-setting where marketing and sales success metrics were interdependent
The transformation wasn’t just about new technology or processes—it was a cultural shift that required both teams to view each other as partners working toward the same revenue goals rather than separate departments with competing priorities.
The results
The impact was measurable and significant. Through improved sales and marketing alignment, SAP achieved a significant year-over-year increase to their mid-market pipeline. The alignment enabled them to:
Identify and engage high-value accounts more effectively
Reduce time wasted on unqualified leads
Create marketing content that sales actually used in conversations
Respond faster to market changes and competitive moves
Scale their mid-market presence without proportionally scaling headcount
This success story demonstrates a critical truth: when a crisis or challenge demands adaptation, the companies that win aren’t necessarily those with the biggest budgets—they’re the ones where sales and marketing work as a unified force.
Support equals survival and success during tough times
The evidence is clear: organizations that prioritize sales and marketing alignment don’t just survive challenging periods—they emerge stronger. These success stories share common threads, including transparent communication, shared goals, and a commitment to mutual support rather than territorial silos.
The pressures of a deadline, crisis, or pandemic shouldn’t have to push sales and marketing teams to proactively collaborate. A culture of mutual support is a powerful asset. For any sales and marketing operation that wants to generate better leads and close more of them, it should be ingrained in the daily process.
There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.”
– George Shinn
Whether you’re sales, marketing, or C-suite, no single team is solely responsible for carrying another through a crisis. All teams, however, are responsible for supporting those sitting across them to perform at their best during trying times.
Following the steps above, marketing and sales teams can survive and steady themselves for success once the clouds of crisis part.
Frequently asked questions
How should I adjust my sales messaging when prospects are facing budget cuts or uncertainty?
Shift from selling features to emphasizing ROI and risk mitigation. Focus on how your solution helps prospects save money, avoid problems, or maintain business continuity during uncertain times. Use empathetic, consultative language that acknowledges their challenges. Avoid aggressive pushes—instead, position yourself as a trusted advisor helping them navigate challenges successfully.
What’s the best way to qualify leads when buying decisions move up the corporate ladder during a crisis?
During crises, decision-making shifts to senior executives with different priorities than usual buyers. Identify and focus on reaching C-suite and finance teams. Ask about budget approval timelines, decision-making authority, and business continuity concerns. Expect longer sales cycles and multiple stakeholders. Research organizational changes like new leadership or restructurings that signal buying readiness despite the crisis.
How do I keep my sales team motivated when pipeline volume drops during a crisis?
Set tiered incentive goals that reward consistent activity, not just closings. Invest in training to build skills during lean periods. Celebrate small wins and progress. Connect sales goals to personal motivations—help reps understand how weathering the crisis supports their long-term career growth. Regular team communication and transparency about the company’s strategy builds confidence and commitment.
Should I adjust my pipeline forecasts during an economic crisis, and if so, how?
Recalibrate metrics based on the new reality: longer deal cycles, more stalled deals, and different win rates. Instead of cutting forecasts arbitrarily, analyze current pipeline stage-by-stage and apply adjusted win probabilities. Be realistic but not fatalistic. Focus on deals in advanced stages with committed buyers over aspirational new prospects. Update KPIs quarterly as conditions stabilize.
How often should I contact existing customers and prospects during a crisis without seeming opportunistic?
Reach out regularly with value-first content: research, case studies, or helpful resources addressing their crisis-related pain points. Avoid selling directly. Position outreach as checking in and offering support. Consider webinars on relevant topics or exclusive resources. As buying confidence returns, gradually introduce solution conversations. Customers who feel supported through a crisis become long-term advocates.
How can we use CRM data more effectively during uncertain times?
Your CRM contains early warning signals that can help you adapt before challenges become crises. Focus on tracking leading indicators like changes in deal velocity, shifts in which personas are engaging, and emerging objection patterns.
Share this intelligence between sales and marketing weekly, not monthly. Marketing can use these insights to adjust messaging and targeting in real time, while sales benefits from content that addresses the specific concerns prospects are actually voicing. Companies that establish this feedback loop see conversion rates improve by up to 2.3x because their approach stays relevant as conditions change.
What role does AI play in maintaining alignment during challenging times?
AI-driven tools are transforming how sales and marketing collaborate during periods of uncertainty. Predictive analytics can identify which accounts are most likely to convert despite budget pressures. AI can automate routine follow-ups and data entry, freeing both teams to focus on strategic relationship-building. Conversation intelligence tools can analyze sales calls to surface common objections, which marketing can then address through targeted content.
However, AI is a tool for augmentation, not replacement. The human elements—genuine empathy, creative problem-solving, and relationship trust—become more important during challenges, not less. Use AI to handle repetitive tasks so your teams can focus on what humans do best: understanding nuanced needs and building lasting partnerships.
