NEW YORK A new global study of client go-to-market capabilities conducted by the CMO Council and The Boston Consulting Group reveals more than a few disconnects.

Of the 1,000 marketing and sales leaders who answered the study's questionnaire, 56 percent agree that talent investment can improve company performance, yet only 24 percent plan to expand training and development. A similar majority -- 58 percent -- aim to be "best in class," but only 8 percent put a priority on monitoring the practices of industry competitors, and even fewer -- 6 percent -- get ideas from the competition.

So why are the respondents so insular and shortsighted, even when they know better? Like most executives at publically traded companies, they likely feel the pressure to deliver quick results and have little time or energy to focus on long-term objectives.

"That has to do with the day-to-day tactical pressures that they have," said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. "The problem with most marketers is that they're waiting tables. They're not looking at the menu, creating new menus and, to a certain degree, they're not as active in the kitchen preparing the food. The salespeople tend to pull the cords there, and there's a lot of what we call random additive marketing versus cohesive, well-integrated, multi-level, multi-channeled kinds of campaigns."

The respondents came from 1,000 companies around the world, including Eastman Kodak, Motorola, Capital One, Google, Nortel, Samsung Mobile and Ameriprise Financial. Only a third rated their marketing effectiveness either "extremely good" or "quite effective," while 23 percent said it "needs work" or is "deficient." The rest -- 44 percent -- simply said it's "getting better."

Of course, the average tenure of a CMO is shrinking, which breeds short-term thinking. Still, until marketing and sales execs get their bosses to understand the value of say, making consumer insights as important as sales results, the companies won't reach their full potential, said BCG senior partner Mark Lubkeman.

"This is not an agenda that the head of commercial alone can drive," said Lubkeman, who leads BCG's marketing and sales practice for the Americas. "This really is an agenda that needs to be embraced by the senior management team across functions. We call it 'go-to-market,' we talk about commercial, but it really is a corporate-level imperative."