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 ten 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 driving revenue, 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 and those companies often have trouble meeting their targets and goals.
Matt: Can you give us an example of what this might look like?
Neha: Step into the shoes of sales. 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 to help inform our marketing messaging.
It's important to know what questions customers ask, so we can use this to help inform our marketing messaging.
Here are some ways to do this. First, join sales calls. Don't worry, you don’t need to speak, you can learn a lot by just listening in. This helps you understand the problems your product solves for customers and what questions they ask. I’ve always found the questions that prospects ask very insightful to help inform my marketing content strategy.
Second, talk to your sales reps. If you can't join calls, have a casual conversation with your sales reps after their calls. Ask them how it went, what they learned, and what questions came up. It’s not only a great way to show your interest and understand the challenges that your sales team might be facing on the ground, but also a good way to get to know your sales reps and build that relationship.
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.
Lastly, learn how to do a basic product demo. Your sales team will appreciate the fact that you’ve taken the time to learn the product and enable you to have more meaningful conversations when you’re talking to your sales reps. 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 before creating any marketing strategy. 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 and pain points it helps to solve.
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 achieve their business goals.
The ultimate goal for the sales team is to close more deals and drive revenue. So, marketing needs to show how their work helps with these goals. When given the opportunity during team meetings, 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 pipe 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: A couple of practical examples on how we involve sales in our marketing plans include:
Having a monthly or quarterly "creative coffee" with our SDR team. We spend 30 minutes together in one room, close all other apps and use one Google Doc. We brainstorm ideas for the next quarter or two from both a marketing and SDR perspective. 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. You'd be surprised with how many ideas we come up within just those 30 minutes.
Another example is selecting webinar and event topics. I regularly consult with the sales team for their insights, as they have valuable knowledge of current trends and the questions their customers are most eager to explore.
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 and aligning on KPIs. They need to pass this teamwork mindset down to their teams. If we don't do this, the teams can quickly become siloed.
