Things started normal enough.

Baker introduced his guest, Michael “Mike” Carroll, head of growth at Nutshell CRM. There was some chatter, including an admission from Baker that “we don’t go in with a whole lot of prep” at Above the Fold – which is fine, because Carroll likes his podcasts raw. There was also some speak of all the weed Joe Rogan smokes – you know, the usual stuff.

Anyway, the conversation tumbled its way toward sales enablement. This part was super insightful and got to the existential core of the age-old rift between sales and marketing.

But then around the 35-minute mark, something extraordinary happened.

Carrol, who must have ingested a Molotov cocktail before recording, verbally unleashed its fiery wrath all over Facebook.

There were cuss words. And it was spectacular.

Sales is marketing, and all marketing is sales: Why the disconnect?

Even when represented as a haiku (👆), the idea of sales and marketing having an antagonistic relationship is trite. And yet it’s too often too true.

Carroll has seen marketers refuse to take accountability for leads because they didn’t want to be on the hook for repeating that success for sales or being blamed for failure. He’s also seen sales not follow up on marketing’s leads because the BDRs and BDEs insist all marketing leads are garbage.

The irony is that “it’s all part of the same funnel” – as Carroll put it. Why do they care where the leads come from if the shared goal is to generate income for the same company? Two words: metric incentives.

Marketers traditionally want leads, lots of them. Sales want to close as many deals in as little time as possible, which means they’re less concerned with volume of leads, and more zeroed in on the quality of leads.

And even if marketing actually was generating great leads, are BDRs and BDEs willing to stake their commissions on them? As Baker put it, “We’re all working to put dinner on our plate at the end of the day.”

So how to align incentives and metrics?

According to Carroll, the solution is to kill the concepts of separate sales and marketing teams. Instead call it one team and provide a group commission. Make the one KPI for both teams the same: revenue from new deals.

Fortunately, he wasn’t talking out of his tuchus. This is something he’s experimenting with at Nutshell, and he has plenty of ideas on the subject of sales enablement (starting at around the 7-minute mark).

Why Carroll hates Facebook

Where to begin?

How about here:

  1. “Facebook is a social ill unleashed upon an unwilling populous designed to bring people together that has achieved exactly the opposite. And they continue to push forward as a corporate entity that holds themselves up as the arbiter of social discourse when they’re the ones that f*cking destroyed it.”
  2. “The second reason I hate Facebook from a business perspective is that they’re a bunch of sack of sh*t liars.”

One man’s opinion?

Maybe. But Caroll’s vitriol is backed up by very real and very troubling anecdotes – both for users of the platform and for marketers who think they’re actually getting real value from it.

And as wildly entertaining – if not gratuitous and even cathartic – as it is to hear a veteran digital marketer lambaste a social media platform that gets easier to hate by the second, his warpath is not unwarranted.

I don’t want to spoil it for you, so I’ll just say this: If you’re a B2B marketer who’s spending time and money on Facebook for lead gen, pay especially close attention starting at the 35-minute mark. This is one rant that might save you tens of thousands of dollars.

A few things Carroll wants you to check out

Context-free quote of episode

“The whole world is blowing up and someone’s gonna get fired.”

Dominick Sorrentino, Brafton's Brand & Product Manager, is based in Portland, ME. He likes language, playing guitar, birding, taking his dog on scenic strolls, traveling, and a good conversation over a great cup of coffee. He promises he's not as pretentious as he sounds.