Your “Leads Problem” Might Actually Be a Language Problem
Interview: Joseph Lewin on fixing the marketing + biz dev disconnect in professional services
Behind the Agency Podcast with Joseph Lewin, Director of Growth at Proofpoint Marketing
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Prefer the highlights? Key takeaways and summary below.
TL;DR – Key Takeaways
“Marketing vs Sales” fights usually aren’t about effort. They’re about misaligned goals and mismatched definitions.
If marketing is graded on traffic + followers and biz dev is graded on pipeline + revenue, you’re not a team. You’re two departments arguing over the same budget.
A “lead” often means different things to different teams. If you don’t define it the same way, you’ll keep having the same fight forever.
CRM hygiene is not busywork. It’s how both teams can agree on reality without needing a weekly courtroom trial.
The fastest way for marketing to stop guessing is simple: sit in on sales calls and steal the customer’s exact words.
A lot of growth work is change management, not marketing tactics. If you can’t get stakeholders aligned, even the best campaign won’t matter.
Practical play: help biz dev create content from stuff they’re already consuming (articles, keynotes, research). Don’t ask them to “write a blog post.”
Another practical play: biz dev should build relationships through content (LinkedIn Live interviews with prospects, influencers, authors).
🎙️ Meet the Guest
Joseph Lewin is the Director of Growth at Proofpoint Marketing, a go-to-market consulting firm focused on technical professional services (think: business consulting, IT consulting, implementation—“your people are your product” companies).
He’s done both sides:
demand gen / marketing delivery for client accounts
internal growth (marketing + biz dev) for Proofpoint itself
His big focus: bridging the gap between marketing and biz dev so companies can actually hit their growth goals.
Episode Summary
1. What “growth” really means (in the real world)
Joseph described “growth” as the marriage of marketing and biz dev—not as two separate functions doing their own thing, but as one unified engine.
He’s pushing for a structure where:
marketing + biz dev report into the same leader
they share business objectives (revenue, profitability, margins, etc.)
they run a single, aligned go-to-market plan
Because when they’re split, you get two teams “trying to help growth” while pulling in different directions.
2. The most common problem: totally different scoreboards
This part will make every agency founder nod in pain.
Marketing says:
“We’re increasing traffic, followers, leads.”
Biz dev says:
“We need pipeline. We need closed-won. We need net new accounts.”
Then the classic fight begins:
Biz dev: “We need more leads.”
Marketing: “I can’t pull leads out of a hat.”
Biz dev: “These leads are garbage.”
Marketing: “You’re not nurturing them.”
Biz dev: “They were never qualified in the first place.”
Joseph’s point: they’re speaking different languages and using different definitions.
A lead to marketing might mean: “someone filled out a form.”
A lead to biz dev might mean: “someone who could buy in the next 90 days.”
If you don’t define those terms together, you’re basically arguing in two different dictionaries.
3. The fix starts with shared definitions + a CRM that tells the truth
Joseph hit two really “unsexy but real” fixes:
A) Define terms together
What is a lead?
What is an MQL?
What is an SQL?
What qualifies as “an opportunity”?
B) Keep the CRM updated
So either team can look at an account and say:
“Yep, this meets the threshold.”
Without needing the weekly blame meeting.
This is where I’ll add my own hot take:
Most teams treat CRM hygiene like flossing.
Everyone agrees it’s good.
Almost nobody does it until things start bleeding.
4. The hidden issue: both teams secretly disrespect each other
Joseph said something most people won’t say out loud:
A lot of marketing people don’t respect sales.
A lot of sales people don’t respect marketing.
Sales thinks marketing is “the brochure department.”
Marketing thinks sales only cares about closing today and ignores nurturing.
And honestly? Both caricatures show up in the wild.
But the path out is:
shared business goals
each team has KPIs that ladder up to those goals
regular feedback loops (so you can diagnose whether the issue is targeting, messaging, or sales process)
5. The simplest way for marketing to get better: sit in on sales calls
Joseph gave a great example from his past role as a marketer supporting a highly technical product.
He sat in on 20–30 sales calls and it did two things:
Helped sales improve messaging + the pitch (watching where prospects glazed over)
Gave marketing direct access to real customer pain, in the customer’s exact words
This is the “ingredients vs secret recipe” thing:
Internal brainstorms are the ingredients.
Customer language is the secret recipe.
Most companies keep trying to cook with ingredients alone.
6. Growth is often a people problem before it’s a marketing problem
This is the part that’s easy to forget when you’re deep in tactics.
Joseph basically said: even if your idea is good, it dies if you can’t get stakeholders aligned.
Change requires:
agreement that there’s a problem
willingness to put time + political weight behind the fix
real buy-in, not just “fine, here’s budget, now go away”
If you can’t navigate internal alignment, you can’t move the needle.
Practical Moves You Can Steal
If you’re a marketer
Help biz dev create content using what they already consume:
industry articles
research
conference keynotes
trend reports
Format ideas:
quick bullet post with a POV
30–60 second video summary + opinion
screen share breakdown of an article
Don’t ask them to “write a blog post.” It won’t happen.
If you’re in biz dev / sales
Do content with people you want relationships with:
prospects
influencers
authors
partners
Invite them to a LinkedIn Live:
“Loved your take on X. Want to unpack it for 20 minutes?”
You’ll build relationships you can’t get through cold outreach alone.
If you’re trying to get exec buy-in
Stop pitching tactics like:
“10,000 impressions.”
Start pitching outcomes tied to business goals:
close rate improvements on target accounts
pipeline created within a defined list
margin/profitability impact
retention / expansion
Execs don’t buy “marketing activity.”
They buy “business impact.”
Notable Quotes
“If the metrics and goals for marketing and business development are totally different, you’re not going to be aligned.”
“A lead to marketing might not mean the same thing as a lead to sales.”
“The best messaging is always the words of the customer directly.”
“It’s a people problem first… then it’s a marketing problem.”
Learn More / Get in Touch
Joseph on LinkedIn: Joseph Lewin
Proofpoint Marketing: proofpoint.marketing (as mentioned in the episode)
Proofpoint focuses on technical professional services, helping teams:
identify ideal customers
tighten messaging
align marketing + biz dev
kick off via a workshop to diagnose the real growth constraint and build a plan
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