How to Align Sales and Marketing?

Ben: Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Michael. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Eckhoff: Thanks, appreciate you being here.

Ben: I love it. Michael, we're going to talk about something that we're both really passionate about. But before we dive into the subject, love to introduce you to the rest of the audience listening in. Who are you? What's your background? What do you love about content and marketing?

Michael Eckhoff: Yeah, no, appreciate that. So Michael Leckoff, I'm at the moment, I'm what you would call a fractional CRO, meaning I'm working with a few different companies, just taking some of my experience and helping companies grow or scale. And how do you bring sales marketing product all together into an aligned approach? And so now I'm doing that for a few different companies that are at that precipice of going from a startup to a scale up and growing.

Aligning Sales and Marketing

Ben: I love it. And I love the different perspectives that you're going to bring to the show. Most of the listeners for the show are your seasoned marketers, content marketers, head of marketing. And I love that you're going to bring that sales background and that marketing background. You know, that alignment is so key. So that's really what we're going to focus on today. Sales and marketing alignment. How we can do that through metrics and data. And then also how content plays a role in this and how we can measure its effectiveness and things of that nature. So I'm excited for the discussion. So first and foremost, when you're looking at marketing and sales alignment, how do data and metrics actually make a difference? Like why, why does that matter? Why was that one of the first thoughts that came to your mind when we were figuring out what to talk about and why you can and how you can align these departments.

Michael Eckhoff: Yeah, I mean, I'm old enough, you know, I've got the gray hair to show that I've been around sales for a while. And when I first started in sales, you could be very prescriptive in your sales process. You could define a sales playbook. You could set up sales stages. You could use, you know, common methodologies like medic and command of the message. And sales had more control in the process.

The Buyer Journey

Ben: I love it, I love it. It's interesting you talk about really understanding the buyer's journey. One of the coolest things that ever happened to me is we had a consultant come in and one of the businesses I worked at and she said, okay, I need you to handwrite out on pieces of paper each step of the buyer's journey. And we booked out a boardroom and we taped them on the wall and she literally shoulder to shoulder with me. We walked one step and said, here's what they're going through. We walked through the next step. Here's what they're going through. And there was something about that actual taking steps and talking about it. That meant a lot. And I think that's a cool exercise. And however you do that in your business, I think makes a lot of sense. So one question I have there, you know, you're talking about metrics and things like that. When you talk about those.

Accountability and Metrics

Michael Eckhoff: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think part of it comes down to the size of the team, the roles and responsibilities. What I want is I want people to own metrics that they have control over. So putting marketing in response, you know, giving them responsibility for and, you know, deals closed. They don't take ownership of that. They don't feel ownership of it. It's not something they have control over. What I like to do is build a reverse funnel. Where we start with revenue, we go back through what our close rates are, how many opportunities do we need based on our ASP. I like to then say, okay, well, how many SQLs do we need? And go all the way back through to how many impressions and then break that down into the logical functions that each group actually has a responsibility for. So if the marketing team is able to deliver a certain number of...

Ben: Love it. So you find the buyer's journey. You find the most impactful points. You're measuring those points. The data is public and available. Everyone can see it. It's holding each other accountable and aligned. What?

Regular Collaboration

Michael Eckhoff: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of things. One, the dashboards and the metrics to me, if you're not looking at it every day, it's probably not important to you. And so I want to look at for the individual metrics that each function is responsible for. That should be a daily checkpoint. There's so many tools now like Slack that you have for company communication.

You can have it automatically publish that out. And if there's any variance in it, it can actually alert people. So there's a lot of ways you can do that to make it that daily occurrence for the alignment. You know, most businesses operate in a quarterly model. I like to have a regular call, usually led by product marketing to pull those teams together on either a weekly, biweekly or monthly process, but a quarterly.

Role of Product Marketing

Ben: Yeah, I love it. So when you're talking about that, you mentioned product marketing. What is your opinion on how product marketing can bridge the gaps? What were they filling in to build the alignment between sales and marketing as well?

Michael Eckhoff: Yeah, if I had a whiteboard, I'd draw my favorite Venn diagram, which is the circle of product, the circle of marketing, the circle of sales, and then the circle in the middle that aligns all three of those, that's product marketing. And I've kind of long been a believer of the pragmatic marketing model, very standard industry model for product marketing. But the idea that product marketing is the one who is understanding what the customer needs, what's happening in the industry with competitors, helping to define that category that you're competing in, that's sharing that information back to the product teams so the product knows what to build and when to build it. That's giving that information to the marketing teams and understanding what's working, what's not. That's taking the product features and capabilities and turning that into value-based messaging.

Michael Eckhoff: Have that in your website and for people to consume information that really understand what value the product is going to bring. That can use those value -based statements and value -based discovery models to help the sales team get a better view of the customer and then carry that all the way through through the sales cycle so that you're building a value -based sale. Those are the ones that have the greatest success, that have shorter sales cycles, bigger deal values.

higher close rates. And so that's part of what I am passionate about is that value selling approach. And that's really driven by product marketing.

Metrics for Product Marketing

Ben: I love it. So one final question related to product marketing. When you're looking, we talked about data and metrics. What are the metrics that they're trying to improve? Like, are they actually looking at close rates and asking themselves, how do I help the sales team close more? Are they looking at speed to sale, things of that nature? What are the metrics that you recommend product marketing teams really focus on to again, build alignment, but also accountability and focus on the right things to move the needle.

Michael Eckhoff: Yeah, I mean, you know, today product marketing typically is very focused on content and content is key. Whether you're building an awareness campaign to educate your customers, whether you're just sharing information, whether you're getting information out on public review sites across that buyer journey, the different pieces of content, whether that be a, you know, a white paper, a PDF, a blog, a video, or even just a value based message, right?

Closing Thoughts

Ben: I love it, I love it. Well, as promised, these episodes go by quick to make them action-oriented and super easy to consume. Michael, I have so much to think about and I have learned so much from this episode. It's really amazing. If anyone wants to connect and reach out and find you online, where's the best place to find you?

Michael Eckhoff: Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, certainly easy to find me. Michael Leckoff, I'm one of very few out there on LinkedIn. So certainly reach out to me there and I'd be happy to connect and carry the conversation forward. I appreciate you letting the rogue, you know, quota carrying sales guy show up in the world of marketing, but it's very important to keep us aligned.

Ben: I love it, I love it. Well, Michael, thank you so much again for the time today.

Michael Eckhoff: Yeah, thanks, Ben.

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