Marketing 911
Marketing 911, is the podcast where we tackle the toughest marketing challenges at the executive level.
Whether you're navigating complex strategies, trying to reach your target audience, or facing shifting market dynamics, we're here to provide you with actionable solutions.
From digital transformation to customer retention, if it's a marketing crisis, we're here to help you solve it—before it turns into a full-blown emergency.
Marketing 911
Bridging the Gap: Sales and Marketing Alignment
Gone are the days when marketing could toss leads over the wall to sales and call it a day. True organizational alignment—where sales, marketing, product, and customer experience teams share vision, goals, and KPIs—has become the critical foundation for go-to-market success.
In this candid conversation with Christie Styer, founder of the boutique go-to-market agency Athena, we explore how the most successful companies are breaking down silos and creating seamless customer journeys. Drawing from her experience leading global teams at Cisco responsible for $700 million in revenue, Christy shares both painful lessons and breakthrough strategies that transformed organizational dysfunction into powerful growth engines.
We tackle the evolution of demand generation from a marketing-owned function to a true partnership between sales and marketing teams. The old finger-pointing—"these leads are terrible" versus "they never follow up"—is giving way to shared accountability and common metrics. But this alignment doesn't happen by accident. It requires treating internal stakeholders as "customers," understanding what matters to them, and demonstrating how your initiatives support their goals.
Perhaps the most revealing moment comes when we discuss the infamous "marketing closet"—that space in every sales office stuffed with beautifully branded materials that salespeople never use. This stark reality check forces marketers to ask the essential question: are we creating what sales actually needs to succeed with customers?
Data integrity emerges as the final frontier in organizational alignment. Without a single source of truth, teams waste precious time arguing about whose reports are correct rather than solving business problems. As AI increasingly influences our data analysis, we must also grapple with when to trust and when to question these new insights.
Ready to break down silos in your organization? Listen now and discover practical strategies to align your teams, enhance customer experience, and drive sustainable growth.
Hello everybody, this is Brian Backstrand from Marketing 911, and we are on the last of what is four podcasts.
Speaker 2:We are here in Austin, texas, with Marketverse. It's been a great experience. We've been able to meet some wonderful people, but you know what we did?
Speaker 1:We saved the Steyer, who is a go-to-market executive who just opened her own boutique agency, Athena, two weeks ago. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Yep, that's right.
Speaker 1:What are you focusing on?
Speaker 3:So we're focusing on go-to-market strategic initiatives, providing customers with fractional resources as well as customer experience.
Speaker 2:you name it Everything go-to-market, customer, end-to-end experience and I personally think this is fantastic timing for you because the importance of having specialists come in who know the market. You're a go-to-market executive. You've worked at some of the biggest brands in the world and you're able to come in and help them not have a ramp-up period, to immediately step in, provide that expertise when they need it and apply it in a very focused manner. I got to believe that's been a great opportunity there.
Speaker 3:It's been really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the things that we've talked about before on these podcasts but we wanted to talk about today is there's a lot to go to market. Yeah, we wanted to talk about today is there's a lot to go to market? Yep, however, none of it works unless the organizations are aligned, on the same page, have the same KPIs, et cetera. So you've worked at one of the biggest brands on the globe, as well as small companies.
Speaker 3:Tell us about that the impact of having that alignment and the impact of not having it? Yeah, good question. So obviously I think not having it. We all have experienced that right. It becomes dysfunctional, it's disconnected, your customer experience is confusing, it doesn't typically create the outcome or the growth that you expect from an organization.
Speaker 2:And let's be clear so that our audience knows when we talk about organizations, we're talking about sales marketing, product marketing, those types of things, right?
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah. So then we all kind of scratch our heads and say, why isn't it working? And it's because it's disjointed. The customer doesn't understand. It's not simple, it may be complex. So when you can get in a room and have a shared vision or shared KPI, then you're much more likely to be kind of rowing that boat in the same direction. And it's simple yet complex, right, it's difficult to get people aligned. It's difficult to get people to buy in, especially when people have their own P&Ls. It doesn't always, it's not always consistent for them. And so, being able to take that, really look at your internal stakeholders as kind of your internal customers, if you will, and what do they need to be successful? How do you align to that? How do you show them why it matters to align with yours? And then have that cohesive approach. You see a much better kind of flywheel, if you will, of growth with your customers. And then it makes it so much easier to get brand ambassadors, whether you do that from an employee standpoint or from a customer standpoint.
Speaker 3:And, by default, almost marketing has become the one that's pushing hardest to get this alignment, exactly, exactly, seeing a trend of marketing becoming more closely aligned with the sales organization, even from a reporting structure. You're starting to see a customer experience practice either being stood up on their own and or incorporated into the sales organization, so you have that tighter alignment just from an organization reporting perspective.
Speaker 2:And I'm seeing it with so many of the clients I'm working with demand generation. The demand generation it's almost like okay, who owns demand. Now sales and marketing are owning that process. It's no longer a pure marketing demand generation. The demand generation it's almost like okay, who owns demand. Now sales and marketing are owning that process. It's no longer a pure marketing demand gen. In the past it's like okay, marketing generates the demand, hands it over to sales, sales then takes it. And there was always that finger point right, oh no, it's terrible leads. Oh no, they don't follow up. And now you see that demand generation function falling under almost a joint combined effort because it's become so much more prominent beyond branding, beyond advertising. It's demand gen would that.
Speaker 3:Would you agree with that percent? I think that line has blurred because of all the different platforms. Just how, um, just our social has evolved. Absolutely, when I, when I carried a bag, it was so easy to say I can't build my pipeline because these leads are stale, and then marketing is like well, what are you talking about? This is what we have, these are the best tools we have today. Those tools have evolved and again, that partnership, I think, has elevated the effectiveness and it's created a better what's the word? Kind of feedback that they can actually see. Okay, it's created a better what's the word? Kind of feedback.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:That they can actually see. Okay, it's not sales discounting our leads. They truly aren't aligned with our personas, what we're selling, our product offering, and so I think you start to see more engineering and product management coming into play.
Speaker 2:Oh, I like that Because, Brian, on a previous episode I've heard you talk with some of our guests about that alignment. It was with John Mellon, where when sales sits down with marketing and marketing sits down with sales and they get to watch how the other one works, suddenly it's like that aha moment. They're like, oh, and then you just mentioned the one that really the product engineers need to be brought in. It moves them closer to the customer, doesn't it? It moves them closer to the customer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and you build empathy right. You understand what that day-to-day looks like, and so you have a better understanding of the obstacles and how you can help. Again, if you have a combined, or at least shared, kpi, then you're more willing to be able to loop the needle because you understand and you're bought into that.
Speaker 1:And so how have you been able to sit down with sales?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, the head of America's global region.
Speaker 2:Or the local CEO. That's a founder-led organization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either one and convince them that working together is a better path.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a lot of face-to-face. So, honestly, covid kind of limited some of that and it stunted all of us, right? Because?
Speaker 3:you didn't have that, but it is really sitting down, building trust in a relationship and an understanding of what's important to them. Again, it goes back to, in some ways, that's your internal customer, your internal stakeholder. What matters to them should matter to you. So how do you understand that, how do you get them to articulate that and then how do you share that, Because it becomes a partnership right. And being able to do that what I found with the team that I led at Cisco most recently, we had a global team responsible for driving about $700 million of revenue in terms of adoption and retention and then obviously, setting that up for renewal, and it was a newer platform.
Speaker 3:In some cases with a large company, you see that customer may not even know. So we had contactability issues. We had customers that didn't even once we found the right contact, didn't even know they had it, they had eligibility to this particular platform. So what do you do? You have to go work with sales because they own that relationship. So going back to them, educating them on here's where my role will support you and help you long-term retire quota. But I need your help. I need an introduction to the right contact. They don't even know they have it. So we need to make sure we're selling them on the value and making sure that we don't dilute whatever else you have in the works with this customer and then let us show you how we can progress that customer through the adoption life cycle.
Speaker 1:so it's constant communication, constant bringing them with their customer through that journey you were in sales, I was richard, was it is yeah I ended up hiring marketing people for trying to find those who had a sales background for that exact reason, because I found it to be incredibly difficult to run a global field team to say to a marketing manager in France, you need to go meet with the head of sales and sell them on the internet.
Speaker 3:They get scared yeah 100%.
Speaker 1:But if they have that sales background then they understand the pain that sales is going through.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, my story was way back. We can go way back to the Novell days. Anybody listening that they have Give me a shout out. Hooray, I'm the head of marketing for my product $100 million revenue. We've been pumping out the marketing content and I fly to the New York office and hey, I'm here to talk about my product and I'm meeting with the head of sales there in the New York office.
Speaker 2:He says, come with me and he walks over to a closet, opens the closet and it is floor to ceiling of marketing content that my team and every other marketing team at the company has been pumping out back when it was paper and he's like yeah, yeah, this is your stuff, we can't use it right, because it didn't fit into how sales was actually interacting with the customer. And that was my aha moment as a marketer at the time that I needed to align so much more closely with sales because they're the touch point with the customer, and I was so removed. I had my checkbox. Yeah, I made my flyer and it fit all the branding and messaging. Yeah, it didn't resonate with the salesperson like, I can't use this and maybe they could help maybe, but no, they didn't use it.
Speaker 2:And if they don't use it, doesn't matter. The reason you got to get it to be that partnership where they say this is what I need and I'm like okay, and here's what I mean. I'm Christy, I love what you said is that you sit down with them and say here's what I need from you for me to be successful, to help you exactly, and it goes back to engineering same thing.
Speaker 3:So engineers want to make a better mousetrap, right? Yeah but they can't do it without direct customer feedback. So how do you, along that adoption journey, build advocates that can give engineering? And we were fortunate enough that we designed the organization to sit very closely to our product and engineering teams so we could give them constant feedback in iteration.
Speaker 2:You say the word sit. Was that physically or just or structure?
Speaker 3:I wish sitting. We were all still so remote.
Speaker 2:I know and the remote has kind of interfered with that Absolutely. You know, executives are like, hey, we can do better if we all come together, which is true, yeah, but very few of us are actually sitting with the cross functional teams.
Speaker 1:That would help if we were all in close proximity so one of the pushbacks that I've seen is sales says alright, I'm on board, let's have joint KPIs, but their mindset is you get me the lead. That creates pipeline.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:And then I'll take the KPI to close it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we all know, it's more than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have you had that? Have you been able to bridge that gap where we say, well, we're going to jointly agree on the pipeline and be held accountable?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's always a challenge, right? Because it's a mind shift and it depends on how the organization is structured. It also depends, I think, the type of product and services. So hardware is very different than the software cycle, right? So I always advocate for some sort of retention as part of compensation Because, let's be honest, salespeople are selling and they are coin operated and they will the good ones work on their conflict. That's what their incentives do.
Speaker 3:So if we want that behavior to be collaborative and care after they sell it, how do you then create that compensation model? And then the same is true, for if you're not getting the leads and clearly the lead source isn't working, then how do you pivot and where do you get that information? Because it can't come from one salesperson or two salesperson people. It has to be a trend. How do you figure that out quickly? And that comes with your sales ops team. So getting that sales ops team involved early on to say we're going to monitor this and we're going to feel fast. If we see that this lead source isn't working, we all agree we can pull the plug and start over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think a great point sales ops and marketing ops, and more and more companies are going to this. You need one source of truth. If we all went back two, three years, it would be okay. Sales saying this is what my data says and marketing says, no, this is what our report says. And then you sit in the room arguing about the data. You need to get past that and say, hey, this is the only report that we're going to discuss, right?
Speaker 3:And that's that shared KPI. Because what we found, we had our own set of KPIs. It didn't necessarily line up with sales, so we created our own disconnect. And so how do we make sure we have some at a high level, a shared objective, and how do we? Obviously you're going to have separate, more specific kpis for samples. It's not going to be the same for marketing or cx, but you've got to have at least a common thread yeah, um great point.
Speaker 1:So in marketing 9-1-1, we always talk about what is the big issue or the nine alarm fire that you either live through and learn to deal with or worry about in this organizational alignment, what is your experience?
Speaker 3:I think the data is big, right, having proper data, single source of truth for your customer, for your customer. The bigger the company, the more you know channels, you have that complexity, just exponentially. So how do you, how do you solve for that? That's a big challenge. And how do you? Because if you're using data to make decisions and that data is erroneous, decisions are going to be erroneous. So how do you support data usage and that integrity? So that has been the biggest challenge.
Speaker 3:I mean I lived and breathed that. A big company. You have more data than you can know what to do with from you know 40 years, right, how do you rationalize that? So that is always a concern, like being curious and almost questioning that data, not to the point where at some point, you've got to analyze it and put a stake in the ground and move forward Again, being able to test that and then reiterate as quickly as possible. But that's kind of the biggest of what I've seen in the last you know, 10 years of my career is using. We're so data driven and we talked about this earlier in Marketverse in this conference is the data with AI. Where do we have to stop and question that data and where what's the ethical component of that, and I think that's something we're all trying to figure out right now.
Speaker 1:Great point to end with. Absolutely so, richard. This has been a wonderful.
Speaker 2:It has been and I really enjoyed this conversation. So we've been listening to Christy. She's talked to us about the market and the alignment, which I have really enjoyed because that's such a critical component. You've been listening to Marketing 911. We've been here in Austin, texas, at Marketverse. I want to thank our guest and Brian for being here. We hope that you have found this interesting and inspiring. I know that I have and so we thank you for listening. Take care Bye-bye.
