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Meet The Team
How to Become the Sales Team’s Best Friend: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with Sales
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Meet The Team
Led by Niti Agrawal, Stage 4 Solutions comprises a highly experienced team of senior-level product marketing
consultants. Each consultant brings a unique blend of strategic and tactical know-how earned through decades
of experience in the technology sector.
Kathryn Houghton recently joined the team to lead strategy and marketing efforts for emerging technology leaders.
Kathryn brings over 19 years of product strategy, management and marketing experience. At Microsoft, she directed
product planning and strategy for MSN TV, marketed Internet Explorer, and launched Windows 98. Previously, she
held leadership roles at Quantum and HP. Kathryn holds a BA in Economics from Stanford University and an MBA in
Marketing and Finance from the University of Chicago.
To effectively manage our growth and continue to provide value to clients like you, we have recently expanded
our team by hiring Suzy McKee as our first marketing director. Suzy has 20 years of experience in marketing,
focusing the last five years on professional services leaders including the research and consulting division of
WetFeet Inc. Suzy holds a BA in Journalism from San Diego State University and a Certificate in Marketing from
UC Santa Cruz.
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How to Become the Sales Team’s Best Friend: Strategies for Effective
Collaboration with Sales
Product marketing is a critical function for any high technology company. Yet this role
is broad and diverse with conflicting objectives and intense time pressures. With responsibilities spanning from
product and market strategy definition, to managing new product launches and supporting sales with quarterly
sales targets, it can be a challenge for a product marketing team to meet all its goals. One high leverage
relationship that will further many product marketing objectives is effective collaboration with the sales team.
Stage 4 Solutions has worked with clients to develop linkages, processes and relationships that
leverage the inherent dependency between product marketing and sales for incredible results. Following are three
steps to build that collaboration.
Step 1. Develop Joint Objectives
A good starting point is to understand how the goals of each organization differ. While product marketing
is expected to have a wide and comprehensive view of the market and customer needs, sales is focused on more
immediate, specific sales targets. Since sales teams are rewarded solely based on meeting monthly or quarterly
quotas, their focus is on the prospects in their current pipeline.
Hold quarterly joint planning meetings - These joint product marketing and sales meetings should focus on
understanding each group’s objectives and defining joint tasks and goals. A typical agenda would cover what
each group needs from the other for the upcoming quarter. Follow up with joint monthly meetings to keep both
teams on track. Sales needs from product marketing include things such as market ready product, effective
positioning, competitive analysis, and sales tools. Product marketing needs from sales include things such
as customer feedback, access to customers, field level competitive analysis, feedback on what is working,
and what is missing to win sales.
Step 2. Develop Sales "Intimacy": Foster a Field-level Understanding of Sales
Often a product marketing team becomes insulated to internal discussion, working on high-level strategies or
analyzing market intelligence and secondary research. To balance high level views with real world insight,
product marketing needs to develop a first-hand knowledge of customers and the sales process. This investment
in learning, conversations and attending sales calls informs so many product marketing responsibilities that
the return is high.
Understand sales incentive structures - This tactic will go a long way to understanding your sales team
objectives and determining how product marketing can support them to maximize their goals.
Know the current sales funnel - Understand which stages of the sales cycle each account is currently in.
Learn what tools and tactics work best at each stage.
Support sales calls - One of our clients requires each product marketing team member to attend a minimum
of three sales calls per quarter and to carry the information learned back to the team. This collective
first-hand knowledge is used to refine sales tools and also inform future product planning.
Step 3. Create Sales Ready Tools
There is often a gap between what a salesperson needs to support a conversation with a prospect,
and what is actually in their tool chest. This gap widens when an initial product marketing strategy is
launched but feedback isn’t collected to validate that strategy. As the market evolves, the high-level
positioning and benefits in the form of static tools simply no longer support a customized sales conversation.
Product marketing can have a powerful impact on sales effectiveness by continuously working with sales to learn:
- Are customers raising any new issues not previously understood?
- Have any new competitors entered the market?
- How do customers currently perceive your offerings or positioning?
One supply chain software start-up with whom we worked followed their solution launch with a vertically-focused
marketing strategy. We helped them to refine the high-level solution positioning and benefit statements into
vertical market specific positioning and benefits. We also trained sales on the unique challenges of the
verticals so they could customize their conversations accordingly. As a result the company increased its lead
generation by 90%.
If you are interested in learning more about how product marketing can increase its collaboration with sales,
contact Niti Agrawal at
or (408) 868-9739
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