Why Sales and Marketing Aren’t as Aligned as You Think

Fresh produce companies are good at selling. Decades of relationship-driven commerce, trade show handshakes, and phone calls with buyers have built a sales culture that works. But as consumer expectations shift and retail buyers ask more questions about brand equity and pull-through, marketing has quietly become part of the sales conversation whether your organization is ready for it or not.

The problem is that in many produce companies, sales and marketing still operate like two separate departments with two separate agendas. Sales wants leads, pricing support, and fast answers. Marketing wants time to build something that lasts. Neither is wrong. But the gap between them is costing companies real opportunity.

It usually shows up in small ways. A sales team heads into a buyer meeting with no materials that reflect the brand’s current story. A marketing team launches a consumer campaign without knowing which retailers are actually prioritizing the product this season. Both teams work hard, but they’re not working together.

This disconnect hits differently in produce than in other industries. Because price and availability drive so many business-to-business buying decisions, it’s easy to assume that brand investment doesn’t move the needle with buyers. But that thinking undersells what marketing can actually do. A buyer who recognizes your brand, who has seen your consumer-facing campaign, who knows your product has retail pull, walks into a conversation differently than one who is looking at your product as a line item.

Marketing doesn’t close deals. But it creates the conditions where deals are easier to close.

The first step toward better alignment is simple: get both teams in the same room more often. Not for a handoff, but for a genuine conversation about what’s working, what buyers are asking about, and where the brand has room to do more. When sales tells marketing what they’re hearing in the field, and marketing tells sales what consumers are responding to, both sides get smarter.

The rest of this series is going to dig into how that plays out in practice. But it starts with acknowledging that alignment isn’t automatic and that in produce, it’s worth building deliberately.

Next up: What sales needs from marketing, and how to actually deliver it.