Megan Howe, Chief Sales Officer at Oversight, explores ways to increase marketing involvement in the sales process. She emphasizes the importance of deeper collaboration between the two teams for faster deal cycles and revenue growth. She also highlights the importance of genuine curiosity about each other’s operations and appreciation of the complexities of their respective roles.
“The balance between sales and marketing involves having a genuine curiosity for how the other operates and an appreciation for the intricacies behind each role.” – Megan Howe
Organizations prioritizing sales and marketing alignment are nearly three times more likely to exceed new customer acquisition targets. This statistic from Gartner highlights the critical nature of the relationship between sales and marketing. It’s not just about working together better; it’s about the company’s overall growth and vitality. In today’s revenue-driven landscape, this alignment is the cornerstone of success.
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[Transcript]
Introduction
[00:00:07] Steve MacDonald: Welcome to the C-Suite Marketing Perspectives Podcast. I’m Steve McDonald, your host, and we have an exceptional opportunity today.
[00:00:15] Steve MacDonald: We have Megan Howe. Now, Megan, you’re the Chief Sales Officer at Oversight. You’ve also been a Chief Revenue Officer. You’ve been in sales most of your career, but you’ve got a very unique perspective. It’s not unique in that marketing and sales need to work together. But your perspective is on how I can get marketing more involved in sales.
[00:00:36] Steve MacDonald: We’re going to explore that today in the podcast, but maybe first, before we do that, you could delve into your background a little bit more and explain a bit more about who you are.
[00:00:45] Megan Howe: Yeah. Steve, thank you so much for having me. As you’ve mentioned, I’m super excited to be here today and share whatever perspective I can from my position as a current chief sales officer at Oversight based in Atlanta.
[00:00:59] Megan Howe: So, a little about my background. I have been in sales my entire career, starting with payroll HCM. So, I grew up in a very fast-paced, structured environment. It was the best experience to start my career, and I spent just under 10 years in that space. In both regular outside sales and sales leadership, I transitioned over into private equity-backed mid-market type companies to have a little more impact on the actual sales, process results, etc.
[00:01:25] Megan Howe: That’s how I found my way to Oversight, where I was for about three years. I left the business briefly and was the first-time CRO at an AML-KYC compliance company. I then returned to Oversight a little over a year ago in the chief sales officer role. I’m super excited to be here.
[00:01:42] Megan Howe: I’m very passionate about the topic you and I have discussed and that you introduced to your viewers. This topic includes the relationship between sales leaders, marketing leaders, sales teams, marketing teams, BDRs, and AEs, and all of the different flavors of demand generation.
[00:02:00] Megan Howe: But really, how can the involvement get stickier and stronger for the ultimate goal of not only synergy between the two teams but faster deal cycles, more top-of-funnel revenue, and most importantly, revenue that gets to the bottom of the funnel and out to hit our top-line numbers?
[00:02:16] Steve MacDonald: I want to start it off because I’m going to read a quote from Gartner that came out last year. It talks about marketing and sales alignment. It says organizations prioritizing sales and marketing alignment are nearly three times more likely to exceed new customer acquisition targets.
[00:02:34] Steve MacDonald: Three times more likely. What we’re talking about here is just a nice to have. If we’re revenue all CMOs and certainly CROs and CSOs we need to, we’re trained to be very pipeline-driven and revenue-focused these days. This alignment isn’t just a ‘we need to have it because we need to work together better.’
[00:02:54] Steve MacDonald: This is about the overall growth and vitality of the company, the organization, the mission, and the growth goals that we have. It’s not a small subject matter. The topic here is, but tell us a little bit from your point of view why you suggested the title for the podcast today.
[00:03:13] Steve MacDonald: How do we get marketing more involved in sales? What does that mean to you and why?
Understanding the Empowered B2B Buyer
[00:03:18] Megan Howe: Okay. That quote is interesting. There’s a lot to unpack there. Historically, as you said, it’s not just important, and I’ll use this word lightly, culturally to say we have a unified relationship.
[00:03:31] Megan Howe: I also don’t think it’s essential only from a business professional standpoint to say we’re checking the box on a go-to-market solid front. What I unpack from that and the reason I’m excited to talk today, I don’t purport to have all of or any of the answers on this topic.
[00:03:47] Megan Howe: It’s just something that I’m very passionate about. In a high topic of conversation and my mastermind groups, but it’s just how do we do this? Because it’s critical to the success of the business. How does going to market take a different form in not just saying we want more pipeline or more leads?
[00:04:04] Megan Howe: It’s just the why behind all of that. Why are we doing this, and how do we do it better, quicker, faster, and stronger from both teams’ perspectives? I don’t want to bring up historical stereotypes from either the marketing or sales audiences. It’s easy for sales teams and leaders to say, we need more leads.
[00:04:23] Megan Howe: We need better demand gen. We need better qualifications. I think it’s probably easy for marketing leaders to say, ‘Okay if I give that to you, is sales going to work inappropriately? How do I have the confidence that you’ll act on the leads with the right speed?’ So, I think a synergistic understanding of the why and the how of the pieces behind Gartner’s quote is the magic to go into 2024. I think it’s more critical than ever, whether with tools like chat GPT or barred or anything that continues to come out.
[00:04:56] Megan Howe: Our buyers and SaaS outbound B2B sales are more educated than ever. I’m sure that I don’t know if most SaaS buyers are spending their time in chatGPT looking for suggestions on what software they should buy to solve XYZ problems but it exists. I think without that conjoined effort between marketing leaders and sales leaders to be able to say.
[00:05:18] Megan Howe: I think without that conjoined effort between marketing leaders and sales leaders to say, ‘We both respect that people are at all different points of their buying journey. How do we meet them there? How do we improve upon the communication? How do we meet those very sophisticated buyers already in the mid to late sales cycle and understand the pieces of content communication collateral that might even accelerate that?’
[00:05:37] Megan Howe: Bring in additional stakeholders, touch different people in the business figuratively to say, ‘Hey, there is an active cycle with this ABC company, and now all of a sudden, they’re all over my phone and my newsfeed.’ How can we strategically work together as two units to capitalize on modern technology to meet modern buyers exactly where they are with the ultimate goal of success for the business and deals coming out the bottom of the funnel?
The Consultative Sales Approach
[00:06:03] Steve MacDonald: You said something right before we started to record here. You said that you think it’s incumbent upon sales to understand more about marketing and marketing to understand more about sales, so this partnership is a curiosity, what makes great marketing? So, therefore how it can impact sales better and reverse from a chief marketing officer looking into sales.
[00:06:25] Steve MacDonald: You also mentioned this modern buyer and the self-serve trend. When they’re doing more and more research in the same amount of time, they don’t have more time in the day but do more research. Therefore, they don’t want to talk to us as a company until later.
[00:06:43] Steve MacDonald: Now, that has huge implications. What that means is that if we’re going to get the conversation started earlier in their buyer’s journey, then we have to engage with them earlier, and earlier engagement leads to more content, higher-level content that advises and helps from a position of expertise.
[00:07:05] Steve MacDonald: The alignment between marketing in sales and getting marketing more involved in sales. That’s buyer-led. If you look at it, it is based on what they’re doing. Tell me a little about this modern account-based marketing process that needs to happen to address these trends and things happening in the marketplace. How do you think about that in an ABM world?
[00:07:29] Megan Howe: Yeah, it’s a great question. The disclaimer that I’ll give is probably part of the genuine curiosity to understand and read books about ABM and try to meet leaders like you and the CMO from the last company that I worked with is, one of the most brilliant marketing minds that I’ve worked with is so that I can acknowledge that I could never do that side of the house and vice versa. I want to communicate what and why we do what we do on the sales side, like the intricacies of a sales process to understand how different marketing techniques and strategies fit in at each stage of that process.
[00:08:04] Megan Howe: I’ll use a simple example that no successful CMO, VP of Marketing, or Marketing Leader would do. But of course, if we have somebody in a very late stage deal and sales, historically the fear has been what if a piece of content goes out that just completely takes us back 22 steps and introduces these obstacles and objections and questions that I wasn’t planning for and now my deal is going to take forever to close. I think it’s incumbent on sales leaders to help understand the ABM and targeted marketing side of the house to communicate to sales teams and sales leaders why it’s so critical and won’t mess up our deals. It could be the one piece that accelerates our deals to a close. So, that’s why it’s been such an asset to work and talk with other marketing leaders and my own VP of Marketing, who’s wonderful, to be able to do it strategically. Brainstorm around the pieces of content and the strategic touches. The strategic outreach to make sure that deals are being accelerated. So, the venues, and the things that different buyers want to hear at different pieces of their journey don’t slow a deal down but could accelerate it.
[00:09:20] Steve MacDonald: Those pieces of content you’re talking about, no buyer wants to be sold to, they want to be advised. They want to be helped. They want to be supported, and so that content that isn’t in any ABM process, right? You can’t just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell.
[00:09:34] Steve MacDonald: You’ve got to position yourself as that trusted advisor, somebody who supports, helps, and educates. It’s very important, but typically, that can be some of the hardest content to create. That’s the content that you could label thought leadership content. However, we want to do that.
[00:09:48] Steve MacDonald: A fantastic line in a Forbes article said content marketing solves problems. Thought leadership sparks conversation. In an ABM world, and in a world where we’re trying to get earlier in the buyer’s journey, we’re trying to spark the conversation.
[00:10:05] Steve MacDonald: So we have to have that high-level content, and the content that we create needs to be collaborative. It can’t be content that marketing creates and just throws over the wall. We know what happens because the studies show that typically in the B2B world, 60% of content that marketing creates sales doesn’t think has any value and, of that, thought leadership content.
[00:10:27] Steve MacDonald: Seventy percent of the B2B buyers say 70% of the thought leadership content I read has no value. So, this value that we’re trying to create here in that synergy, that getting marketing more involved, seems like the quality of the message and content. Therefore, the quality of the outreach matters dramatically. But I’d love to get your opinion on that and your thoughts.
[00:10:52] Megan Howe: It does. Quality certainly matters, right? Quality and also timing. There will always be common requests from the org’s marketing and sales pieces. Okay, our testimonials are great, and our featured podcasts, or webinars with trusted advisors and partners give us credibility and branding. That type of content will always have a home and a place at any stage of a sales cycle for educated buyers new buyers, whatever that might look like. But continuing to whittle down beyond just.
[00:11:29] Megan Howe: We tend to talk about these things obsessively. Who’s our ICP? What’s our target market, and how do we market to those verticals? Those pieces are critical to any successful funnel generation, sales deal cycles, marketing success, et cetera. However, the quality of the content for the buyers at different stages may be within a vertical.
[00:11:49] Megan Howe: Do we see anything? There are tools out here. Thank goodness that helps do some of this whittling down for us so that we’re not trying to make tally marks of how many people hit our website from a certain vertical or industry. But personally, what we work on internally is looking at the different verticals in our customer base to shape different types of messaging. What tends to resonate even within the client base with our client advisory boards? Test that from a go-to-market perspective.
[00:12:17] Megan Howe: The quality of content has a testing component to it as the statistics you shared. It’s one thing for what salespeople might think works, but then all of a sudden the thought leadership that we all think will crush it in the market. Seventy percent of prospects don’t think that it’s helpful or it doesn’t spark a conversation, but it doesn’t matter.
[00:12:33] Megan Howe: So, it’s a complex science. There’s an A-B testing component to ensure that what we’re defining as quality is quality. That’s well received in the market by our buyers.
Understanding the Why and How
[00:12:43] Steve MacDonald: There’s the quality and you said the timing and the dilemma too. Marketing is constantly trying to figure this out in the short and long term.
[00:12:54] Steve MacDonald: Product marketing needs much more focus to help close deals in the pipeline. We need a lot more thought leadership content, right? To get deals into the pipeline. We had a three-time B2B CMO a couple of months ago.
[00:13:08] Steve MacDonald: She said the way I look at it is that today’s brand is tomorrow’s demand. If we do that, that will take cycles away from the sales process because then the sales team doesn’t have to position themselves as much at the beginning of the sales cycle as that trusted advisor, as if they’re coming in known as a trusted advisor.
[00:13:28] Steve MacDonald: I don’t know your thoughts on short-term versus long-term. You nod that today’s brand is tomorrow’s demand, so I’d love to get your thoughts.
[00:13:38] Megan Howe: That statement, coupled with something you said that I loved, shows that sometimes content or thought leadership is meant to spark a conversation.
[00:13:47] Megan Howe: So, coupling today’s brand with tomorrow’s demand with starting conversations earlier that have some embedded credibility is critical to success. So, I think about it from a selfish standpoint of the conversations that we have at Oversight our buying audience, and oftentimes, we do need that conversation earlier because it is part of what buyers deal with.
[00:14:12] Megan Howe: In any form or fashion, trying to solve a problem starts well before a conversation sparks the searching in their infancy of trying to understand: A, do we even have a problem? B, have we acknowledged it? C, is there somebody out there who can solve this? With the appropriate branding, and I don’t want to steal this person’s quote but, today’s brand–what’s out there in the marketplace from an intent and a search-driven perspective could help accelerate those conversations earlier on.
[00:14:33] Megan Howe: Sometimes the short-term pieces are necessary, but a much long-term game pays off from consistent and constant branding focus.
[00:14:52] Megan Howe: Beyond just how many conversations are we having? How many webinars do we do per month? How many in-person visits or trade shows are we doing? All those pieces are critical, but what’s the difficulty of capitalizing on ensuring that today’s brand turns into demand tomorrow?
[00:15:09] Megan Howe: Of course, this is the struggle, science, and testing behind your entire marketing leadership audience.
[00:15:15] Steve MacDonald: It’s interesting. I wrote it down because I love it, and I’m going to steal the way you phrased it in those conversations with embedded credibility.
[00:15:24] Steve MacDonald: It’s another way of saying we’re doing the job right in branding and positioning ourselves as leaders and trusted advisors. So I love that. By the way, the CMO said today’s brand is tomorrow’s demand, her name is Jamie Gier. She’s just phenomenal.
[00:15:46] Steve MacDonald: But the idea here is that it takes sales cycles away at the beginning, but it accelerates sales cycles all through the ABM process and the acceleration of the sales cycle through the ABM process is because we can’t just sell sell sell, but we have to be sharing things of high value, high credibility. If we’re not constantly producing things of high value and high credibility, then we’ll lose the ability to add that into the sales process. We’re branding thought leadership can be seen as longer term. We need to be doing it, but guess what? I got a quota over my head. I have very short-term things that I’m trying to accomplish. Yes. It’s setting up the brand, but I wanted your opinion.
[00:16:24] Steve MacDonald: But at the very same time, in day-to-day ABM sales processes, it’s making an impact. There is very much short-term impact, or you can agree or disagree on this. I’d love your opinion. There are long-term and short-term impacts of that high-level credibility, embedded thought leadership, whatever you want to call it, content. Would you agree with that? What are your thoughts and perspectives?
[00:16:47] Megan Howe: I’m not just saying this, but I would agree with that because there’s another added layer. Again, very specifically from my purview in a sales cycle, the short-term thought leadership pieces can come in handy.
[00:17:00] Megan Howe: That added layer could be, is this a competitive sale? Without us knowing who’s coming into the funnel and where they’re at in their journey. Are they going to bed? Is it an RFP? Do we already know that there are three competitors in the mix? Again, to give the very sales leader-type statement, I should have prefaced this with every sale being a competitive sale because somebody could choose to do nothing.
[00:17:24] Megan Howe: But what I’m speaking to and why I agree with your statement is, if we’re in a head-to-head comparison between somebody else and there exists an entire library of branded thought leadership. This person, this other company was doing webinars sponsored by EY or PwC or whoever it might be, or they’re a trusted partner of ABC company and we’ve not put the focus on that short-term content that later in a sales cycle might create some question marks, objections to credibility. Why don’t you have branded webinars with somebody prominent in this space or a managed service partner? Are you skilled in what you say you do?
[00:18:05] Megan Howe: Do you have studies with Gartner? The floodgates tend to open from there, and we’re in a sales cycle, already on our heels scrambling. That’s the danger point where sales leaders run to marketing and go, hurry up, drum up something for me that can help accelerate this.
[00:18:22] Megan Howe: Do we have anything? Go through the archives, and that is just a recipe that none of us from a sales or marketing perspective ever want to find ourselves in. So, I do agree that balance and the commitment to short-term content pieces that could contribute to really credible thought leadership later in a sales cycle are very important pieces of the cycle.
[00:18:43] Steve MacDonald: That’s great. We tend to focus on what’s right in front of us, but what’s ‘right’ in front of us if we don’t know if a thought leadership piece, a blog post, a podcast webinar, or something was that deciding factor, in the end, like it’s not a linear buyer’s journey–it’s spaghetti.
[00:19:02] Steve MacDonald: So the idea that ‘Oh, they’ve progressed, the buyers progressed to this stage in the buying journey. Therefore, we need very heavy-focused, product marketing-focused information,’ which is incredibly important. But we never can forget the fact that we need to constantly position ourselves as leaders.
Overcoming Historical Stereotypes
[00:19:22] Steve MacDonald: If we do that, guess what? Experts make better products. You know that we will be the perceived value of the solution that we’re selling like the rising tide lifts all boats. Experts are going to make better products. They’re going to perform better than people who aren’t.
[00:19:40] Steve MacDonald: That’s something we tend to forget. I don’t want to forget something that we talked about earlier, though, that we want to talk about here: that there can be real resistance to marketing and getting involved in these later stages. You touched on it that they’re going to create a little bit of content, right?
[00:19:56] Steve MacDonald: I’ve talked to marketing CMOs who are heavily involved in the sales process. I’ve been brought into sales presentations, meetings, and discussions. As you said, I want to get marketing more involved in sales. There’s this hesitancy to involve marketing in sales, but we might muck it up. Where is that balance? What do you want to say to CMOs regarding a path forward?
[00:20:24] Megan Howe: I appreciate the question. It’s an evolving answer. So, the one piece that I would say—and I’m sure when my counterpart in marketing listens—I will be held accountable for making sure that I do what I’m about to say. But it’s good because I want to make sure that marketing leaders understand—I’ll steal your term—the spaghetti nature of a sales cycle.
[00:20:45] Megan Howe: Oftentimes, the disparity or the fear is too strong of a word, but the kind of protectiveness of a deal of, ‘Okay, now it’s in sales hands. Let’s make sure that we were the ones that do this,’ it just comes from the idea that if we in sales explained across the board, probably to the company to product leaders, to marketing leaders, this is what a sales cycle might look like when a buyer comes into the funnel when they’re at this piece of the funnel.
[00:21:15] Megan Howe: I just find that open dialogue behind this is why we need different types of involvement at different stages of the game on just that simple conversation and open feedback loop, which we do a great job at Oversight between ourselves and marketing teams helps tremendously. I should disarm both teams in terms of, okay, marketing is now not feeling the pressure. Am I going to mug up this deal?
[00:21:42] Megan Howe: Does the salesperson already have a red flag based on the content that I believe will be helpful? Too many things are happening in a silo, and when things happen in silos, there’s never any good outcome. My take is to open up the curtains and have an open conversation about the intricacies of a sales process or a buying journey. I also understand that enterprise sales are tricky, and so is your audience.
[00:22:04] Megan Howe: It’s tricky. A new buyer could make a deal that we would dub stage four or late stage in the sales force. And that could mean something very different for how marketing needs to get involved than a more linear deal.
[00:22:24] Megan Howe: Knock on wood. We all hope those fall down to us. But at the same time, it’s just the open dialogue behind how a sales process could transgress and how marketing could best be involved. It’s easy enough. We’ve got standing strategy meetings between marketing and sales, both the full teams.
[00:22:44] Megan Howe: Then, my marketing leader and I will say what’s going on in the pipeline, and it’s less about our team from a sales org perspective going, ‘What are you bringing me into the pipeline and the marketing org going, what are you closing this week that we’ve contributed?’ and more of ‘Okay, what is where? Who is the profile of the buyer? How many people have entered each stage of this process? Who do we think?’
[00:23:00] Megan Howe: We all need to be very open to asking those questions from a deal inspection perspective. Nobody wins from being secretive or defensive. As a sales leader, I’ve been known to say we don’t have to win alone, and we sure as heck don’t have to lose a deal alone.
[00:23:22] Megan Howe: Whoever wants to sit in on our strategy sessions is welcome to come and listen to us. Talk about our deals. It’s an open forum, at least in my team calls. I would encourage your audience, other sales leaders, and marketing leaders to ask, ‘Hey, can we listen to a forecast session? Is it okay if we go listen to how you talk about your deals?’
[00:23:39] Megan Howe: I think that then helps to influence what might be a traditional way of thinking this is how we should market to this very specific deal, persona, vertical, et cetera, and can help say, ‘Oh, that’s something different that I haven’t heard before. Maybe now we can use that to open the conversation around either different content or different types of outreach to accelerate the deal.’ I hope that answers your question. That was very circuitous in nature.
[00:24:09] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, it did. Marketing doesn’t have a lock on all the great content ideas.
[00:24:15] Steve MacDonald: We just don’t, but we need ideas that spark. If we’re sitting in that forecast or on the regular sales meetings, and say this is the 4th week in a row. I’ve heard the same thing, or I never thought about that before, and it happens all the time. It’s only the collaboration.
[00:24:32] Steve MacDonald: It’s always the sum of two heads coming together better than one. So, sales and marketing are coming together, collaborating, and discussing what we are struggling with. What worked well? What do we want to dig deeper into?
[00:24:44] Steve MacDonald: What do we want to expand on? That would be great. Let’s do three more pieces on this. All of that just comes from that collaboration. So, you are open to having some of your internal meetings, right? You are open to marketing and vice versa. I think that’s fantastic. It leads me to another question: What kind of content comes from that?
[00:25:05] Steve MacDonald: You talked about credible marketing. That same woman, Jamie Gier, said today’s brand leads to tomorrow’s demand. She said our best-performing content year in and year out is the content where the customer’s voice leads out. Then, it’s your ICP that listens to their peers.
[00:25:26] Steve MacDonald: They’re in their same jobs, struggling with their same things, and that’s one of the things that helps break down the barriers between sales and marketing. It’s always good if it comes from your ICP, your prospect, or your customer. Let the customer’s voice lead our voice as the company to gain credibility and authenticity.
Leveraging Modern Technology
[00:25:50] Megan Howe: Yes, I agree, especially in this age of modern buying and buyers. We all want to relate to somebody who has been where we are, back to the beginning of this conversation. As you said, people don’t want to be sold to, even us consumers.
[00:26:09] Megan Howe: I know what I need. I know what I want. I need the quickest path to get there. There’s a reason that client reference calls are a huge ask in a sales cycle. There’s a reason that people want to know, okay, who else in my vertical, manufacturing, life sciences, and higher education uses us?
[00:26:27] Megan Howe: Is there anyone of note? It’s because the voice of the customer is better leadership. I hate to say this, but what we think is thought leadership is that most prospects or prospective buyers are going to have some sort of ‘Okay, but is this marketing material?’, and that’s fine. I think the voice of the customer is critical.
[00:26:46] Megan Howe: Before I expand on that, the perfect pitch deck will never close a deal, whether that’ll get me in trouble with sales leaders or hopefully disarm some marketing leaders. We all need to come to terms with the fact that at some point, people are in sales because there’s going to be an art and a finesse to messaging and getting people to the point of actually making a purchase decision.
[00:27:08] Megan Howe: The pressure of, ‘If only I had the best piece of collateral, I would have closed this deal.’ I’m going to call a bluff on that one. Because of that, it should help focus more on the things that matter, and the voice of the customer is huge.
[00:27:21] Megan Howe: When we go to conferences or trade shows and have speaking sessions, panels, or round tables, more often than not, I would say the most attended are those where we’re speaking with a customer, supporting a customer on stage, or facilitating a conversation with a customer.
[00:27:39] Megan Howe: The whole reason is that they come and look at me and say, ‘Okay, thanks. We don’t want to hear what the sales gal has to say. We’d like to hear how the person using the system has seen results has gotten their hands dirty and understands where I’m at in my process in my day-to-day.’ They want to hear from that person.
[00:27:55] Megan Howe: So whether it’s the virtual pieces that are produced or the physical, now that people are going back and attending conferences and trade shows, it’s that combination voice of the customer. I would agree with your former guest on that.
[00:28:08] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, and it’s the kind of thing where we’re incumbent, sales and marketing, to say it makes sense.
[00:28:13] Steve MacDonald: When we say something about the company, it’s essential, but we can get validation from our customers, the peer community, and ICP, It goes from here to here. We should be thinking about what our unique point of view is, what the belief statements and the selling statements that we stand on that we use all the time are.
[00:28:28] Steve MacDonald: How do we get those validated regularly? Because that’s going to be the best sales strategy, which is where we think is essential to close if we’re leading with that voice of the customer: it’s validating what we’re saying because we are the seller, ultimately. It tears down walls, it tears away the defense shield that goes up when we all know we’re in a sales conversation because we get sold too.
Conclusion
[00:29:01] Steve MacDonald: We’ve covered so much territory. I know we could go on another hour and a half easily, but if there was one thing that was a takeaway that you wanted CMOs, CROs, or CSOs that are listening to remember from our conversation today, what would that be?
[00:29:20] Megan Howe: As simplistic as it will sound, both sides have a genuine curiosity for how the other operates and an appreciation for the intricacies behind the science of each role. We’ve covered a ton, indeed, and it would be easy to say content here and accelerate our deals here but none of that gets accomplished.
[00:29:40] Megan Howe: It’s essential to have at least a proper understanding of the why behind each respective organization’s role. So, from a sales perspective, I’m curious if there’s a piece of content or a webinar; I want to hear the process behind it and what we expect from an outcome. Conversely, marketing should feel comfortable speaking to salespeople.
[00:29:58] Megan Howe: How do you take your deal from this, and why does it almost feel like it goes backward when somebody more senior or two additional stakeholders come in? Opening up that dialogue for the two to talk and sales to say that this is a really good thing even though it might be a tiny step backward and we have to revalidate things catapults us forward.
[00:30:21] Megan Howe: So, it’s just taking the idea of sales and marketing teams working well together, which I’m sure anyone or everyone who has listened to your podcast or any one-on-one from a relationship perspective but at the same time.
[00:30:42] Megan Howe: It truly is. Let’s take that conversation forward and discuss the why and strategy behind how both groups operate independently and as one cohesive unit.
[00:30:51] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, it’s very different, though. It isn’t basic. We are inherently curious about what we can get from the other, but we’re not curious about how that happens or how we can help it happen.
[00:31:04] Steve MacDonald: That goes well beyond a basic one-on-one. If people had additional questions, would sharing a link to your LinkedIn profile be appropriate?
[00:31:14] Megan Howe: Absolutely, please. I’m happy to do it. My profile is public, and I would welcome further conversation or answers to questions. Please feel free to share.
[00:31:28] Steve MacDonald: That’s okay. No problem. Thank you very much for coming on and sharing your insights.
[00:31:32] Megan Howe: Thank you so much, Steve. I appreciate it!