Sales And Marketing Alignment

Contrary to popular belief, having a GTM team offsite will not fix your go-to-market problem. Neither will a pipeline meeting on Wednesdays. Neither will a CMO-CRO bi-weekly coffee meeting. Neither will firing your CMO and trying to hire a unicorn marketing leader. It’s a Band-Aid. It might make it easier for people to work together. It might patch up the problem for a while that will come back to you in 3 months when you’re missing your pipeline for Q4. It’s a Band-Aid. The real solution? Redesign your GTM (aka the Factory that produces your revenue) - Starting with Financial Planning, Modeling, and Budgeting, and then working across the rest of GTM team to Sales, Marketing, Sales Dev, Ops, Post-Sale, etc. 1. Build a Unified View of GTM with Financial Data & GTM Data that measures both performance (effectiveness) and unit economics (efficiency) 2. Align the entire GTM leadership team on a core KPI stack that has *nothing* to do with attribution by department or channel 3. Categorize and evaluate GTM investment portfolio allocation by customer lifecycle stage, NOT DEPARTMENT. 4. Methodically break down compound metrics to isolate the biggest issues / risks / opportunities by customer lifecycle stage 5. Build and align on cross-functional initiatives to solve the biggest issues in your Revenue Factory 6. Monitor and evaluate impact against the core KPI stack that has nothing to do with attribution by department or channel. #finance #gtm #b2b #sales #marketing p.s. Just to drive home the message - you should be able to *clearly* understand how your GTM is performing and isolate the biggest issues/opportunities without ever discussing or using attribution by channel or department 🙂

6 EMAIL MARKETING PROBLEMS (and how to fix them) LOW OPEN RATES This can stem from uninteresting subject lines, poor deliverability, or not using preview text. Craft subject lines that spark curiosity and use personalization. Ensure strong sender reputation, avoid spam words, and test sending times. Use preview text to complement and summarize. Make subscribers eager to open your email, not just feel obligated. HIGH UNSUBSCRIBE RATES High unsubscribe rates may signal irrelevant content or frequency issues. Get feedback via surveys or emails. Segment list for tailored content and frequency. Improve content with value and variety. Deliver what subscribers want to keep them engaged. LOW CTR Low click-through rates often result from dull call-to-actions (CTAs) and irrelevant content. Use action-oriented, appealing, and well-placed CTAs. Align content with audience interests; use visuals. A/B test CTA styles, placements, and wording. When you have CTAs that stand out and relevant content, it'll help improve your email engagement. EMAIL GOING TO SPAM Emails landing in spam folders are often due to not following email deliverability best practices. Use double opt-in if necessary. Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Regularly clean your email list. Monitor reputation with Google Postmaster. Follow these easy best practices to improve email deliverability. SLOW EMAIL LIST GROWTH This can stem from poor sign-up strategies, low-value offers, and low traffic. Offer compelling lead magnets like eBooks or discounts. Write persuasive copy and simplify the sign-up. Promote sign-ups via social media and website. A/B test form designs, placements, and copy. A streamlined and seamless sign-up process will help boost your list growth. HIGH BOUNCE RATES High bounce rates typically indicate issues with email addresses or list hygiene. Clean list regularly; verify addresses before sending. Monitor bounce reports; address hard and soft bounces. Use double opt-in; keep subscription info updated. A healthy, well-maintained list minimizes bounce rates.

I am tired of hearing about sales and marketing alignment. It's an outdated narrative. Here's why: Consider this: Buyers are typically 57% to 80% of the way through their buying process (depending on which study you consult) before they even raise their hands to engage with sales. This statistic alone underscores a critical reality: The Silent Killer in Sales: Overestimating Salesperson Influence Many executive teams believe their sales heroes can close any deal, but here's the reality: Salespeople are closers, not magicians. 🪄 The concept of "alignment" implies separate entities that need to be brought together. In today's complex buying environment, this siloed approach is obsolete. Modern businesses require a seamlessly integrated revenue generation system where sales and marketing function as one cohesive unit. Strong marketing, clear value propositions, and a frictionless buying journey are crucial for success. Think of it like football - Sales is your star running back, but they need a solid offensive line (Marketing) to create opportunities long before the final play. Here's the shift we need: From siloed functions to a collaborative team environment: • Break down walls between Sales & Marketing • Work together on buyer personas, messaging, and content throughout the entire buying journey • Invest in both sides: Equip teams with necessary tools and shared metrics From "closing the deal" to "creating a winning customer experience": 👉🏽 Optimize the entire customer journey: Every touchpoint matters, especially early-stage interactions ️ 👉🏽 Focus on providing value from initial marketing outreach through to ongoing support The benefits of this integrated approach: 👉🏽 Shorter sales cycles: Well-nurtured leads convert faster 👉🏽Higher customer lifetime value: A seamless experience fosters loyalty 👉🏽 Boosted employee morale: When everyone's on the same team, magic happens Let's move beyond "alignment" and embrace true integration. Sales and Marketing are different positions on the same field, working in unison to drive revenue and achieve championship-level results in today's buyer-driven landscape. #sales #b2b #marketing #culture #customerexperience #leadership

Strong KPIs do not always translate into stronger deals. Many teams improve engagement, reduce acquisition costs, and optimize campaign performance, yet prospects still hesitate when it matters most. The issue is often not the quality of individual touchpoints. It is the lack of consistency between them. Buyers do not experience marketing through separate channels or dashboards. They experience one connected journey. When messaging, positioning, or expectations shift between ads, landing pages, and sales conversations, trust begins to weaken, even when each individual asset performs well on its own. This is one of the hidden challenges in modern marketing. Teams optimize isolated metrics while the overall buyer experience becomes fragmented. Over time, that disconnect limits growth and weakens conversion momentum. This week’s newsletter explores why cohesive buyer experiences matter more than isolated performance metrics and how teams can align messaging across the entire journey. For organizations seeing strong numbers but inconsistent deal movement, it is worth a read.

Sales and marketing alignment isn’t a workshop topic—it’s a revenue system. A methodology that often requires culture change to stick. As teams plan for 2026, the gap between strategy and operational effectiveness across and between these two functions still blocks predictable pipeline in focused, complex markets. In other words, "jazz hands" at SKO often fails to translate into what needs to happen on Tuesday. Alignment means nothing without consistent, successful execution. As I see it across the countless client and community conversations we've had this year, four pressure points are creating most of the barriers to true alignment and impact: 1️⃣ Attribution If sales and marketing don’t share a single influence model, both sides optimize locally and the complex motions you need regress to random tactics that fail to achieve your goals. Pick a model, publish the rules, and hold everyone to it. Use it to inform planning—not just to settle debates after the fact. 2️⃣ Goal alignment Pipeline math must connect cleanly: ICP coverage → stage-weighted opportunities → win rate → revenue. If these ladders don’t reconcile across teams, you’ll miss targets even with strong activity. 3️⃣ Incentive alignment Comp drives behavior. When qualified lead and opportunity goals conflict with sales quotas you get sandbagging, over-qualification or turf wars. Consider tying marketing variable comp to sourced and influenced pipeline that closes, and tie sales to opportunity quality and velocity. Or, if you're brave, eliminate sourced/influenced metrics altogether and align incentives on metrics you can actually buy a beer with. 4️⃣ Board/investor expectations Assumptions, when left unchecked, often harden into mandates. If you don't show your board an operational plan for getting sales and marketing to work together, they'll think they have to define it for you. And you definitely won't like that. Translate board-level growth narratives into an operating model both teams can run: agreed ICP, motion mix (inbound, outbound, partner, PLG), capacity plans, and an SLA for handoffs and follow-ups. As you build towards true, sustainable sales and marketing alignment in 2026, here's a checklist of priorities to get in place sooner than later. 💡 One shared attribution model with monthly governance 💡 A joint, integrated pipeline playbook: coverage, conversion, velocity and capacity by segment 💡 Unified incentives with a common “closed-won” denominator 💡 A "Revenue Council" cadence: sales, marketing, finance, ops—meeting regularly with a single dashboard 💡 A proactive alignment board narrative with milestones and dashboards for regular updates We're all tired of talking about sales and marketing alignment. But for many organizations it has become THE blocker to predictable, efficient and sustainable pipeline and revenue achievement.

1st time when we launched ABM at a $35M company, we thought we had it all figured out. we didn't. here's what actually happened: we picked 100 "dream accounts." we built personalized ads. we sent direct mail. we tracked engagement. 6 months later? → 3 meetings booked → 0 closed deals → $50K+ spent the board asked: "what went wrong?" the honest answer? we fell in love with the tactic, not the strategy. here's what we missed: 1. we picked accounts we wanted, not accounts that wanted us. no intent signals. no timing data. just logos we thought would look good on our website. 2. we personalized everything except the message. custom ads with their logo. personalized landing pages. but the value prop? generic. they didn't care. 3. sales wasn't bought in. marketing ran the show. sales saw it as "marketing's project." when leads came in, follow-up was slow. alignment was broken from day one. 4. we measured activity, not outcomes. engagement scores looked great. but engagement doesn't pay the bills. pipeline does. the fix? we rebuilt ABM from scratch: → started with sales and CS input on account selection → used intent and signal data to find accounts already in-market → aligned on a shared revenue segment, not just MQLs → measured ICP-fit pipeline and closed revenue, nothing else that's when ABM started working. my lesson: ABM isn't broken. GTM isn't broken. Marketing or sales isn't broken. but the way most teams run it? absolutely is. your take? love, sangram

Sales and marketing both think they're doing their job right. And they are. That's exactly why nothing's working. The problem isn't effort or skill. It's that they're operating from two completely different understandings of the buyer's journey. Marketing builds campaigns, thinking buyers need awareness. Sales gets on calls and realizes they're already comparing solutions. That gap? That's where deals die. Here's how you close it: 1. Map the buyer journey together with both teams and break down ⤷ What actually triggers buyers to search?  ⤷ What confuses them most?  ⤷ What objections keep showing up?  ⤷ When both teams agree on this, everything else starts working. 2. Make marketing listen to sales calls This closes 50% of the gap instantly. Marketing finally hears the real objections, the tone, and the questions, and it makes their messaging sharp. 3. Let sales approve messaging before it goes live. Sales knows which phrases confuse people and which make them lean in. Use that. We have worked with 50+ B2B companies where aligning the sales and marketing efforts from the buyer journey turned their pipeline around in weeks. Deals closed faster. Conversations became productive. The blame game stopped. PS: Drop a 👍 if you've ever been caught in the middle of a sales vs marketing argument. #SalesAndMarketingAlignment #SMarketing #RevenueOperations #B2BMarketing #BuyerJourney

I’ve managed countless BDRs to successfully source hundreds of millions of dollars of pipeline and revenue. Here are the 5 reasons BDR teams that report to marketing deliver better revenue outcomes. 1. When marketing is accountable only to ‘leads’ or MQLs, they have less skin in the game on the quality front. Everybody in marketing should be accountable to (and should deeply understand) pipeline (both quantity and quality) and having BDRs report directly to marketing ensures deeper visibility and accountability into the funnel before sales resources are invested. 2. BDRs are often the front line brand ambassadors of the organization, making that first impression and framing early discussions with prospects. Ensuring those critical touch points are on brand and aligned to the overarching story is best achieved by marketing. Delivering that strong brand message from the outset increases the likelihood of revenue wins. 3. There is always a risk that BDRs will be reduced to glorified schedulers and order takers for sales (no shade intended - this is a common and understandable default practice), which is a wasted opportunity. By breaking the reporting line, it is easier to prevent this from happening and establish enforceable ground rules. 4. If Sales and Marketing aren’t aligned, the GTM engine is at risk. By having BDRs report to marketing, you create a forcing function for that alignment by ensuring the two teams are talking about (and agreeing on) things like ICP, pipeline readiness, pipeline conversion and deal velocity. 5. Especially in an enterprise sales cycle, the nuance between an inbound and outbound sales motion is complicated and connected (eg - BDRs might be warming up an account with a strong outbound motion, growing brand awareness and interest, only to have the prospect inbound 6 weeks later). When BDRs sit in marketing, it is much easier to shine a light on that nuance and lean into the opportunities more proactively. Bottom line - all organizations should open their minds to the possibility of having BDRs sit on the marketing team. While it’s much less common, it can present meaningful opportunity. Where do BDRs sit within your company and what’s worked for you?

Dear Marketing - You can't give everyone the VIP treatment. It doesn't matter how "scalable" or "AI-first" your strategy has become. It's a trap many marketers fall into (or dive into depending on your mood), and it greatly affects ABM strategy. "Let's give everyone a highly-personalized marketing HUG." It's so important to structure all marketing efforts (ABM mainly) on the right accounts. Priorization is everything. I'll type it again... prioritization is everything! HockeyStack has been one of my main resources recently to up-level my understanding of how to THINK about prioritization in a meaningful way. Because it may seem easy, but it is damn hard. Spewing “let’s focus on the best-fit accounts” is one thing, but actually aligning sales and marketing on which accounts matter, why they matter, and how to engage them is where things get damn messy. The best teams I've come across have built a scoring framework to help build a foundation around the gut feel. They assign scores based on: Fit – How well does the account match your ICP? Intent – Are they actively researching solutions like yours? Engagement – Are they interacting with your content, attending events, or engaging with sales? "Kyle, c'mon. We were talking about this in 2018." "Well, fictional marketing leader reading this post. We are still lost and haven't advanced from spray and pray. I'm sorry." This is OLD NEWS but it still amazes me how many marketers do not take this approach to building clear account tiers: High-score accounts get custom content, executive involvement, and deep sales engagement. Mid-score accounts get automated nurtures and light-touch outreach. Low-score accounts? They wait until they show stronger intent. Scoring models and frameworks are important, but the alignment between GTM leadership is even more important. If sales is chasing one set of accounts while marketing invests in anything, y'all are screwed. And even MORE importantly, the best teams constantly adjust because if you do it correctly, the tiers will change based on actions. ABM isn’t about reaching more accounts. It’s about reaching the right ones at the right time.

“Marketing used to be seen as order takers,” explained the CMO from a $190m services firm, “but after several years, we’re now seen as business drivers.” Several years! And that’s your internal audience. Imagine how long it takes to change external perceptions. Like it or not, marketing leaders must devote time to marketing their marketing. Not once at an “all hands” town hall. Not twice via follow-up emails. Relentlessly. Fearlessly. Consistently. Across all possible channels. Personally. And via surrogates. Why is this so important? Marketing often gets a bad rap in the C-suite which trickles down to disrespect across the org. Disrespect that manifests as unsolicited advice on all aspects of marketing. Advice that can derail your well-conceived plan especially if it is centered on tactics.  Marketing is not a snowball fight. You can’t just gather your ammunition, and hurl it at your target one toss at a time. Well, you can try. But that approach inevitably fails to leave a lasting impression. Instead, think of marketing as the ball of snow rolling down a mountain, gathering girth and speed (i.e. force = mass x acceleration). Marketing is the cumulative impact of all your activities over time – starting with your internal audience. Here are several sure-fire ways of marketing your marketing internally: 🐧 Involve employees in your repositioning work. 🐧 Field and share quarterly employee surveys 🐧 Own and indoctrinate BDRs 🐧 Help employees build their personal brands 🐧 Orchestrate innovation days 🐧 Create an entertaining “this week in marketing” update Involve employees: If you expect employees to believe in the brand, make them part of the process from Day 1. Keep them updated throughout the process. Before launching publicly, create a brand certification program (easily done now with GenAI) that all employees must pass. Quarterly surveys: Don’t leave this to HR. Surveying is too important. Measure eNPS. Ask if they are proud to work for your company. Include at least 2 open-ended questions. [I’m happy to share a sample survey] Indoctrinate BDRs: Half the CMOs in CMO Huddles “own” BDRs. Ensuring that Marketing delivers qualified opportunities to Sales, BDRs also become marketing evangelists once they move up and around the org. Enable personal branding: Employees are “free” brand ambassadors and can be awesome advocates if properly trained. By teaching employees how to build their personal brands, you’re helping their careers and your company. Orchestrate innovation days: Ask your employees to work together in small teams to develop innovative solutions to your biggest challenges in one day. Have a panel of judges. Offer prizes. Implement winning ideas. Count the smiles. Update weekly: A pithy yet entertaining weekly update will educate employees on how Marketing is helping to drive the business. After a few weeks, employees will look forward to your reports.    What’s your approach to marketing the marketing?