Answering the age old question - how can Sales and Marketing work together effectively?
What I cover:
- Why sales x marketing alignment is integral
- Understanding sales x marketing priorities
- Actionable ideas for creating shared context
This was presented on 29th July 2021 at the SaaS Insider event. Will be revisiting this later to revise & update.
You can get in touch with me on Twitter (@RoshanCariappa) or LinkedIn (Roshan Cariappa) if you have questions.
2. What we will discuss today 🧐
• Sales & marketing alignment: why? what does it look like?
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• Understanding Priorities: what they care about? why?
• Creating a shared context: strategic, tactical, & actionable
3. “They think that intelligence is
about noticing things are relevant
(detecting patterns); in a complex
world, intelligence consists in
ignoring things that are irrelevant
(avoiding false patterns)”
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4. Why me, why now? 🙋🧐♂️
• Sales & Marketing: both, together
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• (Zero to one) x n: optimize for impact
• Enterprise experience: usually siloed $ ACV
# People
5. Why Sales 🧐🧐 Marketing?
• Customer is omnipresent: multiple channels, touch points
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• Integral to scale: can’t brute force winning markets
• Anchoring vision: to reality through feedback loops
6. Why Sales 🧐🧐 Marketing?
• Force multiplier: more opportunities, more $$
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• Understand macro: beyond tactical to strategic
• Storytelling: learning to paint the bigger picture
7. Why Sales 🧐🧐 Marketing?
• Customer context: speak the customer’s language
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• Moving the needle: translating leads to revenue
• Aligning brand promise: what you say v/s what you do
8. What Sales 🧐🧐 Marketing alignment
looks like 👀
• Momentum x Efficiency: more leads, more deals
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• Predictability in outcomes: what will it take to do ‘x’
• Better stakeholder NPS: employees, customers, others+
9. "Salespeople suck!” 😡
• "They don’t care about my leads!”
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• "They won’t share any information!”
• "They only ask for more and more!”
10. "Marketers suck!” 😏
• "They don’t understand customers”
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• "They chase vanity metrics!”
• “They give me more work!”
11. "Salespeople suck!” – asking why? 🧐
• "They don’t care about my leads!” -> Why should they?
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• "They won’t share any information!” -> Why won’t they?
• "They only ask for more and more!” -> Why do they?
REDUCE friction | BUILD empathy | HELP win
12. "Marketers suck!” – asking why? 🧐
• "They don’t understand customers” -> Why don’t they?
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• "They chase vanity metrics!” -> Why do they?
• “They give me more work!” -> Why do they?
REDUCE friction | BUILD empathy | HELP win
13. The fundamental shift – help me, help
you 🙏🧐
• Sales: Quotas -> Market
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• Marketing: Leads -> Revenue
• GTM motion: Sales + Marketing
14. Ideas for Better Alignment – 3/9 🧐🧐
• Culture: Company > Function > Team
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• Cadence: on campaigns & pipeline
• Shared vocabulary & process
15. Ideas for Better Alignment – 6/9 🧐🧐
• Talk to customers (events, demos)
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• Learn to pitch, sell and demo
• Generating leads -> Influence opportunities
18. If you could only follow 3 + 1 people
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Jason
Lemkin
SaaS
Dave
Gerhadt
Marketing
Brian G
Burns
Sales
Rory
Sutherland
Branding