I recently had the pleasure to sit down with Christina Bottis, Chief Marketing Officer at Mural, and Pat Eskew, Chief Revenue Officer at iManage, as they shared their honest perspectives on one of our industry's most persistent challenges: sales and marketing alignment.
As someone who's spent decades in revenue leadership, I've seen countless frameworks, workshops, and strategies aimed at solving this divide. Yet, as Christina pointed out during our session — somehow, we're still having the same conversations about the challenges of building a unified GTM plan.
Here are some of their best insights and strategies for go-to-market alignment across sales and marketing teams, gained from being in the trenches, working closely with their partners in sales or marketing, and sitting with them at the (boardroom) table.
1. Silos are often self-imposed
Christina's unique career path — starting in product, moving to marketing, and leading sales teams — gives her a holistic view of GTM that few executives possess. Her cross-functional experience allows her to see through the artificial nature of our organizational silos.
"Calling them different departments perpetuated the thought that we didn't care about the same end goal" Christina explained, describing her bold decision to rename her team "the go-to-market team." This change is a fundamental reframing acknowledging a truth we often miss: fragmentation is frequently self-imposed.
Christina was met with many head nods in the crowd (myself included) when she then asked: "Why do we do this to ourselves?"
So, rather than settle for how we’ve always labeled our teams, we need to start unifying them because that meant shared goals. Business is challenging enough without creating unnecessary barriers between teams that ultimately pursue the same objectives.
2. Trust is the foundation of sales and marketing alignment
Pat mentioned that he met with the EVP of Marketing many times before accepting his current role, which reveals this about true alignment: good partnerships start with strong relationships.
“We both had mixed experiences with interactions between marketing and sales in the past,” Pat explained when he spoke about connecting with his CMO. He pointed out that the foundation of their success isn’t a clever attribution model or shiny shared metrics dashboard. It’s intentionally building trust between both GTM leaders that trickles down to their teams.
Pat also discussed his decision to make his first hire at iManage a revenue operations leader rather than a traditional sales operations role to give marketing and sales input into shared reporting and goals. "We want one common process, set of data and KPIs," he emphasized. The result is an essential shared language that both teams can use more effectively to communicate what’s working and what's not.
Another key component of building trust between the marketing and sales team? Mutual empathy.
Christina challenges marketers to understand the pressure sales professionals face: "Have you ever been in bed at night worried about what you’ll get paid this month?” Simultaneously, she reminds sales teams that marketers often operate under constant pressure to validate their existence.
"Marketing is always trying to prove its worth... That's why we're like, look at the attribution. See, we're so good. Please like us," she noted.
This empathy deficit explains much of the dysfunction we see between departments. When teams fail to appreciate each other's unique challenges, collaboration becomes transactional rather than transformational.
3. End the attribution war
Christina believes that marketing's constant need to prove its worth via attribution also creates a psychological barrier to effective collaboration. It’s another reason Pat and Christina share a distaste for attribution battles that consume so much energy in our industry.
"I care about attribution, but I care more about the bottom line," Christina stated. Pat agrees that most attribution discussions are divisive, stressful, and unproductive for both sides.
Sure, directional attribution has value, but the months — sometimes years — spent debating credit for specific deals ultimately distract from what matters: driving business results and serving customers effectively.
4. The customer is the ultimate unifier
Christina and Pat also agree that a shared focus on the customer is the ultimate unifier between sales and marketing. But it’s not easy to align when sales and marketing teams don’t interact with customers in the same way.
For example, Pat points out that marketing teams often don't spend as much time directly with customers, making it difficult for them to understand certain nuances in their wants and needs.
It’s true. The most successful marketing leaders I've worked with regularly engage with customers directly — not through surveys or analyst reports but genuine conversations that reveal unfiltered perspectives.
"It's not about us; it's about them," Christina repeatedly emphasized. This customer-centric approach provides what she aptly called "a common love language" for both teams.
She believes that marketing teams should be constantly talking to customers, listening to calls, reviewing feedback; it creates a currency that both teams value.
Pat also shared the practice of bringing an "empty chair" to meetings as a physical reminder of the customer's perspective.
This simple but powerful metaphor forces teams to ask: "Would you be having this conversation if a customer was in the room?"
The path forward
For revenue leaders seeking to break down walls between sales and marketing, Christina and Pat's conversation offers clear direction:
- Reconsider your organizational language and structure. Are you inadvertently creating divisions where unity should exist?
- Prioritize trust-building between team leaders before expecting alignment at the operational level. Foster mutual empathy by helping teams understand each other's unique pressures and challenges.
- Create regular opportunities for marketing to engage directly with customers.
- Focus on directional attribution without getting lost in the weeds of deal-by-deal credit.
- Remember that the customer is your ultimate 'why.'
Organizations that master sales and marketing alignment will consistently outperform their competition and dominate in their category. But that’s not all: they’re also more pleasant places to work.
The bottom line? In today's challenging market, we simply can't afford the luxury of internal friction between the teams responsible for driving revenue growth.
The question isn't whether we can break down these walls — it's whether we can afford not to.
Follow Christina Bottis and Pat Eskew on LinkedIn and learn more about what customers are saying about Mural and iManage on G2.
