ShoreTel CMO On Unifying Marketing And Sales

Can personality tests close the gap between sales and marketing? Mark Roberts, CMO of ShoreTel, shares his strategy in this week’s Marketing Superstars podcast.

As CMOs, we often speak of the discord between the sales and marketing organizations. So how does one begin to mend the rift? A box of chocolates? A night-time serenade?

Well, how about a personality test? This is the strategy of Mark Roberts, CMO of ShoreTel, a unified communications vendor based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

“By having this virtual map of the team, it allowed us to work through the concepts of how to introduce something,” he told me. And when he learned how to speak to his sales team, he began unlocking their trust.

“It’s one of those more important relationships you have in an organization,” Roberts added. “You know when it’s going well, and you sure as heck know when it’s going badly.”

In this episode of Marketing Superstars, hear Roberts’s secrets to using these tests to better understand his marketing team and mend the rift between sales and marketing.

Additional highlights include:

• Understanding the disconnect between sales and marketing (2:45)
• Tying the buyers journey to sales (5:15)
• Leveraging the voice of the customer (8:55)
• Communicating building trust with sales (10:30)
• Using personality tests to help to communicate (15:25)
• Riding along with the sales teams (18:40)
• Providing transparency of information (21:20)

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