OnBase: Smashing Sales and Marketing Misalignments Ep. 499 | Achieving Cross-Functional Alignment for Revenue Growth
Episode Summary
In this episode of OnBase, Kyle Lacy discusses strategies for achieving cross-functional alignment between sales, marketing, and other teams. He identifies the main B2B marketing challenge as aligning these groups around common metrics and goals, emphasizing the need for documented processes and a shared revenue model. Kyle stresses the importance of marketing demonstrating its contribution to sales outcomes, not just brand-building. He also shares insights on leveraging AI tools while cautioning against replacing human sales roles. Overall, Kyle provides practical advice for B2B marketers seeking to improve cross-functional alignment and drive business growth.
About the guest
Kyle has spent the last 17 years building, scaling, failing, and winning in high-growth software. He’s currently serving the Jellyfish team as their CMO, and before joining the Jellyfish “bloom,” he had the pleasure of building a company called Lessonly. He has also been fortunate to lead teams at Seismic, OpenView, Salesforce, and ExactTarget. But most importantly, he is the father to two wonderful boys, an energetic dog, and one too many books on World War II.
Key takeaways
- Cross-functional alignment: Success in sales and marketing hinges on aligning around shared performance metrics e.g., pipeline, revenue) and fostering collaboration across teams.
- Focus on key numbers: Misalignment often occurs when sales and marketing teams aren’t tracking the same metrics. Agreement on crucial numbers is vital for achieving alignment.
- Sales and marketing collaboration: Understanding the sales model, including pipeline coverage and quota attainment, is critical for marketers to contribute effectively to revenue.
- Importance of brand: While brand building is essential, it must always tie back to measurable business results like pipeline and bookings.
- AI in marketing: AI is useful as an assistant for research, content creation, and data analysis, but it’s not yet capable of fully replacing human tasks, especially in prospecting.
- Engaging content: Effective case studies and white papers should focus on clear ROI data rather than just promotional content, making them more engaging and useful for prospects.
- Documentation and process: Having a well-documented process and alignment on definitions like MQLs) helps prevent confusion and misalignment between teams.
- Marketing’s goal: The ultimate purpose of marketing is to help sales close deals, and success is determined by contributions to pipeline and quota.
Quotes
"Nobody cares about your brand campaign if your sales team hits 40% quota attainment."
"If you're not aligned with the sales leader and not looking at the same numbers, eventually it's going to break."
Recommended Resource
Books
"Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson: Kyle recommends this biography for its insights into the mindset of innovators with extreme urgency and ambition.
Newsletters
Ultra Successful by Dr. Julie Gurner: A paid newsletter Kyle highly recommends. He praises Dr. Gurner for her brilliant insights, noting that it’s one of the few newsletters he subscribes to.
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