The #1 Thing Your VP of Marketing, VP of Sales and CEO All Have to Agree On

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Q: How do I drive alignment between my new VP of Marketing and my VP of Sales?

The simplest forcing function to help your first VP of Sales and Marketing work well together is for you all to agree on what the #1 core metric in the funnel is.

And then what the core goals are there for each month and quarter of the year.

Is it X leads per month?
Is it a certain number of MQLs? Or is it SQLs? Or is it SQOs by number?
Or is it Y $$ of opportunities?
Or is it simply Z $$$ of closed/won business?

I.e., pick >one< phase/stage of the funnel as Priority #1 for the Demand Gen+ Team Goals. (This of course is in addition to your MRR growth goal).

And have your VPS, VPM and CEO agree on that stage as your core marketing KPI. And then your VPM will know exactly what she or he is accountable for delivering to sales. And report against each month and quarter.

These days, more and more marketers and SaaS companies focus on core funnel metrics “further down” (i.e., SQOs vs. MQLs or raw leads). But really, it doesn’t matter as much as just aligning on which is the #1 goal for demand generation. And driving it up ideally even faster than your goals for revenue growth.

So pick a core stage of the funnel as marketing’s goal #1 — and its core commits and accountability to sales over the year.

Then as a team, talk about how you are going to hit it. Every week.