August 12, 2025

The math behind marking vs sales

A couple days ago, I sent an email that boiled down to this question:

“If you hate both marketing and sales, but HAD TO do one of them, which would you pick?”

Longtime friend-of-the-list Kai Davis replied with what I consider to be an excellent and rational breakdown (shared with permission):

It’s an interesting question if you look at it like “listen, if you know you’re going to utterly suck at and dislike one of these and you’ll do it poorly, which do you pick?”

if you’re decent at sales and weak at marketing: 0-2 leads a month, close ~30% = so 0 - 0.6 projects/month

if you weak at sales and okay at marketing: ~3-8 leads a month, close ~15% = so .45 - 1.2 projects/month

I think it’s better to be okay at marketing and suuuuck at sales. You can fumble your way to a closed deal with a decent stream of leads. But even the world’s greatest salesman will struggle to close deals with no pipeline.

Better to have leads you can’t close than no leads at all!

kai

Agreed!

Thanks to Kai for sharing :-)

Yours,

—J

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