---
title: "The One and Only Way to Align Sales and Marketing"
episode: 4
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Cameron Legge"
guest_title: "Engagement Manager, LeanScale"
date_published: 2023-05-03
date_modified: 2026-07-22
duration: 00:14:20
word_count: 2423
topics: ["revenue-operations", "gtm-strategy", "demand-generation", "sales-leadership", "enterprise-sales"]
canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/cameron-legge-align-sales-marketing/
source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# The One and Only Way to Align Sales and Marketing — Full Transcript

> Episode 4 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Cameron Legge.
> Published May 3, 2023 · 00:14:20 · 2,423 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/cameron-legge-align-sales-marketing/

## 00:00 — Cold open + welcome

**[0:00]** Hi, I'm Anthony. Welcome to The LeanScale Podcast, where we talk about everything RevOps. Thanks for listening.

## 00:21 — A tale as old as time — meet Coach Cam

**[0:21]** Welcome to The LeanScale Podcast, where we talk about everything RevOps. Today, we're going to be talking about a tale as old as time. The never-ending struggle to align sales and marketing. With me today is Cameron Legge, currently an Engagement Manager for LeanScale, but most importantly, coaches his local high school basketball team. And I thought he could bring some of his courtside expertise to the issue of getting teams aligned. Cameron, thanks for being here. Appreciate it, Anthony. I can definitely say I have the whistle ready. Excited about another episode of the podcast. I think we're going on

**[0:55]** episode four here. So I think it's time to tell the folks that are tuning in and watching and listening religiously. It's time to like, comment, subscribe. Let's go. It's The LeanScale Podcast. Come on. That's right. All the reshares, all the likes. Much appreciated. We hope you appreciate the content and we're happy to keep bringing these topics to you. So let's hop into it. If you could just describe what you typically see in your experience as an Engagement Manager at LeanScale also being a sales professional marketing professional in the past. How do you typically see these departments working together?

## 01:34 — How sales and marketing operate in silos

**[1:34]** Yeah, I think in terms of them working together, a lot of times we see some silos between those two teams. Marketing is making decisions and thinking about the marketing funnel in their own silo and making decisions based on what they feel like is working and the way that they're being measured and how they want to reach those goals. They're thinking about their world, in their world, in their silo. Then you have sales that's also operating in their silo and spending a lot of time obviously running around hustling, getting deals, you know, down the funnel and

## 02:09 — Basketball vs. football: two different games

**[2:09]** close wanting deals, of course. So a lot of times we do see them operating in their own games, right? So as you talked about me being a basketball coach and leaning into the sports analogy, I think we want to use the somewhat of a metaphor where marketing is more than playing basketball and sales is more playing football, America's favorite pastime. And we just, I think from that standpoint, just see those two games being different and being able to align those two games. And I think we even joked about getting LeBron James to play tight end for you and making that

**[2:49]** crossover is extremely important and having a high level of collaboration can be extremely fruitful for the business when you're just having that high level of collaboration. I think when this shows up, when you're in a company, and I don't know if you've seen this, you probably have, but where this is usually obvious is when you're doing a monthly review or you're sharing results at a company offsite and the slide comes up, how many leads did we get? And then marketing will say, Oh, we got 10,000 leads. And then sales is like, Oh, those numbers are terrible. That doesn't even make sense. And that doesn't happen when you're

## 03:26 — Same sport, then the same scoreboard

**[3:26]** watching a basketball game. You don't have one team say, Oh, we have 30 points. And the other team says, No, that's not even real. And I think they met up the metaphor makes a lot of sense, like getting the two teams to at least play the same sport. But then even better, if we can align to the same scoreboard, then that'll get the teams to run in the right direction. So what opportunities are typically missed? What's left on the table by having these teams run in silos? Yeah, that's a great question. I think the big key is the ability to have the sales team collaborate on marketing initiatives. The sales team is going to feel and

## 04:13 — What silos leave on the table: the feedback loop

**[4:13]** also be rewarded by marketing initiatives that are working. So when they're investing in certain channels, that the sales team can then clearly say, whether it's a data driven, right? So, hey, I know I've got deals coming in from marketing channels, and the inbound is pumping. And that's great for me because I can jump in and start to move this down the funnel. That feedback is invaluable, from a data perspective, but then also just the feel, right, you have sales reps attending trade shows

**[4:44]** and other levels of events that sales teams are attending. And they get a pretty good sense of what's working and what's not, you know, when they come back from a trade show, and knowing, you know, hey, this was a productive couple of days or a week, I know we've got some long conferences out there in the business world. But knowing, you know, hey, I'm coming back with some legitimate leads that I can go after. So that just level of collaboration and just that feedback loop, where sometimes when we talk about those silos that

**[5:16]** marketing and sales are working in, it's it can kind of get to the point where it's, hey, don't look over the wall at my yard, right? Like, hey, I, you know, I'm focused on marketing every day, I know what's going to work well. But when you're able to have that feedback loop, and be able to collaborate at a level where nobody's getting their feelings hurt, right? We're all smart business professionals, we're all trying to pull in the same direction and grow the company. I think those things matter a lot. And the same thing can be

**[5:47]** said from marketing to sales, right? It's not just a sales feedback loop for marketing and where their investment should be made. But also, you know, allowing marketing to speak into things that are happening and happening in the sales process based on their experience in the marketing process, I think can be such a big multiplier for your business when you're allowing that feedback loop to happen in a healthy way. And just having that collaboration can just be really fruitful for the business.

## 06:19 — Bringing marketing into the sales process

**[6:19]** I think that makes a lot of sense. And I want to double click on marketing getting involved in the sales process, because I think a lot of sales professionals probably have an opinion about how they can get involved in marketing and might be missing a huge opportunity by inviting marketing into the sales process. You typically have teams that are well trained, well experienced in branding, positioning, understanding the marketplace that you're in, involving marketing in how you're explaining the product, how you're

**[6:51]** explaining the value that it can offer, and then really understanding the competitive landscape as well, and incorporating that into the sales process, incorporating that into the pitch process, I think is invaluable. And we lose the opportunity to leverage a lot of frameworks that would make us as sales professionals, more effective by not bringing marketing teams into the process itself. So this podcast is about getting tactical, we stay away from high level stay away from just the pie in the sky

## 07:21 — Getting tactical: how do you actually align them?

**[7:21]** ideas. So okay, we know they're not working together. Typically, some companies have it down and we're proud of you. But that's that's not the norm. How do we get these teams working together? What do we have to do? Yeah, so bringing that question back to our analogy, right? It's how do we turn touchdowns and field goals and merge those together with three pointers, two pointers and free throws, right? So I think the first thing from an alignment standpoint is clearly defining your

## 07:51 — Step one: define your go-to-market lifecycle

**[7:51]** go to market lifecycle. So having that really drilled in, because that's the foundation of how we're going to calculate the points in the game. So I know here at lean scale, we work with our customers on a regular basis, it's never a perfect science where it's set, and then it's done, right? It's an ongoing process of dialing in that go to market lifecycle. We have a very clear one that we have in our lean scale method. So shout out to all the folks that you know, are able to contribute to what we think is best practice from a go to market

## 08:22 — High-velocity: tie marketing to bookings (uptempo offense)

**[8:22]** lifecycle perspective, and we'd love to share that with folks out there. But having that dialed in is just so important. And when you think about that scoreboard, and we're merging together that scoreboard between marketing and sales, when I think about companies that we work with that are a little bit more high velocity from a sales cycle standpoint, aligning marketing to the bookings outcomes that happen, right? When you're talking about a low sales cycle, so let's say anywhere from 30 to 60 days and that high

**[8:50]** velocity range, the points are going to be on the scoreboard rather quickly, right? We're talking about an uptempo offense here in terms of basketball reference, right? We're talking fast break up and down the floor. So the points are going to be on the scoreboard pretty quickly, right? You're not waiting around and eventually trying to figure out how marketing played a part. That's true. That's true. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, so again, for those who might what we mean by go to market lifecycle is actually the stages that you set up in your CRM. So what

**[9:22]** stages are the leads in what stages are your opportunities in all the way from awareness to closed one. So getting alignment on that, of course, makes a lot of sense so that it's really well defined. If you have something moving to a marketing qualified lead, there's no argument about what that means. And if it counts, or if it doesn't count, where if you use generic terms that that might, that might be the case. But to your point on high velocity, if you get marketing tied to the goal of closed one deals, and like you said, typically 3060 day sales cycle, I think that

**[9:56]** completely changes how they think about what they do and how they do it. Could you dive deeper into that one? Absolutely. So I think just from that standpoint, the points are going to be scored, right? They're going to be scored in a tangible range where you know the outcome. So aligning marketing to that bookings number or the closed one deals, right where the whole company is trying to get to everybody's pushing towards a closed one deal, right? That's, that's what we would call a golden

## 10:25 — One target, one team — who cares where the lead came from

**[10:25]** stage. So having marketing being measured in that same way, is just so crucial. And I think it's really important to to hone in on that and be able to have them a part of that number. And I also think that creates an environment. Who cares where the lead source came from? Who cares if it came from marketing or if it came from sales? Did marketing give sales material that help them get their own leads? Or did they help

**[10:51]** them with their sequences and cadences to get the right messaging to, you know, book an opportunity and book a close one deal? If so, that's great. The marketing helped and sales can can be appreciative. Or did marketing set up great paid advertising campaigns that develop the fruits of those campaigns for sales too? So I think aligning them to the same target really creates that teamwork mentality that that we're really striving for.

## 11:21 — Enterprise cycles: assists, pipeline, and SQLs

**[11:21]** So that works for high velocity. And we have a lot of customers that we work with that are in that segment. What about companies that have major enterprise sales cycles, long drawn out? I mean, we work with companies that have 12 18 month sales cycles. How do you get them playing the same game, when the points are going to be so far away, you might not even have the same marketing team members around by the time the deal actually moves to close one.

**[11:51]** Yeah, let's let's dive into the enterprise world. And this is now going to be your slow it down offense, right? We're no shot clock potentially. So we want to give marketing their fair due when it comes to assists, right, as we continue on with the basketball metaphors here. So the closed one of marketing and our eyes as a sales qualified lead. So when you're thinking about enterprise and marketing is closed one golden stage is what are we able to drive in terms of

**[12:20]** created pipeline and sales qualified leads. So that's where we would want to give them their due on the scoreboard. So I think that's really important. And, you know, in that, that scenario, when we're thinking enterprise, you know, from an MQL standpoint, or marketing qualified leads, those start to be just leading indicators, right? So being able to then really attach them to SQLs, and the assists that they're making in creating that pipeline, I think is the way that we see enterprise being approached from the scoreboard, right, and making sure that they have their part in terms of scoring points on that scoreboard.

## 13:04 — Wrap-up: fix the game, not the people

**[13:04]** Yeah, that seems to work just so well, when sales says, yes, this is a lead. Thank you. I'm moving forward to the conversation with a legitimate opportunity. There's no denying that marketing gets credit for that activity. So let's wrap it up. Typically, these departments are not fully aligned. It's something that we see with our customer base. It's something we've seen in our past experience.

**[13:31]** I'm sure a lot of people listening have seen this in their organizations as well. And the core of it isn't because they don't want to work together. It's not because you know, one team has good people, the other team doesn't. It's because they're not playing the same game. In some cases, they're not even playing the same sport. So that has to be fixed in order for them to collaborate together. And when you do that, then you open up the opportunity for both teams to add value to each other, create a positive feedback loop that ultimately is good for your customers and good for your business.

**[14:08]** Cam, thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciate you going to this topic. Love the basketball metaphors and looking forward to the next one. Awesome. Thanks, Anthony.