Key Takeaways
- Focus on defining clear roles, aligning on a shared vision, invest in the right tooling, and always communicate
- Organizations that prioritize alignment with marketing are nearly 3x more likely to exceed new customer acquisition targets.
- By 2026, 65% of B2B organizations will transition from intuition-based to data-driven decision-making, using conversational intelligence and AI technology
In the show Ted Lasso, Richmond Football Club fans adopted the phrase “It’s the hope that kills you” – of course, Ted countered this with his intrepid “I believe in belief.”
In the GTM world, it’s the silos that kill successful execution. Disconnects between functions create inefficiency and lost time, low employee morale, and ultimately, reduced impact to the bottom line.
Companies that stay ahead of the competition are the ones that can successfully translate strategy into execution, and break down these silos with a connected GTM. To achieve this, a strong Marketing – Sales Enablement partnership is absolutely essential.
But many teams struggle with understanding this relationship – what are the right handoffs, how to stay aligned as initiatives roll out, and how to get the right insights to optimize future efforts.
Here are a few tips for creating a successful Marketing and Sales Enablement Partnership:
Tip #1: Define Clear Roles
Sometimes people ask “Where does Marketing stop and Sales Enablement begin?” Instead of thinking about teams starting and stopping, which can lead to disconnects, focus on establishing clear roles that work in concert.
Typically, Marketing drives GTM strategies, campaigns, and content creation – the “source code”, including messaging and positioning, sales assets, and competitive intelligence. These GTM strategies and initiatives are ideally aligned with growing a brand, building pipeline, and closing revenue. They work closely with the Sales Enablement teams to execute and drive consistent execution through sales plays and other resources.
On the other hand, Sales Enablement owns taking the GTM Strategies and coordinating between Marketing, RevOps, and Sales on initiative prioritization and optimization for landing with sales. This includes alignment on what behaviors need to change to drive business outcomes. After aligning on the prioritization, enablement owns the readiness strategies to equip, train, and coach sellers on these strategies and initiatives. They will be the experts in GTM change management and driving initiatives by creating sales plays for sellers, ensuring sales reps can easily find and utilize GTM resources, and helping sales managers coach their teams effectively. It’s proven that the more mature enablement is holistic–across training, coaching, content, guidance, and engagement–the greater the average rep quota attainment and win rates organizations experience.
Tip #2: Create a Shared Vision of Success
If you don’t know where you’re going, you likely won’t get there. Collaborate to define common goals and key metrics for success. Whether it’s training sales on an upcoming competitive initiative or enhancing their ability to deliver key differentiators, mutual clarity upfront prevents disjointed execution.
This may require some tradeoffs, but getting the clarity upfront will save you pain down the road. And then identify what KPIs, especially with the help of scorecards, will determine successful readiness and indicate a likelihood of achieving business outcomes, such as improved win rate or pipeline generation.
Tip #3: Invest in Unified Tools
It’s no surprise that by 2026, 65% of B2B organizations will transition from intuition-based to data-driven decision-making, using conversational intelligence and AI technology that unites workflow, data, and analytics.
Nothing breaks GTM effectiveness more than disconnected tools and data systems. Adopting a shared platform for content and initiative management, training and coaching, and buyer engagement can streamline operations, generate more actionable insights, and ensure your sales team has what they need when they need it.
Tip #4: Ongoing Communication
The job isn’t “done” when the initiative is launched or the content is made available. It’s important to establish a regular communication cadence with Marketing and Sales Enablement to assess progress, gather feedback, and plan future strategies. While many organizations use handoff meetings, we have created the concept of a “Bridge Meeting” to make sure teams know that ongoing partnership is needed.
In conclusion, building an effective Marketing and Sales Enablement partnership can be difficult, and will take some time to get it right.
As Ted Lasso said, “Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.” But if you establish clear roles & responsibilities, define a shared vision of success, and embrace the right tools and regular communication, you can successfully build a connected team and a winning GTM.
