Practical strategies for marketing-sales alignment

Matt: Today we're talking about how sales and marketing teams can work better together. This is an important topic that affects all marketing teams, no matter how closely they work with sales. It's been hard to find good, practical advice on this.

Neha: I've been working in marketing for nine years now. Throughout my career, I've noticed one thing that's always true: you need a good relationship with sales to succeed in marketing. Sales teams focus on making money, and as a marketer, you need to work well with them to help the business reach its goals.

This topic has always interested me. I've always tried hard to build a strong connection with sales teams. I make sure marketing and sales work together, not separately. I've seen companies where these teams don't work together well. Those companies often have trouble meeting their targets and goals.

Working together is important because when marketing and sales are separate, it can cause problems. Companies that keep these teams apart often struggle to hit their targets and meet their goals.

Matt: Can you give us an example of what this might look like?

Neha: The main thing is to understand what sales does. This means learning about their daily work, how they talk to potential customers, and how they present our product. It's important to know what questions customers ask, so we can use this information in our marketing.

It's important to know what questions customers ask, so we can use this information in our marketing.

Here are some ways to do this. First, join sales calls. You can listen in on sales calls without saying anything. This helps you understand the problems our product solves for customers and what questions they ask. These questions can give you ideas for marketing content.

Second, talk to sales reps. If you can't join calls, just talk to the sales team after their calls. Ask them how it went, what they learned, and what questions came up. Show interest in their work. This can give you a lot of useful information.

Both these methods help you understand what's happening when sales talk to customers. This information can make your marketing work better and more relevant to what customers need. If you have access to AI tools that can create meeting summaries and notes, it makes this process even easier.

I'd like to add one more important point about understanding sales better. It's really helpful for marketing teams to learn how to do a simple product demo. This is often overlooked, but it's crucial.

It's really helpful for marketing teams to learn how to do a simple product demo. This is often overlooked, but it's crucial.

As a marketing team, you need to understand the product you're promoting and creating messages about. A great way to do this is by actually trying to demonstrate the product yourself. You don't need to know all the technical details, but you should be able to explain the main features.

For example, if someone at an event asks, "Can you show me your platform?", you should be able to open your laptop and give a basic demo. This helps you understand the most important parts of the product to focus on.

Addressing misconception of marketing: Involving sales in marketing strategy and planning

Matt: This really helps build credibility, especially in B2B. It's important to answer common questions from potential customers about the product. This builds trust. If you can say, "Yes, I can show you how the product works," it helps create a stronger connection with the sales team. This is much better than many marketing teams who don't know much about the sales process. It changes the relationship from "us versus them" to "we're all working together."

How else can marketing show their value to sales? I'd like to know more about this, as it can help build trust between the teams.

Neha: The best way for marketing to show credibility is through results and value. Many salespeople think marketing just does flashy events, ads, and branding. But what really matters is how these efforts help the business make money.

Sales teams care about revenue, leads, and closing deals. So, marketing needs to show how their work helps with these goals. We should always be ready to explain the value of our activities.

For example, don't just say, "We're running an event with these speakers." Instead, say, "We ran this event, got this many leads, and here's how much money it helped bring in." Always think about how your work helps the sales team.

It can be harder to show value for things like blog posts or ads. But you can still do it. If the goal is to increase awareness, show how those numbers are growing over time. While revenue is important, it's also good to show other activities that can lead to revenue later on.

Matt: It's important that everyone knows why we're creating each piece. Each piece should have a clear purpose. As you said, it's not always about making money right away. Sometimes it's about speeding up the sales process or teaching potential buyers. The key is to clearly explain what each piece of content is meant to do.

How else could you involve sales in and around the marketing ideation of marketing strategies?

Neha: To create better alignment between sales and marketing, we should involve sales early in everything we do. This includes strategy and planning. Sales don't need to create our entire strategy, but they should give input and feedback. They should be able to tell us if something doesn't fit their market needs.

It's important to build good relationships with sales teams. This allows for open conversations about strategy and planned activities.

It's important to build good relationships with sales teams. This allows for open conversations about strategy and planned activities.

Without buy-in from sales, our marketing activities are less likely to succeed. In fact, I'd say about half of our marketing success depends on having sales fully involved. Their involvement makes our activities even better.

Remember, this goes back to our first point about building strong relationships. Good communication with sales reps, teams, and leaders is key to successful marketing.

From creative coffee to joint decisions

Matt: In B2B especially, many marketing teams don't know what sales teams really need. They often don't ask important questions like "What would be helpful for you?" or "Here's our plan - what do you think?"

It's good to let sales give feedback and add value to marketing plans. Even though sales might think they can do marketing's job, they can definitely make it better. Their input can make marketing 5% more effective because it matches what customers want and need.

Neha: Let me give you some examples of how we involve sales in our marketing plans.

First, we have a monthly or quarterly "creative coffee" with our SDR team. Here's how it works. We spend 30 minutes together in one room, close all other apps and use just one Google Doc. We brainstorm ideas for the next quarter or two from both marketing and SDRs. In the last 5 minutes, we comment on each other's ideas and build on them. This way, we come up with ideas together, instead of marketing deciding everything alone.

Another example is choosing webinar topics. I often ask the sales team for help with this because people's attention spans are shorter online than in person. We need to pick topics that will keep people interested. Sales teams know what questions customers are asking.

I use this information from sales to create webinars or content that answers these questions and addresses customer problems.

Matt: Leadership alignment is also really important. This kind of teamwork needs to start with both marketing and sales leaders. If both leaders don't support it, the idea won't spread to the rest of the team.

Neha: Yes, I agree completely. It all begins with the leaders working together. They need to pass this teamwork mindset down to their teams. This way, everyone understands that this is how we'll work together. If we don't do this, the teams can quickly become separated.

Get involved, share your thoughts, and connect with like-minded people.