“Couples Counseling for Sales & Marketing with Greenhouse’s CMO and VP Enterprise”

All right. Introductions. So as you know, I am the Chief Marketing Officer of Greenhouse Software. I have been with Greenhouse now for the past 4 years. And I came to Greenhouse from a background in branding. I worked in small technology startups and most recently worked with Capgemini Consulting and Capgemini, a large systems integrator. I'm also an advisor to startups on matters of marketing.

Right? And again, Ankur Pasi. I serve as the Vice President for Enterprise Revenue at Greenhouse Software. I've been at the company for just under 2 years, actually, and I've been in startup land my whole career, for the most part, aside from a short stint at Oracle. I currently advise 2 startups, and I'm also a mentor with Techstars. Prior to Greenhouse, I was at a company called Telnyx, where I oversaw growth from $10 million to $60 million in ARR.

Okay. So very quickly, our agenda today. What we're going to do is just share with you a little bit of the journey that we've been through to sort of, you know, get where we are reconciling past and present. You know, any therapy session starts with childhood. We won't get you all the way there, but we'll, we'll probably start early in the career, most recent 5 years or so. And then we'll segue into the things that we believe actually make the success, a successful partnership between sales and marketing. We will turn to, I don't know if you're familiar with this concept of love languages, but it is essentially a way to talk about the communication that is essential between sales and marketing teams. And we'll finish off with some key takeaways, things that you can immediately practice and take back. Our session today does not actually have any time for Q&A, But we would love to have some Q&A. So grab us or come and visit us at the Greenhouse booth. All right, let's get started.

All right. So in order to understand the present, we have to go back in the past. So going back to early in my career when I was working as a sales leader at an early-stage company and understanding some of those gaps that existed in the relationship between sales and marketing that hindered our execution. So oftentimes you'll find that marketing is so focused on lead generation, right? So focused on a marketing qualified lead, when in reality all that sales cares about is the opportunity and a qualified opportunity at that. So what we've often found is that sales and marketing are sometimes on two different pages because they're executing and working in complete silos and they're not project planning together.

Right, right. And so while it's really appropriate that marketing is focused on lead generation, Marketing also has this much larger remit of ensuring that the brand is where it needs to be, that awareness is there, carries through, you know, into all of these aspects. But one of the things that's quite critical is, as marketers, we can care a lot about the metrics around awareness and audience reach and database building and all of those campaign metrics. But the thing that we really, really need to ensure is that as sales and marketing teams, we are aligned on the core metrics. And those metrics are right in the funnel. They are not MQLs at the top of the funnel. They are actually sales accepted leads, the opportunities that get started, that actually kick off the process that sales is going to be working on. And being aligned at that point is critical. One of the things that I experienced in my career is when sales and marketing teams are not aligned at that level, you hear things like, um, OK, how many leads is marketing delivering this week? How many webinars? How many ebooks? These are all important activities, but that is not the end goal. And so I think that there is an opportunity there for us to actually, as sales and marketing leaders, align and get off the hamster wheel of leads and get on the path of being focused on having a common target. Ankur, I want to build on one extra thing there, and that is The other aspect we mentioned is clear communication. One of the things that I really hate whenever I'm advising or even working in an organization is, what's marketing doing these days? Like, the minute you get a question from sales that says, what's marketing doing? You know that you're not actually planning together, you're not working together, you're not aligning the things that you need to focus on. And it's important for everyone to understand that effective sales and marketing collaboration starts with joint planning.

That's right.

So let's see, have we covered all the bases here on what typically teams get wrong? Ankur?

Yeah. So typically when you think about what sales and marketing teams get wrong, it's mismatched metrics and expectations, very unclear communication and siloed planning and working practices. So I've had the benefit of interviewing many different sales leaders across my career. And I've often found that when asking them that simple question around what could you have done better in your most recent role to scale up new logo acquisition in partnership with marketing, the response that you'll often get is, well, I could have partnered with them to drive a clearer ICP definition to ensure that we're going after the right audience. And the reality is, is by setting up a framework by which you can identify that ICP, identify your key buying persona and understanding what actually drives folks to buy your software. That's aligning sales and marketing at the deepest level.

We're going to get to that, that planning framework in a minute in a bit more detail. There's one thing that I just want to share. Oftentimes you read about, you know, one of the things that would secure a good relationship is having an agreed SLA. If you have a sales leader or a marketing leader says that we have to have an SLA, they fundamentally do not exist in a trustful relationship. Because when you are aligned on what it is that's needing to happen and you plan together, there's actually really no need for a documented SLA. You can have one, but basically you need to have each other's backs jointly as opposed to through the guarantee of an SLA. Did you want to say something?

Yeah, I would say it doesn't only start with the top of funnel, it's also the bottom of funnel. And mid-funnel. So marketing and sales should really be focused on how do you move opportunities through the funnel after a lead comes in.

Right. Okay. It's easy to talk about the things that don't work.

There's a lot of them.

Let's think about the things that do work. Okay. So for us, it starts with some of these things. And what we've done with these next few slides is just to give you some exhibits that actually speak to the things that we believe characterize a good relationship?

That's right. So we've aligned on 4 different KRs. So for those of you that don't know what OKRs stand for, it's objectives and key results. And these 4 KRs are cross-functional. So it's not just sales and marketing. Product might be included, customer success might be included. And this drives organizational alignment throughout. So one that really stands out to me is just aligning on the product market fit. So GSA stands for Greenhouse Sourcing Automation. This was a company that we acquired about a year and a half ago called Interseller, and we've integrated them into our product offering. So what we're doing with this KR is actually measuring the success that our customer base is having adopting that product. So that's not only ensuring that sales is selling to the right buyer, that they actually have intent to use the product correctly, But it also ensures that marketing has a play in terms of educating our existing customers and product is working on the things that actually drive adoption.

I want to build on what Ankur is saying here because the beauty of these— of this OKR is sort of very at the top, very wide about what revenue target we are pursuing. But as you get more into the KRs, you actually get a sense of some of the prioritization that also would steer the planning and the campaign development and the prioritization that marketing would then have the choices that marketing would have to make. So having shared OKRs and having kind of core metrics for that then sort of seeps into the next thing, which is shared projects. Actually, SaaS is a really great example of shared projects, where from the field marketing perspective, we all sit down and we say, okay, who are the audiences that we want to reach? Where do they live? How are we going to find them? What are the roles and responsibilities that we as marketing and sales want to have? And before we actually get to an event like this, we've got everything pretty much worked out in terms of who's going to do what, what metrics do we want to see as success coming from the event. And then we never have to ask Ankur's team about a fast follow-through because before this day is out, the follow-through would start to happen. And I really— it sounds very simple and actually basic.

It is simple.

But if you never have those conversations and you never make those agreements, you never get the outcome that you're looking for.

Oftentimes you'll find, in my opinion, without the framework, without objectively thinking about attending an event like SaaStr, what the outcome should be, who you're targeting and why you're targeting them, it gets messy. Right. And sales teams just aren't executing on the right mission at hand.

Right. So planning. This slide that you see, this slide that you see, actually, can you see if I'm standing in front of it? Somewhat tall. This slide is a great example of good collaboration. So Ankur, talk a little bit, please, about sort of the framework of the segmentation that's on the side, and then I'll touch on the sides here.

Perfect. Yeah, so in the enterprise, we've aligned on our top 250 prospects that we want to go after for one reason or another. For example, a reason might be that they're an industry leader and they're a great fit for our software. Another reason may be just simply that we've been in a sales cycle with them, and we know for a fact that this year they're going to evaluate new vendors. So actually, account executives, ICs, actually help build out that list. So they're taking, give or take, 10 accounts from their total account list to build up that segmentation. And then from there, we kind of boil it down as far as what the focus is. So we're also focusing on lost opportunities that are greater than 6 months. We're focusing on our top industries that we know we're the perfect fit for, and we're also focusing on some new industries that we want to A/B test.

And the reason why Ankur is taking pains to actually talk through that is this is the first point of alignment. If you don't know who you're, you're pursuing, you're not necessarily going to design the strategies and tactics that will get you there. But there's more to it. And that is what you see here in terms of top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel. We actually frame out at the beginning of the planning period and sometimes refine it at the beginning of each quarter what it is that we're going to be pursuing and what initiatives and campaigns marketing is signing up for. Who are we targeting? And then I think an important piece of sales and marketing collaboration is obviously the sales enablement component. There's a ton that goes into making sure that everyone has the tools that they need and know what to expect from each other.

I love that we're talking about the who, the what, and the why. So sales enablement in general is obviously critical to this, but also those personas and understanding that both AEs, ICs that are writing the content for marketing are all aligned on the why is critical. To any success, but specifically the success of this campaign.

Right. Okay, so the relationship between sales and marketing is often full of buzzwords. Name a buzzword that starts with an A. ABM. Man, the number of times I've been in conversation where somebody says, "Let's do ABM." I'm like, "Do you have a clue?" So the thing about ABM is really trying to understand How are we going to reach and target an audience in a customized way, if you would, in a more personalized way? And sales has this tendency to say, well, let's do ABM because it means lots of dinners and events and possibly some personalized swag. For us, it actually means in every sphere of that, like, breakdown, how are we going to reach the one-to-one-to-one one-to-few, one-to-many. And there's a ton of benefit in sitting down and planning together what that entire process of ABM is going to be. And for us, successfully in market in Greenhouse at this moment, we are doing ABM at a pilot level because there's no point in diving in and like pretending to have a big ABM program. What you really want to do is scope it out and start maybe with a handful of accounts to see what kind of successes, how is it going to work in marketing, how is it going to work for sales. I'm going to skip over this slide just very briefly, but essentially it's an entire process and timeline. And, you know, one of the things that Ankur and I actually feel quite strongly about is that there's a lot of shared process and shared tools in getting good collaboration between sales and marketing. Uncle, did you want to just talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So in general, like when we think about scoring, we're not just talking about scoring ABM accounts. We're also thinking about scoring leads. And I think that's really critical, aligning on lead scoring at the earliest level, but then also focusing on prioritizing those very high priority opportunities through marketing, spending dollars on ads, etc.

One thing that you just brought up, which is an important point of alignment, is you gotta sit down and look at the marketing and sales lifecycle. So figure out right from the beginning what all the stages are gonna be in your funnel and agree on where marketing is going to be leading, where sales is going to take over, what the expectations are. Oftentimes when a relationship between sales and marketing isn't working, you hear things like, oh, it's a top of funnel problem. Sometimes it's a top of funnel problem, but other times it's a problem with lead qualification. Other times it's a moment where that handover wasn't actually done very well. In the case of— let me just say, in the case of marketing, the joint metric that we have in Greenhouse for for us is the sales accepted lead, sales qualified lead, actually. And so marketing is measured, our performance rests on that. And that is the very same metric that sales is sharing with us.

Yeah, and I was just going to mention that on the right-hand side, you could see that there are different folks that are involved in this. So from SDRs to AEs to marketing, but we also talk about building out that sales process, which I think is really critical. So on the right-hand side, we have a tidbit there that talks about accelerating deals and creating that toolkit to help validate, prove, negotiate, and close. We're actually leveraging marketing to share specific content that we should serve up to our buyers at specific stages to help accelerate that sales process. And that's been immensely valuable.

And we actually have a little secret sauce here. We do our tech stack together. It goes beyond Salesforce. There is a— we use SixSense extensively. We actually use and select tools together for the benefit of making sure that it will work for marketing as well as much as it will work for sales. I'm going to segue to the next thing, which is when you get it right and the collaboration is there, it looks like this. This is, on this process, you get a sense of the entire cycle of a deal, where marketing at the beginning is doing a lot of the generating of the contact, of the engagement, et cetera, et cetera. Then the lead becomes active. It's actively being worked by sales. And then the lead goes a little bit, or the contact goes a little bit quiet. Some of the things that marketing can do to actually stimulate velocity in the funnel all the way through to the end. This is This is the kind of stuff that truly signals close, positive collaboration. Magic. It's like magic. All right.

That actually has helped us double enterprise revenue in the last 18 months. Being really specific, targeted, knowing exactly where each prospect sits within the funnel, what their intent looks like, how likely they are to buy. It allows for management intervention, allows for product intervention. It allows for us to speed up legal. So Just creating this heat map of sorts has helped us a lot.

Okay, we're getting to the communication piece and also towards the end here. So Love Languages. If you've read anything about Love Languages, they have nice packaging around it. So there are 3 love languages that really characterize good, clear, positive collaboration between sales and marketing.

I'll take a stab at the first one. Yeah, go for it. So words of affirmation. So Karen is always at our sales acceleration events, which is also known as a kickoff. We have quarterly kickoffs, we have annual kickoffs. We ensure to have marketing representation there. We celebrate our wins. We talk about how marketing has helped accelerate a deal. We talk about the work that marketing has put in over the course of a quarter, over the course of a month, and we celebrate those wins of ICs actually partnering together to either unblock an opportunity or create a new one.

I want to give a big shout out to my partner in crime, CRO Sean Murray. He never lets an opportunity go by to actually do a shout out to the marketing team. And it's so appreciated, especially when you're doing it in a public and vocal forum. And very much try to reciprocate that. Under acts of service, acts of service is really about listening. It's about not necessarily going, oh my God, what do you want now? And rather saying, okay, I see the challenge of this particular deal, or I see the challenge of this particular audience that we're trying to pursue. Listening to those requirements and maybe, just maybe, also adjusting whatever the plans are that you have made up to this moment and testing to see if a new way of doing something is going to get us there. So acts of service, really like leaning into the relationship and the conversation. And then the last one.

Quality time. I love it. So for salespeople, we love to spend time in person, get out of the virtual office. And I could tell you that it's helped immensely to spend time with Karen in Cannes a couple of months ago.

My location.

And I brought our little baby, and it was a lot of fun. But I think spending time in person, getting out of the virtual office, ensuring that you're collaborating in real time, ensuring that it's communicating— sorry, you're communicating to your entire team what's taking place, inviting folks from your team to collaborate, it's been immensely helpful for us as well.

So our key takeaways for you, and I think you've picked up on a whole bunch of them, these three things— shared metric, frequent celebrations, and making time together— we've just spoken about them. But there is one other, I think, really critical thing, and it's about executive leadership alignment. If you're going to have a positive sales and marketing collaboration, it actually starts at the top. It starts with the go-to-market leaders that are hired by the CEO. It starts at the support of the CEO for those two leaders to collaborate and then for those leaders to role model the relationships and the behavior. And in Greenhouse at this moment, we have levels of collaboration that goes way beyond CMO and CRO. It goes into operational teams, revenue leadership, marketing leadership, and a thing called Customer Acquisition SLT, which is where we are all sitting around the table every 2 weeks talking about what's happening in our acquisition, in our pipeline, across our sales. Ankur, can you bring us home? Yes.

So in closing, I hope you all walked away with something valuable. The one part I really want to speak about again, because it's immensely valuable for everyone, not just us at Greenhouse, align on that one North Star metric. Do it once a year and ensure that all teams are tracking towards that metric and back it up quarterly.

Plus 1000. All right. That's our story. If you have any questions, please see us at the booth at Greenhouse. And I will just say one thing. When you get it right, it's a joy to be in both marketing and sales. All right. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.