C-Suite Sidekick

6 Easy Steps to Better Sales & Marketing Alignment

• summer poletti

Share episode

Welcome to the inaugural episode of C-Suite Sidekick! I'm your host, Summer Poletti, and today we’re diving into the world of sales and marketing alignment with our first mini pod. In this concise and focused episode, we're tackling a crucial topic that often sees sales and marketing teams at odds. Have you ever been in a meeting where fingers are pointed and blame is shifted between these two departments? If so, you’re not alone—and it’s time to bridge that gap for the greater success of your business. The buying journey is more digital than ever, and for sales and marketing to thrive, they need to work together seamlessly. Stay tuned as I share six actionable steps that can help you align these critical teams, starting today. So, whether you're squeezing this in during a quick car ride or a brief moment between meetings, let's get started!

  • Episode recorded and edited using Descript
  • Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
  • Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
  • Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

Hello and welcome to my first mini pod. Are you someone who would listen to more business podcasts, but you don't always have 20 to 45 minutes to spend? Maybe you work from home now and the only free time you have is when you're in your car picking up your kids. Well, then the mini pods are for you. These are going to come in handy when I have a quick idea I want to share with you. These are going to be eight, 15 minutes max. The first topic deserves a deep dive, but we're going to scratch the surface today. This is sales and marketing alignment. Transcribed I have six tips for you that will help you get better aligned with sales and marketing. But first, I want to envision something. Have you ever been in a boardroom, maybe now it's a Zoom meeting where there's hard questions being asked about revenue? The marketing leader points at sales and says, we generate a ton of leads and they never do anything with them. Or the sales leader points at marketing and says, well they don't generate enough leads or all their leads are junk. Think about it. It's a pretty common scenario, so if you've ever seen it, congratulations, you're not alone. The thing is, that might serve somebody in the moment who doesn't want to be embarrassed in a meeting, but it doesn't serve the goals and objectives of the business itself. The business needs to generate money, and sales and marketing are no longer siblings who can afford to fight. The B2B buying journey is becoming increasingly digital. Buyers spend time researching before they engage with a salesperson. And generally they engage with a salesperson when they already have an idea of what they want, and they're ready to make a final decision. When someone engages with you as the salesperson, they're usually down to you and a couple others, and they're ready to compare and contrast. Learn a couple extra insights that will help them make that final decision. And in addition to doing a heavy amount of research beforehand, that contact also is leading a buying team of like five to ten people. They meet with you, they also meet without you. You might have one main contact, but there's a bunch of other folks who have an influence on the decision. I'm not telling any, you anything you don't know. Did you know that not only does your main contact continue to do research while they're engaged with you in that buying process, But the other members of their team also conduct independent research on their own and they tend to bring some piece of research with them to make them look smart in that meeting that they have without you. So what this means to you is that no longer is marketing a business unit that generates leads exclusively. Marketing, when done right. Best is your best sales enablement tool. Marketing needs to generate leads for you, of course, and they also need to provide content that will speak to the questions and concerns in the mind of your contact and everyone on that buying team at every different stage throughout your sales process. And the only way that marketing is going to have the intel on what buyers are thinking and what they're concerned about is if they get that feedback from sales. To win today and in the future, you have to have sales and marketing alignment. But then it's easier said than done. These are closely aligned siblings. They both work in revenue. It's really easy when things get rough for them to deflect and point the finger at each other. But no more of that. We're going to get sales and marketing aligned. I've got six things that will help you and you can start today. One. Sales leaders and marketing leaders need to get together with the purpose of working better together. If you're not meeting regularly sales and marketing leaders, you need to start and now is a great time to do so. We're beginning the second half of the year. If you are meeting, you probably need to meet more regularly. Monthly is ideal. And this isn't just a fluffy how are you meeting. This is for the purpose of winning more deals together. Start with feedback on what has been working year to date. If you come to a meeting and point fingers at each other, that's not a good way to get aligned. Look at what has been working and then work on doing more of that. It's a good place to start. Your meeting starts on a high note. Your action item, conduct monthly feedback sessions between sales and marketing. Focusing on what has been working. Number two, marketing needs to understand the objections during the sales process. The only way they're going to do that is if they hear from sales. If you're listening and you're in marketing, come to this meeting with a list of questions about objections. Where are the deals falling out of the funnel? What are their concerns? What is causing people to not want to pull the trigger? And if you're in sales, look back at your deals that you didn't win this year or the ones that are stalled and come to that meeting with a list of common objections. Your action item, focus on objections. That's going to help improve your sales. your marketing for when folks are doing their independent research. Number three, remember the content that has been working? Not only do you need to figure out why it worked well and do more of that, but you can repurpose what you've already produced. Did you have a LinkedIn post that did really well? Do a deeper dive, write a blog about it. Was there a blog that did really well? Cut it up and do a carousel post on LinkedIn. If there's a series of blogs that have a cohesive similar topic, Bundle them together. Now you've got an ebook. There are a lot of things that you can do that are not as labor intensive as producing the content in the first place so that you can get a little bit more out of what's been working. Your action item is to come to that meeting with your creative brain and work on ideas to repurpose the content that has performed well. Number four, you need to focus on nurturing mid funnel deals. Remember that marketing can be your best sales enablement tool. So think about those big deals that are in your pipeline. You've probably got a whale or two. Is there anything that you can do that might look like it's a company marketing post, but it's super focused on that prospect? Get really deep on those big whales and think about what their concerns are and what you can do that speaks just directly to them. So you could put out a post on LinkedIn, a video, and then you forward it to them and you're like, Hey, here's our new video. And then surprise, surprise, the prospect says, Oh my gosh, those are our exact problems. How did you know? Think about what can close in third quarter. And here's when you can start gaining a friend. In marketing, ask for their help. People love to help. Marketing also wants to show their value. Marketing, in general, CMOs are making the case that marketing is no longer a cost center. Marketing can be attributed to revenue. We'll get to that later. Long story short, they want to help you. So imagine this, you come to that meeting with an ask, here are some huge prospects we're working on. Here are some deals that can close in third quarter. What can you do? How can you help us? What can we do to push them over the edge? Marketing will come up with ideas. So that's your action item. Focus on mid funnel deals that can close in third quarter and what nurturing do they need from both sales and marketing In order to close. Number five, this should not come as a surprise, top of funnel. What do we need to do now in order to get new people in the pipeline that can close in fourth quarter? These are your standard demand gen tactics, developing new lead magnets, new webinar series, getting new contacts into the database, nurturing the contacts that are already there to turn them into hand raisers, and B2B buyers are really skittish right now. So whatever worked six months ago, you have to ask yourself, does it even work now? Look at your lead magnets. See which ones are still working and which ones aren't. Do those need to be ditched altogether? Or could they be updated with some new intel to get them generating leads again? If you're in sales, come to the meeting with some intel on what people are talking about now. This is where your value as the feet on the street comes in handy. What is top of mind now? And, was it different than it was in December? In marketing, this is where you guys get to have some fun. Marketing changes quickly now and you get to do some new stuff. So, come to the meeting with some new cool things, some new trending things, a lot of marketing is trying new stuff and seeing if it works. So, what can we do that's exciting? My tagline is B2B doesn't have to be boring, so let's do some cool stuff together. Why let B2C have all the fun? Your action item here. Come up with a couple of new things that you can try that are geared toward attracting and nurturing top of funnel contacts. And before I get to the sixth tip, I want you to picture this. Have you ever been in a situation where you helped somebody do something and they're getting congratulations? They're taking a victory lap. I spent years as a solutions engineer, so I lived this a lot. Working on custom pricing, doing the demo, negotiating the contract, and then the salesperson wins the deal, and you're left scratching your head knowing that you played a huge part in that. Think about the Oscars. When someone wins an Oscar, they take a list out, and it's a long list of people that they want to thank. So if you win something at work, you have to have your list of people to thank. So the last tip, number six, and it's the most important, is you need to celebrate wins together. And I feel like I'm talking exclusively to sales folks here. If you win a deal in 2024, I guarantee you that your new customer looked at at least one piece of content that marketing created. Even if it was a referral from a current partner or client or someone in your personal network, they at least looked at the website before they executed the DocuSign. And if they looked at the website, and that's all they did, but the website looked good, That's, that's something. I've worked for a company where you didn't want the prospect to look at the website because it was terrible. The website is part of the know, like, and trust. So let's pretend that the prospect did nothing but look at the website. If it was still good enough to continue the conversation, marketing is definitely in this deal with you. So you gotta give marketing their attaboy. And that's how you start working together. So quick rehab before I let you go. Marketing and sales alignment are more important now than ever because the B2B buying journey is more digital than ever. These teams need to work together to achieve business success. And how are you going to do that? 1. Start meeting regularly and focus on what has been working. 2. Gain an understanding and discuss objections during the sales process. 3. Repurpose content that has been working. Four, focus on what you can do together to nurture mid funnel deals. Five, focus on what you can do to attract and nurture top of funnel deals. And six, give each other shout outs. There's enough attaboys for everybody. I hope you liked the mini pod, and I hope you consider sharing this with anybody who might need it. If you need a deeper discussion on this, If you're having any trouble with sales and or marketing, I have been there and I'm a listening ear even if I can't help you. I'm Summer Paletti. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can also find me at theriseofus. com. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I hope the kids had a good day at school.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Summer Poletti

Host