Howdy 👋 

As most sales pros would advise against doing, I’m opening this issue with, “Hope you’re doing well!”.

Because I do actually hope everything’s going well for you! And I low key love using that as an email opener (cold outreach advice be damned!).

Speaking of sales…

In this month’s issue, we’re going to dive pretty deep into practical tips and advice on how non-Sales folks (🙋‍♀️) can partner with Sales to help make a noticeable impact.

I’m super excited about this one, because I got to chat with Nikki Lang—a highly skilled AE, seasoned seller, all around bad-ass, and founder of Mindset in Sales—to get the inside scoop on how marketers of all sorts can build better partnerships with Sales at work.

Whether you work directly alongside Sales, have 6 degrees of separation from ‘em, or just want to develop a more effective relationship with that department…

This issue is for every.marketer.out.there.

Ready? Let’s get into it 🥳

But first, you should know—this wasn’t your typical “how can we help increase ARR?” chat

When you’re a marketer, working with Sales is tough—tradition would hold that all Sales wants from you is another one-pager or case study. Meanwhile, all we really want from Sales is for them to accept our MQLs, you know? 😂

So, I asked Nikki to give me the tea on marketing <> sales, because driving impact doesn’t always mean hitting a far-out ARR number.

First thing’s first: you’ve gotta meet Nikki

Nikki is unlike any Sales pro I’ve met. She’s funny, witty, outspoken, and empathetic—not to mention, a total bad-ass. She regularly shares helpful tips with fellow Sellers on how to stay sane in Sales, too (like this handy reminder that anyone working in tech could use!).

You could call her a hustler, but having worked with Nikki for some time now, it’s evident she really does go the extra mile to not only make an impact at work (as all Sellers hope to do), but keep shit human.

Case in point 👇

Oh, and she also does a fantastic job partnering with us on the marketing side here at Copy.ai. So I knew I had to pick her brain for this issue, because the tips and advice she’s got up her sleeve are invaluable to us non-Sales folks.

And holy heck, you won’t be disappointed 👏

Nikki, tell the folks reading this a little about yourself

“I'm Nikki, an account director here at Copy.ai—which is just a fancy term for “account executive”. I've been in sales for about 14 years now, I've been an enterprise rep, for I don't know, maybe three years.”

Give us a sneak peek into what a typical day in the life of a Seller looks like 👀

“My typical life, well, I mean, today's a perfect example—I've been on back to back calls since 9am.”

At the time of our chat, Nikki had just come off of her 5th call of the day 😮‍💨

“So, five hours of back-to-back sales calls, which, actually, let's look at my calendar.”

Nikki shared her calendar with me, and I had the opposite of FOMO. Like…fear of being involved, basically?? Her calendar is packed.

“It’s stuff like demos, you know, setting up sandboxes, checking in on existing deals, intros, all sorts of different calls with prospects at varying stages of the journey of the sales process. And then, I also stay on as an account manager once I close the deals. So I also had an implementation call today—that's a typical day.”

Now, I know a lot of marketing peeps out there want the nitty gritty on how Sales actually feels about partnering with Marketing…

So I asked Nikki to give us her raw, unfiltered insights into what that relationship has historically looked/been like.

So, Nikki—as someone who’s worked in Sales for years, you’ve had to partner with marketing teams…a lot 😅 What has that experience been like?

“I've never been on the marketing side, but I can see the marketing side. We here at Copy.ai have an excellent relationship between sales and marketing, but we're a very small team,” says Nikki.

“So there's no hiding from each other here, you know? In bigger organizations, it's a lot easier to just be like, “Oh, those elusive marketing people!” but you don't really know who they are—they might not have a name or a face to you. It’s easier to generalize marketing teams when you’re in a bigger organization.”

Having worked in larger organizations, I can relate a lot to this—there were times when I wouldn’t even converse with certain Sales folks until 6 or 7 months into my role 😬

What if you don’t work in a startup? What do you find the most challenging about collaborating with marketing?

“Here at Copy.ai, there's this synergy that I think is very, very unique, that I haven't experienced at any other organization.

[But at other organizations], I just think there's too much of a disconnect. I think it’s sometimes impossible for marketers to really understand what sellers go through on the ground—we are truly on the front lines, here.

For example, there's too much of a disconnect between the reality of the day-to-day of sales, and the creation of general awareness in the market, like the infamous MQL, where the rubber meets the road between those two worlds.”

Let’s break down some of the core challenges Nikki and I spoke about:

Knowing the buyer 💡

Sellers are usually far more involved in a buyer’s journey, because they have to understand what will (or won’t) get a buyer to cross the finish line and sign a deal.

As a marketer, I wish I could say I disagreed with Nikki on this one…but honestly, I don’t.

I think the only way we (marketers) can actually get to that same level of understanding of our buyers that sales has, is if we:

• Do buyer research—not just customer research, but actually researching our ICP and understanding who the heck they are before they become a paying customer.

• Sit with Sales—we need to understand the stuff we usually don’t wanna hear or aren’t typically concerned with, like objection handling.

If you’re not in B2B, you can still “sit with Sales” and do buyer research by talking to customers, surveying repeat buyers, and looking at things like shopping trends (for the D2C folks who probably aren’t reading this, lol). 

Understanding what “good” leads look like ⭐️

Marketing and Sales teams are very rarely aligned on what “good” looks like when it comes to MQLs or qualifying leads—not because we don’t want to be, but because expectations are different at a demand generation vs sales level.

What we think may be a high-quality lead based on lead scoring, or what’s traditionally been done at our companies to “score” folks, may differ a lot from what Sales sees as a quality prospect.

Hot tip: ask your marketing leader to bring together your sales and marketing teams on lead scoring. Better yet, just ask your sales leaders what a “good” lead means to them. You’d be shocked (as I’ve been) by the gaps in thinking. 

There’s also a neat argument to be made here: maybe marketers don’t need to worry so much about good MQLs versus, well, good marketing 🤷‍♀️

Sarah Breathnach makes a pretty valid point (below). Some of us are going to be judged on stuff like pipeline influence and conversion, while others are measured by the branding work they do. Either way, being able to align on what “good” looks like for MQLs may just be a bonus, especially when Sales has a different idea of what a “good” lead is.

Speaking of…

Sharing goals 📊

In smaller companies, sales and marketing may be one united front—so understanding what “good” MQLs or leads look like may be a no brainer. But in bigger orgs, the 6 degrees of separation can feel like the open maw of a canyon. It’s pretty rare to see sales and marketing teams share common goals—like how both can work to get prospects over the finish line.

For most marketing teams, our goals look entirely different to Sales’—unless, of course, you’re talkin’ ARR; then, we’re all in it for the bag 💰

But having shared goals isn’t just about MQL quality or pipeline creation. It’s about stuff like:

• Understanding why Marketing is running a campaign, and how it’s going to help Sales folks have better conversations with prospects.

• Building a team culture where Sales and Marketing share ideas, brainstorm together, and drive towards similar KPIs or business impacts.

• Aligning marketing outcomes with how the product is sold.

• Working collaboratively instead of combatively, where the finger pointing can become less blame-y and more, “I get why your team is doing X, and we can help by doing Y”.

(Again, this is more applicable to us B2B folks—if you’re in B2C or D2C, you may not necessarily be as concerned about sales alignment or sales-led partnerships so much as driving repeat sales, getting customers to upgrade or renew on a self-serve basis…you get the picture!).

Really neat idea from Nikki: have your marketing team attend events with sales, like SKO. As Nikki explained to me, these get togethers shouldn’t be exclusive, but inclusive of other teams that are driving towards shared goals and values. 

MQLs and all that rigmarole aside, how can both functions work together to drive tangible impacts for the biz—large or small?

Nikki and I shot the shit around this, focusing more so on the relationship building aspect of working together, and not just the tactical ways marketing can align with sales.

Nikki, what advice do you have for marketers looking to build better relationships with Sales (and drive an impact)?

1️⃣ Find a sales team member you like, and get in on the ground floor with them

• Pick their brain, chat with them consistently, ask to be a part of their process (like when they’re putting together an account plan, ask to shadow them).

• Similarly, let them into your world a bit; show them what’s going on behind the curtain of sales activities.

2️⃣ Get each other more involved in the educational side of marketing

• Get Sales folks involved in content creation, webinars, lifecycle, etc.

  • You might have some Sellers on your team who want to host a webinar, or be part of a panel, or contribute to email campaigns!

• Work together to create targeted content that will help buyers understand the product before they get to sales.

• Pick an AE’s brain on top of funnel content topics or ideas.

• Ask your Sales team about the common challenges, problems, or objections they’re hearing in prospect calls, and use those insights for marketing work (again, like content).

3️⃣ Educate each other on your prioritization

• Sales is probably gonna ignore stuff that doesn’t require their immediate attention; similarly, Marketing is probably going to fluff off requests for yet another one-pager 😂

• But, if both sides understand what each function’s key priorities are, or why a marketer is asking sales for something right now (and vice versa), it’s easier to work together.

I asked Nikki how I might be able to get Sales’ buy-in when, say, I have a campaign or project that requires input from a Seller.

3️⃣ Be consistently vocal

• Share upcoming campaigns, projects, or events in public Slack channels.

  • And don’t be afraid to tag sales and marketing leaders in messages or posts that are relevant to their teams.

• Get your leaders/bosses to help rally sales and marketing folks around a common project.

  • This could be an in-person event, a virtual summit, or hefty ad campaign that sales and marketing should both contribute to

• Join sales meetings, standups, reviews, and other chats where you can get a firsthand look at what Sales is focusing on right now.

  • A low-hanging fruit here? Add yourself to your Sales team’s weekly kick-off calls.

Nikki also gave me some solid advice when it comes to collaborating with Sales on projects…

Use urgency and accountability 🚨

For example:

• Use time blocks when you need to talk to an AE, or block off regular touch points/chats in your calendars—even better if you make it a repeatable, short meeting (like a 30-minute round robin with your fave AEs).

• Ask for a specific contribution from a Sales person when you need their help with a project—don’t just throw something on their “desk” and ask them to “take a look”.

• Make it clear what type of particular feedback you’re looking for on a project when/if you loop in Sales—this way, neither of you wastes valuable time going back and forth on stuff.

4️⃣ When it comes to leads, MQLs, lead scoring (😴)…

• Align on how Sales is qualifying a lead vs. how Marketing is qualifying a lead–or, at the very least, ask Sales how the heck they qualify a lead!

  • For example, at Copy.ai, we don’t do traditional lead scoring because…#startuplife 😂 But we do tier out leads, and both Marketing and Sales agreed upon the tiering logic before we put it into place.

• Ask for feedback around MQLs or leads from an AE you’re comfy with.

  • At Lever, my DG manager and I would monthly Sales meetings to talk about recent leads and get insight into stuff like…

    • How was Sales working those leads?

    • Why did they leave some on the table but not others?

    • How many of those leads were going cold, if they were?

💡 If you’re in that kinda awkward, frustrating spot where no one is telling you what a quality lead looks like—or if your bosses can’t decide—your best bet is to get the point-blank, no holds barred opinion from Sales.

“That's a 30 minute conversation that can inform your entire marketing MQL strategy,” Nikki says. “Talk to your top rep that actually knows what they're doing and knows what to look for in a good lead, and then build your MQL metrics around that.”

Okay, last question: what isn’t really known about Sales folks?

During our chat, Nikki brought up something really interesting that I had never considered when it came to Sales folks.

Not because I had a skewed idea of what their workload is like, but because I just really never stopped to consider something vital—and that’s the pressure they’re under.

Off camera, Nikki and I spent an extra 20-30 minutes just shooting the shit, talking about our mutual experiences in tech, and she gave me a lot of food for thought.

Here are some things to consider about your Sales counterparts that might make it a bit easier to “understand” them, the way they work, and how they function day-to-day 👇

💰 Sales is under a lot of pressure to produce revenue—and their quarterly goals are rarely, if ever realistic or rational.

💜 A Sales person’s self worth is often tied very closely to whether they can hit their goals at work—the sense of personal accomplishment vs. failure is separated only by a fine, almost imperceptible thread.

😮‍💨 Because Sales teams are judged so heavily on their ability to produce, many Sales folks live with perpetual worry or anxiety about being laid off, let go, or suddenly fired.

📈 Sales and Marketing are working towards the same goal—and Sales people recognize the pressure marketers are also under, more than we might think they do.

🤝 A lot of Sales teams are just as confused or stumped as marketers are when it comes to opening a dialogue or line of communication between teams!

Alrighty, let’s sum it up, hey?

If you scrolled to the end, or want a quick TL;DR, well, this section’s for you 😜

• Find a Sales rep in your company you like or get along with, and start building rapport with them—this is your Sales BFF.

• Teach each other about what your teams’ key priorities are (there’s a good chance some of these align).

• If you can’t align on what “good” looks like (ex. for leads), or don’t know why your reps turn down MQLs, ask them point blank how they qualify a lead 😉

• Include Sales in your marketing activities—like TOFu content creation, webinars, etc.

• Don’t just listen to Gong recordings or read call transcripts; ingratiate yourself into Sales meetings, kickoffs, planning sessions, you name it.

• To get a rep’s insight on, or participation in something, give ‘em urgency and accountability.

  • Example: Time block their calendar if you need to talk to them, or ask them for a specific contribution with a deadline.

Now, go forth and start building better relationships with your Sales team 🥰

Your approach may look a bit different than the recs and advice shared throughout this newsletter…but I have faith you’ll find a Sales bestie that’ll help make life a little easier at work.

And, if you read to the end of this newsletter: I’m freakin’ proud of you 🥳

I’ll be in touch next month with another issue of That Marketing Newsletter

P.s. here’s what I’m drinking & reading this week

P.p.s. Have feedback about this newsletter, ideas to share for future issues, or any gripes? I’m all ears—shoot me an email at [email protected] 👋