Marketing & Sales Divide: Perspective from Both Sides

[0:05] Intro:

Welcome to Revenue Rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita, Brandi Starr.

[0:34] Brandi Starr:   

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Amelia Taylor and Tara Pawlak. Amelia is a daily challenger of the status quo. She is currently the strategic sales and lead evangelists at regie.ai. Amelia specializes in content creation for modern go-to market teams, meeting buyers where they live, go to market strategies, strategic sales techniques, social revenue generation, brand building, an SDR coaching backed by EQ plus IQ. Tara is a b2b marketing leader who has spent her time in various marketing positions in global b2b tech companies. Tara's passion is for all things revenue and strategic marketing with a special focus on demand generation, operations and analytics. Tara currently leads the Get Accepted US and EU marketing teams to grow demand by leveraging brand demand gen strategies to create exciting buzz and trying out the latest marketing tech trends. Tara, Amelia, welcome to Revenue Rehab, your session begins now.

[1:59] Tara Pawlak:

Thank you so much.

[2:01] Amelia Taylor:

Yes, thank you for having us. I am thrilled to be here.

[2:04] Brandi Starr:   

Yes, I am so excited to have you all; and before we jump in, I like to begin with a little woosah moment that I call buzz word banishment. So I'll start with you Tara. Tell me what buzzword would you like to banish forever?

[2:26] Tara Pawlak:   

Well, I'm going to go old school here. I'm going to go with the term blast from a marketing end, specifically email blast.

[2:38] Amelia Taylor:   

That's a really good one. 

[2:41] Brandi Starr:   

Yeah, we're not in a rocket ship. So why did it always become called blast? And actually, I think I know why. Because you think about when email marketing first was a thing you did just blast your message out. It was kind of putting it in there, shooting it up and hope something sticks. 

[3:08] Tara Pawlak:   

So funny. Can we can we banish the emoji with it, the rocket ship emoji? Can that go with it too? Because those two go hand in hand. I feel like if you can't say blast without doing that [overlapping voices 03:21] share mine in a second.

[3:24] Amelia Taylor:   

If you're strategic about marketing, there's no blasting anything if you think about it. It's all segmentation and positioning and knowing your buyer and as personalized as possible. So literally marketing should be doing the opposite of blasting off you guys...

[03:42] Brandi Starr:  

Maybe we can call it email darting. See if I can make that stick. Because you want to be like right to the target, really specific, some skill behind it

[3:54] Amelia Taylor:   

Where should I dart that. I don't know if that's really where we should go with it but... The marketer over here I've not even uncovered the play on words, but make it up, toss it out there, see what people say. 

[4:09] Brandi Starr:  

I can take that. So Amelia, we will shift to you what buzzword would you like to banish?

[4:16] Amelia Taylor:   

Okay, so I slightly have two but I have to say this first one that is going along with yours, can we stop with the hashtag LFG. That thing drives me... It was LSG let's go, all of that drives me insane because that implies this whole blast off thing. It's the go go go until you're burnout. It's a let's go until it's New Year's Eve and we are going to hit people up and we don't care if we're hitting our numbers. No! That's not how you hit numbers. It's doing the work now to set yourself up so you're not having to blast people and they keep seeing LSG let's go, let's go. No! We got this. So I have to share that one just because that sits right next to the blast and the rocket ship emoji. The other one, any and all acronyms are driving me nuts. We're talking about it non-stop PLG, and then there's CLG now - community led growth, all of these LG things they drive me nuts.

[5:41] Brandi Starr:   

So we're just going to remove the letters L and G from the alphabet; no PLG no CLG, no LFG. 

[05:51 Inaudible]

[05:53] Tara Pawlak:

Starts with LFG. 

[5:57] Amelia Taylor:   

[inaudible 05:55] I'm just banishing it. We're going to start something here y'all.

[6:02] Brandi Starr:   

Well, yes, I we will banish #LFG and we will also not be blasting anyone. And I love that they are both of the same sentiment. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, let's dive into why we are here. And so marketing and sales divide has been a thing for a long time.  I can think of in presentations that I've had this image of like a boxing match, and that's kind of how marketing and sales teams have operated. And so I wanted to bring the two of you together. So Tara from the marketing side, and Amelia from the sales side, to really talk about why we feel like this divide exists. What do we feel like we're not getting from the other side? And just really kind of have a real transparent conversation about what are the actual problems. Because I think so often, we are just talking about how to make it better. But I am a firm believer that in order to improve something, you got to actually understand why the problem exists. So that's why we're here today.

[7:24] Amelia Taylor:   

And there's a lot to go over here. I'm like all about this topic, for sure. 

[07:30] Tara Pawlak:

For a cause, here we go. 

[07:33] Amelia Taylor:

Yep, here we go.

[7:34] Brandi Starr:  

Awesome. So I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. So Amelia, I'll start with you this time, what is your intention for this conversation? What's your best hope of what people will take away?

[7:56] Amelia Taylor:   

That there's an action item that you can do whether you are in leadership, whether you are an SDR that you can say, okay, I can still show up within my organization and understand what marketing is doing even if I am a new sales rep. I can still go say, hey, to marketing person XYZ, can I learn from you. So being able to put that guard down, and knowing it's okay to go approach the other side, if you will, go to the side that you don't talk about the you don't know what's going on over there and figure out what their messaging is, align it with yours and see what happens.

[8:35] Brandi Starr:

Awesome. And what about you Tara?

[8:38] Tara Pawlak:   

I love that Amelia. I would say every one and marketing and sales needs to understand that this is a constant relationship and it's all about communication. So at the end of the day, it never ends. It's hard work that you have to work on every day, every week, every month with your counterpart, even if it's all the way up to the CRO or to your SDR or it's your marketing specialist or your CMO. Everybody needs to be aligned that this is super, super important, that we're going to achieve better things together.

[9:14] Brandi Starr:  

Awesome. So let's dive right in. And I'd like to start with your opinion on why do you think there is so much friction between two teams that seemingly should be the most collaborative, and Tara, I’ll let you go first on this one.

[9:34] Tara Pawlak:

Sure. Thanks. I think it all starts with alignment around definitions and goals. So historically, it's marketing sent us all these leads, they're not quality, they don't make sense. But then on the other side marketing is saying we sent this many leads to sales and they're just sitting there, no one's taking care of them. They didn't move down the funnel and things like that. So I think it's a historic problem that's happened over time. And each organization, each person needs to really align and fix on it. What does quality mean? And you have to agree on that throughout the funnel. And if you don't have that, from the get go, and everybody doesn't have a core understanding of what's happening, if it's a sales qualified lead or our opportunity, or who owns winry, and what can we do on both sides, then you're not set up for success. And so I really think that's where it all comes down to, it's a lot in the metrics

[10:40] Brandi Starr:

I'm going to dig into that a bit. But Amelia, I'm going to let you give me your take first.

[10:45] Amelia Taylor:   

I think from the start of time of any organization, there's the lack of a liaison, for lack of a better term. Someone bridging the gap for that communication to be free flowing for sales and marketing. Sure, there's leaders within but do they know exactly how to relay the messaging that marketing is sending out and sharing. Should sales be saying the same thing? Yeah. There should be this communication, this constant, hey, this is what we're doing, these meetings set up to where it's not a oh, this could have been an email kind of meeting. No, these are action items. This is why you're saying this, because marketing is sending this out, and this is the collateral we're using right now. So where is your center of truth for your collateral? Does everyone have access to knowing what's on this one pager that marketing is sharing or the webinar leads, to play off of what Tara saying too. Say there's webinar leads and reps are like, no, God no, please don't send me those. There's gold in there sometimes, because it could be this huge opportunity. And you just landed this massive champion within, you build a relationship there and you go, and that's the whole strategy behind the sales motion. So having a strategic team too I think is so important, because they can be that liaison. It really boils down to a lot of this attribution to where did things come from? And are they qualified? Who's qualifying ahead of time? Because that's when sales will get all salesy, right and angry and marketing because marketing didn't do what they should have done by giving us things that we didn't want. But there can be people who can go ahead and have these sales ready leads that are already qualified. If they go out and they're doing this -- kind of what I'm doing with this whole evangelist thing. I'm meeting buyers where they're at, I'm pre qualifying things, this walking-talking bridge, if you will, between understanding what marketing is doing, what sales is doing, and having people go to where I'm at with it being okay, these already qualified, these are ready to rock and roll, let's do it. So marketing says go, sales says go, boom! So it is a historical problem. It totally is. But I'm such a believer, and inaction is still an action. So we can talk about it all day, in so many companies do, but without actually doing something, what are we doing? Nothing.

[13:28] Brandi Starr:  

So I think you both hit on a key point that I have always seen as a big problem. And that is the definition measurement and goals. Because talking to people and as a consultant, I have the luxury of being able to talk to marketers in different size companies, different industries, and their sales counterparts. And consistently, I see that we're not using shared definitions. So sales sees a lead as one thing and marketing sees it as something completely different. And more important than the definitions is the measurement and the goals. If we look at what marketing leaders are expecting of their team, and how they're measuring success within their team, and what their team is incented on, and then you match that up with the sales team, it's not the same. And I was having a conversation with a client over dinner, and he used a really great analogy. And that was that the marketing team was incented to market livestock. But sales was only incented to sell brown cows with white spots that had a red tag on the ear. And so if sales only cares about brown cows with white spots that have a tag on the ear, but marketing is bringing all types of livestock, it's like the fact that the expectations are set completely different. It's like, well, we're in the farm animal business. And you know, this is like such a ludicrous example, [overlapping voices 15:23] what we sell. And so I always like the preposterous examples, even though I'm sure there is somebody that sells livestock. And so it's like, why does this disconnect? Because you think about it, you have a head of marketing, you have a head of sales, no matter what those titles are. You think it's like probably two people? How do those two people not have a conversation and say, hey, what are we trying to get? Any thoughts on the measurement and the goals and how this impacts the disconnect?

[16:04] Amelia Taylor:   

I truly believe that if there is not some kind of Rev ops within your operations to where they are saying hey, you too need to talk, it's not going to happen. I think if there's not the enablement within where it's people enablement, understanding, okay, here's your tech stack, here's how you need to be enabled with your tools, it falls under sales ops and whatnot. And then any kind of operations; if there's that, that's really that foundation that's building on, brick by brick process by process with it also, tying in -- sales marketing have to talk. So we're going to create a process that's going to be in alignment with what these definitions are, what the measurements are, what the goals are and here's marketing goals, understanding what marketing goals are, what sales goals are. Knowing what each other's doing, even if reps are brand new, being able to cross train and going over and saying, maybe this is a better fit for me. There are little things like that makes so much sense why there's the disconnect. Say it's two people, you could boil it down to pride too that sales, has this in a kind of -- okay, no, we've got it. We know what we're doing and I know that probably stirs marketing up a bit, because it's like, you guys don't know what you're doing. You're literally pulling words around and you're driving us nuts. And it's so true because sales isn't filled in on what marketing is doing. Because marketing is looked at as not sales. You're not taking the action to go and do, you're gathering these inbound leads. No, that's not all they're doing. There's so much more to marketing than that. And I'm dabbling in it a bit right now. And figuring out, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never done marketing before. But there is so much more to marketing than just inbound leads. I mean, it is a whole other world. And so to sales too, if it's strategic and done without the blast, [overlapping voices 18:16] with an email, you're blasted from us, we're getting you. But it's going to go to your spam because we didn't do anything right. 

[18:28] Tara Pawlak:

You didn't set it up for it at all.

[18:29] Amelia Taylor:  

Yeah, because there's no operations [overlapping voices 18:31]. So we are building on a foundation, even if you're in this Series C, let's say like, you've got things really moving, flowing, you've got the financial set, there's so many companies that don't have any process in place that let those two even talk. Because who's taking initiative, somebody's got to take initiative, and just set something up. And it goes back to inaction is still an action. Set something up for your team, for you, everybody is more successful.

[19:07] Tara Pawlak:   

I think it comes down to knowing who owns what numbers and how we help each other. So like marketing absolutely should own a revenue number, and everyone in sales should know what that is. And when you report out on the numbers each week and each month, it should indicate okay, marketing drove 50% of what we should have this month. Okay, what happened? Dig into those. But sales should be part of that conversation. And then the same thing on the sales end so marketing can hear where sales is accelerating, where they're like having trouble and really align like you're saying I'm really on the action items after that. So for example, for an inbound lead, depending on what we have, we use high intent that we know our sales team takes more care of, I'd say it like that. They will do more outreaches and phone numbers, they'll work much harder to convert that for us because people are raising their hand to talk to us for a demo request versus we do have like a free account motion, [inaudible 20:12]. But marketing, we know exactly what those are. We know the actions that sales is taking off of every single one of those. And until you have that outlined at every level, there's so much disconnect. And that's why marketers are like, oh well, we just did this event, or we just did that. So we align on goals, at least that get accepted at every single thing. We will say, we're going to this event. Yes, there's a lot of brand awareness, there's a lot of marketing work that's done from a project management standpoint, but we believe these are the sales goals. We're going to create this many opportunities, this many deals, this is what we'll close, present that to sales, we'll go back and forth, until we get that alignment, and then we bring in the rest of our teams. So everybody should have a deep understanding of the definitions, expectations and outcomes, and then we'll review where we're really doing a great job and where we're not.

[21:11] Amelia Taylor:   

Like what works, what doesn't and I think with salespeople, when they are out there having the conversations, hey, this is what's clicking. This is the feedback, where are feedback loops coming from, which are so important. These feedback loops of this is what people are saying and they did not resonate well with this ad that they saw. They were like this looks so pitchy/salesy, this is in your face, it's LFG, we're blasting this to you, you're going to see it everywhere. And all of that is, okay, let’s feed that back into marketing, into their ears because they need to know but they don't know. Everybody doesn't know what they don't know. So when you're in the dark on what the other side, I keep referring to it like that, just because it is, there is the divide. But the other side of the revenue driving part of the business is doing just as sales is doing, it's both revenue driven. What they're doing, is telling them, hey, this is what the industry is saying, this is where the markets going. And from being on the front lines, talking to people all day, or being in communities where you're hearing this or seeing this, I think that's where a strategic team really comes in. Because they're not just on the phones, hearing feedback, or they're not just emailing and whatnot and getting no's. It's the why, asking the right questions digging into what is it as to why this isn't something that's going to be working for you. Because what we're seeing in the industry is this,. Having an industry knowledge is so important, feeding that back to marketing, vice versa. Marketing sharing, hey, this is what worked great. So sales people can go and do what works with the messaging the marketing created.

[23:06] Brandi Starr:   

So you guys are hitting on two key points, which is around the measurement and the communication. And I want to dig back into something you said on measurement, before we shift into talking more about the communication. So Tara, you had mentioned that we have to have clear ownership of who owns what numbers and talking about marketing, owning this percentage of revenue, etc. And I have seen that number actually create more friction. So I do agree that there should be numbers that marketing is accountable to and those should tie to revenue. But it seems to create a little bit of a battle of what did marketing originate? I believe what gets measured gets done and so there are places where marketing could be supporting sales in more of a sales enablement capacity. But that's not happening because marketing has to focus on this generated number. And so in some cases, this battle for I talked to them first, so it's sales generated versus all you did was send one email that's not marketing. It's almost like this ownership of revenue becomes a friction point. So even though marketing should have accountability, more than just lead generation, it seems like when it is that originated number, that becomes part of the problem. And so I want to hear your thoughts on that a bit.

[24:48] Amelia Taylor:   

Yes, so true. Tara, take it away. I'll follow behind.

[24:52] Tara Pawlak:  

I've been in that position. I think all of us marketers and sales can appreciate that. I think for me, having teams understand that we have to work together and yes, this is what we're shooting for but at the end of the day, you're looking for that revenue number that we contribute together, and always analyzing it. So last year, maybe marketing contributed 50% of the total ARR for that business. And maybe this year, it looks different, and being truthful and honest to where you're actually at. And if people understand that, what are we trying to do, is make customers happy, have good experiences, sell whatever your software business or whatever services is that you're actually in this whole thing together. And having the right people believe in that. At the end of the day, you're always going to have some people that won't, that absolutely will say nope, I did that. It's mine, they didn't help. And I think really relaying at like a sea level, that that's really not what anyone is looking at by saying this is sales and this is marketing. We're trying to figure out the best way to work together and to allocate resources and projects and strategic growth levers across both functions of where to double down on, where to focus on. We're not looking to like have a oh okay, this debate of sales actually did this and marketing did this. That actually comes in my experience from an individual, you're not being in a safe environment to just be honest and transparent to like, what's actually working for the business. The C-suite just cares about, like efficiency, or growth or profitability, or whatever, and they're really just looking at the truth. And usually it doesn't come down to the individual. They're creating that kind of mantra and mindset, in my experience anyways.

[26:56] Amelia Taylor:

That's so true. And there's a lot of fearful salespeople out there, or people who have that pride ego gets in the way of my mind, or I can't lose this. I'm going to fight my battle that is wasting my time, and everyone else's time, by gathering these people who nobody wants to talk about. It could be going and getting another opportunity, that could be even better, without wasting your time on these nonsense conversations of mine, mine, mine, I drove this, I had a texting conversation six months ago with them. I saw the ownership within sales first, whatever the rules of engagement are. Define the rules of engagement too if it's where there's salespeople who are having friction, or if there's marketing and sales friction to where marketing saying, okay, we drove this number and this is the percentage of inbound that actually closed. This was PLG, that it came in through what we drove, leading to the website, they signed up on their own. And this was, great you had a texting conversation. Where's that noted? So salespeople are the worst admins ever. That is why companies like Dooley and scratchpad exists, because salespeople are the worst at doing any kind of admin work. So with that said, of course, that drives marketing insane too, because there's different personalities, there's more of a process on marketing side, I would hope in a lot of organizations. Is every organization perfect? Absolutely not. Are there ways to improve on both ends? Yes. But if there is not any kind of attributable number or understanding, or lead source of knowing within your source of truth, wherever your CRM is, whatever you use, -- you should have a CRM people, but whatever your source of truth is, if there's no lead source saying this came in from this, or if you're not keeping up with your notes, that's on you. Don't fight some battle where you didn't do the work and do it well. And that's strategy. It literally boils down to strategy and you brought up strategic growth. And I think that's so important of having individuals who see this divide, and leaders who know how to lead and lead well, and understand how to coach the people who are seeing this and seeing this divide and saying, okay, you guys are getting it. Well, let's put you on the strategic team and let's test and then iterate if it's not working or let's nix it if it doesn't work at all. Be that liaison a little bit between sales and marketing. Have some people join in on marketing calls to be in that know, and more so if their social selling and stuff too, their right there. They're reading in Slack groups and whatever in different communities what people are saying. Gather that info, share it both ways. You can be an SDR and still do that. I did that at one of my first STR gigs, because I'm like, whoa, no, no, none of this is working. I would jump in marketing meetings without them inviting me ever. It drove me insane. I'm a little salesperson, so I'm like, hey guys, so I have an idea. And they would be like, hey Amelia, what's up? And I'd be like, so just did you all see this email that went out from Vinyard? they did amazing.  And I was like, oh my gosh, they did this, this this. And it was a cool thing. It was just where they did something with their partners to where it was uplifting them at the same time. And I'm like, why are we not doing that? Because that's a really great look. And they're like, oh no, we could probably implement something like that. It didn't happen, because I was on the sales side, but I still took initiative. I'm not saying everyone… do this don't. 

[30:57] Brandi Starr:

I was going to say it. Do not encourage...

[31:00] Tara Pawlak:

Do not show up to marketing meetings un-announced.

[31:06] Amelia Taylor:

In my LinkedIn what you read, I do things in a strategic yet rebellious way. Because if I do see something as this big gap, which there was a massive gap, no one was there filling it, I eventually started creating my own role within this organization to where I could have the conversations with sales and marketing. And there was a little bit more of alignment. And so when you take a chance, don't go do that. I'm still saying don't go jump in marketing meetings, they're not going to like you ever promise, they will forever butcher your name. But if you go talk to leaders within, you do not feel that your sales leadership is doing what they should be doing to help bridge this gap. Go have a one on one with someone in marketing, and just say, hey, can we chat about this? Because I don't get it? I think there's a better way maybe, you tell me. I don't know what I don't know. 

[32:07] Brandi Starr:

And this really dives into what I wanted to talk about around communication. Because when we say these things, it sounds so simple. Pick up the phone, walk over to a desk, then the slack chat, but it doesn't happen. And I think there is this, not my monkeys, not my circus kind of mentality of yeah, it's a problem but why should I be the one that's responsible for fixing it. Or if I open this door, then I become responsible for this initiative. And I've already got enough shit to do. And so especially so if you think about, most of our listeners are going to be heads of marketing. And I've even heard this from CMOS, it just isn't worth my battle, I got enough battles to fight. And so really, at all levels, it seems like everyone is aware of the problem. They're also clearly aware that communication feedback loops, all of the things that you both have been talking about, are the way to solve that. Yet, it's still not happening. And Tara, I'll start with you like, what's your takeaway of why is that happening? Why can we not get somebody to take the initiative to break down that barrier, and force communication?

[33:24] Tara Pawlak:

I don't think everybody would do it. I think you need to find the right people that are your advocates. So I'm the first marketer to admit, I am not on the front line. I am not the person setting up demo requests. I am not the one that's emailing back and forth with prospects, and every marketer should know that and they should admit it. And they need to say that to sales. That their feedback is so crucial to us. Because a marketer's worst nightmare is to spend months and months on a project, initiative, content, collateral events, and then the sales team think it's a big flop. And if you make that error, you need to own it, and say we had high hopes for this and it didn't work out. You need to build that trust. So I think a really good way for all marketers listening is you go to the sales team, you find your people, you find the sales reps, SDR, AE, sales manager, head of sales that will be brutally honest, and give you the right feedback. In a collective group, it never works. If you go into a sales meeting, a marketer shows up in a sales meeting, it's going to be awkward. They're not all going to give you the truth and the transparency. So I really think that in each organization, you have to have those people that will just tell you the truth. Be honest. It's an open, and it needs to be both on the marketing end and the sales end. And that's where the ownership can take over and you can start a SWAT team or you can start a strategic group or some feedback group. You cannot do it as a whole as both teams combined, because it just won't work.

[35:19] Amelia Taylor:  

Sales personalities don't do well in groups, because everyone at high D, everyone's like, well, I have an idea and I know the way and my way is the highway, and this is the highway we're taking. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, seven worst words do you can use in any businesses, we have always done it this way. So let's mix that all together because there's other ways to do things to bridge this gap. This has been just I don't know, innate maybe, or just literally feeling it, sensing it, knowing it to where I have always just seen this gap. In any organization, I've been a part of being within even RevOps, selling RevOps Services, to preaching about process and trying to build one internally at the same time. And I'm like, am I lying to everyone? Like beating my head against the wall, some days, and then there's also the product selling and I thought, okay, I'm best with people and understanding where they're at. And they can put their guard down with me as they would if a marketing person came to them, and they could talk freely to them. Sales has this, oh my gosh, you're salesperson, I'm not going to talk to you and tell you exactly where we're at because I don't want [inaudible 36:38], we're all a bit clueless on your line of business. All of you founders, y'all are still a little clueless. I think y'all are great, but a lot are clueless. And there's either luck on their side, money on their side, or good people underneath them, or next to them who are helping run the ship. You've got to have good people. Like you said earlier Tara, I mean, it is about the people, but there will be the people who are going to challenge things in certain ways that are going to make it challenging within. But who is going to say, hey, this isn't that quote, whatever it is, if it doesn't matter in five -- will it matter in five years, whatever that quote is about, don't spend five minutes. I don't know what it is. But ya'll know what it is. 

[37:20] Brandi Starr:   

If it won't matter in five years, don't spend more than five minutes.

[37:24] Amelia Taylor:

Exactly. Yeah, totally.

[37:27] Brandi Starr:

So talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so one of the things that's always important to me, is that we give our listeners something around, where do they go from here. And so, in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework, but here at Revenue Rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. And so just really quickly, I'd love to hear from each of you. What is one action item that people can take in order to help to close the marketing and sales divide. And Amelia, I'll let you lead quickly, and then Tara will let you follow up.

[38:14] Amelia Taylor:

Big thing is, I would challenge both whoever's leading on the sales side and on the marketing side; whoever those two people are find those two leaders, for those two leaders to find at least two people on either side who are big advocates of bridging this gap, who are out there in the trenches doing things and on the front lines, maybe it's not marketing, totally on the front lines, but they're driving a lot of inbound, a lot of outbound, a lot of seeing all that. So grabbing those two people, having then a biweekly/weekly sync of this is what we're seeing in what we're doing. You form some kind of SWAT team, some kind of strategic team, and just start from there. If it doesn't work, switch it out, see what happens, but just start somewhere and grab a few key players that are going to help.

[39:04] Brandi Starr:

Awesome. So schedule a SWAT team is our first action item and Tara, what about you?

[39:10] Tara Pawlak:

I would, each month or quarter what makes sense for your business, set up a retrospective with teams going in of what went well, and come up with core themes between marketing and sales. What went well for inbound? What went well for conversion? Get everyone's thoughts out there on the table and figure out what do we want to continue to do? What should we stop doing? And then new ideas. To have everybody really come in to think that we're one team and your voice matters at every single level; it has to be a very like controlled retrospective and like planned out and have everybody come in with their own thoughts to have a really good discussion. And one of the best ways to do this is have a moderator that is not in sales and marketing. You pull somebody else from a different team [overlapping voices 40:04] more success, yes, exactly. And it's just the point that everybody needs to be aligned no matter what level you're on both teams, and getting all of those ideas out on the table and their thoughts and collecting it. And then you bring a lot of that feedback to more of a strategic team to think through because at that point, that strategic team should be analyzing it anyways, and coming up with those growth levers, and what the priorities are. But you really want that feedback from the boots on the ground and the people interacting every single day and executing from a tactical standpoint.

[40:41] Brandi Starr:  

Awesome. I love that. So both of our takeaways really are around getting time with those people, having a sit down. And I love the idea of having a moderator that is not within the organization, or within the marketing and sales. I know as a consultant, a lot of times that's what we're brought in to do is just to facilitate some of these discussions and bring people...

[41:04] Amelia Taylor:

No talking right now. 

[41:07] Brandi Starr:

I'm quick to be like parking lot. But thank you both so much. I have enjoyed our discussion today, but that's our time for today. And for everyone listening, Tara does have a podcast, The Sales Ladder Podcast. So we will be linking to that in the show notes. And for content creation for guests, there is a free trial. So that whole PLG motion for regie.ai and we will make sure to put that link in the show notes as well. Thank you both so much for joining me today. 

[41:49] Tara and Amelia:

Thank you so much.

[41:50] Amelia Taylor:

Thanks you guys.

[41:52] Brandi Starr:

Awesome! And for everyone listening. I hope that you have enjoyed my conversation with Tara and Amelia. I can't believe we're at the end. We'll see you next time.

[42:05] Outro: 

You've been listening to Revenue Rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. Join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenuerehab.live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at Revenue Rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.