How to get sales and marketing to work together. ft. Summer Poletti

Dave: One of the key concepts I’m passionate about is to make sure that marketing creates content that is actually useful to sales. In other words, I don’t believe that the primary purpose of content is to generate traffic. Traffic by itself doesn’t generate sales. In my opinion, content needs to educate, not sell prospects, about possible solutions to their problems.

And then explain why a company is a perfect guide to help them solve those problems. So content is a resource. It’s a resource that needs to be leveraged by the sales team in their sales process. If sales doesn’t use it, then I just don’t see the value of producing it. But it’s quite difficult to get the team to open up and talk about specific questions and objections they encounter during their conversations with leads and prospects. So today I decided to bring in a sales expert who can help us marketers get our sales team to talk with us so we can create content that is actually useful. Hey there, Summer.

Why don’t you give us a little brief introduction about yourself and then we can get started.

Summer: I was the generalist before it was popular to be a generalist. I have experience in customer service and operations. In PR and marketing and also in sales leadership and the beginnings of customer success back when we weren’t even calling it customer success.

So right now what I focus on is helping people align all of those pillars in order to increase revenue and to do it without increasing budgets. So it, it just goes straight to the bottom line.

Dave: Very cool. And we worked on a previous project together where I was kind of in the marketing role and you were in the sales leadership coaching role—can I say coaching?

Summer: Yeah, yeah. That was back when I was working as a coach, and I got handed that assignment because I was the one coach on the team who had done work as a VP of Sales in the corporate world, and so that client wanted a fractional VP of Sales, so, yeah, it was a little bit of both.

Dave: And that, that’s one of the interesting things, because I also came from corporate America, is taking the lessons learned of these large corporations and being able to filter it and kind of adapt it to our small, medium sized businesses. I think that’s a fascinating exercise.

Summer: Mm hmm. Indeed.

Dave: I’m going to go ahead and link Summer’s LinkedIn profile and website in the transcript. But let’s go ahead and get started. I’m really excited to have you as a guest today because both of us believe that there is a huge opportunity for companies to accelerate the revenue growth if only they can get sales and marketing to work closely together.

So today I want to chat with you about the three common objections that us marketers will face when we ask the sales team for time to sit down with us so we can create that compelling sales enablement content.

Summer: I had a little bit of a déjà vu when you sent that topic to me. Just remembering the teeth-pulling on my side. As a sales leader with marketing experience, I always had an appreciation for what marketing could do for an organization. So I was just blessed to have that in my background.

I do remember the first time I attempted—and I’m going to say succeeded because I eventually got around this—working in tandem with sales and marketing. There was a new marketing leader in the organization wanting to make a splash and my team had just been struggling. We weren’t getting enough leads. The leads we were getting were garbage. The brochures just didn’t reflect what we were actually talking to clients about or what clients cared about. It was all just fluffy, top-of-funnel stuff. My team was frustrated. They weren’t making the kind of money they knew they could. And it was like, okay, something’s got to give.

So this new marketer, who wanted to make a splash, just started working with her, only just the two of us. And then when I started to bring my team along, there were three objections. And I think it’s not just the marketers that will face these objections. I think it’s also the sales leaders who are going to drag their team along and align with marketing.

The three objections were:

1. “Content is marketing’s job.”

Salespeople didn’t see content as their job and felt marketing just needed to do theirs better.

2. “We don’t have time.”

Busy salespeople with quotas didn’t want to attend another meeting with corporate.

3. “Marketing will take credit.”

Salespeople feared marketing would get the recognition for deals they closed—even if commissions weren’t affected.

Dave: That first one, “Content is marketing’s job,” really reminds me of a very siloed approach—like the traditional linear sales funnel where marketing owns awareness and sales owns consideration and decision. Is that still the case?

Summer: Oh my god, it is so blurry. I showed a client this Gartner image of the buyer journey—from the buyer’s perspective—and it doesn’t follow a linear path. Buyers are doing research constantly, even after they’ve engaged with a salesperson. They back-check, fact-check, price-check. We’re stuck in an outdated mindset where the salesperson held all the info. It’s not like that anymore.

Dave: So when sales says, “writing content isn’t my job,” how do we help them see we’re creating resources to help them, like case studies or explainer blogs they can share with prospects?

Summer: I like that. Here’s the thing: sales folks are usually not the most detail-oriented. They want to move fast. If you give them something that saves them time—like a blog they can forward instead of writing out answers—they’ll love it. If it helps them sell faster and smarter, they’re in.

Dave: That’s exactly how I use content. I hate the “just checking in” emails. So I send over an article and then follow up with something like, “Hey Summer, any questions on that article I sent?” It continues the conversation and avoids the awkward check-in.

Summer: Yes! And when sales teams build their own decks because the website content doesn’t help, it creates inconsistency. Marketing can build those reusable assets that align everything and actually look good.

Dave: Exactly. Let marketing create the common language model. The same messaging—across the site, brochures, sales decks. That saves time and keeps everything consistent.

Summer: And when that experience is disjointed, buyers notice. Especially post-COVID—buyers expect seamless experiences. Even small businesses don’t get a pass anymore.

Dave: Totally. Okay, so your third objection—salespeople worry marketing will take credit for deals. That one surprised me.

Summer: Yeah, it happened mid-way through a process. We were doing mid-funnel marketing, custom content, nurturing, and won a big Fortune 100 deal. The salesperson got mad when marketing celebrated.

He felt it was his referral and his relationship. But the buyer had visited the website, read the content—it was a team effort. Still, sales needs recognition. It’s ego, sure, but also pride and performance. We had to learn to high five each other and share the win.

Dave: I get that. It’s going to get more important with account-based marketing. That’s targeted, strategic, and marketing will play a critical role all the way through the funnel.

Summer: Exactly. Celebrate together. Sales gets the commission. Marketing gets the win. It’s a team sport. Marketing is special teams.

Dave: Let’s wrap this up. Sales and marketing traditionally operate in silos. How do you start bringing them together?

Summer: It starts at the top. CEO, founder—whoever is in charge—needs to foster collaboration. If leadership doesn’t drive that alignment, sales and marketing won’t shift. It takes culture change. Not just process change.

Dave: Totally agree. We’ve been trained to think in MQLs and SQLs. It takes leadership to rewire that into one unified revenue team.

Summer: And you build it with small wins. Get people working together on one campaign, one asset. Then keep going.

Dave: It’s go team revenue. Not go marketing. Not go sales. Go revenue.

Summer: I love it.

Dave: Thanks again, Summer. I appreciate your insights—helping marketers understand sales psychology and bringing the teams together.

Summer: Thank you for having me.

Dave: And folks, don’t forget to check out Summer’s podcast at her website. I’ll link it in the transcript. Thanks for spending time with us.

Connect with Summer Poletti on LinkedIn.

Check out her blogs and podcast.