Ryan Arnett

First and foremost, it's fantastic that you've taken the initiative and made this a priority! Being in front of customers has been the single most important thing I've seen to drive a true understanding of our customers, and, perhaps even more important the challenges sales reps face day to day and how to build a better customer centric product with the right message to follow. In my past experiences, product marketing stated their purpose for being there in the introductions; I'm here to listen, learn and perhaps share and communicate our product and roadmap if applicable. Due to the early transparency and clarity for their attendence, the customer ended up looking at product marketing as a resource/consultant to their business. By removing pressure on product marketing to "inform" or "pitch" during the call they had conversations that left the customer and the PMM with critical takeaways. Those customers ended up having the most buy-in and built better long term relationships. 

Having worked well with Product Marketing in the past (and as a sales leader) sales can be admittedly tough to generate buy-in. However, sales is needy and tends to make an overwhelming number of asks from marketing. The problem I've seen is that sales is not educated on the role of product marketing and therefore less supportive. I would start with educating sales on their role/responsibilites, goals & how impactful product marketing "is" or "could be" if they have a strong line of communication. Once they understand how aligned their goals are, it becomes more of a partnership. Sales typically can carry a lot of weight because they are customer facing every day; however, if sales doesn't understand how working closely with marketing will help them move and close more deals then they take the "us" vs. "them" approach. Clear understanding of roles/responsibilites, alignment on goals and the Jerry Maguire "help me, help you."