#246 Sales Alignment | Danielle welcomes Talya Heller, founder of Down to a T, a B2B consultancy helping marketers turn competitive positioning into high-impact sales assets. With experience in engineering, product management, and product marketing, Talya knows how to bridge the gap between what marketing builds and what sales actually uses.
Together they unpack:
- Why most sales decks and battle cards go unused and what to build instead
- How to enable your champion to sell internally with confidence
- Simple frameworks for mapping competitive positioning that teams will actually use
Talya also breaks down how she researches, builds, and delivers assets that align sales, marketing, and product, all rooted in buyer empathy.
Timestamps
- (00:00) - – Intro & Talya’s background
- (02:08) - – From engineering to B2B marketing
- (08:53) - – What is buyer enablement?
- (11:08) - – Why deals stall after vendor selection
- (13:23) - – The problem with sales decks
- (15:53) - – Why battle cards don’t work
- (18:08) - – Talya’s competitive positioning map
- (24:20) - – Grouping competitors by approach
- (26:50) - – Market maps for sales
- (28:50) - – Where to get the best insights
- (31:20) - – New formats for enablement
- (33:35) - – Why context matters
- (35:20) - – Empathy for your sales team
- (37:05) - – Closing thoughts on empathy
- (38:10) - – Where to find Talya online
Join 50,0000 people who get our Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Today's episode is brought to you by Knak.
Email (in my humble opinion) is the still the greatest marketing channel of all-time.
It’s the only way you can truly “own” your audience.
But when it comes to building the emails - if you’ve ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know how painful it can be. Templates are too rigid, editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever.
That’s why we love Knak here at Exit Five. Knak a no-code email platform that makes it easy to create on-brand, high-performing emails - without the bottlenecks.
- Frustrated by clunky email builders? You need Knak.
- Tired of ‘hoping’ the email you sent looks good across all devices? Just test in Knak first.
- Big team making it hard to collaborate and get approvals? Definitely Knak.
And the best part? Everything takes a fraction of the time.
See Knak in action at knak.com/exit-five. Or just let them know you heard about Knak on Exit Five.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
- They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
- Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
- Visit hatch.fm to learn more
