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Why Sales and Marketing Alignment Became Critical After COVID (And How to Fix the Gap)
- Michael Colling-Tuck
- Jul 7
- 4 min read
By Michael Colling-Tuck
The email arrived at 8:23 AM on a Monday.
"If your marketing team continues to claim our device enables faster recovery times, we'll stop using it entirely."
It was from one of our key opinion leaders - a surgeon who'd been championing our product for years.
Marketing had launched a campaign highlighting "accelerated patient recovery" based on early data trends. But our sales team knew the clinical evidence wasn't robust enough to support that claim.
Sales had been having a different conversation entirely - focusing on procedural efficiency and reduced surgical complexity. They knew the surgeons valued precision and reliability over unproven recovery claims.
The disconnect nearly cost us our most important clinical advocate.
That was 2019. Today, with HCPs more sceptical than ever and regulatory scrutiny at an all-time high, that same misalignment would be catastrophic.
The Post-COVID Reality
Healthcare has fundamentally changed since 2020. HCPs are more time-poor, dealing with patient backlogs that still haven't been cleared. They're taking on management responsibilities they never trained for. They're adapting to AI tools while protecting work-life balance that took a beating during the pandemic.
More importantly, they've become hypersensitive to overstated claims and marketing messages that don't match clinical reality.
In this environment, every interaction with your company matters. A marketing claim that sales can't defend doesn't just slow momentum—it destroys the trust that took years to build.
Yet most healthcare companies are still operating with the same sales-marketing divide that existed five years ago.
Where the Gap Lives
I see this pattern repeatedly:
Marketing creates awareness campaigns built around aspirational benefits and broad value propositions.
Sales teams have clinical conversations grounded in evidence they can actually defend in the field.
The result? HCPs question your credibility when marketing promises what sales can't substantiate.
In a post-COVID world where HCPs have less patience for overstated claims, this disconnect is more costly than ever.
The Three Alignment Pillars That Actually Work
Here's what I've learned from 20 years of bridging this gap:
1. Align on the Clinical Challenge, Not Just the Product
Stop starting with features and benefits. Start with the clinical frustration that sparked your innovation.
When marketing and sales both understand the core problem you're solving, their messages naturally converge. The surgeon dealing with complex revisions and the procurement team evaluating cost-per-case are both addressing the same underlying challenge—they just need different evidence.
2. Create Shared Customer Personas Based on Real Conversations
Your ideal customer profiles shouldn't live in marketing's deck or sales' CRM. They should be co-created based on actual field intelligence.
I work with teams to build personas that capture both the clinical drivers (what keeps them up at night) and the business drivers (what gets budget approved). When both teams use the same customer understanding, their messages support rather than contradict each other.
3. Build a Common Evidence Library and Unified Playbooks
Post-COVID, HCPs want proof that works in their environment. They need clinical data, real-world evidence, and economic models that speak to their specific situation.
Create a shared repository of case studies, clinical evidence, and business cases that both teams can draw from. But don't stop there—develop messaging playbooks that translate this evidence for different audiences and sales playbooks that guide field conversations with consistent story frameworks.
Marketing uses the messaging playbooks for campaign development and content creation. Sales uses the sales playbooks for customer conversations and objection handling. Same story, different formats, unified approach.
What Changes When You Get This Right
The transformation is immediate:
Sales cycles shorten because prospects receive consistent messages across all touchpoints
Win rates improve because your clinical and business value stories reinforce each other
Customer satisfaction increases because there's no disconnect between what was promised and what's delivered
More importantly, your innovation gets the recognition it deserves because every interaction builds credibility rather than creating confusion.
The Bottom Line
In healthcare's new reality, alignment isn't just about internal efficiency. It's about respecting your customers' expertise and earning their trust.
HCPs don't have bandwidth for claims they can't validate. They need clarity about what you solve, who benefits, and why the evidence supports your position.
When sales and marketing work from the same understanding of customer challenges, shared evidence base, and unified playbooks, credibility emerges naturally.
Because great healthcare innovations deserve clear, consistent stories that help them reach the clinicians and patients who need them most.
Your Next Steps
If your sales and marketing teams are operating with different customer assumptions or conflicting claims, start here:
Audit your current messages - Compare what marketing claims with what sales can actually defend in the field
Create shared customer challenge statements - Define the clinical and business problems you solve
Develop unified playbooks - Build messaging playbooks for marketing and sales playbooks that work from the same core story and evidence
Build evidence that serves both teams - Develop materials that support both awareness and sales conversations
Want help aligning your teams around demand creation?
Download our Sales-Marketing Alignment Framework PDF below.
Get our Product Messaging Playbook Framework here: https://www.agencybristol.com/download-product-playbook-framework
Or speak with us about training your teams: [https://www.agencybristol.com/join-in]
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