Jennifer McAdams, new CMO of Xactly, shares her tips for aligning sales and marketing.
One of the keys for running an effective go-to-market system is aligning the efforts of the sales and marketing organizations. But that goal is often unattained at many companies which can lead to revenue goals also being unattained. To fix the alignment challenge, Jennifer McAdams, the new CMO at Xactly, recommends five tips for bridging the two teams. Since her company’s focus is helping motivate sales organizations by providing timely insights on forecasts and incentives, she brings a unique perspective to enabling marketing and sales organizations to operate more seamlessly. Here are her tips.
1. Acknowledge alignment could be better – Like with many things, change begins by admitting that the there is a need to improve. McAdams began developing the relationship with her sales peer by taking this step. She confessed, “Sales and marketing definitely had become disconnected. As much as it sounds trite to say, there was a break there. Sales and marketing alignment has been a big thing that I've been talking about. Even when I was in my advisory role previously, when we did our readout, it was pages of things that marketing could improve upon. The head of sales called me on my cell phone right after we'd finished our readout and said, ‘I just want to thank you because anytime something goes wrong, all people want to do is inspect my sellers and inspect my team. Thank you for bringing more to the table. We're not perfect and there are things that we could be doing better in sales but thank you for acknowledging that there are also things we could be doing better in marketing.’ So, regaining a lot of the relationship with sales has been important.”
2. Align sales and marketing incentives – While this sounds like an easy step for bringing the two teams together, it rarely occurs. McAdams acknowledged the benefits of shared incentives when she was a marketing leader at Progress Software. She explained, “When I was with Progress Software, we were on a marketing commission plan. My team and I were all on marketing commissions. Originally our plans had several components, but in the end, they were aligned with our sales targets and our sales goals. We were divided by product lines, so our marketing leader’s numbers for that product line would be aligned to the sales leader for that product line. We were Xactly users, so we were paid through Xactly. We had a line of sight of what our commissions and variable comp was going to be.” She found that aligning goals and incentives kept everyone tightly connected.
3. Participate in the Sales QBRs – Not all solutions to a challenge need to be difficult or complex. McAdams shared, “To be honest, some of it's not hard! We had QBRs last week, so I participated in and traveled to them. The team was so grateful for being heard and said, ‘We've never had a CMO sit in on our sales QBRs before.’ And I was like, why wouldn't you sit in on your sales QBRs? Some of it felt to me like natural things just weren't happening, so we’re reinstituting some of that.”
4. Integrate the sales and marketing tech stack – Often times, the ability to align sales and marketing breaks down in the operational details. McAdams admitted this was the case at Xactly. “We don't have the cleanest house when it comes to technology and marketing operations. We were a little bit of ‘this looked cool at the time’, so we bought it and brought it in, but maybe didn't integrate it or adopt it as well as we could have. We definitely need an audit of what our end-to-end technology looks like with the ultimate overriding goal being lead handoff. Are we efficient in collecting leads and handing leads off to salespeople in a way that they can then accept and work efficiently? Certain data points aren't passing and things like that. We need to get our technology stack working predictably so that we can measure what's working and what's not.” Building confidence that the marketing to sales lead management systems can function effectively is a key step in building trust and alignment.
5. Align annual goals and plans – It’s incredibly difficult to align marketing and sales if the plans that guide annual operational activities are not in sync at the beginning of the year. McAdams has benefited from the planning process that Xactly had in place when she joined the company. “As a company, we have a mandate for profitable growth and meeting our growth targets for next year. And doing so within a reasonable budget envelope with demonstrable returns is top of mind. I'm a bit lucky that I got here when I did because we're doing our annual operating planning right now. Every leader is responsible for their chapter of the story for how we're going to get to what our growth targets are. It's great! It's been really helpful to be able to read the chapter from the CFO and what that team is going to be doing in order to get to our goals for next year, as well for Sales. Our CEO came up through the product organization so the product roadmap is at an exciting inflection point where I think a lot of our promises for what we would be able to do with our add-ons are really being realized now. From the product side, as well as the operation side in terms of what he's doing on the professional services and customer success organizations, there is definitely a lot of alignment there. As I'm drafting our chapter, it's been it's a helpful time to be here, because everybody's thinking together about how we can achieve the goals for next year and beyond.”
One item that did not make the list was having the CMO report to the CRO. While this might be helpful for alignment, there are trade-offs for a company to consider. McAdams shared her perspective on this topic. “I've reported to the CRO twice in my career, and both times have been fantastic for driving alignment. Most recently at Progress, we were in a business unit structure, and I was the head of marketing reporting to the CRO for that business unit. The joke that I tell is once you report to the same leader, the hugs get tighter, but the asks get bigger. They were very generous in allowing me behind the curtain to see how quotas were set and territories were made. So from my perspective, I've enjoyed times when I have reported to the CRO in the past. Here in this role, we don't have a CRO currently. As CMO, being part of the executive team reporting to the CEO, there's more to it than sales and marketing alignment. Yes, that's a big part of it. But in terms of where we are with our corporate brand, we need a bit of a refresh, and where we are with some of our other goals around employer branding and employee relations. There's more to it than just driving to the sales number. I do think that if alignment is an area where there are problems, it could be a way to help fix those problems. But for my role right now, for what it's in front of me and the marketing team here, I think that we need to be part of the executive committee and reporting to the CEO.”
