Marketers, Why You Need To Talk To Sales

In this episode of “How to Sell More,” host Mark Drager is joined by Purna Virji, past winner of the LinkedIn Ads Cross-Functional Partner of the Year award, and author of "High Impact Content Marketing." She knows how to make sales and marketing play nice together, working with teams of all sizes across the globe.

Purna walks us through the benefits of using insights from sales to inform marketing strategies, and creating a collaborative environment where both departments work towards common business goals.

• Importance of Sales and Marketing Alignment: Aligning sales and marketing teams enhances overall business performance.
• Effective communication and understanding customer needs: Regular interaction and open communication channels between sales and marketing teams are crucial.
• Strategic decision-making based on sales insights: Sales insights should be a primary driver in marketing decision-making processes.

“If you get the right feedback from the right people, the content will be 10x more successful.”  -- Purna Virji

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Links to This Episode

• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Audible

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Key Takeaways

• Working together for a common goal - Mutual understanding and collaboration between sales and marketing are vital for increasing sales.
• Appreciating what each team brings to the table - The alignment between teams helps utilize each team's insights for strategic planning and decision-making.
• Putting the customer first - Understanding the customer feedback and insights from sales can significantly inform marketing strategies.

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

• What makes the most money: Before doing any customer research, Purna researches what drives the most value for a business and how their current sales techniques can help focus any future messaging.
• Purna’s hardest lesson: Every successful leader has a painfully embarrassing lesson that they swear they’ll never repeat. Purna shares hers.
• The needs-analysis tour: Purna’s #1 strategy for marketers who want to help companies sell more: spend 10 hours over a few weeks interviewing different sales stakeholders.

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Follow Purna Virji on Social

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnavirji/

Purna's Book (High-Impact Content Marketing): https://a.co/d/arHYwcF

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More About Today's Guest, Purna Virji

Author, High-Impact Content Marketing | Principal Consultant, LinkedIn | Ex-Microsoft | International Keynote Speaker | Coach and Trainer

I'm a best-selling author, content strategist and marketer who has been named by Adweek on their Young Influentials List, was crowned the Search Personality of the Year by the US Search Awards and was named by PPC Hero as the #1 Most Influential Expert in the world. 

Prior to joining LinkedIn where I'm currently the Principal Content Solutions Consultant and Global Program Lead of ‘[in]novate with LinkedIn’, I led global learning and thought leadership programs for Microsoft. 

Having worked at a social media network, a search engine advertising platform, agency-side and in-house, at global corporations and start-ups and in television as a talk show producer, I've gained a unique, holistic perspective on content marketing only a rare few have. Over the past two decades, I've marketed content as a creator, storyteller, program manager, SEO, publisher, instructional designer and brand evangelist. 

I'm an award-winning former journalist who is now a columnist and top-rated international keynote speaker. I've been featured in The Drum, TNW, Marketing Land and Adweek. Most of all, I find joy in lifting others and am an active mentor supporting women in technology. In my spare time, I'm an avid traveler, aspiring top chef and enthusiastic tennis player.

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A Transcription of The Talk

Mark Drager: So, Purna Virji, I am really excited to have you on because you gave an amazing presentation at an event we helped sponsor a few weeks ago, the Rand Fishkin event, Spark Together. What struck me with your presentation is how you really helped bridge the gap between the alignment of stakeholders, whether it's people in the C-suite, executives, a sales team, or a marketing team. In my career, I realized that actually, something that is one of my superpowers is getting everyone on the same page, and just forcing, like, being brutally honest and forcing people to get on the same page. But it's not something that I really have figured out how to teach. It's not something I've figured out how to systematize. It's not something that I figured out how to be able to get other people in my company to do the way that I do. And you laid out the seven steps, you laid out this amazing framework. And I would just love it if you could drop your knowledge for me and our audience. So that way, we can all get our sales or marketing teams and our leaders all on the same damn page.

Purna Virji: For sure, Mark, I'll be delighted because I'm super passionate about this topic. And—

Mark Drager: By the way, what a weird thing to be passionate about.

Purna Virji: I know, sales and marketing alignment, because I—you hear this thrown around as buzzwords or, you know, in my job, I get to work with a whole bunch of different advertisers and marketers from all shapes and sizes of companies all across the world. And so often we'll hear like, you know, "How often do you talk to sales, the sales?" "Why would we talk to sales?" I'm like, "Are you kidding me? What is our function at the end of the day, as marketers? Yes, we're here to build a brand and do so much. But at the end of the day, there's a clear reason why we're here. And we're here to help drive more sales, right? Without any kind of revenue coming in, why need a marketing team?" And so very, very early on, and I learned this from my instructional design days, where I was working at Microsoft, for a while a big portion was teaching sales, you know, create learning programs for sales to sell better. And in doing that, and understanding the day-to-day role of sales, I benefited because I became 10x better and more effective as a marketer. And so now if I think about my process, every marketer hears this speak, talk, you know, "Talk to your customers, learn what they want," which is true, and I'm not denying that.

Mark Drager: But that never happens, though.

Purna Virji: So rarely happens.

Mark Drager: So rarely. I don't think marketing teams spend enough time with customers or with sales. Like, it just doesn't happen.

Purna Virji: I agree, Mark and that's something that they need to do. And so maybe I will share why it's so beneficial. So, step one, marketers need to get a bigger seat at the table, right? We so often will come in, and we'll have this big victory. And then we'll go in and be like, "Look at this reach, like, and just impressions." And then people just poo-poo it and be like, "Well, what did you do for money?" And then they can't, it's so hard to explain back. And they're like, "But we had all of this reach and we had thousands of people come to this event, and then but that's not what people care about, like what did you do for our business?" And so for me, the framework, how I go about it is one, even deciding what strategies I should prioritize. It should come from your customers and from sales. So before I even start doing the research on your customer, I'm like, "Let's research what makes us money." Because it always starts with what's the highest value. You could have any business with multiple offerings. And you will have customers interested in multiple offerings, but there's only a finite amount of time in a day, right? So how do I prioritize, and figure out what drives the most value for our business? And it could be offering B could be this big, sexy thing that everyone's talking about. But offering A could be really the big bread and butter. So start by talking to the sales teams to be like, "What's top for you to pitch in the next three to six months? You know, what have you found brings the most value over time? What are the common objections or pushback?

 that you're getting from customers? And questions like 'What do you always say that helps you close the sale?' could all be so insightful for me as a marketer to know in the first place, and now I know where to focus." Then I'll go in and dive more deeply into the customer, and what they want. What are their thoughts? So it starts with prioritizing which strategy I should go after.

Mark Drager: If I can just jump in real quick. So, do you find that most sales teams want to be handed the way to think, the materials, the product, the pitch? Do they really want to be handed it? Or are they often actually figuring out and reverse engineering? I'm curious because it seems to me that most organizations are top-down, leadership down to sales, go ahead and find the market and sell it. Whereas it sounds like what you're saying is like, let's ask sales what they're going to push, what the entry-level product is, or what the loss leader should be, or what like, what is the hook that starts the conversation off to generate the lead, work the lead, close the lead? And then everyone else should change to service sales. This is not how most organizations work, though, is it? Or am I just not understanding the way I took it?

Purna Virji: No, it's not going to be that because in most organizations, what you'll see is there will be higher-level company priorities and so on. But there are just different ways of picking it. Sales, as you know all too well, and your listeners do, is that ultimately their pay is based on if they sell. Most salespeople tend to be on some kind of commission-based structure. And so it really affects their take-home money, so they're much more on the ball in terms of what's going to make money, what they are prioritizing to pitch because then they'll want to prioritize it based on what makes them money. They have these clear goals to hit. Marketing, instead of just going out there and having an impact, can become more effective if we understand sales because they talk to customers all day long. As you said, most marketers don't spend enough time talking to the customer. So if we could find out that maybe a big priority is to push this AI solution, but customers still need a lot of education, and their level of awareness is so different, that even what they're getting from marketing to pitch is just insufficient. Every organization that I've talked to, you see some salesperson trying to reinvent or rejigger some of the stuff that they've gotten from marketing. And like, why are we wasting the organization's time and having that double work? Should we not create something that will be more easily used? And marketing can win if more salespeople use it. So I always start by talking to the salespeople to tell me more about the customer. And about their journey, what do you find that people are pushing back on, because so often, from my research, I've found that most objections from customers boil down to like four root causes, right? It's either they don't think you're a priority, they don't see the value, they don't have the right influence, and then the perception of you might be different.

Mark Drager: You skipped over budget.

Purna Virji: That would fall under value, right? About that, they see the right values. Maybe I might think that yeah, you're really smart, your perception is good, but maybe I just don't have the budget, I don't think it's valuable enough to take my budget and put it towards you. So that's where it would come in. Of course, the budget is a big one. But sometimes people have more money, they just don't see you as valuable enough to take that money and put it towards their right. So that can also be the case. And sometimes people just don't have the budget. In that case. If you know—

Mark Drager: The other thing on the budget, which I always find interesting, is I have to remind my team often, "Hey, I know that we are passionate about this, like I know that you are passionate about sales and marketing. But most of the people that we're working with, we are like 26 on the list of their quarterly priorities." And even though we want to push to make this the best, or the highest, the fastest, or get this locked in, or move forward with it, it's just one of the many things our prospects or our customers have to worry about. And then if it requires their internal stakeholders, it's even lower on the priority list often, and so it's just recognizing that what's important to us may not be important to everyone else, right?

Purna Virji: 100%. And those things as marketers, we can either learn it the hard way, which is by putting out a bunch of content and then learning, or we can learn it the easy way, which is by talking to sales. Because they spend all day talking to customers. Go in and see, you know, every time you try to pitch something. And let's say we have a priority that's been passed down from leadership to go in and pitch this. What are the objections that are coming up? What's the pushback? Like how are you working around them? And if we know that, we could stack the odds in our favor. We can proactively address some of those objections in the content that be you worried about XYZ, and you know, there's feel, felt, found, which is one of my favorite sales tools, which says like, "Oh, you know, I don't believe here that you feel this way. In fact, many of our other prospects have felt that way too, but in reality, what the research has found..." and then you can throw in a question like, "Can I set up some time to learn more?" So how do we put feel, felt, found, which is essentially a sales tool, but can we put that in the context so it proactively will help grease the wheels? For sellers, they can have an easier job, and you will only find that out by doing what I call a needs analysis, which again comes from the mode of instructional design.

Mark Drager: Can you walk us through that, like, what does this look like? So—

Purna Virji: It's just simple conversations. It's a great way to build relationships and sponsorship for yourself and your work within a company. But I would try to hit up three levels of sales folks and maybe cross-functional partners. So one is the individual contributors, aka the ICs, the ones who are really on the phone and doing all the work, the daily doers. Then hit up frontline managers just to say like, "What are you seeing as a theme magically across your pods, your vertical?" And then I'd go into senior sales leadership, like "What are you hearing from your vantage point, next five-year goals, etc, what you're hearing?" And I'll see the common elements, sometimes you'll see discrepancies even within sales, and then marketing can have this bigger seat at the table. Because what I'll do is I'll go and do, and I'll ask everyone a similar set of questions based on their role, and I'll get common elements from it. "What I'm hearing from the ICs is that XY and Z are super important. Sales Managers also aligned but then sales leadership is like, oh, maybe they'll hear something slightly different, or ideally, it'll be similar." And then I can go back and vet to the senior sales stakeholders and be like, "This is what I'm hearing across the board, like, do you agree, and based on some things that I've heard these common themes, let's make something up. Okay. So let's say I've talked to all of these reps, and like Account-Based Marketing, ABM, is really, really big. And so I could add value by creating a little, you know, poor some training program for better content on for ABM, like, what do you feel and then I'll get sales leader buy-in? And then if I get sales leaders by and then they're pushing down on their teams to be like, are you not using what Purna has created? She's created it for us. And so now automatically, I get more support for the programs that I build. B, I know that sales will want to use it because it's built for them.

Mark Drager: It comes out of the sales budget, as opposed to the marketing budget, right?

Purna Virji: Sometimes, I have had sales thrown in their budget. I'll tell you, I've literally had cases where I had no budget for design or something. And sales were like, "You know what, I really believe in what you're creating, we have some extra budget, we'll do this or we'll fly you somewhere to deliver this content," which is awesome. So, that's the kind of superpower that marketers can give ourselves by getting more teams vested in what we're doing. And we make sure when the right law—

Mark Drager: Okay. I'm super curious now. Share with us, because you've done this a lot. Share with us the secrets here, what's your favorite question when you're doing these interviews?

Purna Virji: Mainly, it's more so asking them that. What are your top one two, or three things that you're trying to pitch? And then I'll ask more about the audience. And then I think if I can only ask one thing, I'd be like, "What do the customers keep asking about? Or why do they want to buy?" And if I know some of the motivations, if I know the sort of category entry points, quote-unquote, like, where do they buy, with whom, what tends to spark the desire, then I can create content that's tucked into that. So then I'll have a sort of framework of where I'm going. And then the other thing that I try to do is once I create content, so often as marketers or whomever, as a content creator, you're very close to it, I'll always try to have a salesperson just review that content a little bit on one of the desired outcomes that I'm trying to drive. And it's great for them, because it's career development, too. Sometimes it's a passion project that they can do outside. And their feedback is invaluable. Like, there are so many times when I've painted something that I thought was absolutely perfect. And then sales looked at it and said, "You know what if you can rephrase it in this way. Or here's a way that customers always ask about it. So can you dial up this point, and you dial down this point?" And if you listen, and if you get the right feedback from the right people the content will just be 10x more successful than if I didn't get that point of view.

Mark Drager: I love how you're downplaying, like, I think you've done this so much. You're like, "Yeah, it's definitely, I just ask them questions, and we dig into stuff." But for those who don't do what you do every day, or what I do every day, I know how mind-blowing this is because I do sit across from stakeholders. And I ask them these types of questions. And they go like, "Oh, man, I've never thought of it before." One of my favorites is, "Listen, let's just get straight to it. What is the challenge we're solving for? Or what is the opportunity we want to take advantage of?" Like, if you don't give me a challenge that I'm trying to fix, or an opportunity we're trying to pursue, I can't help you. And I just kind of force it into that thinking, because at the end of the day, isn't that what we're trying to do here? Like, we're not going to put time, resources, and budgets if we're not fixing a problem or actively and aggressively pursuing an opportunity, right? And so, man, I love where we're going with this. Okay, so we've now been able to connect with some of the different leaders at three different levels. We've had these conversations. I love your question in terms of what is it that customers are constantly saying. And you're bringing up questions or asking because frankly, that just identifies the need right there. What do we do next?

Purna Virji: The next thing is you've got to try to figure out based on number one, what you're trying to solve is, what's my desired outcome? And how do I tie my marketing goals back to business goals? And that's always sometimes the case where marketers can struggle or where we may not get enough seats at the table. Right? There's a lovely quote from Rory Sutherland. That always cracks me up where he's like, "Can I go back to the and I'm gonna completely bungle it up." But in the case is like, you know, trying to go and explain to the CFO the value of some of these, like random metrics is like going to the surgeon at St. Mary's Hospital and explaining to them the healing power of crystals, right? Because so often we're like, "We hosted this event, and we had all of these thousands of people come and they engaged and our NPS was super high." And then sales was like, "Great, where's the money? Like, what?" And so the whole thing is, like, I try to make sure that everyone is on the same page about why I'm trying to create what. So I'll get very crisp on what are the business outcomes? What are the business goals that I'm trying to influence? Then what can I as marketing, like? What's the behavior change in the audience? So let me give you a super quick example. If I work for a car company, and they're coming up with a brand new car, I would know that car sales would be an ideal goal for the company, of course. Now, what can I as a marketer influence? Obviously, I'm not gonna do like, sell cars off the lot, right? That's, I don't have that kind of power. What I can do is try to get people excited to either come take a test drive, or like configure something on the app. And so then if I finally go, that the behavior change, I'm trying to drive or influence ultimately is gonna take more test drives, or do something on the app, I can help guide that. I can create content that will get really excited, I can create marketing campaigns, which will ultimately help drive that behavior change. So now I know where I'm going. And when I'm explaining to sales, like X, Y, and Z is what I'm gonna do. 

These are the different sorts of angles I'm gonna cover. And my ultimate goal for all of these is to drive people to the showroom. And so then they'll be like, "Super supportive, great, we know why you're doing it, how can I help?" or they'll be like, "Here's a case study that we could use." So my next step is to create a brief before I create any content. And I do this myself, I do this with my teammates, as well as that we're not creating anything, because creating content or marketing campaigns takes so much time, energy, and effort, I want to make sure we're going off on the right foot. So I'll come up with a brief. So I have a brief template, which includes number one, write up the job, what's the goal do next? What's my targeted outcome? Or like? What's the reason essentially for the content? How will we see that play out in terms of the immediate next steps my audience will take? And maybe the next step is to download the app. And then the download in the app of the car company and then like configure or something I love to identify. And then once I know what my next steps are, I'll know how I can measure success. So maybe app downloads could be a metric now, so that was all tied back to what I'm trying to influence. And then I'll write down from my listening tours, like, based on my topic, what are those common questions that come up from customers? Like, what are the objections? What are incentives? And then I'll try to understand, like, what formats and platforms they visit. So I'm setting the odds up for success, right? Before I start creating, too often, marketers fall into this trap of, "Let me create a bunch of stuff, put it out there, and see what resonates." And I'm not saying that that's wrong, it's just not as efficient as it could be. If you stack the odds in your favor.

Mark Drager: I think the test and market approach, that's the test and spin approach, where we're going to create a lot of messages, a lot of assets, a lot of creative, we're gonna put it out into the market, and in real-time, we're gonna put spin behind it and see what sticks and almost get information back. I mean, from a direct response or an advertising point of view, that is the gold standard. But you are spending money to learn everything in real-time. And you need a very systematic approach, you need to have all the attribution models locked down, and you have to have the data to come back. And I believe that tends to work when you do not have to report back to stakeholders, or you don't have any cross-functional input from other teams. If it's just you, or a small organization, or a small product, or a small team, you can just go off and do it in a really targeted approach. But trying to come back then to report back findings and explain everything and get buy-in when frankly, it's like, "Hey, we came up with a bunch of stuff. We did it. We spent all this money. And this is what the data says. Now what should we do next?" There's often not enough, in my experience, not enough rationale behind or enough learning behind why, and you can't replicate and you can't scale those often. Has that been your experience in the past?

Purna Virji: It has. Definitely when I worked agency side, before multiple, you know, when I was with startups for a lot of the early decade of my career. That was the gold standard: go out, test, get those learnings, it cost money. And I'm not saying never test, because even if you did start with, let's say, you're a solopreneur. And you don't have—like when I was on the agency side, could I get stems from salespeople? I don't think I was ever confident enough to make that ask either. So I get that. But I would go in and read reviews. And sometimes you can find your customer, the voice of your customer. So often. And I've applied that—

Mark Drager: To comments. I don't know why people don't go to videos, where your targets are or based on the topic and just read the YouTube comments.

Purna Virji: YouTube comments, Reddit posts, like forums, like there's all of these, even niche industry forums, if you're, you know, in a certain niche industry, go and read it. And that's so much will help you more because I remember I had a customer who had a client who had a hotel in like a fancy resort in the Caribbean. And they have this like one mile like a private beach, which was gorgeous, and so picturesque and perfect. And that's what they thought, "That's our USP like we have this private beach. It's so massive, it's blah, blah, blah." And they were pushing that everywhere. But I'm like, well, it's not that unique. Isn't like the Caribbean is just by default, beautiful beaches, sand, and gorgeousness. So I read the reviews. And I kept seeing that a lot of people were flagging that they had amazing restaurants, they had, you know, five or six, and it was all-inclusive, and they have five or six different restaurant different cuisines. And a lot of the people were saying that this was the best all-inclusive experience because they had so much variety, even for a week-long stay, they never felt bored of the food choice, even once. And so I'm like, why don't we highlight that? And so we changed some of that content, and we did a test campaign because like you're still working, you still gonna have to test it out anyway and see if the direction is helpful. And they saw actually a big lift, not a big lift, but like quite a decent size, lift in conversions from going out. And just, it sets them apart a little bit more, right? Because we could say that we have this additional option plus everything you dream about—

Mark Drager: That is such a—oh my goodness, what a great example. I mean, because a beach is a beach is a beach. You're right. I mean, a private beach is better than a public beach. And white sand, I guess, is better than regular sand. Like, but they're thinking like infrastructure-based people, right? Like, we've spent this money, we've built this thing, we've looked around. And we're like, we have 5200 feet of private beach, and it's just like, it's cool. I got it, you got a nice beach. What else?

Purna Virji: That can stay the same, or that kind of result? Is there some like, okay, you want to think about what sets you up? And sometimes what you can think is important, as you said, like the investment, a lot of money, clearly into developing that beach in the gorgeous, but your customers may think differently, or your target audience may think differently. So it aligns with your goal, which was to increase bookings in a busy holiday season. And then, so that would be where it comes in, and learning, the more you can learn about, I think you have to fall in love with your audience. Like when I'm creating a campaign, I want to think, who's my audience? And how can I help them? Like, how can I go there and not be that sort of stage on the stage, but I want to be like the Guide By Your Side and help you with that. And so I absolutely love my audience, no matter how can I add more value and add value. And that's so clear. And you can get once you understand them more, you can paint that more robust picture that goes way beyond one of those Rando personas that people love too much, like Marketing Molly and Sales Sally. That is just so made up. I'm not Pooh-poohing it, but it's just based on your guesswork rather than actual in-depth.

Mark Drager: I have loved this conversation. This is why I wanted you on the podcast because I knew we could get really strategic and deep. And if you're listening to Purna and you're like, "Wow, okay, she knows what she's talking about." Here are a few things to actually back it up. So, she won a LinkedIn Ads Cross-Functional Partner of the Year award. So, she certainly understands how to work across departments. Purna Virji is also the author of the book, "High Impact Content Marketing." And when I say book, like, you know, if you listen to this podcast, and you're like, "Yeah, okay, she's on here. She's not on here to push the book." Honestly, we haven't even mentioned it, but I bring it up. Because it's like, the most dense. And I don't mean that in a bad way. The most dense, strategic, and detailed book that I think I've ever seen on content marketing. 320 pages, I can't even count the number of references. But in working through it, it's like if I were to go to university and take a marketing course, and I was handed a textbook, Purna's book would be the book that I would expect to get. And so if you want to dig deeper into this, I would highly recommend that you pick it up. This isn't a push for it or anything like that. I just think it's something that should be sitting on your shelf, and you should read and work through it. Of course, I say all that to say now, I want you to dish a little bit here. What's the hardest lesson you've had to learn? And how did that come about?

Purna Virji: Oh, I think the hardest lesson I learned was actually like not keeping sales in mind, because then they will, you can—

Mark Drager: Give me specifics. You waste—

Purna Virji: I wasted months like I was so bought into something, this was in my startup days, whereas, you know, I mean, it was a pretty well-established fully VC-funded startup. But it was how I spent three months, I was so gung-ho about creating this whole additional content library that would help our SEO goals and help all of this, and I made a big mistake in not talking to the sales force about it because I put it out there. I remember poor design teams and content writers were working round the clock, like so hard, and then it just never picked up as much traction. And yes, it got some PR, but it never converted into sales. And then I was so ashamed of myself

 as the director of comms at that time. And I'm like, "Oh, no, right. Like, I've spun people's wheels, and I don't have a lot to show from it." And that really taught me a lesson which is, don't just create a don't listen to the highest-paid person's opinion only, like don't try to make just the boss happy. And you really ultimately come down to audiences and working with sales. And so now, I will not go to a sales leader without telling them that these are the people I've done my due diligence with, and this is why I'm presenting you a research-backed research thing, too. So yeah, big, big. I'm the valedictorian of the school of hard knocks, Mark, because everything I've learned, I think I've learned the hard way.

Mark Drager: I have never met a pragmatic and successful marketer, salesperson, or leader who has not had such a painfully embarrassing and expensive lesson that they weren't like, "I never want to do that again." So like with what you are giving out here in terms of like, "Let's make this work," which is what this whole podcast is about. I knew that in your background. So final question for you. And I love to ask it of everyone, what would be your number one tip or strategy to help those of us who are listening right now sell more?

Purna Virji: Start a little needs analysis listening tour. A) You will build your reputation internally, you'll build your relationships internally within the org. And B) You never realize how important having sponsors and support from sellers will be for your campaigns and their reach and impact. Plus, you'll save yourself time in spinning your wheels in different directions when you have a clear map to get to the outcome. So just spend, give yourself 10 hours that you can spread across two weeks, three weeks you will call to just have interviews with different sales stakeholders. That's it, you will learn so much as a result.

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Resources & Go Deeper

"10 Tried-and-True Tips for Sales and Marketing Alignment"

This article provides 10 practical tips for aligning sales and marketing teams, emphasizing the importance of shared goals, customer focus, and regular communication.

10 Tried-and-True Tips for Sales and Marketing Alignment (hubspot.com)

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“Sales and Marketing Alignment: Strategies & Best Practices”

The article discusses strategies and best practices for sales and marketing alignment, highlighting the significance of understanding the customer journey and developing a consistent message.

Sales and Marketing Alignment: Strategies & Best Practices - LeadSquared

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"7 tips for aligning your sales and marketing strategy"

This piece explores the benefits of sales and marketing alignment, including increased cooperation, effective lead use, and more scalable strategies. It provides examples of successful alignment in companies like Zoom and DocuSign, and offers actionable best practices like focusing on customer satisfaction and defining funnel steps.

7 tips for aligning your sales and marketing strategy | Outreach

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