AMA: Glide VP of Sales, Katie Harkins on Sales / Marketing Alignment

You can't share enough. Objections and post mortems are my love language. If the Product Marketing Team and Sales teams are only talking at QBRs, you've already lost. I remember inviting my VP of Product Marketing to my QBR in San Francisco and he came out of it learning more than teaching us. That moment of shock on his face will stick with me forever. He said, "I should do this more often." If you wait to long to share objection trends and win/loss insights, they spoil like berries left in the ...Read More

If Sales isn’t ready, it’s not launched. It’s just deployed. A product launch is not when the feature goes live. A product launch is when a rep confidently sells it without reading from a slide. Sales should be giving Product and Marketing real world context. ICP validation, objections, competitive implications and pricing sensitivity insight from the past. Never forget about your Sales enablement. Clear positioning: What problem does this solve? Talk track: How do I introduce it in discovery? E ...Read More

Content doesn’t fail because Marketing is lazy. It fails because no one owns the lifecycle. First I recommend mapping content to the buying journey. Audit every asset and make sure it answers the question, "What stage does this help my prospect move forward?" The best content is stage accelerators. Never send a naked email. There is a customer story or pdf that can help move your prospect forward. In your next 1:1 dare you to ask AEs, "What do prospects keep asking for that we don't have?" Measu ...Read More

It's easy to say, but revenue is a team sport. PLEASE - no more silos with dashboards. What gets measured gets funded and everyone should see the same scoreboard. Gray zones create churn. Expansion doesn't happen by accident. It happens by design. Is there executive sponsor strength? Industry plays that have worked over the teams? Product usage trends? Adoption gaps? Weakness can smell like a discount. It's everyone's responsibility with clear swim lanes because the market only cares whether cus ...Read More

I've seen webinars fall flat on their face and other webinar strategies dominate TOFU results. During Covid, our webinar team was our #1 generator of net new leads. First, your CSV download shouldn't be "Webinar_Leads_Final_FINAL3" They should have the webinar name & date. Don't fumble hot intent. If it's easy to do, please segment before you sprint. Did they ask a question? How many resources have they downloaded? Did they drop early or stay until the end? Maybe they registered and didn't a ...Read More

I've seen this be a nuclear explosion to a sales org. Our revenue operations team tripled the size of the SDR team without consulting how we were going to triple the size of our MQLs and SQLs with our Marketing team. You have to make sure AEs want more at bats, conversion rates and strong and SDRs are efficient before you invest in deman generation. Don't hire more hunterst if there's no forest. The uncomfortable answer to this is sometimes it's not more budget or more headcount that fixes the p ...Read More

After 20+ years of watching chaos unfold, a clear approval framework is necessary when you're massaging changes. Product --> Product Marketing --> Sales Leadership --> Customer Success/Renewal Managers. There sholdn't be any whisper campaigns. What's changing and why? Before and after examples are most definitely needed. Sales Teams usually need sales talk tracks and how they should craft their messaging. Any updates on objection hanging and updates in collateral + DATE of execution. Wh ...Read More

Remember to test early & test often. Every test must answer: What hypothesis are we testing? What metric moves if we’re right? What happens if we’re wrong? There shouldn't be any ambiguity. Do you have a definied audience, variable, expected outcome and measurable impact? Don't change six things at once. It's one major variable at a time. It's ok to create an experiment brief with your Sales, Marketing & Revenue Operations Team. This keeps it simple, documented and visible. Don't punish ...Read More