When Marketing Stops Being An Enabler

I'm a big believer that Marketing is meant to enable sales (and any other revenue generating functions). BUT...

There's SO many examples of when it's doing the exact opposite.

So, today, I want to look at just a few of them to help people see what's happening, so that we can ACTUALLY address the problem...

Instead of people just doing what they're told so they don't get fired.

Scenario #1: We need "_______" from Marketing before, "__________"

Anyone familiar with this one?

We need a website. Then we can go sell stuff.

OR...I won't hand out my business card BECAUSE it has the website on it, and I don't want customers to go there.

Don't sell anything until we have the CRM set up, otherwisewe can't track the funnel.

I could rattle these off all day (quite literally).

And all of them?

EXCUSES.

Now, I'm a marketer. I don't want to pretend that REAL marketing isn't important.

But those things above...

They DO NO ENABLE SALES.

And if Sales thinks they do...then we need a reset.

Scenario #2: Turning Brand Guidelines into a Prison

I was excited to share a bit about this on The Digital Download a couple weeks back, as it's something else that's super common that I think a lot of people don't notice.

When your brand gets big enough, it’s common for companies to begin “protecting” it.

We start trying to trademark everything. We lock down the logo and tell people precisely how to use it in our Brand Guidelines. We create airtight social media guidelines to make sure our employees don’t do anything we can’t stand behind. We ensure that every word, every colour, every pixel is approved by our internal brand police (aka the Marketing Department).

What we’re really doing is building guardrails that are so strong that nothing unexpected can happen. And then we give ourselves high fives about being responsible. Disciplined. Mature.

And no one has any autonomy to talk about our business without us.

And we turn off any potential business multiplier that we had.

Does that sound like an engine for business growth? I think not.

Scenario #3: The need to "understand" the funnel

As humans, we have a deep desire to understand things. Or better yet, predict things that are actually unpredictable.

Like when another person will be ready to buy something.

We convince ourselves that if we just collect enough digital information about a person that we'll know what they need to know to choose us, and we'll tell them that, and they'll be good to go.

But, at the end of the day, humans make emotional buying decisions.

And, someone they have an emotional attachment to will rise to the top of a list.

Regardless of how much they "know" about the funnel.

Now, I'm not saying don't measure anything.

But fully understanding the variety of people that make up our buyers?

It's just not possible.

And when that's the entire focus, it detracts from actually building relationships and providing solutions (aka "sales").

More Information ≠ More Wisdom

And there are SO MANY MORE Scenarios like these...

But luckily, there is a remedy.

Asking questions about how each marketing effort drives sales AND...

Where our assumptions are wrong.

I know it can be difficult identifying things we've been doing FOREVER that have no contribution. But isn't that better that continuing to add waste into our sales and marketing ecosystems?

If you're looking at "cleaning up" your marketing assumptions in 2026, let's start now ✨

Book a Discovery Call and we can jump into those framing questions ASAP 💖