Internal Alignment for External Momentum
Attribution and alignment are two of the hottest topics to get a bunch of marketing and sales leaders fired up. Hear how these three leaders take on attribution and keep their teams aligned on the same goals.
Hello everyone, my name is Robert Zimmerman, I'm the CRO here at Qualified and
I'm incredibly
fortunate to be joined today by Anna Rosenman, CMO of Automation Anyway, and
Sid Kumar, our
SDP of RevOps at HubSpot.
And when we did our first pipeline summit in the fall, one of the sessions that
I write
tendies loved the most was getting a look into how other teams are managing
their internal
alignment between their sales and marketing organizations.
It's a topic that has a thousand facets to it, but today we're diving into the
alignment
strategies that really help make a difference.
So with that, Sid, I was hoping to start with you.
I think anytime you get marketing and sales leaders at the same table, the
topic of alignment
is bound to come up.
It's a tough thing to get right.
I'd love to hear from each of you how alignment across revenue teams is priorit
ized within
your organization.
Why is it important and what kind of impact does it have?
So Sid, over to you, would love to hear.
Sure.
Thanks for having me and Anna on the show.
Really, really excited for this conversation.
I mean, you said it.
It's a hot topic because it's really important to get right.
And the way I really think about it is if you have a clear view of what your
customer
journey looks like and what those different engagement points are for your
company and
your customers and prospects, the alignment becomes a lot easier.
And you start thinking about alignment as a horizontal, as opposed to a
functional silo
type of approach.
You're always going to have functions like marketing and sales and customer
success.
But once you have clarity around working backwards from how do your customers
want to engage
with you?
How do your prospects want to engage with you?
Getting that out and then looking at who does what and when from a functional
standpoint
and then getting very clear on roles and responsibilities on those different
touch points
within, we call it attract, engage in the light.
We call it a flywheel and up spot.
It's a closed loop and different functions and different sub teams interact and
engage
at different points of that customer journey, but everybody has clarity around
what are
the Nord stars on our customers getting the experience we want them to get at
these different
touch points.
And how do we know we're actually delivering on between those Nord stars and
different
leading indicators.
And I think the reason why is it important is it should feel like one customer
experience
and one brand experience to the customer prospect, not a number of different
handoffs or botanical
conbasses along that journey.
That's why it's important.
That's how we solve for it here.
I love that idea about that Nord star.
Anna, as you think about your role at automation anywhere, do you have a
similar type of concept
with that Nord star?
How do you think about this?
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right.
All has to be around the customer.
But I'm almost thinking about alignment from what goes on behind the scenes.
And the economy has been absolutely crazy.
Our customers are all struggling, right?
And we're all trying to figure out how do we create value for our customers in
new and
different ways.
So as much as a marketer, I would love to have a plan and just execute it.
What we're finding is that we have to come to back to the table more frequently
than we
have in the past now.
And just to realize, where is the business at?
What do we need to be doing?
How do we pivot really quickly?
So for us, alignment is not a point in time.
Similar to you, Sid, it's this never-ending journey, which it should be for
every company
of where, what is the ICP?
Who is sales going after?
What is the go-to-market motion?
And how do we in marketing support that?
Where is product building for six, 12, 18 months out to make sure that we've
all got
our arrows pointed in the same direction?
I just think it's so important.
And what we found is that there's different types of alignment that we go
through in the
company.
There's before the fiscal year, which is let's figure out our ICP.
And then as you're going through the year, every quarter, every month, there's
the plan
for the next quarter and the bi-weekly or monthly check-ins about how's our
pipeline
looking.
Do we need more?
Do we need to focus on maturation?
So I don't know, alignment should almost be a verb rather than a noun.
It's like the act of aligning across revenue teams.
Super important.
I love the way that you're thinking about that, Anna.
And sticking with you, you're both working with some larger employee bases.
How do you scale those alignment initiatives when you've got hundreds or maybe
even thousands
of employees to align?
Right.
Well, I'll jump in, said if you don't mind.
You know, at automation anywhere, we have embraced an annual planning process.
I think that this audience will be familiar with the Salesforce V2 Mom.
So it's a little bit of the V2 Mom, and it's a little bit of commitment-based
management.
We merged them together into what is a V2 OKR we created our own.
And getting that right is really important for the company.
We get it right at the beginning of the year.
It is a living document, and then we go across our team so that everyone ends
up with their
own individual V2 OKR.
I think that's really important for getting everyone aligned to what's the big
goal.
Where do we want to end up at the end of the year?
And then it's really about constant communication.
You know, the company all hands, the team line all hands, those ongoing
meetings and pipeline
councils.
We do, we invest a lot of time in making sure that the communication is going
from the CEO
down to that individual person with their feet on the ground as they're talking
to their
customer.
It's work though.
You have to invest in it.
If you don't, you're going to have disconnect for sure.
Sid, what about at HubSpot?
How do you find creating alignment and scaling alignment?
How does that work?
Yeah, very much aligned with the way Ada was talking about it.
I would say I'd break it out into strategic alignment, which is a very similar,
you know,
we go from a company top-down planning process to then look at what does our
flywheel objectives
look like, which is our go-to-market organization.
And then we get into marketing sales, our success, and revenue.
So there's really a tight linkage between what are we doing on the ground at
each function
and how does that line are back up to the company's strategic objectives over
the next
couple of years.
We do that annually and we go revisit that every quarter, just as an opponent.
The markets change pretty dynamically right now and I think agility is key and
being able
to go retest and revisit those assumptions.
And then from a day-to-day execution standpoint, it really is that customer
journey that we
anchor around, we call it the customer-centric operating model, and that is
what we use to
broaden the business from a day-to-day perspective and from a week-on-week
perspective to go look
at how we're doing relative to our KPIs or output metrics.
And so the theme here I think is really is strong process aligned with strong
communications
are very much agree with Ana and that it's not one time, it's ongoing and
recurring and
something that has to be an always-on muscle especially in this market.
You've both alluded to the market conditions that are out there and they are
challenging.
And it's interesting, there's this kind of cycle that marketing and sales teams
get into
when things aren't going well, whether it's providing quality pipeline,
converting those
leads at marketing created with sales is an acting on those to marketing's
satisfaction.
How do you combat this finger pointing across organizations?
What have you done in your individual teams to do that?
And maybe start with you, Ana.
Sure.
Well, we like to blame product.
That's our strategy, just kidding.
I think that when everything is good, everyone's a winner, right?
When everything is good, when everyone's hitting their numbers, the marketing
is perfect, the
sales guys are so talented, the product's perfect.
It's when the company isn't necessarily achieving their goals, it's that finger
pointing begins.
And I never think there's, it would be too easy if it was as simple as the
leads suck,
right?
Or the sales guys need to be doing one thing differently.
It's usually a combination of factors.
So how do you get to that consensus or how do you get that problem clarity?
I think the first thing that's really important is are we, do we agree on the
data?
And I know that I've been in situations where there's the marketing view of the
data and
the sales view of the data and they don't necessarily align and you end up
getting into
meetings where you're reviewing, you're having conversations and it becomes a
fight about
attribution rather than, you know, let's figure out where the problem is.
So as quickly as you can get all of your data into a single place, whether that
's everyone's
looking at the same sales force dashboard or Tableau dashboard or whatever,
whatever
tool you've got, I think that we're hub spot, whatever you're using.
I think that becomes really important.
Do we have that single view of the data?
And then relationships matter, I think, you know, how well do you get along
with, you
know, how well do I get along with my CRO?
Am I able to come to him and say, okay, maybe we can do some of the things that
we're going to do, something different with how we're bringing in pipeline.
Maybe we're qualifying or qualification process is a little bit too generous.
You know, that's on me.
We'll work on that.
We'll go to events.
We'll do the things that you want.
What about you?
Like, what's your strategy to improve as well?
And I think when you've got that shared data and that vulnerability that it's
probably
not just one problem, it becomes easier to solution.
That's been my experience.
I've been, since you won the revenue operations function, how do you create an
effective feedback
loop between revenue teams to eliminate this blame game?
Yeah, I mean, plus one to everything.
Anna just said on data and a single version of the truth, I mean, that's just
so foundational.
Dabbing for productive conversations.
And one of the things that we've done is created just a demand framework that
both sales and
marketing align on and use that as a way of planning and also as a way of
measuring how
we're doing during the course of the year.
And it creates shared accountability.
It gives us a sense of for the company to achieve its objectives.
What does our demand picture need to look like?
And what are the different sources from which that demand is going to come?
And we try to, we plan for that as rigorously going into the year as we do on
our revenue
plan or our retention customer success plans.
And that's become a way of just driving mutual accountability.
Common definitions is usually when sales and marketing are not on the same page
, it's usually
around pipeline.
It's not around a brand, Jevane, it's not around your social media strategies.
Or maybe there is Anna, but a lot of times I see that, you know, it's do I have
enough
demand to go get these numbers?
What did I expect versus what did I get?
And then how are we going to go fill that together?
And I think if you look at it holistically, then becomes more of a discussion
of we need
this amount of pipeline or this number of deals for the company.
We plan for it to come from these different sources.
If it didn't come from those different sources in the way you expected, how we
jointly can
go fill the pie and make sure we have what it takes to achieve the number.
So it's just one, it's an example of a process and a mechanism that we use.
It's like a demand challenge, a bunch.
I really like that idea.
And I think Anna, your comment about relationships matter is so critical in
times like these.
Now one question that I'd love to ask you, Anna, is I'd love to hear about
something
that you've tried out that flat out didn't work.
You know, what did you learn from that?
And how do you tell when something isn't working and when you know when to pull
that
plug?
Oh my gosh, there's been so many failures.
It's really hard to pick one, but I don't think anything's really been, I'm
sure there
have been failures that are just like, wow, that was a terrible idea.
You should not have done that.
None of those are coming to mind as much as when you try a strategy that really
, really
worked for a different segment, a different product, a different market.
And you try it again and man, it is not resonating.
Like an SMB style of marketing doesn't work for the enterprise if deals take
six plus
months to close.
Now you need marketing that's helping to mature that pipeline or account based
marketing,
et cetera.
So there's been times when, you know, I've looked at, you know, broader
marketing strategy
and say, hey, this should work.
And you know, it doesn't.
In terms of when do you know to pull the plug, I think kind of bringing it back
to the data,
when you're starting to, when you, what you're measuring looks like success,
but the ultimate
results for the company are not successful.
So hey, we're creating all these leads, but oh my gosh, they don't convert into
stage
one's, stage two opportunities.
That's when you really have to say, okay, my data and my historical metric isn
't actually
panning out for the broader picture.
I think that's the flag that you have to watch out for.
Great.
Sid, when you were talking about the framework earlier, I want to take that
into some discussion
around goal settings.
When you think about setting goals within your individual departments, how do
you make
sure that those goals are aligned across other cross-functional teams?
What are you doing to make sure that that happens?
Yeah, I think it's really breaking it into input and output metrics is the
short answer
on that.
So if you look at how does pipeline get generated at your company, right?
And it might differ by segment, it might differ by GM.
Overall, or partners playing or e-commerce, so you really look at the full
spectrum of
sources of demand.
And the common objective is everybody wants to create more deals and you want
to create
larger deals with bigger ASP and you want to create pipeline that comes from
that that
ultimately closes, right?
So I think that's what commonly brings all these teams together in the context
of this
framework that says this is the output we all want to generate.
I think where it often falls down is you don't continue peeling that onion back
or just going
back to in order for each of those line items or channels of demand to
contribute what you
expect them to.
What needs to be true?
Yeah, and take a BDR example.
How many meetings do they need to be having in order to generate that volume of
play?
And then you want to have a pipeline based on your conversion rate of meetings
to pipeline
in order to have that many meetings.
How many emails, LinkedIn messages, social interactions that they need to have.
And those equations are going to, it's a math equation that's based on your
company and
what your specific situation is.
You want to continually optimize and look at how do you prove those conversion
rates.
And I think there's an analogy for partners and for, you know, reps and leads,
right?
And each of them is going to have a different set of input metrics and leading
indicators.
So I think it's as important as when you get that shared alignment and
framework around
contribution and relative mix that there's, you also do, you don't stop there
and you
go back and go do the homework around, does everybody have clarity around what
activities
and inputs are required to get there?
And you have as much rigor in your operating cadence as whether it's biweekly,
monthly,
whatever it happens to be that you're looking at those and say, are you on the
track to
get to that output metric?
If not, are we going to course break?
Or if there's something more systematic that you are not going to be able to
course direct,
do we have the ability to go pivot to another channel that's going to over
rotate that is
working more effectively and can overcompensate.
So the company still achieves its objectives.
I really like that said, in terms of thinking about agility, you know, there
was so many
takeaways just in this session, whether we talk about the rigor around running
frameworks,
the internal relationships that you build within your colleagues across
different groups.
And such an important factor in today's company's success.
It's such a big topic.
And I really want to thank both you, Anna, and Sid for joining us on this
session.
There were some incredible nuggets that you shared.
And I think there are a lot of really good takeaways as companies start
thinking about
how to create that alignment between their different groups.
So thank you again, and on to pipeline that we can generate for marketing our
sales organizations.
No coincidence that this is our pipeline summit.
So appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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