Strategies for Sales and Marketing Team Collaboration

Over the years, I've discovered the truth: Game-changing products won't succeed unless they have a unified vision across sales, marketing, and product teams. When these key functions pull in different directions, it's a death knell for go-to-market execution. Without alignment on positioning and buyer messaging, we fail to communicate value and create disjointed experiences. So, how do I foster collaboration across these functions? 1) Set shared goals and incentivize unity towards that North Star metric, be it revenue, activations, or retention. 2) Encourage team members to work closely together, building empathy rather than skepticism of other groups' intentions and contributions. 3) Regularly conduct cross-functional roadmapping sessions to cascade priorities across departments and highlight dependencies. 4) Create an environment where teams can constructively debate assumptions and strategies without politics or blame. 5) Provide clarity for sales on target personas and value propositions to equip them for deal conversations. 6) Involve all functions early in establishing positioning and messaging frameworks. Co-create when possible. By rallying together around customers’ needs, we block and tackle as one team towards product-market fit. The magic truly happens when teams unite towards a shared mission to delight users!

Every revenue leader talks about sales and marketing alignment—but most still struggle to make it work. Here’s why. Sales and marketing should operate as a single, high-performing revenue engine. But in most organizations, they function more like disconnected teams, leading to missed revenue, wasted budget, and deals slipping through the cracks. If you’re a revenue leader facing these challenges, here are the three biggest roadblocks getting in your way—and how to fix them. 1. 𝗗𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 Marketing focuses on MQLs, brand awareness, and content engagement. Sales focuses on closed deals, quota attainment, and speed to revenue. If these goals aren’t aligned, it creates tension. Fix it: • Set shared KPIs that both teams are accountable for—like pipeline velocity, win rates, and customer retention. • Regularly sync on revenue impact metrics, not just lead volume. 2. 𝗣𝗼𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 & 𝗟𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Too often, marketing hands off leads without sales understanding the strategy behind them. Sales dismisses marketing’s efforts as “not helpful.” The disconnect creates frustration and lost opportunities. Fix it: • Implement structured feedback loops so sales can report back on lead quality. • Create joint working sessions where both teams contribute to messaging, targeting, and go-to-market execution. 3. 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀 & 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 If sales and marketing aren’t rewarded for the same outcomes, they’ll never truly work together. A sales team compensated only on closed deals won’t care about lead nurturing. A marketing team judged on MQLs won’t focus on sales enablement. Fix it: • Align compensation and incentives around revenue impact. • Ensure marketing KPIs include pipeline and sales contribution—not just lead gen metrics. 𝗕𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗲:The companies that will win in 2025 and beyond aren’t just the ones generating more leads—they’re the ones ensuring their sales and marketing teams operate as a single, high-performing revenue engine. If you’re seeing any of these roadblocks, you’re not alone. The companies solving them now will have a real competitive edge in the years ahead.

It's the year 2023 and we STILL have a #Sales & #Marketing Silo problem. Want to eliminate the silos? Here are seven proven methods my team has used again and again with much success: 👉 1. Create a "Revenue Team" where heads of each department come together on a consistent basis to share current needs, priorities, needed help, etc. 👉 2. Have your marketing team members "shadow" a sales team member at least twice a year. (crazy effective, almost no company does this) 👉 3. Do not create a content editorial calendar without the help/assistance of one or more sales team members. Constantly ask the question: Will this content help your team today? 👉 4. Have the sales team attend a marketing conference with the marketing team (Total game-changer when this occurs, as I've seen this one act alone work miracles within organizations) 👉 5. Take the time to truly "teach" your sales team the power of content, social, video, etc. Help them to see the what/how/why. (This will almost always lead to a massive perspective shift) 👉 6. Train your sales team how to perform on camera, and then have them act as an on-camera subject matter expert for the marketing team. (This not only raises the brand of the salesperson, but it also gives them a sense of "ownership" of the marketing team's activity/content.) 👉 7. Teach your marketing team how to not sound like a marketer and instead sound like a human. (Seriously, this "curse of knowledge" is a big problem out there, and alienates clear understanding by sales as to what exactly marketing does.) So there you have it. Seven proven methods to eliminate sales/marketing silos. I'd love to hear in the comments section below any you'd add to the list, as well as any experience you've had with the ones I mentioned above. 👇

The ceiling of your outbound success is your company’s marketing engine. The future of outbound is... Drumroll...wait for it... Getting back to basics: sales & marketing alignment. My clients who experience the best outbound results have world-class marketing teams. And here's how they work better together to massively increase outbound success. 👇 ✅ 1) Customer snippet bank Create a bank of 2-3 sentence customer story snippets with: - Customer name - Industry and size of business - Personas - Problem statement - Result/outcome - The transformation Reps will LOVE marketing for this. This can be repurposed for cold emails, talk tracks, discovery conversations, demos, etc. ✅ 2) “The offer you can’t refuse” Increase the value prospects get in return for their time. Make prospects feel silly for turning a meeting down. My best clients lead with free website audits. They secret shop the prospect. They share world-class industry reports. They experience the brand. Teach don't take. ✅ 3) Collaboration with customers and prospective customers Create world-class content with your customers (AKA your prospect's peers). Get them on webinars, create ebooks, share short video snippets, etc. Don't make the content a big pitch about you. Make it valuable in and of itself. Then have reps send tailored, 1:1 outreach to check out the content. Adam Robinson calls this Inbound-Led Outbound. ✅ 4) Marketing: Ride shotgun with sales for a day It can work in the opposite way as well with sales. One of my best clients had 3-5 folks from the marketing team in the oubound workshops I led. Marketers...that's right...marketers...were learning how to cold call, handle objections, and had to role play with reps. Make sure both parties understand what it takes to do their job. ✅ 5) Build a messaging team Last but not least—assemble a team of 5-10 of the best reps, marketers, and sales leaders. Folks that really know the personas inside and out. Involving both marketing and sales punches up marketing messaging by making it "sales-ready." Instead of slide deck on new messaging, you get ready-made sequences, talk tracks, sales collateral, etc. ~~~ Want more ideas like these? Join me, Jen Allen-Knuth, Will Aitken, Sarah Reece 🥇, Doug Davidoff & Todd Clouser next Wednesday IN-PERSON at Outbound@Inbound in Boston. Register here: https://lnkd.in/eUv5gFBt

Every great CMO knows their success hinges on one thing: whether sales views them as indispensable. We surveyed 500 sales and marketing leaders to discover the true unlock for collaboration. Here are 3 key insights: 1️⃣ 📈 Alignment = revenue I expected to see slightly better business results from companies where sales and marketing work well together. But I didn’t expect the extent of it: -> Data: Aligned sales and marketing teams are 2.3X more likely to significantly exceed their revenue numbers. Misaligned teams are 2x more likely to miss their targets all together. -> Action: You now have a business case for alignment. Make it a 2025 OKR for you and your sales counterpart. 2️⃣ 🎯 Shared goals is NOT the issue For years I've heard that sales/marketing friction is caused by "misaligned goals." Our survey debunks this oversimplification and sheds light on the root cause. -> Data: Despite 70% of teams reporting high-level goal alignment, 81% fantasize about replacing their counterparts. Turns out most companies have figured out how to align the high level goals for sales and marketing. The culprit is the execution layer —the systems and processes that facilitate day-to-day execution and collaboration, such as: - Not working off the same data set and customer knowledge - Bad lead handoffs—sales complains about lead quality, marketing complains about lead follow-up - No unified approach to target accounts -> Action: After setting shared OKRs (revenue, pipeline), sit down with your sales and marketing leadership team to design an operating cadence for recurring events like releasing sales enablement, lead qualification and handoff, big campaign launches, ABM. 3️⃣ 🐳 Start by nailing target accounts One of sales' biggest issues in the survey was not getting enough support from marketing on target accounts. IMO this is the lowest hanging fruit for CMOs to fix and become indispensable to sales. Your board will also love seeing your clear plan for winning bigger customers. -> Data: While 82% of sellers view enterprise accounts as a top priority, only 15% rate marketing as highly effective at generating target account opportunities. -> Action: Make this a 2025 OKR: enterprise pipeline goal and 10 enterprise AEs/BDRs viewing marketing as indispensable. Once you agree on target accounts, work with AEs to research accounts and personalize the buying experience. If you want credibility with sales, use fewer actual win stories where marketing action preceded opportunity creation; avoid blackbox funnels that claim attribution for every win. Of course, Mutiny can help you do this in a scalable way with AI. 😉 *** Thanks to those who engaged in this topic already. Details in comments and a link to the report. Leave a comment with “enterprise VP retreat” if you're a marketing VP that wants to join our exclusive enterprise VP retreat focused on sales collaboration and breaking into target accounts. I'll DM you if your company qualifies.