How Successful Tech Startups Embrace Smarketing

What’s smarketing, you ask? As Continuum Senior VP and CMO Jeanne Hopkins explains, it’s nothing short of truly harmonious sales and marketing alignment. Sound too good to be true? Here’s how to achieve it.

As much as marketers would like to believe the campaigns they execute are innovative and creative, the truth is sales teams don’t really care about that, says Continuum Managed IT Services Senior VP & CMO Jeanne Hopkins. Instead, they’re interested in one thing, and one thing only: Results. Namely, whether or not those campaigns generate high quality leads that help them exceed their short-term sales goals.

When that’s the case, sales and marketing teams generally operate in harmony. When it isn’t, Hopkins says true sales and marketing alignment — what the former SmartBear Software CMO calls “Smarketing” — is practically impossible to achieve. In the video below, Hopkins explains why “Smarketing” matters and your teams can master it.

3 Keys for Successful Smarketing

• Really good marketers have some sales experience. Whether it’s from working in a retail environment or from direct experience building and executing a B2B sales process, Hopkins says any form of sales experience helps marketers view their jobs through a different lens.

• Marketers must develop an appreciation for sales’ short-term goals. Because most marketers are focused on broader, long-term growth metrics, they often fail to align their activities with a sales team’s narrower objectives (i.e., their quota today, next week, and next month). To create better alignment, Hopkins says marketers must learn to understand and appreciate the short-term realities of sales.

• Take an hour to put yourself in a salesperson’s shoes. When she was the VP of Marketing at Hubspot, Hopkins used to have her team participate in a call blitz, where they would spend an hour calling leads. In short order, Hopkins says her team gained a huge appreciation for how difficult sales can be — particularly with the wrong leads.

Additional Resources

Looking for more tips on sales and marketing alignment? We’ve got you covered. See the posts below and sign up for our weekly newsletter to receive the best tactics and insights in your inbox.

• 6 Steps to Sales and Marketing Alignment by HubSpot Chief Revenue Officer Mark Roberge
• Why Sales and Marketing Alignment is All About Creating a Universal Lead Definition interview with sales expert Mike Bosworth
• Is Content the Missing Link Between Sales and Marketing? by marketing strategist Sue Duris