How to get sales and marketing working together

How to Get Sales and Marketing Working
Together to Drive Results
Dave Kellogg
8/28/2020
Presentation (and all Kellblog by Dave Kellogg materials) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Step 1: Invite
Them Both To
The Meeting

Agenda
• Self introduction
• What goes wrong?
• How to stop/prevent it?
• What it looks like when it’s right
• Q&A
Kellblog by Dave Kellogg is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Self-Introduction
• CMO of two startups
• Versant, Business Objects
• CEO of two startups
• MarkLogic, Host Analytics
• Board of five startups
• Aster Data, Granular, Nuxeo, Alation, Profisee
• Advised/invested in many more
• MongoDB, Tableau, GainSight, FloQast, ClearedIn, Faros, NetSpring, Kelda, Fortella
• Blogger
• Love learning and teaching about our amazing Silicon Valley system
• Best way to learn a topic is to write an essay about it
Fairly unique perspective
- 10 years looking up at CE0
- 10 years being looked at as CEO
- 10 years looking across at CEO
Good markets and tough ones
Fair weather and foul

(Note: marketers like this scene more than sellers)
Kellblog by Dave Kellogg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Ever Seen This?
The Sales and
Marketing
Double
Drowning

He Said,
She Said
Kellblog by Dave Kellogg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
License.

Anything Else Sound Familiar?
• “Our <sellers/marketers> can’t talk about business value.”
• “Our messaging is totally undifferentiated.”
• “We don’t have enough pipeline and it’s <sales/marketing/alliances> fault.”
• “Our <sellers/marketers> don’t understand solutions.”
• “Nobody’s ever heard of us.”
• “Our real job is to focus on brand.”
• “Sales shouldn’t have to prospect, they should just be closing machines.”
• “If we made sushi, our marketing dept would call it cold, dead fish.”

A Friendly Reminder from
Niccolò Machiavelli
Warring princes means a weak king

The First Big Insight
Are these problems or
symptoms?

The Underlying Problems
• Unrealistic plans
• Function-led mentality
• Blame culture
• Non-alignment (philosophical, strategic, operational)

Is Your Plan Realistic?
• The trouble usually starts when you’re missing plan
• Is the plan pro forma, ex-aere, ex-rectum, or driver-based?
• Are the drivers set in line with historical and/or industry norms?
• Are driver changes sufficiently incremental and rationally credible?
• e.g., if sales productivity will increase 10% to $1.1M ARR/rep next year, why?
• Is your model too optimistic?
• e.g., do it model sales turnover and ramp resets?
• Are you suffering from an Excel-induced hallucination?

Are You (Perhaps Unconsciously) Function-Led?
• “Our engineering is world-class, but our marketing is below par.”
• “We’re a sales-driven company, the product is crap, but we sell the
hell out of it.”
• “We’re a people-driven company, we’re all about culture.”
• “Our product is great, but our S&M is inefficient.”
• (Note: nobody ever says they’re marketing-led!)
• “Are we product-driven, sales-driven, or customer-driven?”

Substitute departments for organs and you’ll get my point
The Mildly
Offensive
“Who’s In
Charge” Joke
One day the different parts of the body were having an argument to see which should be in
charge.
The brain said, “I do all the thinking so I’m the most important and I should be in charge.”
The eyes said, “I see everything and let the rest of you know where we are, so I’m the most
important and I should be in charge.”
The hands said, “Without me we wouldn’t be able to pick anything up or move anything. So
I’m the most important and I should be in charge.”
The stomach said, “I turn the food we eat into energy for the rest of you. Without me, we’d
starve. So I’m the most important and I should be in charge.”
The legs said, “Without me we wouldn’t be able to move anywhere. So I’m the most
important and I should be in charge.”
Then the rectum said, “I think I should be in charge.”
All the rest of the parts said, “You?!? You don’t do anything! You’re not important! You can’t
be in charge.”
So the rectum closed up.
After a few days, the legs were all wobbly, the stomach was all queasy, the hands were all
shaky, the eyes were all watery, and the brain was all cloudy. They all agreed that they
couldn’t take any more of this and agreed to put the rectum in charge.
The moral of the story?
You don’t have to be the most important to be in charge, any asshole can do it.
License.

The Answer: Play No Favorites
• Who’s my favorite salesperson?
• “The one who sold the most last quarter. I love that guy/gal.”
• What’s my favorite department?
• “I don’t have one.”
• (It’s a stupid question. What’s my favorite organ? I need them all.)
• What kind of “driven” are we?
• (Stealth for what’s your favorite function)
• “We are strategy driven. We make a strategic plan based on our situation and
we execute it.”

Blame Culture
• Unrealistic plan → missing plan → seeking someone to blame
• “I’m not trying to blame anyone; I’m just trying to fix problems.”
• Are you, really? Listen to your language. Record and replay the meeting.
• Listen for backward-looking, perhaps-implicit blame statements
• This is why you must not play favorites (i.e., it destroys the credibility of non-
blame-seeking statements)

Blame Culture vs. Problem-Solving Culture
Blame Statements Problem-Solving Statements
The SDRs are below plan How can we improve SDR productivity? What is our
SDR productivity relative to peers?
The effing salespeople are too lazy to prospect Should salespeople prospect in our model? Why
aren’t they? What incentives do they lack? What
tools do they lack? Let’s ask them.
Competitor X has better marketing than we do How can we improve our messaging and enablement?
Should we make that a key focus with task force?
Should we bring in a consultant to help?
Let’s do a thorough review of marketing (best said
with stern, punitive overtone)
Let’s listen to 5 Gong calls together and take notes on
what we can do better.
No one’s heard of us and/or we have a bad reputation Let’s run a market study to get some data on where
outside-in demand funnel and leakage.

Philosophical Non-Alignment: Role
Type 1 Marketer
• Marketing exists to promote our
brand and brand values
• Sales are my implementation
pawns
• CPG or agency background
Type 2 Marketer
• Marketing exists to make sales
easier
• Sales is my internal customer,
but it’s a tough-love relationship
• Software background
See https://kellblog.com/2020/04/26/marketing-exists-to-make-sales-easier/
Please be type 2

Strategic Non-Alignment
These are all company strategy questions that the exec team must
decide and align on.
• Should we build content for vertical X?
• Should we focus on differentiation or value in our messaging?
• What is our ideal customer profile? (Do we need help identifying it?)
• What segments should we target?
• What 1-3 key themes do we want to drive this year?
• What are the top 5 things we want from marketing this year?

A Note on Planning for CMOs
A key skill for any successful CMO is the ability to say “no.”
(Just don’t get too good at it.)

Operational Non-Alignment
• Definitions
• What is an MQL, SAL, SQL, S3, S4,…?
• What is the exit criterion (singular on purpose) for advancing?
• Process
• What accountability do we have on accepted oppties?
• What is acceptable aging at each step?
• At what steps are which fields mandatory?
• How do we will fill in close date and oppty value?
• Reporting
• What’s included in pipeline reporting?
• What expected value reports do we produce? (e.g., stage, FC category)

Written,
Agreed-To
Rules and
Definitions
License.

Common Metrics, Quarterly Demandgen

Common Metrics, Weekly Funnel and Pipeline

Common Metrics, Next-Quarter Pipeline and Competition

Teamwork

Q&A

See Also
• Aligned to Achieve by Tracy Eiler and Andrea Austin
• https://kellblog.com/2020/03/04/stopping-the-sales-marketing-double-
drowning/
• https://kellblog.com/2020/04/26/marketing-exists-to-make-sales-easier/
• https://kellblog.com/2013/08/16/sales-is-from-mars-and-engineering-is-
from-venus/
• https://kellblog.com/2017/11/10/using-close-rates-to-align-sales-targets-
and-marketing-budgets/
• https://medium.com/axeleo/how-to-align-sales-and-marketing-once-and-
for-all-213c8068dd1e

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