Building Better Alignment Between Your Sales and Marketing Teams

I’m doing very well. Thank you so much for having me. Beautiful Monday.

Yes, I am. Portland, Oregon.

Yes, we only have two seasons—rain and August. That’s it. Unfortunately, due to what I’d call climate change, this year we actually saw quite a bit of rain in August, which never happens.

I’ve lived here for 20 years, and August is usually very nice—you don’t see much rain. But this year has been very different.

No, we came here for work. My husband got a job with Intel at the time, so we moved to Portland because of a job way back in the ’90s.

I grew up in Taiwan. I was born and raised there, then came to the States when I was 16.

Well, actually, both sides of my family are huge. But with my parents, it was like, oh my God, they both have big families. They have brothers and sisters like no one else. But for us, not bad—I’m the oldest, and they actually have two brothers.

Yeah, at that time, yeah. Now, nowadays, everybody only has one or two kids—or none, to be honest—just like any other modern family.

Yeah, double income. Everybody needs a double income to live nowadays. I mean, doesn’t matter which country you go to. I think with that and raising kids—it’s expensive. I don’t know if you are, Shane, but having a child, or raising a child, is quite expensive.

What about now—is it private college, or just regular college?

Yeah, my kids. So we kind of did a reverse. We sent our children to private elementary school and then we yanked them out and had them go to public junior high and high school. We were thinking, if we actually send them to private school early, they can set up a foundation and learn how to manage their time or whatever, and then when they’re older, hopefully they’re being trained or educated in a certain way. Then they can take what they’ve learned and better prepare themselves—especially for junior high and high school. And actually, we kind of took a slightly different approach. And it worked out well too.

I totally agree. One thing they learned at that time was actually time management. It was really interesting because they had a small class, and the teacher was teaching them how to manage their time. They had a time sheet every day—not only what they had to do, but also how to figure out when and how to do it. That turned out to be the biggest benefit. We didn’t anticipate that at the time, but it ended up being a great skill they carried forward through junior high and high school. And I have two boys—actually, they’re in college, just like yours.

Yeah. I’m totally broke.

It’s just amazing. I mean, they go to public school in-state, but still—man, it’s expensive. How much, I can tell, is expensive. I don’t know how other parents do it, like sending two kids or four kids to private school. I really don’t know how they do it.

I’m 100% even if you want to be a doctor. I was like, “You know what? You can join the military.”

It’s definitely more affordable, you know.

We’re on the same page.

I went to the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Go Wildcats! I lived in California at the time for about three or four years. Then I went to Kentucky for college. That first year was definitely an eye-opener. It’s a very different environment. The South is very different. I mean, I love the hospitality, and people are genuinely nice—but it’s very different.

Yeah, for a few years before I went to the South.

L.A. Actually, I lived on the east side—in Riverside.

Yeah, the first year was a little bit—it’s much more proper. At that time, California was a more casual place, for sure. And the South was a lot more formal. I’d say the rituals, the values, and even the lifestyle were completely different from typical California style.

Yeah, the situation is horrible. I think that’s kind of consistent in sanctuary states, and unfortunately, they’re still working through a solution. You can see similar issues in San Francisco or Seattle, for sure.

Portland has changed a lot in the past 10 or 15 years. It’s not the same city I used to live in. But I don’t have solutions—I’m not a politician or policymaker. I think everyone agrees it needs to be resolved, but right now they’re still figuring it out. So we’ll see how it goes. But yes, the homeless situation isn’t great.

Yeah, the restaurant scene is phenomenal.

I think we dropped by a lot…

Getting out of college, my first job was waiting tables. I worked at a restaurant for a little while, but then I went to graduate school and got my master’s degree. From there, I started working in the COVID world. I was KP and GP my week—actually for two or three years—and I was a COVID auditor.

Then I moved to Accenture. And my last job—the last company I worked for—was Intel. I was with Intel for almost 20 years.

Yes, he did. He got a job with Intel first, but he left five years before I did. He stuck around for a little while, then left and joined another company.

Yeah. I was in corporate for literally all my life, and I call myself a corporate junkie. Then around 2011—maybe a midlife crisis, however you want to call it—I didn’t buy a red Ferrari, but it was like, inside of me, my heart was in a different place. I didn’t cut the tie right away, but I kept thinking, “I need to do something different.” I didn’t know what that was. So I started this kind of soul-searching journey. It was like baby steps. I believe when your heart starts pulling you in a direction, the universe starts to respond.

And suddenly, things shift. You start meeting people, getting nudged into a direction—either one you want or one that’s meant for you. Between 2011 and 2014, before I officially left, I was asking myself, “What do I really want to do when I grow up?” That was the question. I didn’t know what the answer was, but I started talking to people and meeting different sets of people outside the corporate world. One thing led to another, and I started writing a book. Originally, I wanted to write fiction, but I discovered I had no talent for it. That was my discovery. I was like, “Okay, fine. If I can’t write a novel, I’ll write a business book.”

So I took what I’d learned at Intel—especially a unique experience I had managing global content marketing—and I used it. I was working at a global scale, across geographies and country marketing managers. That’s when I wrote a book on how to scale content marketing globally. It’s a B2B-type of book, and that became my launchpad. It gave me a path to work for myself. So that’s pretty much the highlight of the story.

Yeah. So they have a lot of processes. And I didn’t take Intel’s process exactly, but I kind of put into the framework what I think makes sense—and can scale to other companies. Does that make sense? You know, Intel’s process can be very complex, and I simplify parts of it, then customize it with my own thoughts and observations. That’s what the book was about.

Yeah, I love creating templates—especially modifying templates that fit my customers’ and clients’ needs. After I left Intel, I taught at universities for a couple of semesters. What I’ve realized working with students, especially non-millennials, is they love templates. They’d say, “Pam, can you give us templates?” And I’d say, “Well, marketing can be situational.” And they’d say, “Ma’am, we want 10 plus.” So I said, “Okay, I’ll make it happen.”

For one semester, yeah. Then West Virginia University. That’s an online program—a master’s course. I did that for two semesters.

I wouldn’t say a lot—I mean, enough to get by. But I learned a lot from the corporate world, for sure, and then applied that. Academia can be very theory-driven, and when I taught courses, I tried to bring in real-life applications and examples—how things actually worked in the real world. That was really appreciated by students because it wasn’t just frameworks and theories.

I’d say, “Hey, this is what we actually did in the corporate world,” or “These are the types of questions you should ask.” Like, if we put a marketing plan together—this is what it actually looks like. So they really appreciated sharing those real-life examples.

I went to CMI—it’s a Content Marketing Institute conference called Content Marketing World. It’s in its ninth year, and I’ve been attending every single year. I’m very grateful they keep inviting me back. In the past, I usually just did sessions, but about four or five years ago, I started doing workshops too. Now I usually do both—a session and a workshop—and I try to challenge myself each year by presenting different topics.

For several years now, my focus has been on content marketing and global content marketing. I wrote my second book about that, and the third is on effective sales enablement—how to support sales as a marketer. This year, my workshop and session were both focused on how marketers can better support their sales teams. The session covered five creative ways marketers can do this, and I also included case studies and shared templates with everyone so they could take those and use them right away.

Yes, exactly. What I’ve found from speaking at many conferences is that attendees often don’t know what they don’t know—but they also don’t want to be overwhelmed with details. So when you do a session, it’s about finding a balance. You can’t be too high level, but you also can’t dive into every detail.

People like it when you stay focused. They want clear, digestible info they can actually internalize and apply. So I always aim to walk that fine line.

I 100% agree with that. And at the same time, you have to entertain them. Students want to be entertained.

Yeah, there are a couple of things I’d like to share with your audience. One thing I talk about in my sessions is this idea that, you know how we say “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”? Well, in marketing, it’s more like “keep your friends close—and your salespeople even closer.” The way to do that is to truly understand them better. So let’s talk templates. A lot of marketers have buyer personas—fictionalized representations of your buyers. But what if you used that same template to create a salesperson persona?

I’m not talking about personal details, like, “Oh, Shane is 37 and loves skiing.” I mean, what does a day in their business life look like? How do they manage rejections? How do they move leads from prospects to qualified opportunities? What’s their process? What kind of content do they use? Write it down. Document it. Then take that and review it with your salesperson to validate it. You might write something like, “My salesperson has the attention span of a goldfish.” Great—share it with them. Maybe it’s true, and it opens up a conversation about how to work better together.

The second thing is content. Marketers often create content based on the buyer’s journey. But what if we mapped content to the salesperson’s journey? In a typical B2B sales process—prospecting, qualifying, demoing, proposing, closing—can you identify what they do at each step and what kind of content would help them? Then look at your content library. What content do you already have that matches those needs? You’re not forcing marketing content on them—you’re categorizing it based on how they sell. Now it’s actually useful. That gives you a much better foundation for collaboration. Is that helpful?

Oh, and also how to scale…

That’s another key point. Different types of salespeople have different selling approaches, so you’ll see those differences. You have to figure out how to scale—that’s the challenge. It’s like, “Oh my God, do I have to create 20 different salesperson personas?” No, that’s not feasible, and it wouldn’t help the sales team. So marketing has to find that sweet spot.

That’s a really good question. Most of the projects I work on are with marketing teams, helping them figure out how to better support sales. When I do work with the sales side, it’s usually not directly with salespeople—it’s with sales operations or sales enablement teams.

And I love them—they’re great people—but they’re very busy, and changing behavior is hard. If they’re going to change how they work, there needs to be a major incentive or shift. So most salespeople won’t hire me to help them—they want their marketing team to understand them better. That’s where I come in.

Occasionally, I’ll speak with VPs of Sales, but usually not with salespeople directly. They’re busy selling. Anything they do outside of selling—training, admin, anything non-revenue-generating—takes time away from their core job. So instead, I try to understand what they do and how to support that better. Most of the time, I work with their support teams—operations and enablement.

Yeah, that’s a good question. Shane, there is a tool that really helps facilitate sales and marketing collaboration. It’s called EngageIO—spelled E-N-G-A-G-I-O—and it’s a platform that helps sales and marketing teams communicate better.

It’s positioned as a sales enablement platform, and while there are many like it, some are more sales-centric content management libraries. Marketers can upload content and determine what’s appropriate for salespeople, who can then access it easily through the platform. It basically streamlines how sales teams find the content they need.

There are a lot of tools out there. So my recommendation to listeners is this: before picking a tool, look at your process. What part of the engagement or collaboration do you want to improve? What questions or issues do you need to solve? Then figure out the right tool to support that goal.

So instead of saying, “Use this tool,” I always tell people—don’t start with the tool. Start with the problem. Once you know what you’re solving for, then you can choose the right tool to support it.

Exactly. I use Nimble as a CRM tool, and I’ve tried Pipedrive, but eventually I settled on Salesforce. Most of my clients are enterprise clients—and guess what CRM they use? Salesforce. So I had to get up to speed quickly.

Salesforce might not be necessary for an independent consultant, but I use it to stay educated and serve my clients better. So yeah, it’s about the objective. My reason for using a tool might be completely different from someone else’s.

Oh yeah, that’s nice. Yes, yes—it’s actually a very good tool.

Yeah, they’re huge—and it’s a very complicated tool. I mean, it literally horrifies many marketers when they look at it. I was like, “Wait, what?” There’s just so much going on in there.

Exactly. You pretty much have to hire someone just to understand your process and fully customize the platform.

Yeah. Oh, my God.

To be honest, every company I talk to—and I talk to a lot—no one ever says, “We’re doing a phenomenal job, and sales and marketing are living happily ever after.” Nobody says that. Everyone still has challenges. It’s just like life—every stage comes with a challenge.

Even if your kid is great, independent, doing well—you’re proud—but there’s still some kind of friction. Same with sales and marketing. There’s always a little misalignment. So I don’t know of a single company that would raise their hand and say, “Yep, we’ve nailed this.”

That said, there is a great book called Aligned to Achieve by Tracy Eiler and Andrea Austin. Tracy is a CMO at InsideView, and Andrea is their VP of Sales. They co-wrote the book, which is all about how sales and marketing can work better together. If your company is aligning those two teams well enough to write a book about it—chances are, you’re doing something right.

I’m not affiliated with them at all, and I don’t even know them personally. But it’s a good example of a team that’s clearly put serious effort into alignment. So if you’re interested, you can check it out.

Is everyone working on aligning sales and marketing? Yes, absolutely. Everyone recognizes how important that collaboration is becoming—especially with the rise of digital. Digital is really a forcing function. It pushes sales and marketing to work together.

Take email marketing, for example. It used to be something only marketers handled. But now, salespeople are using tools like Salesforce or CIM platforms to run their own mini email campaigns whenever they want. So if sales and marketing aren’t talking to each other, you’re not creating a seamless customer experience—for prospects or existing customers.

Yeah, the legal review…

I don’t have a perfect solution for it, to be honest. But what I’ve found works well—especially when I was at Intel—is communication. It’s really all about communication, communication, communication. Over-communicating is better than under-communicating.

For example, I used to attend sales meetings regularly to share what content was coming down the pipeline and what campaigns we were running. Sometimes we’d even share email templates or assets directly with the sales team.

Of course, even with all of that, things still happen—like duplicate content being sent to customers. That’s just the reality in a large organization. There’s no perfect way to eliminate it.

So what I did was show up to their meetings or host my own forums to keep everyone aligned and informed. And the second piece is leveraging technology—using a sales and marketing collaboration platform, for example. If everyone uses the same platform, then they can go in, see what’s already been done, and avoid overlapping or overwhelming customers.

But again, there’s no silver bullet. I’d be lying if I said there’s a perfect solution.

You can still do it—literally. Just buckle down and sit. That’s all you need to do. Sit down, start writing, and five or six months later, you’ve got a book.

Actually, it’s my kids. My biggest accomplishments are my two boys—they’re fantastic.

I’m not a tiger mom, okay? Everyone assumes, “Oh, you’re Asian, you must be a tiger mom.” No, I’m not. I don’t push my kids. I don’t say, “You have to work harder,” or “Don’t relax.” I’ve never really pressured them, but they still turned out great. They manage their time well, do their thing, and I’m so grateful for that.

And honestly, I was working the whole time. I didn’t do much—they were raised by my husband, our teachers, and maybe a little by me. I wasn’t around for their first steps, first day of school, or Christmas concerts. I used to apologize to them when they turned 14, 15, and said, “Sorry I wasn’t there for all that.”

But then they say something that melts my heart: “We don’t remember any of that. What we remember is when we needed you—you were there.” And I’m like, “Oh my God. Can I take you out for a drink? Let’s go. You’re 21.”

I 100% agree. They’re very grateful, and we have a close relationship. I feel super blessed from that perspective.

Oh yeah, he’s fantastic. I’m just… yeah, whatever. I’m not very good.

A couple of things. First, I’ll be doing a keynote in Vienna this October, so I’m headed there. When I’m in Europe, I try to stack a few things together, and this time I’m also going to Morocco for five days. Totally different kind of trip—so I’m excited.

I’ve also got a couple of big projects coming up. One of them is really interesting—it’s helping a fairly sizable company build out their B2B marketing organization. I’ll also be working with them on MARtech evaluation. So not just advising leadership, but helping build processes and implement tools that support their sales through marketing. I’m super excited about that one.

It’ll be a combination of both. The company’s based in Texas, so I’ll be traveling there quite a bit. Some of it I’ll do remotely, but I’ll also be on-site regularly.

It’s in Texas.

You know, that’s a really good question. When I saw it, I spent a lot of time thinking about it because it’s such a great one. Through all my consulting projects, teaching, and working with different companies, one perspective I’ve had has actually started to shift a bit.

For a long time, I believed strongly in starting with strategy. I worked at a large company for many years, and I collaborated closely with global teams, country marketing teams, and product marketing. From that experience, I always felt strategy had to come first. I used to think: tools and technology are just enablers—technology is not strategy. You build a holistic strategy first, and then bring in the tools and processes to support it.

But now, I’ve started rethinking that a little.

Technology platforms and tools have become such an essential part of everything we do. It’s not just that they’re trendy—they’re foundational. Right now, we’re using Zoom to talk and Google Docs to collaborate. If we were working together—me in marketing, you in sales—we’d rely heavily on shared tools to communicate and stay aligned. So in that way, technology isn’t just supporting the work; it’s shaping how we work.

For the longest time, the model was: strategy first, technology second. But now, I believe you need to understand your tech stack before you define your strategy. I’m not saying that technology is the strategy—but rather, your strategy should be built with a deep awareness of the tools you’re using and how they shape your workflows.

And that changes things. It means the tools you choose can influence your entire organizational structure—how you divide roles, responsibilities, even how teams are built. Traditionally, we’d separate out roles by function: social media team, event marketing team, email team, etc. But what if we flipped that?

What if we start by looking at the tools and platforms we rely on—and use those to help shape how we organize our teams?

So I guess my big thought is this: CMOs of the future may need to shift away from building orgs based strictly on functions, and instead think about how technology shapes collaboration and execution—and then build their teams around that.

It’s an idea that’s been simmering in my head for a while now. I’m not 100% sold on it yet, but I felt like this was a great place to share it.

Does that make sense? I mean, I don’t have a solid answer. So, guys, don’t take everything I said as like, “Pam said this, yes, I did,” but it’s really just an idea I’ve been thinking about. If you have any follow-up questions or thoughts, I’d love to hear them—even from the audience!

Oh my god. That would be good. That would be fantastic.

No, I would…

But I’d probably scale back a little. I’ve been working a lot. And working for yourself is hard—anyone who’s done it can relate. Especially in the past five years, since I left the corporate world post-COVID, I’ve been putting in long hours.
So if I actually had the money, I think I’d slow things down just a bit. I’d do yoga every day. That’s something I really want to keep as part of my life.

That’s totally true. My husband was like, “I’m going to retire at 56.” And I was like, “Why?”
Meanwhile, I’m over here thinking, “I’ll probably retire at 70.” I mean, I can work. Why not?

Well, the top of my list right now is New Zealand. I haven’t had the chance to go yet, but everyone tells me how amazing it is. I want to go so badly.
But the country I keep going back to is Italy. The culture, the food—I just love it all. I eat all the time there. I eat when I’m happy, when I’m angry, when I’m stressed, when I’m celebrating. I’m like, always eating in Italy.
People kept saying, “You’re like the flu over there,” because I just kept showing up again and again. It’s fantastic.

All right, Shane. That picture was 10 years ago.

I’m on pretty much every major social media platform—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram—you name it. You can reach me on any of those, or you can always go to pamdidner.com and send a message through the contact page. That works great too.

Very good. Thank you for sharing that, Shane. I really appreciate it.

Love that. Love that. Thank you so much for having me.

Bye.