Why A Strong Marketing Strategy Requires Alignment With Sales, ‘Realistic Goal Setting’

‘It’s all about starting to create this dynamic [where they] recognize that they’re two parts of a revenue team,’ says Jade Surrette, president of agency services at The Channel Company.

Effective marketing to technology buyers in 2024 requires close collaboration between the marketing and sales teams, which often may entail rethinking the approach for how the two sides engage with each other, according to marketing expert Jade Surrette.

A strong strategy that addresses the needs of both marketing and sales “comes down to laying the right foundation,” said Surrette, president of agency services at The Channel Company, during a session Tuesday at the 2024 XChange Best of Breed Conference. The conference was hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company and held this week in Atlanta.

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“It’s all about starting to create this dynamic between the organizations,” Surrette said. “It’s the acknowledgement that marketing does have purpose. Sales does have certain responsibilities. But they’ve got to work together, and they’ve got to work in tandem—in a way that they also have to recognize that they’re two parts of a revenue team.”

Ultimately, if an organization gets that right, “this type of alignment starts to then yield significant revenue and business growth,” she told an audience of top solution provider executives during the conference Tuesday.

In addition to treating sales and marketing as parts of a unified revenue team with shared goals, it’s crucial to develop common objectives and KPIs that align both teams, Surrette said.

Joint planning between marketing and sales—with a focus on “realistic goal setting” across the teams—is also essential, she said. Effective growth can be greatly enabled by “joint account planning on a regular basis, and then driving those programs together from an execution perspective,” Surrette said.

For most solution providers, putting a focus on aligning sales and marketing is a solid approach, according to Jason Caparoso, co-founder, president and CTO of New York-based BlackHawk Data.

The ideal outcome is “to have sales and marketing speak to each other and realize, ‘We’re all on the same team here,’” Caparoso said.

Among other things, this alignment is crucial for bringing a cohesive message to customers, he said.

“You can’t go off and market one thing and then have the sales team tell them something completely different,” Caparoso said. For many solution providers, “I think that happens all too often.”

In terms of the marketing strategy itself, placing an emphasis on thought leadership is a solid approach given that this is what many technology buyers are looking for today, Surrette said.

“Many customers, especially in the tech space, want to see thought leadership. They want to see expertise,” she said. “They want to understand that you are that trusted adviser that they can come to.”

Ultimately, there’s no question that marketing is among the trickiest challenges that solution providers continue to face, Caparoso said.

“It is one of those things where it’s a puzzle what resonates with one person and doesn’t with another,” he said. “I wish it was as easy as technology, to tell you the truth.”