How to remove friction in the B2B buyer’s journey
How to remove friction in the B2B buyer’s journey
How to remove friction in the B2B buyer’s journey
CONTENT STRATEGY
/
Chris Carson
Source:
Chris Carson
In a hurry, drop this article in AI and ask it to summarize it for you to help you apply the learnings to your unique challenge.
Messaging clarity is one of the strongest levers for moving buyers through a buyer journey. When each stage delivers the right information in the right way, it reduces the risk of confusion and helps prospects decide faster. Yet, 61% of B2B marketers say creating content that appeals to multiple stages of the journey remains a top challenge.
Friction in a B2B buyer’s journey refers to any obstacle that slows down or discourage buyers, such as unclear messaging, hard-to-find information, or overly technical content, among other barriers. Reducing friction helps buyers move smoothly from awareness through to purchase.
This article will cover:
Building trust in the awareness stage – making content simple, memorable, and framed around buyer priorities.
Clarifying choices in the consideration stage – sharpening value propositions, tailoring by role, and keeping your story consistent across channels.
Removing barriers in the decision stage – reducing risk with proof, aligning proposals to the story buyers already know, and equipping champions with a repeatable narrative.
Awareness stage: building trust from the first interaction
The awareness stage is your first chance to make an impression. Buyers here are looking for clarity and relevance, not technical detail. As Bryan Reid, CEO of Altitude, emphasizes, “The first interaction sets the tone. Keeping the content simple, brief and relevant makes it more inviting, and encourages buyers to learn more.”
Simplicity over technical language
Not every buyer is technical. Leaders in finance, operations, or strategy often need a clear, high-level explanation before they’ll engage further. Content that leads with jargon or detailed specs risks shutting those doors too soon. If your content can’t be understood by a non-specialist, it may never reach the stakeholders who influence the decision.
Actionable steps:
Scrub jargon. Take your homepage, one-pager, and explainer video. Highlight every acronym or technical term that isn’t universally understood by your buying group. Replace each with a simple phrase or analogy (e.g., instead of “data orchestration,” say “software that automatically coordinates your data flows across systems”).
Build role-neutral assets. Write a 150-word “solution in plain English” summary. Use it in top-funnel guides or videos targeted at finance, operations, or strategy leaders. Keep specs in a separate technical sheet.
Test with non-specialists. Run a quick exercise: ask three colleagues outside product/engineering to read your overview. If they can summarize your value in one sentence, it’s ready. If not, simplify further.
Crafting buyer-centric messaging
Buyers want to see their own priorities reflected in your words. If they don’t, even the best product feels distant. At this stage, the goal is simple: make your content about their challenges, not your features.
Actionable steps:
Rewrite feature-first lines. Pick three assets (web page, sales deck, blog). Circle every feature statement. Rewrite each to finish with “so that [buyer goal]” (e.g., “Automates reporting so finance leaders close faster each quarter”).
Build industry briefs. Create one-pagers for your top 2–3 industries listing common challenges and preferred terms. Share with writers and sales to guide tone.
Check with sales. After each campaign, ask reps which buyer questions came up most. Add those words directly into the next round of content.
Setting the right narrative early
In a crowded market, most solutions blur together. Without a distinct narrative, buyers will struggle to explain how your solution is different. A single, memorable line supported by an external insight gives them the story they’ll carry inside their company.
Actionable steps:
Start with a signal. Start awareness assets with one credible stat or analyst finding (e.g., “80% of CFOs say compliance risk is rising”). Use it to frame why the problem matters now.
Write a bold line. Draft one bold sentence that captures your unique POV (e.g., “Security isn’t about compliance, it’s about buyer trust”). Use it consistently across homepage copy, campaign headlines, and sales decks.
Anchor with credibility. Place a validating stat, analyst quote, or mini case study directly under your narrative line. This makes it easy for buyers to repeat your story internally.
Consideration stage: clarifying choices to inspire buyer confidence
At the consideration stage, your buyers actively compare and evaluate options. Clear, relevant content is critical in empowering confident, informed decisions. Bryan notes, "Clarity and relevance is essential. Buyers trust brands that simplify complex choices."
Alignment around value propositions
At this stage, buyers are weighing you against competitors. Friction arises when your claims sound generic — the same “cost savings” and “efficiency” promises everyone else makes. Value propositions need to show how you’re different.
Actionable steps:
Map against competitors. Review your top three value props alongside competitor sites or decks. Highlight overlaps where you risk blending in.
Sharpen by adding contrast. Rewrite generic claims to show either how you deliver outcomes without added costs or trade-offs (e.g., “Reduce onboarding time by 40% without adding headcount”) or by using a unique method that competitors can’t match (e.g., “Shorten sales cycles to 60 days by automating proposal workflows”).
Use exclusive proof. Pair each value prop with differentiators others can’t easily replicate — unique ROI data, benchmarks, or customer results. Example: Instead of saying “improves efficiency,” highlight that “Our platform helped [Client X] cut invoice processing costs by 32%, validated through a third-party benchmark study.”
Role-specific relevance
In most B2B deals, six to ten people weigh in — and they rarely share the same priorities (Gartner, 2023). Treating the buying group as one persona creates friction. Messaging should flex so each role hears the value in their terms.
Actionable steps:
Break down priorities by role. Create a one-page grid listing each key stakeholder (Finance, IT, Operations, Procurement) with their top concern and success metric.
Adapt messaging by audience. For each role, rewrite one version of your core value prop in their terms (e.g., Finance = ROI, IT = security, Ops = efficiency).
Equip sales with tailored content. Provide modular slides or one-pagers for each role so sales teams can pull the right validation points into multi-stakeholder discussions.
Consistent messaging across all channels
Buyers notice when your story changes between the website, a webinar, and a sales deck — and it creates doubt. Mid-journey consistency builds confidence that your team is aligned. The fix is simple guardrails.
Actionable steps:
Create a message map. Capture your three core value propositions, two supporting evidence points, and a short positioning statement. Share it as the “source of truth” with marketing, sales, and leadership.
Audit channels quarterly. Pick one asset from each channel (web page, sales deck, webinar, email). Compare headlines and value props to your map. Where words drift, update copy or retrain teams to bring them back in sync.
Build consistency in workflows. Add the message map into templates, content briefs, and sales enablement tools (like email sequences or pitch decks). This ensures every new asset starts aligned rather than being “fixed” later.
By executing these steps, you make it easier for buyers to compare options, see your distinct value, and move forward with confidence.
Decision stage: empowering confident buyer decisions
At the decision stage, your prospects are ready to choose—but they need reassurance and clear evidence to finalize their selection confidently.
Clear proof and reassurance content
By the final stage, buyers already believe your solution works — the question is whether it will work for them with minimal risk. Friction comes from doubts about adoption, integration, or ROI. Content here should reassure buyers that the leap is safe. Without this evidence, 40–60% of B2B buying decisions can stall due to uncertainty about outcomes.
Actionable steps:
Mirror their world. Create one case study that mirrors the buyer’s size, industry, and challenge. Highlight implementation speed, adoption, and results within the first 90 days.
Add risk-reduction guarantees. Provide evidence of smooth rollouts (e.g., implementation timelines, customer support metrics, uptime guarantees) so buyers see low risk in moving forward.
Hand them a business case. Develop a one-page “business case” template that buyers can use internally — including ROI, risk mitigation, and expected payback period — so they can justify the choice to leadership.
Consistent last-mile messaging
Deals can stall if the proposal or contract introduces new terms, language, or promises. At this stage, consistency isn’t about channels — it’s about closing integrity. Buyers should see the same story from the first deck to the final signature.
Actionable steps:
Audit closing docs. Compare your standard proposal deck and contract templates to the message map. Make sure value props, assurance points, and even phrasing mirror what buyers saw earlier.
Enforce “no surprises” rule. Establish internal guardrails that prevent late-stage additions — like new fees, disclaimers, or bold claims that weren’t supported upstream.
Spot-check live deals. Audit a few live proposals or late-stage decks against marketing’s framework. Flag any drift, and coach reps on how to keep language aligned.
Equipping champions with the right story
Champions carry your message when you’re not in the room. If they can’t retell it clearly, momentum stalls. Give them a simple, repeatable story they can share across finance, IT, and leadership.
Actionable steps:
Write a champion brief. Build a one-page summary with three talking points: the problem you solve, how you solve it differently, and evidence it works. Keep it in plain language so non-specialists can share it easily.
Prepare for pushback. Provide a short FAQ or objection handler with simple responses to common pushbacks (cost, integration, risk). This makes champions more confident in defending your solution.
Design role-specific snippets. Give champions modular credibility anchors they can drop into conversations — an ROI stat for finance, a security example for IT, an efficiency win for operations.
By delivering assurance, alignment, and advocacy, you give buyers the certainty they need to finalize their decision decisively.
Accelerate your journey by removing hidden friction
Reducing hidden frictions across the buyer journey isn’t about rewriting everything — it’s about sharpening how you communicate at each stage.
In Awareness, simplicity, buyer-first messaging, and a clear narrative make you memorable and easy to understand.
In Consideration, sharper value props, role-based relevance, and consistent messaging help buyers see why your solution is distinct.
In Decision, risk-reducing proof, closing alignment, and empowering champions remove the final barriers to signing.
By tackling these frictions, you create a buyer experience that feels clear, credible, and easy to advance. Every stage becomes smoother, deals move faster, and your team gains a repeatable structure for telling the right story at the right time.
Now is the time to review your buyer's journey, strengthen each stage, and give buyers fewer reasons to hesitate — and more reasons to say yes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is friction in a B2B marketing journey?
A: Friction in a B2B buyer journeys refers to barriers that slow buyers, such as unclear messaging, gated resources, or inconsistent content. Removing friction improves buyer flow from awareness to purchase.
Q2. How do you reduce content friction in the buyer’s journey?
A: Reduce content friction by simplifying messaging, aligning value propositions, tailoring content to multiple stakeholders, and offering risk-reducing proof at the decision stage.
Q3. Why is messaging alignment important in B2B marketing?
A: Messaging alignment ensures sales, marketing, and product tell the same story. Consistency builds credibility, clarifies differentiation, and helps buyers move smoothly through the funnel.
Q4. What content is most important in the consideration stage?
A: In the consideration stage, content should highlight distinct value propositions, adapt messages to roles like finance or IT, and stay consistent across all channels so buyers can compare options clearly.
Q5. What is the role of internal champions in B2B sales?
A: Internal champions advocate for your solution within the buying group. Giving them simple briefs, objection-handling FAQs, and role-specific proof points helps them carry your message and reduce resistance.
Author Bio
Chris Carson is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional and PMP® who leads marketing at Altitude. He specializes in simplifying complex messaging for regulated industries like finance and technology. Connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Altitude here.
In a hurry, drop this article in AI and ask it to summarize it for you to help you apply the learnings to your unique challenge.
Messaging clarity is one of the strongest levers for moving buyers through a buyer journey. When each stage delivers the right information in the right way, it reduces the risk of confusion and helps prospects decide faster. Yet, 61% of B2B marketers say creating content that appeals to multiple stages of the journey remains a top challenge.
Friction in a B2B buyer’s journey refers to any obstacle that slows down or discourage buyers, such as unclear messaging, hard-to-find information, or overly technical content, among other barriers. Reducing friction helps buyers move smoothly from awareness through to purchase.
This article will cover:
Building trust in the awareness stage – making content simple, memorable, and framed around buyer priorities.
Clarifying choices in the consideration stage – sharpening value propositions, tailoring by role, and keeping your story consistent across channels.
Removing barriers in the decision stage – reducing risk with proof, aligning proposals to the story buyers already know, and equipping champions with a repeatable narrative.
Awareness stage: building trust from the first interaction
The awareness stage is your first chance to make an impression. Buyers here are looking for clarity and relevance, not technical detail. As Bryan Reid, CEO of Altitude, emphasizes, “The first interaction sets the tone. Keeping the content simple, brief and relevant makes it more inviting, and encourages buyers to learn more.”
Simplicity over technical language
Not every buyer is technical. Leaders in finance, operations, or strategy often need a clear, high-level explanation before they’ll engage further. Content that leads with jargon or detailed specs risks shutting those doors too soon. If your content can’t be understood by a non-specialist, it may never reach the stakeholders who influence the decision.
Actionable steps:
Scrub jargon. Take your homepage, one-pager, and explainer video. Highlight every acronym or technical term that isn’t universally understood by your buying group. Replace each with a simple phrase or analogy (e.g., instead of “data orchestration,” say “software that automatically coordinates your data flows across systems”).
Build role-neutral assets. Write a 150-word “solution in plain English” summary. Use it in top-funnel guides or videos targeted at finance, operations, or strategy leaders. Keep specs in a separate technical sheet.
Test with non-specialists. Run a quick exercise: ask three colleagues outside product/engineering to read your overview. If they can summarize your value in one sentence, it’s ready. If not, simplify further.
Crafting buyer-centric messaging
Buyers want to see their own priorities reflected in your words. If they don’t, even the best product feels distant. At this stage, the goal is simple: make your content about their challenges, not your features.
Actionable steps:
Rewrite feature-first lines. Pick three assets (web page, sales deck, blog). Circle every feature statement. Rewrite each to finish with “so that [buyer goal]” (e.g., “Automates reporting so finance leaders close faster each quarter”).
Build industry briefs. Create one-pagers for your top 2–3 industries listing common challenges and preferred terms. Share with writers and sales to guide tone.
Check with sales. After each campaign, ask reps which buyer questions came up most. Add those words directly into the next round of content.
Setting the right narrative early
In a crowded market, most solutions blur together. Without a distinct narrative, buyers will struggle to explain how your solution is different. A single, memorable line supported by an external insight gives them the story they’ll carry inside their company.
Actionable steps:
Start with a signal. Start awareness assets with one credible stat or analyst finding (e.g., “80% of CFOs say compliance risk is rising”). Use it to frame why the problem matters now.
Write a bold line. Draft one bold sentence that captures your unique POV (e.g., “Security isn’t about compliance, it’s about buyer trust”). Use it consistently across homepage copy, campaign headlines, and sales decks.
Anchor with credibility. Place a validating stat, analyst quote, or mini case study directly under your narrative line. This makes it easy for buyers to repeat your story internally.
Consideration stage: clarifying choices to inspire buyer confidence
At the consideration stage, your buyers actively compare and evaluate options. Clear, relevant content is critical in empowering confident, informed decisions. Bryan notes, "Clarity and relevance is essential. Buyers trust brands that simplify complex choices."
Alignment around value propositions
At this stage, buyers are weighing you against competitors. Friction arises when your claims sound generic — the same “cost savings” and “efficiency” promises everyone else makes. Value propositions need to show how you’re different.
Actionable steps:
Map against competitors. Review your top three value props alongside competitor sites or decks. Highlight overlaps where you risk blending in.
Sharpen by adding contrast. Rewrite generic claims to show either how you deliver outcomes without added costs or trade-offs (e.g., “Reduce onboarding time by 40% without adding headcount”) or by using a unique method that competitors can’t match (e.g., “Shorten sales cycles to 60 days by automating proposal workflows”).
Use exclusive proof. Pair each value prop with differentiators others can’t easily replicate — unique ROI data, benchmarks, or customer results. Example: Instead of saying “improves efficiency,” highlight that “Our platform helped [Client X] cut invoice processing costs by 32%, validated through a third-party benchmark study.”
Role-specific relevance
In most B2B deals, six to ten people weigh in — and they rarely share the same priorities (Gartner, 2023). Treating the buying group as one persona creates friction. Messaging should flex so each role hears the value in their terms.
Actionable steps:
Break down priorities by role. Create a one-page grid listing each key stakeholder (Finance, IT, Operations, Procurement) with their top concern and success metric.
Adapt messaging by audience. For each role, rewrite one version of your core value prop in their terms (e.g., Finance = ROI, IT = security, Ops = efficiency).
Equip sales with tailored content. Provide modular slides or one-pagers for each role so sales teams can pull the right validation points into multi-stakeholder discussions.
Consistent messaging across all channels
Buyers notice when your story changes between the website, a webinar, and a sales deck — and it creates doubt. Mid-journey consistency builds confidence that your team is aligned. The fix is simple guardrails.
Actionable steps:
Create a message map. Capture your three core value propositions, two supporting evidence points, and a short positioning statement. Share it as the “source of truth” with marketing, sales, and leadership.
Audit channels quarterly. Pick one asset from each channel (web page, sales deck, webinar, email). Compare headlines and value props to your map. Where words drift, update copy or retrain teams to bring them back in sync.
Build consistency in workflows. Add the message map into templates, content briefs, and sales enablement tools (like email sequences or pitch decks). This ensures every new asset starts aligned rather than being “fixed” later.
By executing these steps, you make it easier for buyers to compare options, see your distinct value, and move forward with confidence.
Decision stage: empowering confident buyer decisions
At the decision stage, your prospects are ready to choose—but they need reassurance and clear evidence to finalize their selection confidently.
Clear proof and reassurance content
By the final stage, buyers already believe your solution works — the question is whether it will work for them with minimal risk. Friction comes from doubts about adoption, integration, or ROI. Content here should reassure buyers that the leap is safe. Without this evidence, 40–60% of B2B buying decisions can stall due to uncertainty about outcomes.
Actionable steps:
Mirror their world. Create one case study that mirrors the buyer’s size, industry, and challenge. Highlight implementation speed, adoption, and results within the first 90 days.
Add risk-reduction guarantees. Provide evidence of smooth rollouts (e.g., implementation timelines, customer support metrics, uptime guarantees) so buyers see low risk in moving forward.
Hand them a business case. Develop a one-page “business case” template that buyers can use internally — including ROI, risk mitigation, and expected payback period — so they can justify the choice to leadership.
Consistent last-mile messaging
Deals can stall if the proposal or contract introduces new terms, language, or promises. At this stage, consistency isn’t about channels — it’s about closing integrity. Buyers should see the same story from the first deck to the final signature.
Actionable steps:
Audit closing docs. Compare your standard proposal deck and contract templates to the message map. Make sure value props, assurance points, and even phrasing mirror what buyers saw earlier.
Enforce “no surprises” rule. Establish internal guardrails that prevent late-stage additions — like new fees, disclaimers, or bold claims that weren’t supported upstream.
Spot-check live deals. Audit a few live proposals or late-stage decks against marketing’s framework. Flag any drift, and coach reps on how to keep language aligned.
Equipping champions with the right story
Champions carry your message when you’re not in the room. If they can’t retell it clearly, momentum stalls. Give them a simple, repeatable story they can share across finance, IT, and leadership.
Actionable steps:
Write a champion brief. Build a one-page summary with three talking points: the problem you solve, how you solve it differently, and evidence it works. Keep it in plain language so non-specialists can share it easily.
Prepare for pushback. Provide a short FAQ or objection handler with simple responses to common pushbacks (cost, integration, risk). This makes champions more confident in defending your solution.
Design role-specific snippets. Give champions modular credibility anchors they can drop into conversations — an ROI stat for finance, a security example for IT, an efficiency win for operations.
By delivering assurance, alignment, and advocacy, you give buyers the certainty they need to finalize their decision decisively.
Accelerate your journey by removing hidden friction
Reducing hidden frictions across the buyer journey isn’t about rewriting everything — it’s about sharpening how you communicate at each stage.
In Awareness, simplicity, buyer-first messaging, and a clear narrative make you memorable and easy to understand.
In Consideration, sharper value props, role-based relevance, and consistent messaging help buyers see why your solution is distinct.
In Decision, risk-reducing proof, closing alignment, and empowering champions remove the final barriers to signing.
By tackling these frictions, you create a buyer experience that feels clear, credible, and easy to advance. Every stage becomes smoother, deals move faster, and your team gains a repeatable structure for telling the right story at the right time.
Now is the time to review your buyer's journey, strengthen each stage, and give buyers fewer reasons to hesitate — and more reasons to say yes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is friction in a B2B marketing journey?
A: Friction in a B2B buyer journeys refers to barriers that slow buyers, such as unclear messaging, gated resources, or inconsistent content. Removing friction improves buyer flow from awareness to purchase.
Q2. How do you reduce content friction in the buyer’s journey?
A: Reduce content friction by simplifying messaging, aligning value propositions, tailoring content to multiple stakeholders, and offering risk-reducing proof at the decision stage.
Q3. Why is messaging alignment important in B2B marketing?
A: Messaging alignment ensures sales, marketing, and product tell the same story. Consistency builds credibility, clarifies differentiation, and helps buyers move smoothly through the funnel.
Q4. What content is most important in the consideration stage?
A: In the consideration stage, content should highlight distinct value propositions, adapt messages to roles like finance or IT, and stay consistent across all channels so buyers can compare options clearly.
Q5. What is the role of internal champions in B2B sales?
A: Internal champions advocate for your solution within the buying group. Giving them simple briefs, objection-handling FAQs, and role-specific proof points helps them carry your message and reduce resistance.
Author Bio
Chris Carson is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional and PMP® who leads marketing at Altitude. He specializes in simplifying complex messaging for regulated industries like finance and technology. Connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Altitude here.
Ready to move your
B2B buyers forward?
Contact Altitude today to clarify your complex solutions—so your B2B audience quickly understands, trusts, and takes action.
Copyright © 2025 Altitude Management.
All rights reserved.
Ready to move your
B2B buyers forward?
Contact Altitude today to clarify your complex solutions—so your B2B audience quickly understands, trusts, and takes action.
Copyright © 2025 Altitude Management.
All rights reserved.
Ready to move your
B2B buyers forward?
Contact Altitude today to clarify your complex solutions—so your B2B audience quickly understands, trusts, and takes action.
Copyright © 2025 Altitude Management.
All rights reserved.
CONTENT CREATION
/
Chris Carson
Best enjoyed over a morning coffee or shared in team chats to inspire impactful conversations.
Did you know that up to $1 trillion is wasted each year due to misalignment between sales and marketing messaging?
The enterprise B2B buying experience is already complicated enough. If your sales and your marketing teams are sharing different, possibly conflicting messages, you’ll feel it in your bottom line. Research shows that B2B companies lose about 10% of their annual revenue due to messaging misalignment.
In this article, you'll learn how to:
Identify messaging alignment issues quickly and accurately
Unify your teams around a clear, cohesive narrative
Eliminate internal confusion and deliver powerful, aligned communications that drive results
The problem: Internal misalignment erodes external trust
Imagine your marketing team launches an insightful campaign that engages a senior executive. When this prospect meets with your sales rep, they receive accurate but unrelated information. Due to internal communication gaps, your teams unintentionally deliver mixed messages. As a result, this prospect – and others - become confused, frustrated, and lose trust at a key point the buying journey.
This scenario isn't unusual. In fact, a recent study found that 45% of B2B buyers feel frustrated by inconsistent product or service information across vendor channels, making brands appear unreliable and causing buyers to second-guess their purchasing decisions.
Common symptoms your teams might recognize:
Lack of awareness: Your marketing team launches campaigns that your sales teams miss, ignore or misunderstand.
Messaging gaps: Sales teams create their own narratives to answer key buyer questions that aren’t covered by existing marketing materials.
Human error: Customer support gives information that contradicts marketing materials, further confusing customers.
Customers seek clarity, consistency, and simplicity. They will reward you with trust if you deliver.
The impact: How alignment benefits your business
The grass is definitely greener when B2B marketing, sales, and customer service teams are aligned.
A study by Forester, a global research and advisory firm, researched the impact of alignment across sales and marketing teams. By establishing unified messaging frameworks and shared goals, their research showed that companies saw an improvement to their customer experience, achieving 19% faster growth and 15% higher profitability compared to competitors struggling with misalignment.
Further research underscores these outcomes:
Organizations with strong sales and marketing alignment experience 24% faster three-year revenue growth.
They achieve 27% faster profit growth over three years.
Aligned teams often see a dramatic improvement in marketing effectiveness, with up to 209% higher marketing revenue contribution.
So how can you address this? We'll share our strategy your teams can use to build messaging alignment through shared ownership and collaboration.
The solution: shared ownership of messaging
Solving misalignment between sales and marketing requires a structured, collaborative approach. Here's a clear framework your organization can implement.
Assign responsibility: Pick a marketing and a sales alignment leader
Assign one person from marketing and one from sales – with a stake in the success of the solution - to be responsible for ensuring messaging alignment.
Build your “Tiger Team”: Learn from the past
Select 2–3 experienced sales representatives who have successfully navigated tough buyer questions about your other solutions.
Leverage their insights about previous messaging gaps and missed buyer concerns.
Identify messaging gaps: Poke holes in your messaging framework and proposed content
Have your Tiger Team critically evaluate current marketing messaging and content.
Identify critical buyer questions marketing might overlook, such as:
"Will this solution actually work for our specific workflow?"
"How are you different or better than Competitor XYZ?"
"Exactly how will your solution integrate into our processes?"
Create a clear plan to close messaging gaps
As a team, determine practical content solutions. Don’t just think about answering the questions. Think about the context and stage of the buyer’s journey when those questions are most likely to arise, to help identify the right content format for addressing them. These messaging gap solutions could be:
Brief, stage-specific product one-pagers.
Well-organized website FAQ resources.
Sales job aids or quick reference guides.
Clearly outline when and how sales should use each piece of content throughout the buyer’s journey to help visualize and ensure questions are being answered at the right time.
Execute, test, revise and launch
Quickly implement your new messaging content with your Tiger Team first. Refine content based on their feedback before a full rollout to the entire sales team.
Sales training tips for effective use:
Clearly communicate what content is available, its value, and when it’s needed.
Ensure easy access (e.g., one-page quick links organized by sales phase).
Provide email templates so sales reps can effortlessly share relevant content.
Establish a quarterly feedback loop
To ensure your messaging is continuously improving, we suggestion to:
Conduct quarterly check-ins with your Tiger Team to evaluate ongoing messaging alignment.
Gather direct feedback from sales on what they're hearing from customers.
Continuously refine content and messaging based on this real-time insight.
Key insights & immediate action items:
Leverage your internal experts (sales reps with prior success) to identify common buyer needs and content gaps.
Simplify content accessibility to ensure sales readily uses and trusts marketing-provided materials.
Test messaging internally first, then launch broadly once validated, ensuring your sales team has confidence in your content.
Maintain ongoing collaboration through structured quarterly reviews and continuous improvement cycles.
Adopting this structured approach will improve internal alignment, enhance buyer trust, and deliver consistent messaging that moves prospects confidently forward in their buying journey.
About Altitude
Altitude believes effective B2B messaging alignment isn't just beneficial, it's a strategic necessity. It can mean the difference between building buyer trust or creating buyer confusion, and the resulting revenue impact can be significant.
Ready to align your messaging? Schedule a complimentary discovery call.
Discover why marketing and sales leaders trust Altitude's no-pressure discovery call to immediately solve their messaging challenges.
Here's exactly what you'll receive:
Personalized Discovery Conversation
A focused discussion about your specific messaging alignment challenges and business goals.
Complimentary Content Audit
An initial, no-obligation analysis of your current content, pinpointing key gaps and opportunities along your buyer's journey.Actionable Recommendations
Clear, practical steps your marketing and sales teams can take right away to improve messaging clarity and alignment.
This discovery call is entirely low-risk, and our clients consistently appreciate its immediate value. Even if you choose not to continue further with Altitude, you'll walk away with valuable insights and clear next steps to strengthen your messaging.
Book your discovery today and start driving better messaging outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is B2B messaging alignment, and why is it important?
B2B messaging alignment ensures consistent communications across sales, marketing, and product teams, significantly boosting buyer trust, customer retention (up to 36% higher), and revenue growth (up to 24% faster growth).
How can companies measure messaging alignment effectiveness?
Companies can track messaging alignment by measuring sales content usage, surveying sales team confidence, reviewing customer onboarding feedback, and monitoring review platforms like G2 for consistency issues. High content adoption and aligned buyer expectations typically indicate effective internal messaging alignment.
What strategies improve sales and marketing alignment quickly?
Effective strategies include centralized messaging hubs, regular cross-departmental meetings, structured onboarding training, and consistent messaging audits—strategies which can result in a 400% increase in sales effectiveness.
What happens if sales and marketing messages are misaligned?
Misaligned messaging confuses buyers, delays purchase decisions and significantly reduces revenue—costing companies approximately 10% in annual revenue.
How often should companies perform messaging alignment audits?
Conduct messaging audits quarterly or semi-annually. Regular audits maintain alignment, ensure consistency, and quickly identify and resolve messaging gaps, increasing customer trust and internal clarity.
Author Bio
Chris Carson is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional and PMP® who leads marketing at Altitude. He specializes in simplifying complex messaging for regulated industries like finance and technology. When he’s not working, he’s tending a pollinator garden that the bees—and his neighbors—seem to love. Connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Altitude here.
CONTENT CREATION
/
Chris Carson
Best enjoyed over a morning coffee or shared in team chats to inspire impactful conversations.
Did you know that up to $1 trillion is wasted each year due to misalignment between sales and marketing messaging?
The enterprise B2B buying experience is already complicated enough. If your sales and your marketing teams are sharing different, possibly conflicting messages, you’ll feel it in your bottom line. Research shows that B2B companies lose about 10% of their annual revenue due to messaging misalignment.
In this article, you'll learn how to:
Identify messaging alignment issues quickly and accurately
Unify your teams around a clear, cohesive narrative
Eliminate internal confusion and deliver powerful, aligned communications that drive results
The problem: Internal misalignment erodes external trust
Imagine your marketing team launches an insightful campaign that engages a senior executive. When this prospect meets with your sales rep, they receive accurate but unrelated information. Due to internal communication gaps, your teams unintentionally deliver mixed messages. As a result, this prospect – and others - become confused, frustrated, and lose trust at a key point the buying journey.
This scenario isn't unusual. In fact, a recent study found that 45% of B2B buyers feel frustrated by inconsistent product or service information across vendor channels, making brands appear unreliable and causing buyers to second-guess their purchasing decisions.
Common symptoms your teams might recognize:
Lack of awareness: Your marketing team launches campaigns that your sales teams miss, ignore or misunderstand.
Messaging gaps: Sales teams create their own narratives to answer key buyer questions that aren’t covered by existing marketing materials.
Human error: Customer support gives information that contradicts marketing materials, further confusing customers.
Customers seek clarity, consistency, and simplicity. They will reward you with trust if you deliver.
The impact: How alignment benefits your business
The grass is definitely greener when B2B marketing, sales, and customer service teams are aligned.
A study by Forester, a global research and advisory firm, researched the impact of alignment across sales and marketing teams. By establishing unified messaging frameworks and shared goals, their research showed that companies saw an improvement to their customer experience, achieving 19% faster growth and 15% higher profitability compared to competitors struggling with misalignment.
Further research underscores these outcomes:
Organizations with strong sales and marketing alignment experience 24% faster three-year revenue growth.
They achieve 27% faster profit growth over three years.
Aligned teams often see a dramatic improvement in marketing effectiveness, with up to 209% higher marketing revenue contribution.
So how can you address this? We'll share our strategy your teams can use to build messaging alignment through shared ownership and collaboration.
The solution: shared ownership of messaging
Solving misalignment between sales and marketing requires a structured, collaborative approach. Here's a clear framework your organization can implement.
Assign responsibility: Pick a marketing and a sales alignment leader
Assign one person from marketing and one from sales – with a stake in the success of the solution - to be responsible for ensuring messaging alignment.
Build your “Tiger Team”: Learn from the past
Select 2–3 experienced sales representatives who have successfully navigated tough buyer questions about your other solutions.
Leverage their insights about previous messaging gaps and missed buyer concerns.
Identify messaging gaps: Poke holes in your messaging framework and proposed content
Have your Tiger Team critically evaluate current marketing messaging and content.
Identify critical buyer questions marketing might overlook, such as:
"Will this solution actually work for our specific workflow?"
"How are you different or better than Competitor XYZ?"
"Exactly how will your solution integrate into our processes?"
Create a clear plan to close messaging gaps
As a team, determine practical content solutions. Don’t just think about answering the questions. Think about the context and stage of the buyer’s journey when those questions are most likely to arise, to help identify the right content format for addressing them. These messaging gap solutions could be:
Brief, stage-specific product one-pagers.
Well-organized website FAQ resources.
Sales job aids or quick reference guides.
Clearly outline when and how sales should use each piece of content throughout the buyer’s journey to help visualize and ensure questions are being answered at the right time.
Execute, test, revise and launch
Quickly implement your new messaging content with your Tiger Team first. Refine content based on their feedback before a full rollout to the entire sales team.
Sales training tips for effective use:
Clearly communicate what content is available, its value, and when it’s needed.
Ensure easy access (e.g., one-page quick links organized by sales phase).
Provide email templates so sales reps can effortlessly share relevant content.
Establish a quarterly feedback loop
To ensure your messaging is continuously improving, we suggestion to:
Conduct quarterly check-ins with your Tiger Team to evaluate ongoing messaging alignment.
Gather direct feedback from sales on what they're hearing from customers.
Continuously refine content and messaging based on this real-time insight.
Key insights & immediate action items:
Leverage your internal experts (sales reps with prior success) to identify common buyer needs and content gaps.
Simplify content accessibility to ensure sales readily uses and trusts marketing-provided materials.
Test messaging internally first, then launch broadly once validated, ensuring your sales team has confidence in your content.
Maintain ongoing collaboration through structured quarterly reviews and continuous improvement cycles.
Adopting this structured approach will improve internal alignment, enhance buyer trust, and deliver consistent messaging that moves prospects confidently forward in their buying journey.
About Altitude
Altitude believes effective B2B messaging alignment isn't just beneficial, it's a strategic necessity. It can mean the difference between building buyer trust or creating buyer confusion, and the resulting revenue impact can be significant.
Ready to align your messaging? Schedule a complimentary discovery call.
Discover why marketing and sales leaders trust Altitude's no-pressure discovery call to immediately solve their messaging challenges.
Here's exactly what you'll receive:
Personalized Discovery Conversation
A focused discussion about your specific messaging alignment challenges and business goals.
Complimentary Content Audit
An initial, no-obligation analysis of your current content, pinpointing key gaps and opportunities along your buyer's journey.Actionable Recommendations
Clear, practical steps your marketing and sales teams can take right away to improve messaging clarity and alignment.
This discovery call is entirely low-risk, and our clients consistently appreciate its immediate value. Even if you choose not to continue further with Altitude, you'll walk away with valuable insights and clear next steps to strengthen your messaging.
Book your discovery today and start driving better messaging outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is B2B messaging alignment, and why is it important?
B2B messaging alignment ensures consistent communications across sales, marketing, and product teams, significantly boosting buyer trust, customer retention (up to 36% higher), and revenue growth (up to 24% faster growth).
How can companies measure messaging alignment effectiveness?
Companies can track messaging alignment by measuring sales content usage, surveying sales team confidence, reviewing customer onboarding feedback, and monitoring review platforms like G2 for consistency issues. High content adoption and aligned buyer expectations typically indicate effective internal messaging alignment.
What strategies improve sales and marketing alignment quickly?
Effective strategies include centralized messaging hubs, regular cross-departmental meetings, structured onboarding training, and consistent messaging audits—strategies which can result in a 400% increase in sales effectiveness.
What happens if sales and marketing messages are misaligned?
Misaligned messaging confuses buyers, delays purchase decisions and significantly reduces revenue—costing companies approximately 10% in annual revenue.
How often should companies perform messaging alignment audits?
Conduct messaging audits quarterly or semi-annually. Regular audits maintain alignment, ensure consistency, and quickly identify and resolve messaging gaps, increasing customer trust and internal clarity.
Author Bio
Chris Carson is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional and PMP® who leads marketing at Altitude. He specializes in simplifying complex messaging for regulated industries like finance and technology. When he’s not working, he’s tending a pollinator garden that the bees—and his neighbors—seem to love. Connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Altitude here.
CONTENT CREATION
/
Chris Carson
Best enjoyed over a morning coffee or shared in team chats to inspire impactful conversations.
Did you know that up to $1 trillion is wasted each year due to misalignment between sales and marketing messaging?
The enterprise B2B buying experience is already complicated enough. If your sales and your marketing teams are sharing different, possibly conflicting messages, you’ll feel it in your bottom line. Research shows that B2B companies lose about 10% of their annual revenue due to messaging misalignment.
In this article, you'll learn how to:
Identify messaging alignment issues quickly and accurately
Unify your teams around a clear, cohesive narrative
Eliminate internal confusion and deliver powerful, aligned communications that drive results
The problem: Internal misalignment erodes external trust
Imagine your marketing team launches an insightful campaign that engages a senior executive. When this prospect meets with your sales rep, they receive accurate but unrelated information. Due to internal communication gaps, your teams unintentionally deliver mixed messages. As a result, this prospect – and others - become confused, frustrated, and lose trust at a key point the buying journey.
This scenario isn't unusual. In fact, a recent study found that 45% of B2B buyers feel frustrated by inconsistent product or service information across vendor channels, making brands appear unreliable and causing buyers to second-guess their purchasing decisions.
Common symptoms your teams might recognize:
Lack of awareness: Your marketing team launches campaigns that your sales teams miss, ignore or misunderstand.
Messaging gaps: Sales teams create their own narratives to answer key buyer questions that aren’t covered by existing marketing materials.
Human error: Customer support gives information that contradicts marketing materials, further confusing customers.
Customers seek clarity, consistency, and simplicity. They will reward you with trust if you deliver.
The impact: How alignment benefits your business
The grass is definitely greener when B2B marketing, sales, and customer service teams are aligned.
A study by Forester, a global research and advisory firm, researched the impact of alignment across sales and marketing teams. By establishing unified messaging frameworks and shared goals, their research showed that companies saw an improvement to their customer experience, achieving 19% faster growth and 15% higher profitability compared to competitors struggling with misalignment.
Further research underscores these outcomes:
Organizations with strong sales and marketing alignment experience 24% faster three-year revenue growth.
They achieve 27% faster profit growth over three years.
Aligned teams often see a dramatic improvement in marketing effectiveness, with up to 209% higher marketing revenue contribution.
So how can you address this? We'll share our strategy your teams can use to build messaging alignment through shared ownership and collaboration.
The solution: shared ownership of messaging
Solving misalignment between sales and marketing requires a structured, collaborative approach. Here's a clear framework your organization can implement.
Assign responsibility: Pick a marketing and a sales alignment leader
Assign one person from marketing and one from sales – with a stake in the success of the solution - to be responsible for ensuring messaging alignment.
Build your “Tiger Team”: Learn from the past
Select 2–3 experienced sales representatives who have successfully navigated tough buyer questions about your other solutions.
Leverage their insights about previous messaging gaps and missed buyer concerns.
Identify messaging gaps: Poke holes in your messaging framework and proposed content
Have your Tiger Team critically evaluate current marketing messaging and content.
Identify critical buyer questions marketing might overlook, such as:
"Will this solution actually work for our specific workflow?"
"How are you different or better than Competitor XYZ?"
"Exactly how will your solution integrate into our processes?"
Create a clear plan to close messaging gaps
As a team, determine practical content solutions. Don’t just think about answering the questions. Think about the context and stage of the buyer’s journey when those questions are most likely to arise, to help identify the right content format for addressing them. These messaging gap solutions could be:
Brief, stage-specific product one-pagers.
Well-organized website FAQ resources.
Sales job aids or quick reference guides.
Clearly outline when and how sales should use each piece of content throughout the buyer’s journey to help visualize and ensure questions are being answered at the right time.
Execute, test, revise and launch
Quickly implement your new messaging content with your Tiger Team first. Refine content based on their feedback before a full rollout to the entire sales team.
Sales training tips for effective use:
Clearly communicate what content is available, its value, and when it’s needed.
Ensure easy access (e.g., one-page quick links organized by sales phase).
Provide email templates so sales reps can effortlessly share relevant content.
Establish a quarterly feedback loop
To ensure your messaging is continuously improving, we suggestion to:
Conduct quarterly check-ins with your Tiger Team to evaluate ongoing messaging alignment.
Gather direct feedback from sales on what they're hearing from customers.
Continuously refine content and messaging based on this real-time insight.
Key insights & immediate action items:
Leverage your internal experts (sales reps with prior success) to identify common buyer needs and content gaps.
Simplify content accessibility to ensure sales readily uses and trusts marketing-provided materials.
Test messaging internally first, then launch broadly once validated, ensuring your sales team has confidence in your content.
Maintain ongoing collaboration through structured quarterly reviews and continuous improvement cycles.
Adopting this structured approach will improve internal alignment, enhance buyer trust, and deliver consistent messaging that moves prospects confidently forward in their buying journey.
About Altitude
Altitude believes effective B2B messaging alignment isn't just beneficial, it's a strategic necessity. It can mean the difference between building buyer trust or creating buyer confusion, and the resulting revenue impact can be significant.
Ready to align your messaging? Schedule a complimentary discovery call.
Discover why marketing and sales leaders trust Altitude's no-pressure discovery call to immediately solve their messaging challenges.
Here's exactly what you'll receive:
Personalized Discovery Conversation
A focused discussion about your specific messaging alignment challenges and business goals.
Complimentary Content Audit
An initial, no-obligation analysis of your current content, pinpointing key gaps and opportunities along your buyer's journey.Actionable Recommendations
Clear, practical steps your marketing and sales teams can take right away to improve messaging clarity and alignment.
This discovery call is entirely low-risk, and our clients consistently appreciate its immediate value. Even if you choose not to continue further with Altitude, you'll walk away with valuable insights and clear next steps to strengthen your messaging.
Book your discovery today and start driving better messaging outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is B2B messaging alignment, and why is it important?
B2B messaging alignment ensures consistent communications across sales, marketing, and product teams, significantly boosting buyer trust, customer retention (up to 36% higher), and revenue growth (up to 24% faster growth).
How can companies measure messaging alignment effectiveness?
Companies can track messaging alignment by measuring sales content usage, surveying sales team confidence, reviewing customer onboarding feedback, and monitoring review platforms like G2 for consistency issues. High content adoption and aligned buyer expectations typically indicate effective internal messaging alignment.
What strategies improve sales and marketing alignment quickly?
Effective strategies include centralized messaging hubs, regular cross-departmental meetings, structured onboarding training, and consistent messaging audits—strategies which can result in a 400% increase in sales effectiveness.
What happens if sales and marketing messages are misaligned?
Misaligned messaging confuses buyers, delays purchase decisions and significantly reduces revenue—costing companies approximately 10% in annual revenue.
How often should companies perform messaging alignment audits?
Conduct messaging audits quarterly or semi-annually. Regular audits maintain alignment, ensure consistency, and quickly identify and resolve messaging gaps, increasing customer trust and internal clarity.
Author Bio
Chris Carson is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional and PMP® who leads marketing at Altitude. He specializes in simplifying complex messaging for regulated industries like finance and technology. When he’s not working, he’s tending a pollinator garden that the bees—and his neighbors—seem to love. Connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Altitude here.
CONTENT STRATEGY
/
Chris Carson
How clear, aligned messaging accelerates B2B sales and builds buyer trust
Best enjoyed over a morning coffee or shared in team chats to inspire conversation.
Imagine your sales representative confidently pitches a solution’s benefits, but the prospect responds with conflicting messaging pulled directly from your marketing materials. Unfortunately, this marketing nightmare scenario is quite common. In fact, 67% of B2B buyers cite inconsistent messaging as a primary reason for dissatisfaction with vendors. A far too common example of this is misalignment between sales and marketing teams which often frustrates prospects and prolongs sales cycles or stops them dead in their tracks.
This article equips marketing and sales leaders with practical insights to help eliminate inconsistent messaging coming from marketing and sales teams and keep sales cycles moving forward.
B2B buyer trust is built upon on understanding and consistency
At Altitude, we believe that generating buyer trust can only occur if the buyer (or buying group) understands what you’re offering and its potential value to their organization.
Consistency is Crucial: Any contradiction in messaging from sales, marketing, and technical teams can instantly erode that trust.
Buyer Confidence is Fragile: Even minor confusion can cause prospects to withdraw, turning promising leads into lost revenue.
Bryan Reid, CEO of Altitude, emphasizes: "We assume B2B buyers are essentially putting their future careers on the line when they make a strategic enterprise technology purchase. With so much at stake, any inconsistency in messaging can have instantaneous impact on the seller’s credibility. Consistent messaging is not optional—it's essential."
What causes inconsistent messaging? And what can you do?
We readily admit that we don’t have all the answers, but based on our 20+ years of experience, here are four of the main causes of inconsistent messaging that we’ve uncovered and our best advice to address them.
Lack of sales involvement upfront
In the interest of time and efficiency, it’s not unusual to work with a marketing team that is creating content for use by the sales reps, without involving sales teams upfront, to ensure it addresses their needs. The result? Sales ignores the content created by marketing and reps are forced to ‘go rogue’ and produce their own content to meet the demands of their buyers.
When we have the opportunity to hear directly from top sales reps, early in the content creation process, there’s almost always an important revelation that results in either the content or the format changing significantly… and then the final asset is actually leveraged by the reps in their buyer conversations.
Insufficient or ineffective sales training
Enterprise B2B Sales reps are expected to know a lot about a lot of different solutions. Marketers don’t always take the time to create training materials that make it easy for sales reps to understand (and remember – see below) a solution’s key benefits, features and value messages. Marketers who treat sales reps as ‘buyers’ in their own right, create well designed intuitive training materials to ensure the right messages stick in the sellers’ minds.
Ineffective sales enablement content
Not every marketer creates the right content to empower sales to have productive, consistent conversations with their sellers. The ones that do work with sales to understand the types of information that buyers will want to know (and the level of detail they’ll require). Then they create clear, visual content designed to address those needs - in the best format - based on the context of the buyer interaction.
We are not too proud to admit at Altitude that we often create ‘picture books for adults’, because that’s exactly what the buyer needs at that point in the sales cycle.
Lack of sales reference aides
Our clients readily admit that sales training is akin to ‘cramming for an exam’, and we all can relate to how much we remember a week after the exam. Sales reps aren’t superhuman. They are bound to forget things. Marketers who accept this reality can plan for it. We’ve recently created a series of short, highly visual reference aides, to help sales reps quickly remember the key value messages and talking points for a specific solution.
Creating sales ‘cheat sheets’ like those aides, can prevent reps from either:
a) incorrectly remembering what they were trained to say, or
b) making an educated, but incorrect guess when talking with a buyer.
To recap, here are our key recommendations:
Align marketing and sales teams early in the content creation process to ensure the final assets will meet the needs of the reps.
Train sales reps effectively by investing in training materials that are easy for reps to understand and remember.
Support sales reps with the sales enablement content they need so they don’t have to create it themselves.
Remind sales reps of your key messages using brief, easy-to-reference content they can quickly scan before their next sales call.
Thanks for reading. If you’re launching a new solution, or struggling with inconsistent messaging from marketing and sales, let’s talk about it. We’ll let you know how we can help, and you can decide if that’s what you need.
Could misaligned messaging be slowing your sales?
We’re gathering real-world input on how sales and marketing misalignment impacts the buyer journey. Take 30 seconds to share your experience — your insight helps us build better strategies for teams like yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is clear messaging important in B2B sales?
Clear B2B messaging accelerates decision-making, boosts trust and reduces costly miscommunication. In fact, 67% of B2B buyers list inconsistent messaging as a top reason for vendor dissatisfaction. Clear messaging aligns sales and marketing, directly improving sales cycle length and customer loyalty.
How do I know if my company’s messaging is confusing customers?
Identify messaging confusion by conducting internal audits of marketing and sales materials, performing stakeholder interviews, and analysing customer interactions using CRM tools like Salesforce. Look for patterns such as frequent customer questions, stalled deals, or negative customer feedback.
How soon can I expect results after improving our B2B messaging?
Enterprise companies typically see measurable improvements in sales efficiency, customer satisfaction, and conversion rates within a three to six month period after aligning their messaging. Regularly reviewing clear KPIs ensures continual progress.
Author Bio
Chris Carson is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional and PMP® who leads marketing at Altitude. He specializes in simplifying complex messaging for regulated industries like finance and technology. When he’s not working, he’s tending a pollinator garden that the bees—and his neighbors—seem to love. Connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Altitude here.
CONTENT STRATEGY
/
Chris Carson
How clear, aligned messaging accelerates B2B sales and builds buyer trust
Best enjoyed over a morning coffee or shared in team chats to inspire conversation.
Imagine your sales representative confidently pitches a solution’s benefits, but the prospect responds with conflicting messaging pulled directly from your marketing materials. Unfortunately, this marketing nightmare scenario is quite common. In fact, 67% of B2B buyers cite inconsistent messaging as a primary reason for dissatisfaction with vendors. A far too common example of this is misalignment between sales and marketing teams which often frustrates prospects and prolongs sales cycles or stops them dead in their tracks.
This article equips marketing and sales leaders with practical insights to help eliminate inconsistent messaging coming from marketing and sales teams and keep sales cycles moving forward.
B2B buyer trust is built upon on understanding and consistency
At Altitude, we believe that generating buyer trust can only occur if the buyer (or buying group) understands what you’re offering and its potential value to their organization.
Consistency is Crucial: Any contradiction in messaging from sales, marketing, and technical teams can instantly erode that trust.
Buyer Confidence is Fragile: Even minor confusion can cause prospects to withdraw, turning promising leads into lost revenue.
Bryan Reid, CEO of Altitude, emphasizes: "We assume B2B buyers are essentially putting their future careers on the line when they make a strategic enterprise technology purchase. With so much at stake, any inconsistency in messaging can have instantaneous impact on the seller’s credibility. Consistent messaging is not optional—it's essential."
What causes inconsistent messaging? And what can you do?
We readily admit that we don’t have all the answers, but based on our 20+ years of experience, here are four of the main causes of inconsistent messaging that we’ve uncovered and our best advice to address them.
Lack of sales involvement upfront
In the interest of time and efficiency, it’s not unusual to work with a marketing team that is creating content for use by the sales reps, without involving sales teams upfront, to ensure it addresses their needs. The result? Sales ignores the content created by marketing and reps are forced to ‘go rogue’ and produce their own content to meet the demands of their buyers.
When we have the opportunity to hear directly from top sales reps, early in the content creation process, there’s almost always an important revelation that results in either the content or the format changing significantly… and then the final asset is actually leveraged by the reps in their buyer conversations.
Insufficient or ineffective sales training
Enterprise B2B Sales reps are expected to know a lot about a lot of different solutions. Marketers don’t always take the time to create training materials that make it easy for sales reps to understand (and remember – see below) a solution’s key benefits, features and value messages. Marketers who treat sales reps as ‘buyers’ in their own right, create well designed intuitive training materials to ensure the right messages stick in the sellers’ minds.
Ineffective sales enablement content
Not every marketer creates the right content to empower sales to have productive, consistent conversations with their sellers. The ones that do work with sales to understand the types of information that buyers will want to know (and the level of detail they’ll require). Then they create clear, visual content designed to address those needs - in the best format - based on the context of the buyer interaction.
We are not too proud to admit at Altitude that we often create ‘picture books for adults’, because that’s exactly what the buyer needs at that point in the sales cycle.
Lack of sales reference aides
Our clients readily admit that sales training is akin to ‘cramming for an exam’, and we all can relate to how much we remember a week after the exam. Sales reps aren’t superhuman. They are bound to forget things. Marketers who accept this reality can plan for it. We’ve recently created a series of short, highly visual reference aides, to help sales reps quickly remember the key value messages and talking points for a specific solution.
Creating sales ‘cheat sheets’ like those aides, can prevent reps from either:
a) incorrectly remembering what they were trained to say, or
b) making an educated, but incorrect guess when talking with a buyer.
To recap, here are our key recommendations:
Align marketing and sales teams early in the content creation process to ensure the final assets will meet the needs of the reps.
Train sales reps effectively by investing in training materials that are easy for reps to understand and remember.
Support sales reps with the sales enablement content they need so they don’t have to create it themselves.
Remind sales reps of your key messages using brief, easy-to-reference content they can quickly scan before their next sales call.
Thanks for reading. If you’re launching a new solution, or struggling with inconsistent messaging from marketing and sales, let’s talk about it. We’ll let you know how we can help, and you can decide if that’s what you need.
Could misaligned messaging be slowing your sales?
We’re gathering real-world input on how sales and marketing misalignment impacts the buyer journey. Take 30 seconds to share your experience — your insight helps us build better strategies for teams like yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is clear messaging important in B2B sales?
Clear B2B messaging accelerates decision-making, boosts trust and reduces costly miscommunication. In fact, 67% of B2B buyers list inconsistent messaging as a top reason for vendor dissatisfaction. Clear messaging aligns sales and marketing, directly improving sales cycle length and customer loyalty.
How do I know if my company’s messaging is confusing customers?
Identify messaging confusion by conducting internal audits of marketing and sales materials, performing stakeholder interviews, and analysing customer interactions using CRM tools like Salesforce. Look for patterns such as frequent customer questions, stalled deals, or negative customer feedback.
How soon can I expect results after improving our B2B messaging?
Enterprise companies typically see measurable improvements in sales efficiency, customer satisfaction, and conversion rates within a three to six month period after aligning their messaging. Regularly reviewing clear KPIs ensures continual progress.
Author Bio
Chris Carson is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional and PMP® who leads marketing at Altitude. He specializes in simplifying complex messaging for regulated industries like finance and technology. When he’s not working, he’s tending a pollinator garden that the bees—and his neighbors—seem to love. Connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Altitude here.
CONTENT STRATEGY
/
Chris Carson
How clear, aligned messaging accelerates B2B sales and builds buyer trust
Best enjoyed over a morning coffee or shared in team chats to inspire conversation.
Imagine your sales representative confidently pitches a solution’s benefits, but the prospect responds with conflicting messaging pulled directly from your marketing materials. Unfortunately, this marketing nightmare scenario is quite common. In fact, 67% of B2B buyers cite inconsistent messaging as a primary reason for dissatisfaction with vendors. A far too common example of this is misalignment between sales and marketing teams which often frustrates prospects and prolongs sales cycles or stops them dead in their tracks.
This article equips marketing and sales leaders with practical insights to help eliminate inconsistent messaging coming from marketing and sales teams and keep sales cycles moving forward.
B2B buyer trust is built upon on understanding and consistency
At Altitude, we believe that generating buyer trust can only occur if the buyer (or buying group) understands what you’re offering and its potential value to their organization.
Consistency is Crucial: Any contradiction in messaging from sales, marketing, and technical teams can instantly erode that trust.
Buyer Confidence is Fragile: Even minor confusion can cause prospects to withdraw, turning promising leads into lost revenue.
Bryan Reid, CEO of Altitude, emphasizes: "We assume B2B buyers are essentially putting their future careers on the line when they make a strategic enterprise technology purchase. With so much at stake, any inconsistency in messaging can have instantaneous impact on the seller’s credibility. Consistent messaging is not optional—it's essential."
What causes inconsistent messaging? And what can you do?
We readily admit that we don’t have all the answers, but based on our 20+ years of experience, here are four of the main causes of inconsistent messaging that we’ve uncovered and our best advice to address them.
Lack of sales involvement upfront
In the interest of time and efficiency, it’s not unusual to work with a marketing team that is creating content for use by the sales reps, without involving sales teams upfront, to ensure it addresses their needs. The result? Sales ignores the content created by marketing and reps are forced to ‘go rogue’ and produce their own content to meet the demands of their buyers.
When we have the opportunity to hear directly from top sales reps, early in the content creation process, there’s almost always an important revelation that results in either the content or the format changing significantly… and then the final asset is actually leveraged by the reps in their buyer conversations.
Insufficient or ineffective sales training
Enterprise B2B Sales reps are expected to know a lot about a lot of different solutions. Marketers don’t always take the time to create training materials that make it easy for sales reps to understand (and remember – see below) a solution’s key benefits, features and value messages. Marketers who treat sales reps as ‘buyers’ in their own right, create well designed intuitive training materials to ensure the right messages stick in the sellers’ minds.
Ineffective sales enablement content
Not every marketer creates the right content to empower sales to have productive, consistent conversations with their sellers. The ones that do work with sales to understand the types of information that buyers will want to know (and the level of detail they’ll require). Then they create clear, visual content designed to address those needs - in the best format - based on the context of the buyer interaction.
We are not too proud to admit at Altitude that we often create ‘picture books for adults’, because that’s exactly what the buyer needs at that point in the sales cycle.
Lack of sales reference aides
Our clients readily admit that sales training is akin to ‘cramming for an exam’, and we all can relate to how much we remember a week after the exam. Sales reps aren’t superhuman. They are bound to forget things. Marketers who accept this reality can plan for it. We’ve recently created a series of short, highly visual reference aides, to help sales reps quickly remember the key value messages and talking points for a specific solution.
Creating sales ‘cheat sheets’ like those aides, can prevent reps from either:
a) incorrectly remembering what they were trained to say, or
b) making an educated, but incorrect guess when talking with a buyer.
To recap, here are our key recommendations:
Align marketing and sales teams early in the content creation process to ensure the final assets will meet the needs of the reps.
Train sales reps effectively by investing in training materials that are easy for reps to understand and remember.
Support sales reps with the sales enablement content they need so they don’t have to create it themselves.
Remind sales reps of your key messages using brief, easy-to-reference content they can quickly scan before their next sales call.
Thanks for reading. If you’re launching a new solution, or struggling with inconsistent messaging from marketing and sales, let’s talk about it. We’ll let you know how we can help, and you can decide if that’s what you need.
Could misaligned messaging be slowing your sales?
We’re gathering real-world input on how sales and marketing misalignment impacts the buyer journey. Take 30 seconds to share your experience — your insight helps us build better strategies for teams like yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is clear messaging important in B2B sales?
Clear B2B messaging accelerates decision-making, boosts trust and reduces costly miscommunication. In fact, 67% of B2B buyers list inconsistent messaging as a top reason for vendor dissatisfaction. Clear messaging aligns sales and marketing, directly improving sales cycle length and customer loyalty.
How do I know if my company’s messaging is confusing customers?
Identify messaging confusion by conducting internal audits of marketing and sales materials, performing stakeholder interviews, and analysing customer interactions using CRM tools like Salesforce. Look for patterns such as frequent customer questions, stalled deals, or negative customer feedback.
How soon can I expect results after improving our B2B messaging?
Enterprise companies typically see measurable improvements in sales efficiency, customer satisfaction, and conversion rates within a three to six month period after aligning their messaging. Regularly reviewing clear KPIs ensures continual progress.
Author Bio
Chris Carson is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional and PMP® who leads marketing at Altitude. He specializes in simplifying complex messaging for regulated industries like finance and technology. When he’s not working, he’s tending a pollinator garden that the bees—and his neighbors—seem to love. Connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Altitude here.