Steps to Create a Collaborative Sales Plan

Over the years, I've discovered the truth: Game-changing products won't succeed unless they have a unified vision across sales, marketing, and product teams. When these key functions pull in different directions, it's a death knell for go-to-market execution. Without alignment on positioning and buyer messaging, we fail to communicate value and create disjointed experiences. So, how do I foster collaboration across these functions? 1) Set shared goals and incentivize unity towards that North Star metric, be it revenue, activations, or retention. 2) Encourage team members to work closely together, building empathy rather than skepticism of other groups' intentions and contributions. 3) Regularly conduct cross-functional roadmapping sessions to cascade priorities across departments and highlight dependencies. 4) Create an environment where teams can constructively debate assumptions and strategies without politics or blame. 5) Provide clarity for sales on target personas and value propositions to equip them for deal conversations. 6) Involve all functions early in establishing positioning and messaging frameworks. Co-create when possible. By rallying together around customers’ needs, we block and tackle as one team towards product-market fit. The magic truly happens when teams unite towards a shared mission to delight users!

Your comp plan is paying reps to be selfish. You say you want collaboration, team selling, flawless handoffs, and happy customers. But your comp plan tells a different story: - AEs hoarding accounts to squeeze one more renewal. - CS carrying the churn risk from overpromised deals. - SDRs passing junk just to hit demo goals. - SEs dropped from deals because they slow it down. - Partners ignored because they dilute the split. That’s not bad behavior. That’s just math. Sales comp is a system. And systems do exactly what they’re designed to do. If your comp plan only rewards individual heroics, you’ll never get team plays. If it only pays on closed revenue, you’ll never get qualified pipeline. If it ignores post-sale impact, you’ll never get long-term growth. And the worst part? We try to fix this misalignment with culture, not compensation. Cue the all-hands speeches of “We win together and we're all one team!” Buuuttttt then you flash a leaderboard that pits everyone against each other and wonder why nobody collaborates. Incentives don’t need fixing. They need realignment. Here’s how: 1. Add a handoff bonus to every AE/CS transition. Make reps prove they did a real warm intro, mapped the buying committee, and reviewed renewal risk factors. 2. Pay SDRs on qualified pipeline held to AE acceptance criteria. Not on booked meetings. Not on attendance. On quality accepted pipeline. Anything else is activity theater. 3. Carve out a multi-threading bonus inside opp scoring. Reward reps for early ID of finance, legal, and technical stakeholders. If your reps are flying solo, so is your forecast. 4. Protect SE and Partner involvement with minimum revenue share guarantees. Stop shaving 10% off their payout every time someone gets nervous about the split. Real collaboration costs money. 5. Tie CS comp to expansion readiness, not just retention. Involve CS in the expansion forecast. Bonus them on commercial influence — not just support ticket close time. It's not really fair to blame your reps for doing what they’re paid to do. If you want reps to act like owners, you have to pay them like co-owners. That starts with a comp plan that rewards shared wins, not solo ones. Your GTM engine isn’t one superstar away from greatness. It’s just one well-designed incentive model away from finally working as a team.

If I were a revenue leader trying to align marketing, sales and CS to build more quality pipeline, here's the exact play I'd run. Step 1: Kill the "That's Not My Lead" Mentality I have never been a CRO or VP of Sales however I hear this problem a ton. Who gets the credit? Marketing celebrates the MQLs, sales is hitting the gong and CS is celebrating the renewal cause sales maybe sold the wrong thing. Also did we source the right lead in the first place. Everyone's winning their own game while the buyer experiences chaos. Get the team aligned with one north star so everyone wins. Just like a sports team with one mission to win the game. Alex Olley explains this better than anyone. In my opinion, one of the best sales leaders around. Step 2: Create One Source of Buyer Truth Start creating signals that share one source of truth to run a true ABM approach with sales to break into accounts. In working with a lot of sales organizations, I see the biggest disconnect being that people are not communicating exactly what is going on. ↳ Marketing sees which content drives engagement ↳ Sales sees which features buyers care about ↳ CS sees what was promised vs. what's being used As an SDR manager back in the day, I asked for all of this data so I could prepare my team with the right insights to do outbound the right way. Identify someone who can handle this and lead the charge. Context matters. Step 3: Activate Every Team Around the Same Insights Now that we know the one source of truth we can start to leverage it in our outbound. With Consensus: ↳ Marketing knows which demos convert best ↳ Sales knows which stakeholders are engaged ↳ CS knows what to reinforce post sale Everyone has the same insights and now they can use their expertise to get in front of the right people. Step 4: Measure What Actually Matters The benefit of seeing what's progressing in sales cycles? We can use those insights to fix top of funnel. If this material accelerates deals, it can start them too. ↳ What videos progress buyers through their journey? ↳ Are stakeholders getting aligned faster? ↳ Is time to value shrinking? When the whole team rallies around buyer outcomes instead of departmental KPIs, revenue follows. No more "that's not my team." It's all one team. The buyer's team. #ConsensusPartner

Silos are killing your GTM (go to market) efforts. If Sales, Marketing, and Product are not on the same page, you’re wasting time, resources, and losing deals. Here’s the hard truth: Confused messaging = confused prospects. Misaligned goals = duplicated effort. Ignored feedback = missed opportunities. But it doesn’t have to be this way! I’ve laid out a no-BS, simple, 6-step framework to get your teams working together like a machine: 1. Shared goals: Get everyone aiming at the same target. 2. ICP definition: Stop guessing who your customer is—define it together. 3. Unified messaging: One value prop, one voice. 4. Weekly (or monthly) syncs: No excuses. Talk, adjust, win. 5. Shared metrics: No more hiding behind numbers. Transparency wins. 6. Team enablement: Equip everyone to close the gap. This guide is for the ones who are ready to stop the mess and get aligned for real results. Check out the PDF - read it, share it with your teams, and save it if it resonates with you.

Your biggest revenue leak isn’t lack of leads — it’s the silent war between Sales and Marketing. When two teams share the same target but operate in isolation, growth stalls. Marketing produces campaigns. Sales handles customers. But without shared intelligence, both sides miss the mark. Where things break down • Marketing builds personas based on assumptions • Sales uncovers real objections and buying triggers • Marketing crafts messaging from theory • Sales hears the unfiltered truth daily • Insights stay locked within teams • Collaboration becomes optional • Growth becomes accidental The real issue Marketing plans content and strategy using reports and trends. Sales gets live feedback straight from the people who buy. Yet the most important insights rarely make their way back into the marketing engine. It’s like watching a climber scale a wall: one person creates the base, the other uses it to rise. That’s exactly how Sales and Marketing should function — one unified system. The alignment model 1. Shared Reality • Weekly joint reviews • Marketing participates in sales calls • Sales audits messaging and content • Customer language captured and shared 2. Common Targets • Pipeline, not vanity metrics • Revenue, not activities • Quality over volume • Customer success as a shared outcome 3. Continuous Feedback Loop • Sales validates personas • Marketing refines messaging based on real objections • Results reviewed together • Adjustments made consistently Your alignment action plan 1. Set a weekly Sales–Marketing sync 2. Build one shared “Voice of Customer” document 3. Bring Marketing into live sales calls 4. Create a unified performance dashboard Because just like the wall climbers — one can’t reach the top without the other. Aligned teams don’t just grow… they scale. #SalesAndMarketing #RevenueGrowth #GoToMarket #CustomerInsights #B2BMarketing #SalesStrategy #MarketingLeadership #BusinessAlignment #GrowthStrategy