This is a Marketing and Selling Effectiveness sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. Regularly, the IEPS posts a new show with Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Julie Murphy from Sage Communications.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

Find Rick on LinkedIn. Find Paige on LinkedIn. 

RICK’S TIP: “If you’re not getting the results that you want, it’s probably not your people. It’s probably your processes, your governance models, and everything feeding the result of the scoreboard.”

PAIGE’S TIP: “The more you focus on features, the less you sell. Nobody cares about what your product does. They care about the outcomes it creates.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: We have a special show today. It’s our Marketing and Selling Effectiveness show. We’re going to be bringing on Rick Herrmann and Paige Johnson in a few moments here. They both worked at Microsoft and Intel together. We’re doing today’s show in March of 2026, and we want to talk about companies and organizations that understand that sales and marketing need to work together more effectively, especially with things going on in the customer base like AI and how the internet is influencing things. I’m excited to hear what they’re going to be saying together. 

Rick has actually been on the show before. He had his own episode back in 2023. Rick Herrmann, when he was at Intel, was one of our early sponsors of the Institute for Effective Professional Selling Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership Programs. We may get a little bit of interchange of that as well. Enough of the introductions, Julie. First of all, Julie, it’s great to see you. How are you doing? How are things going? Are you excited for this conversation with Rick and Paige? 

Julie Murphy: I’m really excited for this conversation, Fred, because I love it when sales and marketing executives work together at multiple companies, because that means you found a process and alignment that is really repeatable. I’m sure you have a lot of great stories from your time at Intel and Microsoft, and we’re looking forward to hearing all about them. Rick has been at many global companies as a sales leader, and Paige is a real expert in EdTech, and she is currently the CEO of the EdCatalyst Group, and also has significant marketing background. Welcome to you both, and we’re excited to dive in. 

Fred Diamond: Before I get to the questions here, Rick, is there anything else that you want to say as far as introduction that you want to let us know before we get into the interview here? 

Rick Herrmann: I think we’re going to get into this, but Paige and I have had a really extraordinary, I think we’ve worked together for two decades. Julie, you guys were mentioning, together at Intel and Microsoft. We’re going to get into some of the issues that make a great partnership, but we’ve been more than work colleagues. We’re very close friends as a result of going through some incredible battles at work. I’m really happy to have Paige here, and Paige has been a wonderful partner to me now for two decades in this space. 

Fred Diamond: Let’s get deep into that. You mentioned you’ve worked over two decades at two of the most successful companies in the history of technology, Microsoft and Intel. There was a classic article that was written in 2004 by Neil Rackham and Philip Kotler, Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing. Here we are in 2026, and one of the reasons why Julie and I came together for this podcast, is unfortunately we still see siloed organizations. It’s mind blowing that that even exists in 2026. 

You alluded to the partnership. What has made such a great and trusted partnership between the two of you and the successful collaboration that you both have had as a sales and marketing leader? 

Rick Herrmann: I think it just starts with respect. We each have a different set of skill sets that we were able to bring to the challenges that we were facing, both at Intel and Microsoft. I don’t know anybody that’s as expert in the field of EdTech as Paige in marketing go-to-market professional development. I think our relationship is founded on and built on that respect. That respect also leads to incredible trust. Think about hard decisions that have to be made between sales and marketing. Where are we prioritizing? Where is budget going? You talk about this war between marketing and sales. I think it’s pretty typical for those organizations to try and hide the football, hide the budget. None of that happened. 

We had such a great partnership built on respect and trust. That led to incredible transparency, and not just transparency between the two of us. But when you start with transparency, radical candor, radical transparency at the leadership level between two partners, that trickles down through absolutely every part of the organization. Then I think we practiced agree and disagree exceptionally well. You can agree and disagree, you can do it in an agreeable way. You can still walk away with deep respect, even though maybe you didn’t get your way. The ability to make decisions and agree to disagree, but then to go all in on what you agree to. I think those are cultural things that we learned at Intel. It’s things that people talk about but don’t practice well. But actually, I think we put a lot of those things into practice. It’s been an extraordinarily effective relationship. 

Paige Johnson: I was at Microsoft for a year before Rick came, and I’m the one that invited him to join our team as a sales leader. We were yin and yang to each other. One of the reasons why I wanted him to come on board was because there was a lot of friction between the sales and marketing team. In his very first week, he had me come onto his first open forum with his team, and my team was like, “Why are you going to the sales open forum?” His team was like, “Why are you inviting marketing?” 

He started with, “I just want you to understand there’s going to be radical transparency between our two teams. You can’t play us off each other. We’re here to support you, but we’re going to support you together.” It started the entire tenor of our relationship and our team’s understanding of how we were going to change the culture of collaboration. 

Julie Murphy: I love that example, Paige. Both of you have talked about this approach of radical transparency. It’s interesting because I think when sales and marketing organizations aren’t transparent, it comes from a fear, or of a hiding the football, as you put it, that who’s going to get the credit for this, when really obviously you’re both on the same team and that’s why it’s so successful. 

Paige, on this podcast, we’ve heard from both sales and marketing leaders alike that often speak to the importance of this structure and alignment between sales and marketing. That when there’s a lack of that, there’s also quite a bit of friction. I’m curious, where do you think that typically arises from and how do you resolve it? It sounds like, based on your last example, you have some real hands-on experience with friction. I would love to hear your thoughts here. 

Paige Johnson: I think friction does arise, and it’s a natural part, and it comes from three different places. The first is time horizon. Sales teams better make month close, need to land the quarter, and for god’s sake, hit your year. Rick’s annual and quarterly and monthly targets were mine, but he was more on the hook than I was every single minute for delivering those numbers. I was in support of that. But I had other things that I had to tend to. I was responsible for the entire P&L, so uncovered accounts, partner motions. I was responsible for thought leadership. In public sector, policy influencing is a huge part of what moves the market. That policy influencing often involves significant resources from marketing. Finally, if you own inbound marketing, part of your resources are going to the product team helping to define the roadmaps. 

All of those things help sales over time. But when you’re missing on your number, it doesn’t feel like that’s a priority. I understand that, but marketing still is held to those KPIs. Those time horizons and those KPIs are really important. Rick and I have always invested a lot of time in defining what I would describe as a Venn diagram, “Hey, together we share these responsibilities. Sales is going to be primarily responsible for these KPIs. Some of those I’m not even going to worry my pretty little head about because they’re his problem.” There are other KPIs that he’s not going to worry about, because he’s going to be focused on the market and landing his managed accounts, but that doesn’t let me off the hook. 

What that means is that you can show the KPIs, but the third thing around that friction is resource allocation. If you interview sales account executives, a lot of times what they would like 99.2% of their marketing resources to go is sales enablement for what they need to have done tomorrow. Marketing doesn’t have the luxury of that. Trading off those resources and being completely transparent, we showed where the resources were going. They didn’t always agree, we had to get them to disagree and commit, but they understood the trade-offs that we were making and they could see it. That does help a lot reduce friction. 

Fred Diamond: As we’re doing the show, Julie, we’re not talking about people should have the same job. They’re still sales and they’re still marketing. I run the institute for Effective Professional Selling. Most of our interface is with people like Rick, the VPs of sales, CROs, chief growth officer, whatever it might be. But we’ve come to realize, because of where we are in process right now, that if there isn’t this understanding of teaming properly with marketing, that’s not going to lead to your success. 

Rick, let’s get deeper into some of the things that Paige just said as it relates to you. I also want to get your advice for the sales professionals who are listening to today’s show, to the leaders, the emerging sales leaders who want to get to the level where you are leading big sales organizations at companies. Talk a little bit about why did you want this? Why did you realize that this was critical for you to ingrain yourself in the marketing process, for you to empower Paige and her organization to sit in on your meetings, and vice versa? Give some advice for the sales leaders on why maybe that should be part of their mentality as well. 

Rick Herrmann: For me, the mindset was we can learn so much from Paige and from the subject experts that were part of the marketing team. It’s that simple, in my mind. I think about one of the things that we did and one of the things that I think Paige and the marketing team did brilliantly. We had this one-to-one blueprint. No salesperson could have come up with this one-to-one blueprint for education. It was about the whole process of transforming an education or school using technology. What that did is it elevated everybody’s game. You talk about game changers. It moved us from a technology sales force to a consultative sales force, to be able to up level everybody’s. We did not have the skill set as a sales organization to do that. 

That subject matter expertise, at least in the case of being at Intel and Microsoft, really resided with the individuals that were in marketing. Yes, I had deep technical experts that could design a complete server infrastructure. Paige had these experts, and is one herself, that can go in and talk to a chief academic officer to say, “The outcome that you want isn’t technology. It’s learning outcomes. It’s a change in the trajectory of learning outcomes.” 

You started with Neil Rackham and SPIN and we go all the way up that stack from what we’ve learned about selling. It is really moving yourself up into that trusted advisor space, moving yourself into a consultative selling role, moving yourself up in the stack to a value-based role. If there’s one thing that I am incredibly appreciative of, that is what we were able to do in our partnership. 

Then I think as a sales leader, and this came from Microsoft, Microsoft has this term around rhythm of business. It’s interesting because we were doing that at Intel, but we never had a label around it. But at Microsoft, this idea of constantly gut-checking your rhythm of business, what is your governance structure? What is your process? Where do you need to collaborate? When I think about it as a sales leader, sometimes you just need to step back and do a gut-check. If you’re not getting the results that you want, it’s probably not your people. It’s probably your processes, your governance models in that entire rhythm. Do you have the right rhythm? Do you have the right collaboration points? Do you have the right processes in place? We spend an awful lot of time as sales leaders and CRM looking at the scoreboard, and I’m like, “Look less at the scoreboard and look at everything that’s feeding the result of the scoreboard.” I think Paige and I together really focused on those areas. 

Julie Murphy: Rick, I love what you said around the consultative sale, because that’s actually fundamentally what this whole podcast is about, and how the sales environment has changed so dramatically in recent years. The perfect place for marketing and sales to come together is to help you with that education, with that thought leadership, because Fred and I have looked at stats that even upwards of 80% of customers are doing research online before they’ll even engage a rep to talk about the product. That comes from the white papers, the webinars, the campaigns that help elevate the need for these types of services because it’s directly pointing to those learning outcomes, or whatever your customer’s goals are. I think that’s terrific. 

Paige, I’d love to talk to you a little bit about messaging, because especially when we’re talking about technical fields, the two of you worked together at Intel at Microsoft, we’re talking about technical products, and you’re selling into maybe people who aren’t super technical, they’re educators, so they’re focused on learning outcomes in their students. They’re not necessarily deep into understanding the technology, but they will understand if you can explain it to them in outcome terms. When you’re looking at the messaging that really resonates, especially for an audience, like the education community, how have you engaged the sales team to really help in shaping and refining that messaging to make sure that you’re hitting the mark when you go out with your campaigns? 

Paige Johnson: That’s a great question. Just riffing on how you set this up, as AI is entering the workforce at a rapid pace, and people are trying to sell AI solutions into their customers, the more they look like the feature creature, the less they’re going to sell. It’s all consultative sales. Nobody cares about what features your AI has. They all care about the outcomes. Honestly, Rick’s organizations, and Rick himself, were my best market sensing network for messaging. It’s interesting because I’ve often had customer advisory groups, and then I go on ride alongs, especially with the best sellers to listen, and I can go to the same customer, have them at a customer advisory, and when they put their advisory hat on, they’re all sorts of bushy tail, bright-eyed, got lots of advice. But when you go into a sales call, they’re poking, they’re pushing, they’re thinking in an entirely different brain model than they are in an advisory call. Frankly, that’s the one that sells. 

I have to create messaging that overcomes the concerns that comes up in a sales call that often in advisory, they’re just riffing on, “We could do this, and products could do that, and I would love it if you did this.” But in a sales call, you learn. If you go out with expert sellers like Rick and many of his team members, they’ve already learned how to dance that dance, and sometimes it informs product like, “Wow, that’s a great pitch, but we don’t have a product that does that. I better go feed that back into the product team.” 

I really think that you can tell marketing teams that sit in a room and come up with PowerPoints all by themselves. You can see it when their field teams use it. It often leads them over a cliff that they can’t get off of. You can tell marketing teams that spend time really listening to customer pitches and customer conversations. It’s just a very different solution, and it’s a super important part of the partnership. 

Rick Herrmann: Julie, you can tell I’m smiling and laughing a little bit on that last comment, because I’ve seen the two as a sales leader. I’ve seen the siloed marketing team that’s just going to spit out PowerPoints versus the marketing team that engages you as a partner at the ground level with a customer. There is such a big, big difference with that. By the way, it’s on the shoulders of sales leaders and salespeople to bring their marketing partners into the process, to bring them into the field. Part of the reason why we knew Paige was so effective was just because of her skill set. My best closer was actually Paige, because of the deep subject matter expertise or credibility in the industry. I always say I was the person that knew the most about EdTech until Paige walked in the room, and then I just handed the mic to her. That is such a big thing. 

Fred Diamond: That’s pretty high praise. One thing we talk a lot about on the Sales Game Changers Podcast is the fact that selling professionals need to provide so much more value now than ever before. They’ve always had to create value. That’s been basically what sales is all about. But now, in 2026, if you’re not bringing value for the customer a year, two years down the road, that they haven’t even begun to think about, the customer really has no need for you. You’re not adding any value. They don’t need to work with you. Like Julie mentioned in the beginning of the show, they could just go to the internet or AI and say, “What are the trends?” 

You both worked at great companies, Microsoft and Intel. When I worked at Apple, we would do two-day roadmap seminars. You probably did them both as well at Intel and Microsoft. Now the customer can just type in to Claude or Chat or Gemini or whatever it might be, what is Microsoft’s product strategy in blank for the next, and even in EdTech for that matter. You got to come in there with that. 

Rick, we’ve talked a lot about great ideas, theory, I want to be integrated with marketing, I want to bring them in, yada, yada, yada. Give us an example. People are probably waiting here with beta breath of an exact example that you can attribute to marketing playing a role, either the marketing with content or brand awareness, whatever it might be, that actually contributed to a deal closing. However you can be public, however you want to disclose that, whatever it is, but give us one example specifically where the marketing side literally cash contributed to the business closing. 

Rick Herrmann: I can’t name the account, but I’ll talk about the example. We had one of the biggest school districts in the country moving towards a one-to-one implementation. We had been in there as a sales team working with our ecosystem, helping to refine what that RFP should be. It was the entire EdTech community was doing that. But the real game changer was actually when we brought marketing in, and Paige and her team who are experts in professional development, not just technology deployment, but actually how do you train and enable the teachers in the classroom? Those are things we couldn’t do as a sales organization by ourselves. We really relied on that subject matter expertise that eventually led to a hundred thousand devices being deployed effectively into a classroom. That deep subject matter expertise, which as a sales organization, we just didn’t really possess. 

You talked about value. Value at the end of the day is not just bringing a solution to a customer’s problem. It is knowing how to bring your subject matter experts. We’re fortunate at both Intel and Microsoft to have incredibly deep benches of expertise. That is probably one of the greatest assets that a super sales consultative person can identify a problem. Like, “Okay, we want to go deploy all this stuff, but how are we going to get our teachers ready?” Well, I happen to have one of the foremost professional development folks in the country as part of our team. How do you bring that person in to really make a difference? That’s one example, one big school district. But candidly, that was part of our playbook at many school districts. 

Paige Johnson: At that particular deal, one of the things was that the RFP specified a publisher product that they had already spent millions of dollars training on. Because we had relationships with that publisher, we could get access to those digital products. We tested it on the ARM-based architecture. We literally brought pictures in that show where the curriculum broke at that time because it was just designed for an x86 architecture. By the end of that RFP presentation, the social science teacher was literally clutching her chest like, “Hey, you can buy this device, or you can buy this device. But if you like the fun crossword puzzle, it doesn’t work on that device.” She was just like, “All the fun things. We don’t want that.” Thinking through the use cases, not on the technology side, but more through the lens of curriculum and instruction, in that case, set up a repeatable pattern that we scale that is still working for Intel today. 

Rick Herrmann: I think whether or not you’re in a design of try to modernize a classroom for learning, or whether you’re trying to modernize your infrastructure in a mission-critical war-fighter environment, the playbook is the same. It is your deep subject expertise and how you bring that subject expertise to bear. I still love blueprints. Blueprint is an old terminology, but at the end of the day, blueprints are really about process transformation. It gives a clear roadmap to a customer. We would take the things that we learned in EdTech and we would now take them into state and local government. We would take them into mission agencies in the federal space, because at the end of the day, it’s really that effectiveness around blueprint, subject matter expertise, and bringing that value to your customers. 

Julie Murphy: Those are excellent examples. I love, Paige, when you talk about the social sciences teacher, or when you’re talking about the war fighter, Rick. What you’re talking about is really, truly getting into the shoes of who’s actually going to be using the technology, not even the one who’s implementing it, and really getting inside the heads of your audience. Those are great examples, so thank you for that. 

We’re going to have fun with this next one because you both have been in this industry for a long time. I’d love to hear from both of you, what’s one marketing or sales buzzword that you’d love to see retired? 

Rick Herrmann: I think there’s a lot of cringey one-liners out there today that are about driving productivity out of people, and I just don’t find any of those things to be inspiring in the moment. At the end of the day, I would flip the question a little bit, which is, what do you still think holds? Take all the cringey things like, hey, it’s about more productivity, it’s about higher performance, it’s about more profit. Take all those cringey inside the company stuff. What we really should all be focused on is how do we best serve our customers? 

I still really like being customer obsessed. I think that really continues to resonate. I think that’s where you have to start as an organization. But I also think you need to really understand what that means and what customer obsession means. For me, it is really about understanding deeply the problems that you’re trying to solve for your customer. It’s about understanding organizationally the decisions that they have to make and the complexity of those decisions that they have to make. It’s about delivering value in a way that is superior to what your competitor can deliver. I think there’s just a lot of cringey things out there right now floating around. But for me, the one that I remain steadfast on is the idea of customer obsession. 

Julie Murphy: Love it. How about you, Paige? 

Paige Johnson: I deeply dislike the word disruption. Nobody in public sector wakes up and says, “God, I can’t wait to be disrupted today,” or, “I’d like my mission critical systems to be disrupted,” or, “I’d like my child to be disrupted.” I don’t even know why we use that term. It’s so crazy to me. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t play well in enterprise either, but I just cannot believe the number of sales and marketing people who say, “Well, this is a major disruption,” as if like, “I’m bringing you a birthday present. I love change. I love change.” I do not like the word disruption. It does not make me want to jump out of bed in the morning. That’s the one I would kill. 

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. Actually, one thing I’ve learned a long time ago is for sales professionals and marketing people to realize, their customers don’t really want change. A lot of customers that we’re talking to that are using the technologies, they want to have their job for the next 20, 30 years. They don’t want to be the person who brought in a disruptive technology that cost the company a billion dollars and took down the system for a day. They don’t want that. They want to have systems that are predictable, that are risk averse, that will help them accomplish the job that they need to do. 

Before I ask you both for your final action steps, I just want to go back to the comment where Rick said that Paige is one of the best closers, the best closer he’s ever worked with. That really is remarkable, Julie, for a marketing professional to hold that role. Usually it’s an engineer, maybe a service technician or something. But for Rick, who’s held very, very esteemed roles at great companies and has worked on many, many very significant deals across public sector and other markets, and education, as we talked about today, to recognize Paige as his best closer. That’s actually pretty remarkable. What do you think, before I ask for their final action steps? 

Julie Murphy: I think it’s because the customer feels like Paige understands them. Paige is getting inside their shoes. They don’t want to be disrupted. They want what’s best for their students. Like Rick said about the customer obsession, that’s where you have to start. I think that’s why she’s the best closer. I agree, that’s really high praise. 

Fred Diamond: I want to remind people that our award event is on April 29th. It’s at the Marriott Fairview Park in Falls Church. We’re going to be recognizing Nick Michaelides from Cisco with our Lifetime Achievement Award, and Vicki Schmanske from Leidos with our Women in Sales Leadership Award. I want to thank Sage Communications for being one of our sponsors, as you’ve been many, many times. I want to thank Rick Herrmann and Paige Johnson for being on today’s show. Such great insights. 

We like to end our show with a final action step. Tell us one thing specifically that our listeners should do right now to take their sales career to the next level. 

Paige Johnson: I’m just going to say that when they’re partnering with marketing, give grace and assume positive intent. A lot of the misunderstandings that happen between sales and marketing start with assumptions, and that rarely leads to positive outcomes. Pick up the phone and assume that they’re doing something good for the shareholder and good for the customer, and then figure out how to come to an agreement. 

Fred Diamond: Rick, why don’t you bring us home? 

Rick Herrmann: I think for me, maybe two things. The foundation of this conversation has been collaboration with your marketing partner and how important that is. We started the conversation with what makes a great partnership, which is transparency, trust, and respect. My number one advice is if you don’t have that kind of relationship, be intentional about going and building it, because it will pay enormous dividends for your sales organization. 

The second one, and I know you’re going to do lots of podcasts on this, is as a sales professional, figure out AI. Paige actually sent me 30 days ago, she had went out and she had built her own agentic AI for a sales training. Agentic AI, similar to the information flow, Julie, you said like 90% of what a decision maker needs to find today is out there in the open. Agentic AI and AI is going to fundamentally change our sales profession. Period. It’s something that everybody needs to really get smart about, really lean into right now. 

Fred Diamond: Absolutely. We have a special show where we talk about AI and selling effectiveness. Matter of fact, at the award event, we’re going to be giving out our second annual AI for Selling Effectiveness Award, so that’s sound advice. 

Once again, I want to thank Paige. I want to thank Rick. Julie, this was a great show. Look forward to doing more. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 828: Turning Sales and Marketing into One Revenue Engine with Rick Herrmann and Paige Johnson first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is a Marketing and Selling Effectiveness sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

Find Kelli on LinkedIn. 

KELLI’S TIP: “In complex markets, if you win the narrative early, you win the contract later. Marketing doesn’t close the deal, but it shapes the conditions for it long before the opportunity appears.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Julie Murphy, it’s great to have you back. It’s great to be doing another Marketing and Selling Effectiveness show. Sage Communications is a Selling Essentials Marketplace Partner of the IEPS. We get a lot of people reaching out to us, looking for recommendations for sales resources, and we’re always thrilled to recommend Sage Communications. 

Julie Murphy: Thank you for that. We really appreciate. As you know, Sage is a full service PR marketing firm and we love working with IEPS and supporting all of your events because it’s so important to align sales and marketing, which is what this podcast is all about. I’m really excited because we have a fantastic guest today, Kelli Furrer, who I’ve known for many years. Many companies keep the sales and marketing functions separate, which is one of the reasons why we wanted to start this podcast, to really break down those barriers. 

In this case, with Kelli, it’s my great pleasure to welcome her because she is both the Chief Marketing Officer and the Chief Revenue Officer at Slingshot. Slingshot is one of those companies that is at the leading edge of that, of understanding how important it is, where marketing can impact the sales pipeline and function. Before Slingshot, Kelli was at Dell. She’s a perfect guest to have on our podcast to talk about marketing and sales alignment. Welcome, Kelli. We’re excited to have you. 

Kelli Furrer: Thanks, Julie. I’m super excited to be here. Fred, it’s nice to be on a podcast with you. 

Fred Diamond: It’s great to talk to you. Like Julie said, we do this particular sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast because it’s just so critical for marketing and the selling organizations to align together. There’s not as much time, customers are more demanding. Sales and marketing are getting more involved at earlier places and different places through the sales process. I’m excited to hear some of your perspective. 

To get us started, tell us a little bit about Slingshot Aerospace. I’m just curious, you made the shift from Dell to this industry. What is it about the space and the government technology sectors, where you spend a lot of your career, that inspires you? 

Kelli Furrer: When my friends ask me, they say, “You’re working for a space company? What does that mean?” I start with a simple explanation, which is that Slingshot Aerospace is a leader in AI-powered solutions for satellite tracking, space traffic coordination, and space modeling and simulation. In even more simple terms, I say, we really help customers understand what’s happening in orbit. We use our own system of sensors that are placed in locations around the world, take millions of images, and put advanced AI on top of that so that we can track those satellites and debris as they’re rotating around the Earth to predict potential collisions and simulate scenarios really before they happen so that operators can make smart, fast decisions in a very crowded environment. 

Once you get a little bit into the space of space, I think that what I’m really inspired by is really building a domain that’s still being defined. Space science and technology are really smashing together here, and space is no longer just about exploration. It’s infrastructure, which is the world that I come from. It’s economic and it’s strategic. We’re at this inflection point where a small number of companies will shape how this domain operates for decades going forward. Being part of building that responsibly, intelligently, and at scale is incredibly motivating and fun for me. 

Julie Murphy: Slingshot is growing so quickly, and as you mentioned, the space industry is exploding right now. When you’re in a high-growth environment like that, I’m curious, because you’re one of the few executives that lead both marketing and sales within an organization, and those two teams haven’t always played nice with each other in the past, but are really so critical to each other’s success. I’m curious how you’ve seen that relationship between marketing and sales evolve through the years. 

Kelli Furrer: You and I have known each other for a long time, and you know that my career has lived at the intersection of sales and marketing. I’ve always believed that marketing exists to make sales jobs easier by building trust and clarity and demand before a rep ever gets on the phone or shows up at an event. Wearing both the CRO and the CMO hat isn’t really about holding the two titles. It’s really about owning the entire front-end system of our business so we can coordinate it from end to end. With that I say, marketing ensures that our positioning maps the real customer priorities, the actual problems they’re funded and they’re on mission to solve. Then revenue leadership ensures that we’re accessible through the right buying pathways. 

We were talking about Carahsoft, that is a great buying pathway for the US government. Whether that’s enterprise procurement, channel partnerships, marketplace models, or long cycle bespoke contracting environments, but together we design the revenue model to support the platform at scale, not just one program at a time. Those two things living together, what’s changed over the years is that the line between sales and marketing has become much more data driven and systems oriented than it was 15 years ago, when we were doing this earlier in our careers. 

It’s no longer marketing generates leads in a stove pipe and then sales closes the leads. It’s a shared revenue engine and messaging, product packaging, pricing, enablement, customer expansion, all of those things have to align. In a small business like Slingshot, we really have to be very efficient about how we bring them together, and not just a small business, but a complex tech market, especially where now we have AI, we have data platforms, and integrative systems. The story you tell, the way you sell, and the way you deliver, all of those things have to reinforce each other, and that is something that I talk about a lot, the Slingshot flywheel. If there’s a gap between the narrative and execution, the market sees it immediately, that alignment that we’re talking about here between sales and marketing, it is a structural requirement in today’s market. 

Fred Diamond: Let’s get a little more specific, a little more down in the weeds, if you will. How do you structure your team and your processes to ensure that marketing is enabling sales, and vice versa? Give us some of your insights into, like I said, in the weeds, at the ground level, what are some things that you’ve done that have helped this process happen that our listeners would see value from? 

Kelli Furrer: We’re still a relatively small team, so structure matters a lot in our environment. You don’t have the luxury of redundancy. Every function has to directly move the revenue needle. My belief is simple, sales and marketing shouldn’t operate as centralized silos, like we just talked about. The execution roles, which I consider to be field marketing, partner marketing, and enablement, they should be embedded with the sales regions. They need to know who the customers are, understand the buying dynamics, and really support specific revenue outcomes, not just campaigns. 

At our size, that also means really tight operating discipline, shared pipeline goals. I expect my marketers to know as much about the pipeline as I expect the sales people, because the fast feedback loops are so important. If we’re doing something in marketing that’s not helping a rep close or expand the account, then we need to adjust it really quickly. Marketing’s job isn’t just to generate and work on activity. It’s really to create leverage. We ask ourselves every day, with a small team, we have to be helping to create that leverage. Alignment for us is really the force multiplier. 

Julie Murphy: When you think about something like the type of work that Slingshot does, space domain awareness and AI and your sensor network, it’s pretty technical. How do you think the sales team should help the marketing team, specifically with messaging, in a space where it is technical, and what role does thought leadership play in really communicating and connecting with your customers? 

Kelli Furrer: In technical markets, the message is everything. You can lose people more quickly than you can probably win them over. Because every buying decision includes both business stakeholders and technical stakeholders, the messaging is really, really important. A lot of my sales team have engineering or very deep technical backgrounds, which is a huge advantage. They can absolutely nerd out on the space stuff and that credibility really matters. But the real skill is the translation. The message has to be simple enough that a non-technical buyer can remember it, repeat it, and explain it to someone else internally. 

I think there’s like 16 stakeholders involved in a buying decision today, because being able to repeat it internally, that’s how the decisions actually move forward. The story gets retold in a meeting you’re not in. We rely heavily on sales in the message development. They know what resonates, where people get stuck, and what language creates clarity versus confusion. That’s also where thought leadership plays a role, not as marketing fluff, but as a credibility tool. The best thought leadership makes that technical story accessible without dumbing it down. It gives both the engineer and the executive a way to say, “Yes, that’s the problem. Here’s why it matters,” and more importantly, “This is what we can do about it.” 

Fred Diamond: I’m curious if there’s any examples that come to mind of something specific, from a content side or a marketing side or awareness building side, that you could attribute to having helped make a deal happen? 

Kelli Furrer: I’ve been at Slingshot for about a year and a half now. I’d say a great example is our recent $27 million Space Force award to power their AI-driven training environment. For the past year and a half, two years before I even got to Slingshot, we’ve been building a simple thesis that in complex domains, more data wins. More data plus more compute leads to better decisions and better outcomes. We’ve consistently positioned our global sensor network. It’s what I talked to you about at the very beginning when I was describing Slingshot as the data advantage, and TALOS, which is our Thinking Agent for Logical Operations in Space, as the AI that turns that data into machine speed and action. 

Over time, that evolved into a bigger idea, which is AI native space training. Operators shouldn’t train against scripted scenarios. They should train against adaptive intelligent opponents powered by real data. That’s that real data coming off of our sensor network 24/7/365. When the US Space Force and the OTTI, the Operational Test and Training command opportunity emerged, the market already understood our worldview. We weren’t introducing a concept. We were executing on a thesis that we had been reinforcing for years. This became our first large prime contract, integrating alongside major industry players and delivering a platform level capability. That only happens when customers see you more as a vendor. Marketing didn’t close that deal, but it helped shape the conditions for it along the way, because what I believe is, in complex markets, if you win the narrative early, you win the contract later. 

Julie Murphy: Kelli, you’ve been a part of this business for a long time. I have a fun one for you. If there’s one marketing or sales buzzword that you’d be happy if you never saw again or would love to see retired, what would it be? 

Kelli Furrer: I don’t know that I need it to be retired or never say it again, because I do say it daily, but I think the buzzword today is AI powered. That is used everywhere. I also used it, but it’s become a blanket label that everybody uses. But real AI is not a marketing adjective. It’s a serious data science workload. At a technical level, what we’re talking about with AI powered, you’re talking about machine learning at scale, feature engineering, vector math, and models operating over data sets that are so large they can only be processed by machines and not by humans. It requires clean training data, compute infrastructure, evaluation loops, and continuous retraining. Those are disciplines we are deeply involved in every single day. 

When I say AI powered, it’s not a marketing adjective. It is the business that we are in and the output shouldn’t just be AI. The output should be measurable decision advantage, faster classification, better prediction using that data, higher confidence, and ultimately lower latency and more decision advantage. When a company says AI powered but can’t explain that data foundation, the model behavior, or what decision is improved by it, it’s usually just branding. For me, I put a second level threshold for, what do they really mean when they say AI powered? Because it is a very important word in today’s economy. 

Fred Diamond: That’s a great answer. Now that you’re answering it that way, I wasn’t sure what you were going to say is the buzzword, but it’s so commonly used that it doesn’t really take on the vastness of what true AI really does provide. It’s not just typing into Chat. There are so many things that can be utilized to form truly intense answers that are needed to project business and the world for that matter. It’s an eerie statement by me on this podcast, but I loved your answer there. 

Julie, this has been a great interview. Thanks for bringing Kelli on the show. Kelli, thank you so much for your insights. I know you’ve only been at Slingshot for a year and a half or so, but best of luck on your continued success there and for what you all are bringing to the marketplace and for all of your recent success. 

You’ve given us some great ideas here. Give us something specific, one action that our listeners should implement right now after listening to the show or reading the transcript. Something specific you recommend that they do. 

Kelli Furrer: Julie and I, we have this long-standing relationship, and she’s known me both as a salesperson and a marketer. If I could give one piece of advice, it would be this, early in your career, and I tell my kids this, intentionally curate cross-functional experience. If you want to be a great marketer, carry a sales bag first, sit in the discomfort of having a quota, learn what objections sound like in real time, understand how hard it is to move a deal forward, because it is hard to be a professional salesperson. If you want to be great in sales, spend time in marketing, learn positioning, learn how markets are shaped before a buyer ever even takes a meeting, understand pipeline build and messaging strategy. 

The best leaders I’ve seen aren’t deep in just one lane. They understand how the whole revenue system works together, and when you’ve lived in multiple functions, you can make better decisions, you build more empathy for your co-workers and your teammates and you can just simply move faster. I think the fastest way to level up your career is to go one function to the left or one function to the right and then back again, and really that’s going to do a lot to amplify results. 

Julie Murphy: That’s really great advice Kelli, and I also think it builds empathy, because we’re talking about when groups don’t collaborate as well. If one group is saying, this isn’t working for me, if you’ve been in their shoes before, you can better understand why and maybe how you can help fix the situation. I love that advice. That’s really good. 

Fred Diamond: Yeah, it’s very solid. Once again, Kelli Furrer, thank you so much. Julie’s been speaking about you for years, so it’s great that we can finally get you on the show and communicate your wisdom and your excellence. On behalf of Julie Murphy, my name is Fred Diamond. This is the Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Sales Game Changers Podcast. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 823: Break Down Sales and Marketing Silos to Drive Revenue with Kelli Furrer first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is the sixth episode of the “Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.” Regularly, the IEPS posts a new show with Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Julie Murphy from Sage Communications.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

On today’s show, Fred and Julie meet with Kelley Harar, a Managing Director at Maximus, and Liz Anthony, a former marketing director at Maximus.

Find Liz on LinkedIn.  Find Kelley on LinkedIn.

LIZ’S TIP: “In B2G, marketing effectiveness isn’t about generating noise. It’s about enabling sales to earn credibility long before a deal is on the table.”

KELLEY’S TIP: “Marketing and sales effectiveness isn’t about alignment meeting. It’s about showing up together around the mission and earning trust at every step of the buying journey.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Julie, before we get to our two guests from Maximus, how are you doing, how are things going? I’m excited to be doing another show with you. We’ve done about a half a dozen. We’re always looking for marketing and sales organizations to have on the show.

Julie Murphy: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been doing great. It’s been really busy. I feel like we’re in the middle of busy season leading up to the holidays. Congratulations to you, Fred, on 800 episodes. That’s pretty incredible. I’m really excited about this power duo that we have on today.

I’d love to give a little bit more of a formal introduction, first to Liz, who is a longtime marketing leader in the business-to-government technology space. I actually first met Liz through Women in Technology. I don’t know if you remember Liz, but it was probably like 20 years ago at this point. If you’re not familiar with Women in Technology and you live in the Washington, D.C. area, it’s a great local community of women who work in tech, and it’s wonderful. We’re both still somewhat involved. Liz is highly strategic. She’s known for some of the most impactful marketing campaigns for some major brands in this space, and I’m really excited to hear what she has to share with us today.

Liz also brought along with her one of Maximus’s top sales leaders, Kelley Harar. We’re so excited to have you here today. She leads the company’s federal health practice and Kelley has driven capture and proposal efforts, totaling more than 67 billion, according to her bio on the website, which is pretty incredible. Welcome to you both.

Fred Diamond: I’m very excited to hear some of the insights here. Just to follow up to how Julie made the intro, Kelley, Maximus has a great deal of work with technology-enabled health services for federal agencies. For those who may, may not be as familiar, share a little bit about what Maximus does and what excites you about this work.

Kelley Harar: As you know, Maximus partners exclusively with federal agencies to deliver health mission critical support services, and we use that. It’s powered by technology, data, and most importantly, human-centered design. As we all know, we can’t instantly create medical professionals, so we rely on technology to extend their reach in delivering administrative services related to clinical practices to support our health tech enabled services. We deploy proven technology. The government does not like to be a guinea pig, and so we always baseline our solutions with proven off-the-shelf solutions. We keep up with that through understanding our missions, and we will talk about that a little bit later in the podcast as we talk about our efforts in growth and marketing together. But we know that it is a continuous and fast-paced innovation, and we balance our delivery and technical solutions with our people.

We help citizens, military members, and their families, and veterans improve access to care, streamline health benefits, and support readiness through digital transformation. I think what excites me most is knowing that our work directly impacts the lives of service members and their families. We’re not just implementing systems, we’re enabling better outcomes, and we also support national security through readiness of our soldiers. We do a lot of work with the DOD and health readiness is a critical component to the Department of War. We ensure service members can take on the mission of national security. We use the term whole health, which includes how family members are cared for while a soldier is deployed.

Just like we avoid distractions while driving, our programs ensure service members aren’t burdened by healthcare logistics while deployed, such as locating a network provider to a newly relocated family member, or ensuring that their primary care doctor is updated in the DOD systems. This work excites me just knowing how we directly impact the lives of our service members and their families.

Julie Murphy: There’s no doubt that Maximus is having a huge impact in so many different ways. I love how you talked about the access to healthcare and even extending clinicians’ abilities through technology. That’s really neat. Also, the whole health, that we need our soldiers focused on the mission. The fact that they don’t need to worry about it or don’t need to worry about the care of their families helps them do their job as well as possible. That’s wonderful.

Liz, I’d like to talk to you a little bit about messaging and reputation. Maximus has long held a really strong and trusted reputation in technology services and as a government contractor. What do you think about balancing brand consistency with the need to innovate in marketing? Whether that’s new channels, formats, or campaigns that reach decision makers in new and fresh ways.

Liz Anthony: I think that’s always the challenge, is to try to be on the edge of what’s new and how to reach the audiences. When I look at brand and elevating the brand for Maximus and the message of innovation, I have to look at new ways to communicate with our audiences, and especially in a time like the changing administration or a government shutdown. You have to be looking at different ways at how people are going to consume, the time period they’re going to consume. I think that that really is a great model that Maximus has chosen us to do integrated campaigns that are on multilevel. It’s the podcast, it’s TV sessions, it’s the events, it’s on panels, it’s articles, it’s TV, etc. You’re not just really showing up in one place, but you’re showing up wherever the audience is really looking for information to share thought leadership on a variety of topics.

Fred Diamond: The reason why we’re doing this podcast, the Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast, and we’re doing it towards the end of 2025, is because marketing and sales have had the need to come together as customers get access earlier through social media, and as AI can direct customers to places where they need to go to select vendors, and to understand where the vendors value might come from. We’ve seen that marketing and sales is critical now for the interaction. There are no longer silos, there’s no longer marketing, and then things get handed off into sales. The sales journey is mixed up a lot more than it’s ever been before.

The alignment between sales and marketing often comes down to structure and what we like to say, process. Give us some insights for our listeners on how you collaborate with Liz and her team and doing that to ensure that your teams are set up effectively, where marketing can enable sales. Concurrently, sales is providing meaningful feedback to marketing as they do all the great things that Liz just alluded to.

Kelley Harar: I think you said it well, collaboration, collaboration between growth and marketing at Maximus. It has to be built on transparency and shared goals. Liz and her team have done an outstanding job with that. With my background, I grew up in finance and operations, and so my growth role has been relatively new, but I value that process that Liz and team bring to Maximus to support our sales effort. We meet regularly to align on pipeline priorities, how our campaigns are performing in the market, and most importantly, customer insights, reactions. We want to know what’s going well, and we want to know what’s not going so well and what we need to adapt in terms of messaging. We have these valuable customer insights through the technology and the social media and the way that Liz and her team communicates our message.

I think marketing is enabling more and more today with technology by creating targeted content and thought leadership that opens doors for the growth executives. In turn, the sales and growth executives are able to provide that real-time feedback from the conversations, from attending conferences, from their podcasts, from interactions that they have. If it’s not working, we adjust it and we’re able to see emerging needs early on. It’s a continuous loop that keeps us, to use a technical term, agile, but more importantly, customer and mission-focused.

I think through that communication, we can do more of what’s meaningful to our customers. As Liz answered in the question before this, we can adjust that messaging real-time because her team allows us to open up conversations with our clients that might not happen without that marketing support. The podcasts, the conferences, the events, white papers, webinars, together, both teams are focusing on solutions, and most importantly, what is relevant to our customers.

Julie Murphy: Kelley, what you said about the really targeted content is so important. Actually, Gartner put out a report just recently that was saying, it was, I believe, 70% of end user customers are doing research before they even talk to the customer. It was around, I don’t want to butcher this, it was around in the 40s percent that they actually make a decision before they even engage with sales execs. That’s how important it is that the content is so targeted and right on, a lot of times before sales teams can even engage.

In thinking about that, Liz, you know better than anyone because you’ve been in this space a long time, that in a field as complex as technology and government, messaging that resonates and is really well understood is so important. How do you engage both Kelley and your other sales leaders that you work with in your organization to really help refine and shape that messaging? Do you have a secret process that allows you? Because you’ve done a really nice job with that, I’m curious how you go about it.

Liz Anthony: It’s not a secret, but I’ll share that. There’s a couple of things that really work, I think, and that is being engaged with sales from the front end, not catching up on the back end. I think that’s critical. We have to know and understand what are the goals and objectives? What are the needs of the customer? Really, what Kelley was saying, the teams at Maximus are exceptionally focused on what’s the outcome we’re trying to achieve? When sales and marketing knows that together, then it really is a strong relationship to move forward faster. I think that we can see in a variety of ways how customers are engaging in a very elongated educational process. Especially as things are more complex, they spend a lot more time looking at us before we even know it.

Really making sure that we are different places and saying the same thing consistently in different ways, but really creating that surround sound, if you will, for the audience for those customers to understand, and allowing them to raise their hand when they’re ready to engage. That’s really critical. But I also would say that the pivotal point of marketing and sales working so closely together now is more obvious because the stakes are higher in terms of the volume in the market being really high. There’s a lot of people saying a lot of the same things. What is going to make the difference? It’s the differentiation. You can differentiate when you understand what we’re really bringing to market. That differentiation then becomes easier to explain. In a complex world, simplifying the complexity is critical.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. Actually, a long time ago, I was what we now call a fractional CMO. Remember, Liz, it was not a sexy term back then, but now everybody’s fractional at something. I had a motto which was, “Marketing that doesn’t lead to revenue reward is a huge waste of time and money.” I love the way you answered that, Liz.

I’m curious, Kelley, we’re talking about how well you’ve worked with marketing. Can you think of an example or a time when marketing content or maybe even brand awareness efforts contributed directly to closing a complex or high-value opportunity?

Kelley Harar: Definitely. We have had several large opportunities and we have several current large opportunities coming up. Liz and her team and marketing efforts continue to support our growth. They create an awareness of our capabilities, and then we work together to figure out how those capabilities are going to meet the mission of those large programs. I’ll give you a real-time example.

We have a targeted campaign around digital health modernization, and it’s not just buzzwords to us. The marketing team and the growth teams developed white papers, webinar series, all that positioned Maximus as the thought leader that we are for several existing and near-term opportunities. This kind of content and developing this kind of content opens doors with key clients and stakeholders, and it gives our sales teams the credibility, and even more importantly, the context to have deeper conversations around how contractors can meet the mission of these large complex programs.

Ultimately, bringing together sales and marketing has helped us win multimillion-dollar health support contracts across various agencies focused on improving care coordination for the military. It also supports veterans during a time of anxiety within the climate that we’re in, where they’re calling the VA and needing answers. We’ve also proved that our strategy was invaluable during COVID, when the government needed trusted partners to support customer service in a time of great need for this nation.

Julie Murphy: I really appreciate all the concrete examples that you both are giving us. Sometimes sales and marketing can get a bad rap for some of these empty buzzwords, so I’d love to have some fun with this next question, and I’d love to hear from both of you. What’s one marketing or sales buzzword that you’d love to see retired?

Liz Anthony: I have a couple actually. There’s reinventing. It drives me a little bit crazy. The other one is leveraging. Those two words are just overused tremendously. I think that if you really have strong communications and collaboration, you don’t have to be leveraging everywhere. I just think that those are a couple things that should be retired.

Julie Murphy: Liz, you hit the nail on the head too, that once words become overused, I think that’s when they become meaningless too. We have to be really clear in our own communications about what it is that we’re talking about. Kelley, what do you think?

Kelley Harar: We do. Maybe I’ll go back and read the transcript and make sure I didn’t use those two words. I tend to use leverage a lot, but hopefully in appropriate ways. Great question, Julie. I think for me in thinking about talking to customers and talking about programs and talking about meeting their needs, one word that I feel is overused, and in many instances vague, is synergy. I’d rather talk about real collaboration and measurable impact and outcomes, keeping it very simple and meaningful. A lot of people like to talk about the synergy of technology and delivery, or the synergy of technology innovation and human-centered design. Well, exactly what does that mean? I want to be straightforward about how technology and humans solve and meet the mission of our government customers, rather than just saying it’s synergistic.

Fred Diamond: Those are interesting. Julie, we’re going to have to change the title of the show based on what I was going to do based on that answer, just as a quick FYI. I was going to use all three words in the title. I’m just curious, Julie, are there any thoughts you have on what Liz and Kelley just shared?

Julie Murphy: I agree with you. I also think reinventing almost sounds like something’s gone wrong, like if you have to reinvent yourself. I also agree with synergy as well. I feel like that’s a term that’s been used for a long time, and it is very vague and it’s just a filler word. I agree about communicating with precision and being clear about what exactly it is that we’re talking about so anyone can understand.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. Like Liz said before, the stakes are high. The competition’s getting tougher. Again, we’re doing today’s interview towards the end of 2025. People are listening to it in 2026. There have been so many factors in the world that have made every sales and marketing effort much more critical. It needs to work, more eyes are on it, and you have less time to fail.

I want to thank Liz Anthony and Kelley Harar with Maximus for the great insights today. We like to end each show with an action step, so I’m going to ask you both to give us something specific, you both have given us a lot of great ideas, something specific that the audience should implement to take their company’s sales efforts to the next level.

Kelley Harar: I would have to say, in my many years, I won’t say decades, but it’s probably decades too, I find that staying curious and staying close to your customer, whether you’re in sales, marketing, or even delivery or finance, really understanding your customer’s mission and challenges is the fastest way to add value and grow your career. I’ve done this through asking questions, listening very intently. They always say, always be closing in sales. Well, I am one to say, never stop learning. Always be learning. We have to use our past experiences to invent new and innovative ways to address our future markets. With technology advancing so rapidly, you can’t rely on what worked in the past. Today’s government sales are built on trust and delivery. Our operational performance and innovation with technology drive our business forward at Maximus. Don’t take your eye off the customer’s mission or how your delivery team executes on programs. The most successful folks that I have worked with over the years are ones who stay close to the mission and never stop asking the key question, how can we do this better?

Fred Diamond: Liz, why don’t you bring us home?

Liz Anthony: I think that what I would say is it’s absolutely critical to bring marketing to the table and have a voice at the table because the insights and the understanding of the audience and the impact that we can have together really start to draw that what’s the art of the possible that sales and BD and capture, those leaders that I know throughout my career, have really desired. When you have the perspective of sales and marketing at the table, their conversation is really strategic and it’s really very deep so that you can move faster and really have the outcomes that you’re desiring.

Fred Diamond: Very good. Julie Murphy, thank you so much for this Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast. I want to thank Liz Anthony and Kelley Harar with Maximus for being on the show today. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

tant too. That’s great advice.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 801: Mission Happens When Sales and Marketing Aligns at Maximus first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is the fifth episode of the “Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.” Every other week, the IEPS posts a new show with Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Julie Murphy from Sage Communications.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

On today’s show, Fred and Julie meet with Tony Celeste, President of Ingram Micro Public Sector. Tony makes his second appearance on the podcast. Listen to his first episode in 2021 here.

Find Tony on LinkedIn. 

TONY’S TIP: “Credibility is earned. It’s not claimed. You build it by listening, learning, and leading , and showing up where customers make decisions, asking questions, and bringing real insights.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: I’m excited today. I’m with Julie Murphy from Sage Communications. Today we’re doing one of our very well received Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast. Julie, our guest today, Tony Celeste with Ingram Micro, was on the show before. It was January, 2021. Believe it or not, it was episode 313. Julie and Tony, we’re approaching episode 800, and we’ve had about 15 million interactions with the show, and it was quite interesting.

Julie Murphy, it’s great to see you. What are your expectations for this show as we prepare to bring back Tony?

Julie Murphy: I’m really excited. Obviously, I was not involved in the first podcast interview of you, Tony, so I’m excited to be involved now. I’ve actually known Tony for many years. He’s been a sales leader in this space for a long time. I first met him when he was a sales leader at Brocade many years ago, and now he’s been at Ingram Micro for six years. I think, Tony, you’ve been someone who’s always embraced thought leadership in the different times that I’ve worked with you. I think this is going to be a great conversation, not only because you know how to navigate this marketplace, but you really also know all the players in it, and that can get very complicated. Welcome, Tony. We’re excited to have you.

Tony Celeste: Thank you, Fred. Thank you, Julie. It’s great to be here with the two of you.

Fred Diamond: We’re excited. For people who don’t know Tony, give us a little bit of an overview of Ingram Micro. Julie had alluded to you lead the public sector efforts, B2G, etc. Also hit on the relationship between primes, prime contractors, systems integrators, distributors, and customers, and where does Ingram Micro fit in that mix?

Tony Celeste: Ingram Micro is one of the world’s largest technology distributors and aggregators. I lead the US public sector business, where I serve as the president for Ingram Micro Public Sector. It’s the wholly owned subsidiary we created to focus on this market. We did so to provide greater agility for evolving compliance and mission requirements, and we found that this enables us to actually better serve the partners as well as the federal, state, and local government and education markets.

I think what’s really interesting about this space is the public sector’s complexity, the regulatory compliance, security, and mission-driven buying that they do. It’s really quite unique. In this ecosystem, you mentioned spending a little bit of time on the primes, the distributors, the customers. You have prime contractors, distributors, and customers who all play distinct and interconnected roles. The prime contractors are most often the direct interface with the government and the end customers. They’re really tasked with execution.

Distributors like Ingram Micro, we bring scale, breadth, compliance, infrastructure. We are the business enablers, ensuring that technology solutions are innovative, available, secure, and most of all, compliant today with regulations. We all hear about CMMC, the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or NISP, the National Industrial Security Program. My role is like that of a conductor, orchestrate the value chain, aligning vendor partners, resellers, and the government customers so that missions are accomplished securely and effectively.

Julie Murphy: I love that you gave the analogy of a conductor, because that role is critical and it’s a really complex environment. The other thing to think about is when you have so many different people involved, or entities involved, it’s really important to provide credibility. Where are you providing value? My next question for you is, where do you see thought leadership playing into this and providing value and credibility? How have you personally embraced thought leadership throughout your career?

Tony Celeste: That’s a really interesting question, Julie. Throughout my career, I’ve always believed that credibility is earned. It’s not claimed. You need to be constantly inquisitive and have a growth mindset. It’s not about what we know, but what we don’t know, and it’s the ability to recognize it. What I’ve found is what’s been most valuable in being successful is doing that, knowing what it is you don’t know, and then how to go find it out. In sales and marketing, you build value and credibility through insights, consistency, and by showing up where the customer is making decisions, and you show up there to do what? To ask questions and listen. I try to embrace the mindset of listening, learning, and leading.

I’ve also leaned into thought leadership and I’ve done so by participating in panels, writing about procurement shifts, hosting partner webinars, and for example, during times of uncertainty like continuing resolutions or new executive orders, I’ve used thought leadership to cut through the noise and provide clarity to our partners and the customers. We’ve done so by always focusing on the opportunities that those shifts create. The role that marketing plays here is that of amplification. It’s not just about brand awareness. It’s about positioning yourself in your organization as a trusted advisor. You can’t wait to build rapport in person anymore. Think back to the day you used to knock on a door, walk in an office. You could pick somebody’s photograph or get a hi, you build rapport. You have to build that rapport today online. When partners see you consistently bringing insights, market trends, and actionable advice or intelligence, it deepens the relationship and creates aligned interests. That’s what helps to drive sales.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. Customers, they can be much more discerning now where they really, what we found, and we talk about this a lot on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, is that customers don’t need you if you’re not providing real value for their specific challenge. I like the way that you talked about creating these insights and then finding ways to amplify them. Give us some on-the-ground actions that you’ve done, like how have you structured your teams or internal processes to ensure that marketing is enabling more effective selling, and maybe even vice versa. How are you making that at the ground happen and take place?

Tony Celeste: I think you even touched on it in your question. It starts with alignment. Too often sales and marketing run in parallel lanes. I’ve worked to create an integrated approach where marketing provides both air cover and enablement for sales. They’re out there, put it in military terms, softening the beaches. It begins with having a plan. It’s aligned around a common mission statement tied to your long-term vision. Then it’s all about executing on it. That means marketing builds awareness, demand generation, and thought leadership. Sales, we are bringing back the intelligence from the field and the interactions we have, and then we loop that feedback back into our messaging so we’re always speaking to real-world challenges. This requires a lot more upfront work than ever was involved in sales before. You really have to do your homework, you really have to do your preparation, and marketing plays a big role in it.

On my teams, we hold cross-functional planning sessions, sales, marketing, vendor management, all at the same table. We measure success not just by leads, but on pipeline quality, partner engagement, and ultimately the closed wins that we get together. Then when everyone’s aligned around shared goals and metrics, the synergy between sales and marketing becomes incredibly powerful.

Julie Murphy: Absolutely. You become part of one team. It’s great to hear that you’ve been ahead of the curve in even structuring your teams that way. I would love to hear an example, if you have one, of maybe a really big or complex win where marketing was able to directly contribute and help your sales team.

Tony Celeste: I’ll put it in these terms. One strong example was a campaign around the federal busy season. We knew year-end IT spending was under pressure because of budget constraints and policy changes. Instead of just pushing product or a specific solution, we developed a campaign of webinars and market insights and briefing materials to help the partner understand where the dollars would flow and how to align with agency priorities. We also leveraged our solutions, finance team, and our external partners to build as a service offerings and financial solutions, spreading the costs over time and allowing partners and customers to execute today with limited funds. How do you stretch those limited dollars further to get that mission done and accomplished? The awareness we built positioned us as a go-to distributor for guidance and not just for transactions.

As a result, several large resellers turned to us for support on some complex opportunities, specifically on the federal side, and then also on the education. That investment content directly led to multimillion dollar wins in both federal and the education space using that ability of as a service or to spread the cost to do more with less funds today, but get that solution implemented faster.

In prior roles, thinking back, we also built campaigns around open standards, digital transformation, modernization, whatever the priorities of the day were. These served all as disruptors to the status quo in IT acquisitions, unseating incumbents, and introducing innovative mission-enabling technology solutions across the government and across education markets. It reinforces the idea that smart content builds credibility and that credibility drives sales.

Fred Diamond: You used the word disruption. You were on the show before in the middle of the pandemic. We talked about how you can lead through that, what selling professionals should be doing to just have the right mindset, etc. We’re doing today’s interview in August of 2025. I’m just curious, give us some of your insights on how to be successful in professional sales during times of great change. This year has been nothing but change. We talked about this on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, Julie, before. Time of Doge and times of cutbacks. The government is rethinking a lot of ways of not really what its mission is, but how does it go about achieving its mission? Give us some of your insights. What are some of Tony Celeste’s insights on being successful during times at great change?

Tony Celeste: That’s a really interesting question, and I think I will first agree by saying we are in a time of unprecedented change, and maybe haven’t experienced so much change at such a rapid pace as we’ve seen right now. We are at a technology inflection point with AI, and relative to information, technology is going to completely reinvent the stack. We are in that period of tremendous change, new administration, new leadership in agencies, new compliance requirements, the AI disruption, supply chain pressures, and change creates uncertainty. But it also creates opportunity for those who can provide clarity. That’s the key. It’s a double-edged sword. That uncertainty creates opportunity, and we think about uncertainty in terms of opportunities. That’s number one. It’s a mindset shift.

We’ve seen and navigated administration changes before, shifting priorities and spending challenges and new technologies, but not on the scale that we’re seeing right now or at its pace, never all at once. My vision for dealing with this has been to stay informed, stay engaged, and then overcommunicate. We can’t be communicating enough. To coin a phrase from the Marines, “This is a time to improvise, adapt, and overcome.” My approach has been to avoid wait and see, and instead have a bias towards action, leaning into education and enablement. Instead of marketing as noise and saying the same thing, we’ve positioned our marketing around guidance.

This year, we launched targeted content for partners around AI adoption in the public sector, cybersecurity, supply chain risk management, and procurement reform. That’s not just marketing. It’s enabling sales conversations. The vision has been clear, it was to help partners navigate change by being their source of trusted, actionable intelligence. The success we’ve seen is not just in sales growth or revenue, but in stronger partnerships, deeper trust, and being invited earlier into the customer decision cycle. You’re there sooner, you’re there faster, you have the opportunity to really shape those opportunities and you’re increasing your win probability while you’re shortening those sales cycles.

Julie Murphy: I love that you set a bias toward action, and I can tell that you’ve always led that way. I would say, just based on what you just said, you also have a bias toward optimism. I mean, keep learning, identify where the opportunities are, who can you partner with next? I think that’s terrific. I think that’s great, especially in times like now where change is happening very quickly. You have to embrace it. A lot of people freeze, but you’ve got to embrace it and see how you’re going to push forward. That’s terrific.

I have a fun question for you, Tony. You had mentioned also a lot of companies are out there saying the same thing, and in addition, I would say there are a lot of marketing sales buzzwords out there that are really overused. I would love to hear which one you’d like to see retired.

Tony Celeste: Well, it’s not any one single word, but I’ll give you two phrases, and I use them often myself too. It’s hard to avoid them. IT modernization and digital transformation. They’ve been so overused they’ve lost their meaning. I find myself every time I use them explaining what I mean by them, so that people understand the context. Every company claims that every solution is tied to it, but customers are fatigued by the terms. They just, “Okay, what’s the difference?” What really matters is mission enablement and mission outcomes. Are we helping a federal agency protect against cyber threats? Are we helping a school system modernize learning? Are we enabling first responders with better tools? Those messages really don’t get to the heart of the mission. They sound good.

I’d like us to move away from jargon and focus on what truly matters, outcomes that advance the customer’s mission. That means preventing terrorism and protecting critical infrastructure, improving health outcomes for veterans and citizens, safeguarding our war fighters and first responders who put themselves in harm’s way, and delivering better educational outcomes for our children. Those are the missions that will resonate, versus saying, “Hey, we’re giving first responders better tools,” or, “We’re helping schools modernize or federal agencies protect against cyber threats.”

Fred Diamond: Actually, you mentioned in a previous question that Julie had asked about being proactive. One of the main trends that we’ve seen in professional selling is that customers don’t need you unless you’re providing value. I like the way you said that it’s not just IT modernization, more productivity, that doesn’t really work anymore. You need to understand specifically, what is that customer being challenged with today that you can bring solutions to them that they haven’t thought about, maybe by combining various technologies together to help them get to a place where they need to get to to achieve that mission. Improve the healthcare for the veterans, whatever it might be. That is where the professional sellers that are succeeding today, Tony and Julie, we see, they are being proactive. I like the way you talked about how you need to be working with marketing to figure out ways to get those messages to the right people at the right time so that it will accelerate sales.

I liked also the point you brought up about overcommunicating. It’s like a thin line where you can’t keep throwing stuff out there where people aren’t going to listen because they keep saying, “There’s another email about,” whatever it might be. But you need to stay at top of mind and showing them the value. Thanks for all your great insights today, Tony. I love this show because we’re talking about things that professional sales organizations need to be doing to be successful.

Tony, I’m going to ask you for your final action step. You’ve given us a lot of great ideas. I want to give you the opportunity to say something specific people can put into play. But Julie, do you have any thoughts that have emerged? I know you have tons of them, like I have, but anything you want to follow up with before we ask Tony for his final action step?

Julie Murphy: No, I’m excited to hear a final action step, because you’ve been in this business for so long, Tony, and you’ve done a great job of escalating yourself at each role that you go to. I know that you have great career advice. I’m with Fred, I love the overcommunication and the bias for action. I think it’s really already a great tip.

Tony Celeste: I will say one thing about overcommunicating. It’s two way, and if you’re doing it properly, you’re asking lots of questions, and asking lots of questions, people are always interested in talking. I think that’s a good way to transition into what my advice would be, and it’s pretty simple. Invest in learning and invest in relationships, and you do those hand in hand. How do we learn? By being inquisitive, asking lots of questions. It doesn’t mean you don’t go in prepared and do your homework, but you have to do that. That will help you to build long-lasting and meaningful, impactful relationships.

On the learning side, keep sharpening your understanding of the market, compliance, the customer’s priorities. Customers expect you to know their world as well as you know your own products. More planning, more upfront work is required than ever before. I think I’ve reiterated that multiple times to be effective in today’s public sector market. On the relationship side, build trust by showing up consistently, adding value, and listening more than you speak. Ask lots of questions. Your credibility as a sales or marketing leader comes not from what you sell, but from the problems you help solve. If you do those two things, continuous learning and relationship building, you’ll not only advance your career, you’ll become an indispensable asset to your customers and to your team.

Fred Diamond: That’s great insight. Actually, 30 years ago, what keeps you up at night was a valuable question. Well, it’s not anymore. The question now needs to be really focused on specific things. There’s no excuse for a selling professional who isn’t prepared, who doesn’t know what the mission is of a customer. You could find that many ways, what they’re dealing with, you got to be following the trades and even just typing into certain AI tools, we’ll find that out. Julie, any final thoughts before we wrap up here with Tony?

Julie Murphy: Tony, I also love the showing up consistently, which I think is important. Before we would talk about just making sure that you’re actively involved in these events, but you noted in the beginning of the podcast how important that online presence is, or online engagement and LinkedIn. I would say showing up consistently there is really important too. That’s great advice.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 790: Elevating Public Sector Sales with Leadership and Marketing Insights from Tony Celeste first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is the fourth episode of the “Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.” Every other week, the IEPS posts a new show with Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Julie Murphy from Sage Communications.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

On today’s show, Fred and Julie meet with Rebecca Umberger, Senior Advisor, Public Sector Marketing at Sage Communications.

Find Rebecca on LinkedIn. 

REBECCA’S TIP: “Always, always, always work with your sales teams. They want to work with you. Don’t be afraid of trying new things. Don’t get stuck doing the same thing year after year after year. Keep learning, keep changing, reinvent yourself, and keep working with your teams.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

 Fred Diamond: Julie, it’s great to see you again. I love this show. We’re getting great response. We’ve brought on some of your clients and we’ve brought on some great companies that are really understanding the importance of the integration with marketing and sales.

Julie Murphy: I’m really excited about our guest today. This is Rebecca Umberger. Rebecca first came into my world as a client. She was originally my client many years ago at Quest Software, and then at Dell. A couple years ago, I was lucky enough to have her join our Sage leadership team, and now we work together as colleagues. I thought Rebecca would be great for this show because she’s really my go-to on all things account-based marketing, which is so important for sales enablement. We’ve really built a trust and friendship through the years. Rebecca, it’s really wonderful to have you on the show.

Rebecca Umberger: Well, thank you. I thank both of you guys for letting me come on the show today. Thank you.

Fred Diamond: I’m excited to be talking to you, Rebecca. I agree with what Julie said. Account-based marketing is so critical because one thing that we talk a lot about on the Sales Game Changers Podcast is being broad just isn’t really working anymore. We’re doing today’s interview in August of 2025, and if you’re not bringing specific value and helping the sales organization or the marketing organization specifically on what they are trying to achieve, they don’t need to listen to you.

Give us a little bit of background. Tell us what your role is at Sage. As Julie mentioned, you worked at some of the big brands like Dell and Quest. How does an agency environment differ than your role in corporate marketing?

Rebecca Umberger: That’s a very good question. To answer your first question, my role at Sage, I joined Sage a little over five years ago after many, many years in corporate. I help run the business of marketing to the public sector, which is the largest part of our business. I’m able to take all of that experience that I had with all of these large corporate companies and even some of the smaller, medium-sized companies I supported, to help companies like Adobe, Lumen, Sigma Defense, Sans Institute, and dozens of others. For that, I’m really grateful that I can bring that experience to our clients.

But life at an agency is totally different than it was at corporate. I say that because we have clients that are startups, large companies, VARs, distributors, and you really need to know and understand all aspects of marketing. When you’re in a corporation and you’re doing public sector marketing, sometimes you’re doing field marketing, sometimes you’re doing digital marketing, sometimes you’re marketing operations. But when you work in an agency, you are doing it all. You’re helping with messaging, lead gen, partner marketing, website stuff. You are literally doing it all. Even though we have specialized people, for example, that do the website development, all of our teams need to know and understand every aspect of what we’re doing because we have to manage that entire life cycle of the project for our clients. If I had to do it over again, I would’ve started in an agency and really learned every aspect of marketing, rather than just coming into an organization and just having a few different roles. This just allows you to just have such a broader view of the entire marketplace, and pulling it all together for clients.

Julie Murphy: I agree with you because we work with clients of all shapes and sizes. I’ve always said, at an agency, it’s almost learning in fast forward because you have multiple things happening at the same time. The good news is, is we’ve got a talented group of colleagues who I lean on all the time, and I know you do as well. There’s always someone who’s done something. Like, “Who has tried this, and what was the response?” We can lean on the collective to give the best advice to our clients. I don’t want to discount the 30 years you’ve spent in corporate marketing, which has been really valuable to us, and I know you’ve seen a lot. One question I have for you is, how have you seen the marketing and sales relationship evolve through the years?

Rebecca Umberger: Well, it’s changed a lot. I would say I’ve always had a really strong relationship with the sales leaders. Part of that is because I used to run PR in addition to marketing for each of these corporations. When I say run it, for public sector, for my little niche that I was in, and that was really important to have that strong relationship with sales leadership. But back when I started, we didn’t have any automation tools. Sales was its own business unit. Marketing was its own business unit. Marketing was getting all of their messaging from corporate. We had to put together various messaging of course to resonate with the public sector, but they were just more interested in sales being more interested in how many leads did you get for me this month? I want leads, leads, leads, leads. We turn them over to the sales team. The sales team, we had no idea what they did with them, because we couldn’t track anything.

I would say those days that we couldn’t track things, it was a little hectic and we tried to work together as much as we could, but oh my gosh, these tools that we have now with the CRM tools, the marketing automation tools, the intent data that we can get from a lot of these tools, that’s really bringing sales and marketing together as a team, because we can look and share that data and we know what works and what doesn’t work. The sales team has gotten so much better about putting the proper data in, and the marketing team has done a better job of putting their marketing programs in. There’s really so much more alignment when it comes to sales and marketing where you can actually work as a team.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great answer. It used to be back in the day where salespeople could get away with not putting in the right data. If the sales professional was the top and he or she wasn’t interested in that, you really couldn’t say anything. Now there’s really no excuse. A lot of the tools, of course, are voice activated and AI has gotten to play as well.

I’m just curious, and I loved your answer, but from your perspective, how do you think sales teams should help the marketing team specifically with message development? One of the big challenges that we have is coming up with the right message, and then of course, getting it into the hands or the ears or the eyes, and then into the brain of the prospect. I’m just curious, especially in an industry where technology or technical literacy is so critical, and so many companies are looking the same. I originally went to a big tech conference and it was really hard to delineate what a lot of the companies were doing. They offer a tool, but then they want to be broad in AI and whatever else it might be. Related to all this, bring it together in what role technology or thought leadership plays.

Rebecca Umberger: In public sector, the buying journey is so long. It’s highly structured. It involves multiple layers of stakeholders. We as marketing have to stay very close with our sales counterparts throughout the entire sales cycle. This means that we need to create a variety of content in every stage of the journey. Thought leadership is absolutely one of them. Case studies, use cases, nurture content, webinars, speaking opportunities. What’s nice is that sales now sees that if they work with marketing, it just goes so much smoother. Marketing has gotten better at making sure that our speakers and our SMEs are much more prepared when they go into these speaking engagements. They’ve got their questions ahead of time. They’ve got all of their talking points. We’ve got the right SMEs or our sales engineers engaged in each one of these pieces of content.

Marketing needs to be really clear as to what each piece of content or whatever we’re creating is actually meant to be. Like, what is the buyer persona? What stage of the buying journey is this in? If we can let the sales team know, they’re the ones who are out there in the agencies, they know which mandates they’re trying to align to, or executive orders. They know what that agency’s mission is. We need their input on every aspect of marketing. It’s just really important. Again, you’ve got the sales funnel working. Now you’re getting the content and the marketing and that messaging working together.

It’s really important, for example, for us in marketing to say, “Okay, this is not a product message,” because some sales reps want to go for just a, “Here’s our product,” and just do a deep dive dump. But when you’re doing thought leadership, that requires really taking a step back and aligning yourself to what’s really important to the client. Then we like to share the results of whatever we produce with the salespeople to make sure that, “Hey, is this message coming across? Are we projecting ourselves the way that we should be projecting so the government wants to interact with us?” Very interactive process now.

Julie Murphy: A lot of what Fred and I have been talking about on these podcasts is how important customization is. How that messaging is both relevant for the customer, it resonates with the customer, and really everything has to be customized, which is a lot of how account-based marketing comes through too. I’d really love to talk about account-based marketing. I know this is one of your core areas of expertise. There’s also a lot of different definitions of ABM. I would love to hear what your definition is of account-based marketing and why you think it’s become so powerful and gained traction with sales leaders.

Rebecca Umberger: That’s a really good question. I think public sector lends itself to ABM in general, just because we have things to align ourselves to. The government is also very open about letting us know what their missions are, how much money they have to spend. We know a lot about them. Whereas in the private sector, we don’t have that information. We even have a list of who they are, what their email addresses are. All of that’s been available to us for many years.

I would say as a marketer, I started long ago starting with ABM, but I would say my definition would be account-based marketing is a highly-targeted, coordinated approach in which marketing and sales work together to focus their resources defined as on high value accounts. It’s delivering tailored content and messaging that aligns directly to specific needs, to pain points, and to the whole buying community across the lifecycle of the sale. It combines the demand generation, personalization, sales enablement, and building that deeper relationship and accelerating the pipeline in these strategic accounts.

Fred Diamond: I’m just curious, do you have any examples or can you share an example of a time when an ABM campaign directly contributed to a big or complex win?

Rebecca Umberger: When I knew this was going to be one of the questions, I contacted one of my customers yesterday and I said, “Hey, is there any chance I could talk about what we just did with them last year in 2024?” They’re like, “Oh my gosh, please, feel free to talk about us.” I’ve got a few notes here.

We started working with a company called Strategic Communications. They are a medium to large size value-added reseller that’s been in the marketplace for 25 years marketing to public sector, both state, local, and federal, great reputation. They wanted to start up a new program that would really target justice and public safety. What they did was they hired somebody who had 25 years’ experience, Rusty Byers, in the public safety area. He came to us and said, “We want to create this new program. We’ve got the expertise.” What they wanted to do was pull this together in a matter of a few months and build their partner community.

The first thing that Strategic did was they diligently chose the best partners. They didn’t want to choose necessarily partners that weren’t in this area. They went out and did their research, which partners out there have this expertise, which ones have the best reputation? They went to the customers that they were going to be supporting. “Hey, do you know these partners? What value are they bringing?” It was really important for them to establish a really strong ecosystem of partners that really complimented each other and added significant value.

They got together and they decided which states they were going after, which jurisdictions, which agencies specifically would be good targets for them. While they were doing all of that, they asked us to come in and put together all of the marketing as it relates to the ABM program. We worked with them for about four months putting together all aspects of this program, from creating new logos, messaging, wording for their websites. We did one pagers, two pagers. We helped them develop an entire webinar program that was to be a sustainable program that they could do with different sets of partners at different times.

We helped them build their sales deck. We built a sales deck that was customer-facing. We built a sales deck that was client-facing. Then we also helped with the entire production of the webinars and stuff. We were working with them for almost five months. When I sent the email to Rusty, he said, “Oh my gosh, I’m happy to give you these stats.” I’m going to read off some stats of the ROI of this particular program, because he was really excited. Their team was really excited.

What Rusty said was, “The JPS Trust Co-Sell Program was a huge success with 14 new partners added since January. With the 14 added, they’ve been able to launch 8 district initiatives.” Examples are agency business processes, personal journey, corrections facility management, etc. Most of the new partners that they were able to bring in were not only applicable for the justice and safety program, which they call JPS Trust, they’re also applicable across other initiatives, which has been able to help them gain a lot more traction, not only in this area, but in other areas of their business. They participated in over 15 events and trade shows using the branding and collateral that we helped them create.

The first webinar that they launched had 821 people register and 525 actually attended, and it generated 23 really, really strong leads. This is insane for an organization who’s not used to doing the webinars. Really great results there. They won five new clients, and Stephanie, their sales rep, has $40 million in pipeline for new deals that have been generated over the past seven months. The other thing is they were able to generate more co-marketing funds via AWS because AWS was really excited about this account-based marketing program going after this, because they said none of their other vendors are actually focusing on that. Those are some pretty remarkable results delivered from this ABM program.

Julie Murphy: I’m so impressed with those numbers. Like you said, it’s nice that we can finally measure things in a way, so you can also tweak campaigns as needed to make sure that you maximize every dollar that goes into it. I love that. I have a fun question for you next, Rebecca. We know that there are a lot of buzzwords out there for marketing and sales that have been used so many times they almost become meaningless. I was wondering if you have one marketing, or could be two, one marketing buzzword that you’d love to see retired?

Rebecca Umberger: It’s funny because Fred mentioned that in the intro, how many buzzwords there are in going to those conferences, where everything sounded the same. It’s funny because when I was starting to work for Quest Software, I had actually been in the defense world for six years prior to that. I really needed to reacquaint myself with some of these buzzwords. As I was driving from Springfield to Gaithersburg the first few weeks, I was taking post-it notes and listening to WTOP at the time, and I was writing down all the different buzzwords on these post-it notes, and I had them all over my car, because you’re stuck in traffic. It’s not like you’re actually driving and writing, you’re just stuck in traffic. I would post them all over the office and I realized, “Oh my God, all these companies sound alike.”

One of the things that I’ve always been thrilled about with what Sage does, and other organizations do this too, is really making sure that your messaging is really succinct and that you can come up with a really strong differentiator. Because you’re right, everybody sounds alike, but the main things that I really don’t like are the words like end-to-end. It’s just like, “End-to-end what? Give us an idea of what you mean by that.” Is it end-to-end means from intake to post-award management? That’s what end-to-end might mean. But there are just so many of them. We all have acronyms with all of the government acronyms, and then we have our technology acronyms, but we want to make sure that any acronym we’re using, or any words or buzzwords, they actually mean something and we define it. If we’re going to use it, let’s define it, not just throw words out there to throw words out. We hear it every day. It just drives me crazy.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great job that Sage does with its clients. People who know me know that my favorite word to use is crisp. Like, nice, crisp messaging. I love the way you just said, let’s replace end-to-end with what is the beginning and what really is the end? That would definitely give a lot more clarity, which goes back to the point that one of the big challenges that we face in the selling world is that customers don’t want to listen to us or don’t even want to hear from us if we’re not bringing specific value for what their challenge is. Like you just said, if I go to them and say, “Well, we have this great end-to-end solution for you,” well, what value is that bringing?

Rebecca Umberger: What does that even mean?

Fred Diamond: It also doesn’t show them that I understand what they’re challenged with. One of the things that you said, which was really impactful for people listening, is that one of the great things about focusing on the B2G markets, business to government, is that the mission is disclosed. Now, of course, we’re going through some challenges. Again, we’re doing today’s interview in August of 2025, and there’s still some disclarity out there, if that’s a word.

Julie, this was a great show. We talked about account-based marketing, which is something that we really haven’t spoken about before, to be honest with you, on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. One of the purposes of the new Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast that we’re co-hosting with Julie Murphy from Sage Communications is focusing on places where marketing and sales need are behooved to work more effectively. I like the way, Rebecca, you described it before, that we didn’t have the metrics and the way to measure and the automation to really see if marketing was helping sales. Then sales will get a bucket full of leads that didn’t make sense, and they wouldn’t follow up on them, so they didn’t give feedback to marketing. That was a historic thing 15, 20, 30 years ago. Now there’s really no excuse for both organizations to continue and finding more crisp and effective ways to work together. Julie, I’m excited for what we’re going to be talking about moving forward with the Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.

Rebecca, bring us home. We like to end every Sales Game Changers Podcast episode with one action step. You’ve given us a lot of great insights, a lot of great ideas, but give us one specific thing that our listeners should do after listening to today’s show or watching on YouTube or reading the transcript that they should implement right now to take their careers to the next level.

Rebecca Umberger: That’s a really good question. Always, always, always work with your sales teams. They want to work with you. We now share quotas with the sales team. But as far as your career goes, I would say don’t be afraid of trying new things. Don’t get stuck doing the same thing year after year after year. Just coming to Sage, I learn something new every single day, and I’m at the end of my career and I feel like I’m at the beginning of my career, because I just gain so much value learning, not only from our customers, but from the people on our team, from everybody. Keep learning, keep changing, reinvent yourself, and keep working with your teams.

Fred Diamond: Very good. Julie, any final thoughts?

Julie Murphy: I totally agree with you, Rebecca. The way that technology and AI has evolved, our industry continues to change really quickly. We have to take that mindset that we’re always learning forever.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 786: How Great Account Based Marketing Improves Selling Effectiveness with Rebecca Umberger first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is the third episode of the “Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.” Every other week, the IEPS posts a new show with Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Julie Murphy from Sage Communications.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

On today’s show, Fred and Julie meet with Zhenia Klevitsky, Chief Growth Officer (CGO) at ITC Federal.

Find Zhenia on LinkedIn. 

ZHENIA’S TIP: “Thought leadership beats capture. If you’re not shaping the conversation early through targeted content, community engagement, and true mission understanding you’re already behind.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: This is a special episode of the Sales Game Changers podcast. It’s the Marketing for Selling Effectiveness show that we do with Julie Murphy from Sage Communications. Julie, this is our third show that we’re doing. Every other Tuesday we’re posting a brand-new show where we’re talking about the convergence that must be happening with sales leadership and marketing leadership. It’s historically been siloed, it’s historically been a conundrum. We’re doing today’s interview in July of 2025. Today, we’re going to be introducing Zhenia Klevitsky, a VP of Sales, to talk about things that she’s done in her career to bring things together. Julie, this is our third show.

Julie Murphy: Yes, and I couldn’t be more excited to bring on our very first sales leader guest, Zhenia Klevitsky, currently Chief Growth Officer at ITC Federal. She has been a personal friend and client for almost 20 years. She’s one of the best in the business when it comes to leading high-growth teams, especially in government contracting. She’s worked with companies big and small, from ASRC Federal, to Sev1Tech, and as I said, now she’s at ITC Federal. Welcome, Zhenia. We’re so excited to have you on the show.

Zhenia Klevitsky: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I’m so excited to speak with you both.

Fred Diamond: We’re excited, too. Why don’t you get us started here, Zhenia? What does ITC Federal do, and what is your role there?

Zhenia Klevitsky: ITC Federal drives transformation and application development, DevSecOps, cloud deployment and infrastructure automation, and federal financial systems. Those are our capabilities, but our approach is always mission-first. That’s what the company was founded on, and we’re always trying to find innovative ways to harness the power of technology across the broad spectrum of government missions and domain areas. You can see that all across our contracts within the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice. My role at ITC Federal as the Chief Growth Officer is being responsible for leading growth across business development, capture, solution architecture, marketing, and proposals.

Julie Murphy: Zhenia, I know that you’ve been in this government contracting community for most of your career. It’s a very niche space. I’m curious, what do you love the most about sales leadership in this government and technology space?

Zhenia Klevitsky: Th thing that I love the most about government and the technology space is that it’s both extremely challenging, but on the flip side, it’s extremely rewarding. First and foremost, we’re not just selling services or software to the government. We are really helping agencies solve problems that impact mission. For us at ITC Federal, that’s in the National Security space but other missionaries can include public health, infrastructure, the war fighter. That sense of mission alignment is really hard to match in the private sector, in my opinion. I really love that we are able to give back in a way in government consulting.

The other thing that I love about government is that it’s not just sales, it’s not just transactional, it’s strategic. Every deal involves complex procurements, complex cycles. Everything from needing to understand the Federal Acquisition Regulations, different IDIQs or vehicles GWACs set-asides. There are always multiple stakeholders, whether that’s the technical folks in the government, or contracting. There’s always that mission aspect, that political aspect. It involves deep-trusted relationships that you develop over time, like you and I, Julie, who’ve known each other for almost 20 years. This means long-term thinking. It means integrity, consistency, skills that you don’t just have, cultivate as a good seller, but it makes you a better leader and partner.

Because this space is so complex, I also think that mentoring rising sales leaders, account managers, capture professionals becomes a huge part of my job, for example. The legacy of developing others while delivering results is one of the most gratifying parts of government in the technology space. It’s not just the capabilities, it’s the mission, it’s the people, it’s mentoring. There’s something exciting also about bringing new technology like AI, Cloud, or cybersecurity to legacy-heavy environments. Being in our space allows you to be that change agent helping government modernize.

Fred Diamond: You covered a lot of interesting things there. We’re well over 780 Sales Game Changers podcast episodes, and we’ve interviewed many sales leaders from large companies that have served the government like Salesforce, Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, et cetera. The one thing that keeps coming back is the mission. The government customer is not about profits, they’re really about serving the citizens, their safety, infrastructure, health, whatever it might be. Like you also mentioned, there are a lot of long-term relationships because a lot of the customers want to work for government. They do it for the mission. A lot of things take time, they take a lot of people involved with that decision, which is why there are a lot of sales professionals who have been successful, have had long careers serving a handful of customers. They get to know their mission. They get to understand how they operate, et cetera. I’m curious, now, sales and marketing needs to be much more in tune to show the government customer that.

Julie, this just occurred to me. That’s another reason why we’re bringing sales and marketing together here. Zhenia, how have you seen the relationship between sales and marketing evolve through your career?

Zhenia Klevitsky: Thanks to Julie, I learned a lot about marketing. I would say that the relationship between sales and marketing, especially in government and technology sectors, has really evolved dramatically over the past decade. In the past, my view of sales and marketing is that it often worked in siloes. Marketing focused on brand, events, collateral. Sales focused on relationships and opportunities. Coordination was limited. The hands-off were clunky. I think it’s evolved in that now, there’s an increased alignment around shared pipeline goals across organizations. We have account-based strategies, data-driven insights. The best organizations operate as a revenue team, not separate departments. I think marketing has a big role in that.

For example, marketing is no longer about just pushing a message. It’s about arming the business development or sales team with mission-aligned thought leadership. We’re talking a lot about mission today. Capability narratives tied to customer pain points. What is the government really trying to solve? How can things be better? Marketing is about differentiators that map to evaluation criteria in request for proposals, for example. We see marketing as the long road. There’s content that supports early shaping with respect to opportunities and capture strategies. It’s not just about awareness, it’s become this iterative loop that leads to better targeting and faster course of correction. In my opinion, the best sales and marketing teams meet regularly to share insights on customer pain points, win themes, and code developing those messages. They’re not single-threaded like they used to be. It’s more holistic. That’s how I view it.

Julie Murphy: Absolutely. I agree with you wholeheartedly. What are some of the most effective ways you’ve seen sales and marketing collaborate to really drive those results? Obviously, you’re new at ITC Federal. You’re probably in the process of setting up that structure. What are some of the criteria you’re going to put in place to make sure that that collaboration really drives results?

Zhenia Klevitsky: That’s a great question, Julie. I think sales and marketing collaboration in government contracting, GovCon, is most effective when it’s intentional, when it’s integrated, and when it’s aligned to the buying process. We now focus on what we’re calling account-based marketing or ABM for priority pursuits. Business development or the sales team will identify target agencies or opportunities early on in the business development lifecycle, and then marketing will build and customize outreach related to those agencies. For us, currently that’s DHS and DHA. What that marketing customized outreach includes is white papers. Maybe there’s a landing page specifically dedicated to an account on your website. Webinars, capability briefs specific for the agency. Not just capability, but again, back to that mission need. This shapes customer perception before the competition ever comes out. Not the competition, but the RFP or even an RFI, or even before an opportunity shapes, we’re already building that perception in advance.

For me, thought leadership beats capture. For example, executive ghost writing or podcasts like we’re doing today, speaking on panels and webinars positioned by marketing to help shape the narrative around a company’s technical edge or niche capability. Then business development uses these assets to credibly engage technical and program stakeholders early in that acquisition lifecycle. Sometimes, customers will reach out to us just because we’ve had an expert speak on a panel, webinar, or podcast. It’s about building that snowball approach of putting everything together so the market understands what the company is all about.

Fred Diamond: It’s interesting that you bring that up. More than ever, the customer can find information. If the customer is going to engage with sales or BD, the BD or the sales professional need to be talking about things that the customer specifically is focused on. It can’t be broad things like, “Our technology will help you be more productive,” or, “Our technology is great for government.” It has to be specific to what that human being or those specific people in the buying process need to be aware of.

There’s no excuse. We say this all the time, Zhenia, on the Sales Game Changers podcast: there’s no excuse for sales professionals who aren’t speaking specifically to the customer which is where marketing comes in by helping process the message, helping figure out the best ways to get it across. I’m curious, do you have an example of a time when marketing content and awareness building all came together and directly contributed to a big or complex win?

Zhenia Klevitsky: I do. Fred, I want to go back to something you said where you mentioned that the information is everywhere and people can find it. The example that I want to talk about is interesting because the type of information we needed to flow for an opportunity wasn’t available. It wasn’t something that the government could find. I’ll give you more details around that.

When I worked for another firm, we spent almost two years on the capture effort around an opportunity in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That’s a very tight niche community there. The government and industry are connected in their community. They go to church together. They do a lot together. They didn’t know us because we were in the DC area, so they couldn’t find that information that typically, you would find. They just saw a typical DC type of company integrator. We needed to make sure our message, who we are, what we do, and what we represent really got to them.

The first thing we did was we ingrained ourselves in the community. We thought it was very important to get to know people for who they were – people, not just customers. The timing was so perfect that we were trying to get into the community, because at that time our firm was exploring more ways in which we could give back from philanthropic type of ways. We chose a specific foundation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We knew that we weren’t just going to donate, we weren’t just going to volunteer, but we would get ingrained with the community. It was a win-win. We got to know the individuals, for the people and for us, who we were. We were becoming part of that community.

Back then, I’m not sure if that’s still the case today, but billboards were really big in that area. We also invested in a billboard, and we didn’t make it about the capability. We really understood what resonated with that market. Our billboard was more about how we were part of the community. We found panels for our experts to speak on that resonated with the pain points of the customer at the time. That’s when we started to build around our capability set. We talked about microsite. We launched a microsite specifically focused on Albuquerque. This customer, specific case studies in terms of what they were looking for. This effort took me 18 to 24 months.

By the time the opportunity came out, they knew who we were. We had established ourselves not just as the next integrator, but part of the community. We understood their pain points and they knew we understood. By the time the request for proposal, RP came out, the agency language actually closely mirrored the themes and differentiators we had been talking to them about during our campaign. We ended up winning that opportunity. At the end of the day, we came out on top because we really tried to understand and speak their language, both from being involved in the community and through the marketing aspect of it all.

Julie Murphy: I love this example that you gave because it shows how important it is to really be embedded in the community and to understand your customer when you’re talking about messaging. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen from a messaging standpoint is if it’s done in a vacuum in marketing and it’s not done in collaboration with the sales teams who are actually talking to the customer day in and day out. I would love to hear thoughts about hearing directly from the customers. How do you go about collaborating with your marketing teams to help shape the messages? What is sales’ role in the process of setting up the company positioning?

Zhenia Klevitsky: That’s a great question. Because in GovCon the most successful growth teams aren’t just pursuing opportunities, they’re actively shaping the market and educating the buyer community long before the solicitation ever drops, I feel that sales teams should come together to shape messages and educate future buyers. There are multiple ways to do that. First, I think there needs to be tight collaboration between sales solutioning and marketing. You want consistent strategic messaging that reflects the actual customer pain points and your differentiated value, not just siloed, generic talking points.

Secondly, I think that publishing and promoting insight-based education is important. It’s not just capability-centric. It has to tie back to messaging that directly supports not just the mission, but also agency-strategic plans or GAO reports, or inspector general findings. These often signal funding and priorities, and when you’re talking to the customer you get that kind of information anyway. Instead of just reacting to solicitations, growth teams should proactively educate the market. We talked about hosting webinars with subject matter experts, white papers, even point-of-view briefs, but also participating in government industry forums. Julie, I know you and I, especially you, but we were both part of Women in Technology. There’s AFCEA, NPSE, and many others.

Not just participating but trying to become a leader in those organizations. Use a feedback loop to constantly involve the messaging. Coordinate messages by acquisition stage in the business development lifecycle. Develop shared messaging libraries. These are more tactical things, but I think these are some of the ways that sales growth should come together to shape messaging to educate future buyers.

Fred Diamond: I love the way you said before that you need to embed in the community. The reality is customers just don’t need you if you’re not bringing value. I’ve said this many times, the two most uttered words in the history of the Sales Game Changers podcast, number two is empathy, and number one is value. You need, as a sales professional, to be successful today. We’re doing today’s interview in July of 2025. You need to know where the customer is going two steps ahead of where the customer is because your competitor is possibly thinking that way. You need to get really deep and smart and work with marketing to ensure that you get those messages across. I’m curious, we spend a lot of time trying to educate the marketing profession about what sales needs. That’s a common question that we ask when we do panels. I’m curious, Zhenia, what’s something you wish more marketers knew about how sales teams operate so that they could be more effective?

Zhenia Klevitsky: Marketing is different in government consulting because it’s a long game. Sales is a long game. It’s not transactional or constantly looking for opportunities, which we are, but it’s different in the commercial space where the timelines are shorter in terms of delivery, but also the sales cycle. It is the long game. If marketers understood the high stakes and that it’s deeply relational, I think that’s key. This isn’t just transactional, it’s about shaping opportunities months and sometimes years ahead of an RFP. It’s about navigating for us complex organizational charts, inside agencies, and earning trust over time with technical and mission buyers, and on the contracting side.

Marketing content and campaigns that help us stay visible, credible, and trusted during the shaping process. It’s important for marketing to know that it’s not just one-and-done, it’s a long business development lifecycle. It should focus less on volume and more on targeted sustained engagement with key accounts, and timing is everything. That goes without saying. But if marketing doesn’t support the map, the pursuit calendar, it might be too early to shape or too late to matter. These are very important.

It’s important to align campaign calendars to the procurement lifecycle as well. Government contracting sales is a slow burn, trust-based and driven by timing relationships and credibility. We talked about that. Marketing needs to understand this becomes a true force multiplier, companies aren’t just trying to be a service provider. All of those things are the difference between what you see in the commercial space and the government space being involved in that long cycle all the way through.

Julie Murphy: Zhenia, you’ve been in this space now for a long time in government contracting. I’m sure you’ve seen it evolve through the years. I’d love to get your thoughts on trends you see on the horizon both. How has selling and marketing to government changed through the years? What do you think is coming next?

Zhenia Klevitsky: That’s another great question. I think the government buying landscape is shifting fast. We’re in an unprecedented time. But at the same time, I think successful sales and marketing teams all need to evolve with it. Some of the key trends that are already reshaping how both sales and marketing deal with the current environment, or as trends change there are multiple things. The first is the rise of an educated or self-directed buyer.

These days I feel like we see more government buyers, especially those that are technical and mission leaders, consuming industry content earlier in the process like Fred mentioned. Information is everywhere. AI is everywhere. You can just type something in and find information quickly. In the past, it was harder for government buyers to get that information. It’s at the tip of their fingertips now. We need to understand that and evolve with that. Engaging vendors later, often after an RFI or market research doesn’t work. We have to do it long before. Essentially, marketing has to deliver credible, searchable, mission-relevant content so that buyers can find things on their own because we already know that they’re doing that. We have to provide insightful information, not just information. That’s changed, that’s evolved.

Procurement cycles sometimes these days are compression. We’ve seen some memos come out of DoD where they would like to use more OTAs, more commercial solution offering, SBIRs, those are often very compressed timelines, very quick. We need to evolve with that. We need to be able to understand how to respond to those in market in advance. When technology changes so quickly, we have to be ready to shift with that. It goes back to shaping long before an opportunity even comes out. That includes shaping like we talked about, with talk leadership that aligns with what the government is seeking to do.

We talked about account-based marketing. There’s account-based everything. It seems like that’s become the norm. It’s a combination of those long sales cycles, the narrower buyer groups that we’re seeing today, and specific agency missions. That just means that blanket marketing campaigns don’t work anymore. They really need to be targeted to those types of things. Those agency missions, those buyer groups. We need to build together sales and marketing account-based strategies around program agencies and mission that has tailored content and targeted outreach.

We talked about AI and automation. They’re changing buyer expectations completely. That’s been something that’s been around for a while, but it’s really taking off. Agencies are piloting AIML, RPA, and intelligent automation, but they still need help to find use cases. They still need education on risk and governments, and they need to have outcomes, not just have these platforms to have them as well. Growth and marketing need to be more consultants, not just transactional. Marketing has to help position us as a trusted innovation partner, not just a technical vendor as well.

Fred Diamond: I agree with you. You’re so on-target with that. You’ve done a great job today, Zhenia, talking about how the marketing and sales organizations should be working together to demonstrate to the customer that you’re there for them and you understand them specifically, and you understand what their challenges are. You also need to understand what the specific person is dealing with. What is their role? One of the things with government as well is that there are a lot of people involved. You mentioned before it’s not just a transactional sale. There is that in some parts once everything else has happened. You need to educate so many people throughout the process and the message needs to be specific to them.

Julie, this is our third Marketing for Selling Effectiveness podcast. I thought it was great. I thought Zhenia did a fantastic job. I want to thank you for the insights you shared through the process and how both entities, marketing and sales, need to be even more effective right now than ever before with all the things that are happening. The challenges that are facing them, how AI is playing a role, we started to touch on that towards the end. Can you give us a specific action step to wrap up the show briefly? You’ve given us so many ideas. Give us one specific action step that people listening to the show today must do to take their sales career to the next level.

Zhenia Klevitsky: To take your sales career to the next level, to wrap everything up that we’ve just talked about, first and foremost, don’t think about things from a transactional perspective. Think about them from a holistic perspective. Think about, like you said, Fred, we’re not just talking about agency mission, we’re talking about the problems that agencies want to solve, but they’re people as well. Think about the people you’re dealing with. Build those trusted relationships. If you think about it from that perspective, not just, “I need to sell a capability,” or, “I need to make money,” “I need to close my next deal,” you’ll be way more successful.

Fred Diamond: That is excellent. Julie, any final thoughts?

Julie Murphy: Zhenia, you’re a walking billboard for that. You’ve built so many great relationships through the years, and you’re right in the middle of this ecosystem of being involved with industry associations, your collaboration with partnerships and customers. You’ve always had that sophisticated marketing mindset. It’s been a pleasure working with you all these years. Thanks again for all of your insight today.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 777: How Sales and Marketing Can Drive Government Contractor Growth with Zhenia Klevitsky first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is the second episode of the “Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.” Every other Tuesday, the IEPS posts a new show with Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Julie Murphy from Sage Communications.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

On today’s show, Julie shared insights on how marketing organizations can develop better content to help the sales process flow. Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership president Gina Stracuzzi also appeared on today’s show.

Find Julie on LinkedIn. 

JULIE’S TIP: “Good content will strengthen trust. Your customer will think, ‘These guys know what I need. They’re answering my questions. I’m excited about it. I’m learning—and they’re the experts.’

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Gina, we’re going to be talking to Julie here. We have a couple of great questions teed up. You and I talk about this all the time. Before we bring on Julie, what are some of your thoughts on why this is so important?

Gina Stracuzzi: Times have just changed, let’s face it. Buyers are looking for more than just a sales pitch. They really want to know what makes you so different than the other five companies I have on my list, because I’ve been doing my own education, and you have a small sliver of time in order to give them something they really need and want. They don’t care who’s got the best sales pitch. They want to know who’s responsible for what is going to help me and how is it relevant to what I need done. You have to be working with your sales team so intently these days. You just cannot leave it to chance.

Fred Diamond: Today we’re going to be talking about content, and we’re going to be talking about high quality content and why that’s more important than ever. Julie, why is high quality content so important right now than really ever before, in a world where buyers self-educate sometimes before they even reach out to sales?

Julie Murphy: I was so glad that you picked this topic, Fred, because it’s so important in the self-education process that buyers often do before they’ll even meet with the sales rep. I know when we talked about that on the first podcast, we got that huge outpouring on LinkedIn and other commentary that both marketers and sales execs alike feel pretty strongly about wanting to break down these silos between marketing and sales, and how can we better collaborate.

To your question on how do you define high quality content, I would define it as effectiveness, which is obviously part of our name, quality content that’s effective, and it’s also relevant. I think a lot of people actually get really hung up on maybe they feel like they’re not the best writer, they’re hung up on poetic phrasing, or I have to be really clever or creative. While those things are important, it’s important to have really quality writing with great tone.

What’s more important than that, what’s more important than poetic phrasing is having relevant content that’s effective. It’s about the right topic, and it’s answering the questions that your customers or potential customers have about your offering or about this space in general. I think personally that’s most effective, and we can talk about that in a variety of ways.

I would say bad content, if we want to look at the flip side of that, is good content will strengthen trust. Your customer will think, “These guys know what I need. They’re answering my questions, I’m excited about it. I’m learning and they’re the experts.” Bad content, I would define that as being irrelevant content which wastes everyone’s time, and it also can cause the buyer to question, “Does this company understand me? Do they understand what my values are? Do they understand what my real challenge is?” For better or for worse, content can really strengthen your reputation or it can cause some damage if you don’t do it correctly.

Fred Diamond: Gina, Julie mentioned trust, and that’s a word that comes up all the time, and we do a lot of work with partnership leaders. What are some of your thoughts on that?

Gina Stracuzzi: Julie drives home some really important points there. The markets are saturated with all kinds of messaging from marketers. Trust is the big differentiator. If you don’t have high-quality insight-driven content that really garners their attention and makes it worth their while, you’re going to lose out a lot, because they want education, not ads. Because now everything AI is just flooding the market, people are using it right and left, myself included, but you have to be careful how you use it. The buyers know what’s going on. To Julie’s point you, it can’t be just words for words. It has to bring something that’s going to make them trust you as a seller, as an organization. I think her points are so well taken.

Fred Diamond: You made a good point there, Gina, that there’s been so much noise. We, at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, we produce a lot of content. We’re well over 760 Sales Game Changers Podcasts, and we’re proud of all of it. Then how we slice it up and how we put it up on YouTube and LinkedIn and various places. Julie, how do you get through the noise? If a company wants to improve their content and truly make it valuable for the customer that they’re trying to influence, where should they start?

Julie Murphy: The first place you should start as a company is obviously in conversations with your sales team, which we talked about quite a bit in our first podcast. You’re right, there is so much noise out there and you have to be able to cut through that noise with relevant content. That starts with making sure you’re talking topically about what’s going to be most important to your buyer. That’s a closed feedback loop with the sales team. They should be letting you know what collateral pieces are working, what’s not, what do they actually want to take with them to a meeting, or for the top end awareness building piece, the thought leadership piece, what sort of topics are getting their customer’s attention, that’s really going to help build credibility. That’s what I would say from an initial standpoint.

The other thing that you want to do, say you’re brand new to a company and they’ve put you in charge of the content program, the first thing you have to do is get organized. Whether you’re a huge company with a lot of content assets, or you’re a small company with maybe just a handful, you need to know what you have. The first step is to really do a content audit and do a gap assessment so you understand, what do I have? Because a lot of times companies build their content piecemeal and it’s with good intentions. Maybe you have a really important meeting with a specific customer and you built something for them, and that’s great, it should be customized for that customer, but then it’s sort of a hodgepodge of content.

You want to take a look at who am I really selling to? What are all the different audiences that I’m talking to? Does my content speak to all those audiences, or what pieces am I missing? That’s one. Then of course, what we had just talked about is making sure you’re getting with the sales team to make sure that, because a lot of times the marketing people aren’t in your meetings, so they don’t know what the customer objections are, or how that conversation is going. Being able to provide that feedback allows us to make the content even better.

Fred Diamond: Gina, what would be your advice to sales professionals? You run the Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership. You facilitate the Women in Sales Leadership Forum. Matter of fact, the next one starts July 11th this summer, succession program for women in sales leaders at companies like Amazon Web Services, Hilton, Oracle, Cvent, Carahsoft, et cetera. What do you think a sales professional wants to say to marketing about the content that they’re producing?

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s interesting because there was a period where it was all about brevity. Because people’s attention is really short, you can’t put anything too long out there. It has to be consumed in three seconds or you’ve lost them kind of thing. It really did a disservice in many ways to what is really impactful about that company that could help their buyers. It’s got to be that you’ve used both, that you use that little micro content, but it leads to others things like case studies and blog posts and frameworks and things like that. Then taking into account, maybe you use ROI calculators or decision guides, anything, like personal video outreaches is huge, and buyers do respond to that, but sales needs marketing to build that for them. They really have to be working together to say, “The client really seemed to respond to this. Let’s do a little bit more,” not only making it that, but adding it to your list of things that they’re responding to. You’ve got to have that feedback from marketing or from sales, and then sales has to appreciate that marketing needs that feedback in order to move forward.

Fred Diamond: You raise a great point here. Most of the people who are listening to the Sales Game Changers Podcast, again, we’re doing today’s Marketing and Selling Effectiveness, are in complex markets, typically business to business, business to government. There is a transactional part, but to get to the opportunity to have the transactions, it might take 2, 3, 4, 5 years. A lot of the content is critical through the flow. One thing that, Gina, you and I have talked about a bunch is marketing used to do marketing, and then sales would come in. Now through the buyer’s journey, sales needs help like earlier and marketing needs to come in earlier and later. The whole process is not as defined as it once was.

Julie, in B2B and B2G sales, where sales cycles are long and decision teams are potentially in the dozens, how should content be tailored to support the complex buying journeys?

Julie Murphy: I think you just hit the nail on the head that sometimes the teams can be dozens. Think about it in terms of it’s not one individual buyer. It’s a committee that you’re selling to. A lot of times people on that committee have different needs and expertise. Sometimes you need to speak to the technical person who’s actually going to maybe be using the product and making recommendations. You need to talk to the business-minded person that’s looking at the numbers and the ROI. A lot of times, especially in government, you’re working with the procurement teams, and so you have to have content that addresses each of these audiences to make sure you’re speaking to everyone. That’s the first thing.

The other thing is, is it’s really important not to sell too hard in the beginning. I think we know this, what we call old school selling, which is the hard sell right up front. We know that buyers now do so much education on the front end, that on the early part of this, it’s a lot of thought leadership, it’s a lot of education, looking at trends in the industry. The other thing that you can do over long buying cycles is maybe there’s a particular deadline, say a federal mandate where agencies need to meet a particular requirement by timeframe, and you happen to have an offering that’s going to help them with it. You can do a large campaign and warm up the market as you lead up to that deadline.

It’s having a long-term strategy where in the front end it’s a lot of education. Then as you get down the funnel and they’re closer to making a decision, that’s when they might dive into a white paper or some of the more longer form content where they really want to learn before making a decision. It’s about having different content pieces every step of the journey. Gina, you also mentioned the videos and the diversified content of social media and the short form, and those are also especially important at the front end of that sales journey.

Gina Stracuzzi: Yes. I agree.

Fred Diamond: I like the way you said committee. As I’m thinking about this, you, you’re right, there’s the technical, there’s the financial buyer, there’s the program buyer, there’s the IT buyer in a lot of these situations, and government, B2G. Then of course you have the whole contract side and the compliance side, and there’s so many regulations that come into play that your company needs to communicate. Maybe you do a webcam or a podcast on how we specifically address this compliance issue that is going to be a showstopper if we don’t have.

Gina, I think this is a good time to transfer into the AI discussion. I know you’re a big advocate for AI and how it works in the selling process. Let’s talk about the evolving role of AI and ongoing change your buyer behavior. We also do a complimentary, every other week, we do a podcast called Marketing and Selling Effectiveness. Every other week we do the AI and selling Effectiveness with Zeev Wexler for Viacry, where we go deep into this. But I’m curious, Gina, start us off with your thoughts on this, and then Julie, what are your clients expecting and asking you for?

Gina Stracuzzi: What I’m hearing from a lot of people that I speak with is AI can really help everyone. Even if somebody’s searching for a company that does X, AI can help them curate what they’re looking for and give them let’s say 10 ideas on companies. When they go to your website off of that, you’ve got to be ready, because their first impression of you is going to be based on what AI put up to them to begin with. It’s important because it shapes every piece of what the buyer sees now. You have to be ready on all fronts for this.

Really, you have to think about how from a seller standpoint, great content when generated by AI that’s going to pop up first to them can really either build trust or shatter trust right from the start. You really have to be careful about what you’re putting up and what’s being gathered through AI. That’s really what I’ve been hearing people talk about, because they grab old stuff sometimes and you don’t even know it’s there and it’s like, “Oh, that’s very old. I don’t know where you got that.” You really have to think about all these things now.

Fred Diamond: Julie, how are you interfacing with your many clients in this particular vein?

Julie Murphy: I can maybe look at it through two different lenses. One is maybe how marketing and sales teams can use it for content. That’s probably one of the ways that a lot of people have started using GenAI or trying it, is through the content engines. There’s a lot of positive to that, the number one probably being speed that you can very quickly release a blog post. It puts out pretty good content, but I would say the one thing that I think is really important is providing context. You want to make sure that you don’t come across too robotic and that you’re really checking what the GenAI is giving back to you, because beyond just hallucinations, you want to make sure that your messaging is on brand. You do still need that human that’s editing the work.

Also, my other piece of advice, whenever I use AI, you guys would probably laugh at my prompts because they’re like a full paragraph. You just want to give context as possible because the more you give AI, the more customized it’s going to be for you. What you don’t want to start doing is put out generic posts because generic posts or inauthenticity erodes trust, which we know is really important, especially in this marketplace. That’s what I would say in terms of playing around with GenAI and using it for editing or for writing.

The other piece of it, to your point, Gina, a lot of times people are going to AI first before they do anything else to do their research. Do you know why? Because, I even personally love the way it comes back to me, it comes back in bullets, very easy to read. Going back to what we talked about at the very beginning of this podcast, is writing in a way that’s effective. It doesn’t have to be the most poetic, it has to be clear and it’s got to be relevant. A lot of times, that’s what AI is doing. If you write that way both on your website and your other materials, it’s more likely to actually pull that content.

Fred Diamond: This our second Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast. This has been great. For our listeners, we’re very excited with where we’re going to go with this. We’re going to get deeper and deeper and deeper into this topic. We’re going to bring on some leaders, people who are really doing the integration of sales and marketing well, who are ahead of the curve. We’re looking forward to that in future shows.

Here’s how I want to wrap up today’s podcast. I’m going to ask you both the same question, but slightly different. Julie, the question for you is, what do sales leaders need to know about what marketing is going through with content? If you were at a coffee shop or something and someone knows who you are and they’re like, “Gee, what is marketing’s biggest challenge? I’m a sales leader. What do I need to know about what marketing’s going through?”

Gina, I’m going to ask you the converse question. If a marketing director or marketing leader or VP said to you, “Gina, I know you run the Global Women in Sales, the Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership, what are the biggest challenges that sales leaders are faced with right now?” When you have that empathy and the understanding, it definitely makes work happen a lot better. Julie, why don’t you take it first, and then Gina, you’ll bring us home.

Julie Murphy: I like how you frame that, that it’s really good to understand each other. I think a lot of times when sales leaders have challenges with marketers with the content, it’s in regard to this piece of content didn’t get me any immediate leads. It’s not lead-gen-focused enough, which a lot of times that content, as we know, is further down the funnel. A lot of sales leaders are aware of this, but we’re trying to bring everyone on board of just the importance of thought leadership early on in the process because a lot of times that type of content, it might not bring you an immediate lead, but it’s helping to shape the market. It’s helping to get you on the short list. It’s helping to bring credibility to your buyers so that way when they’re actually ready to call they want to call you.

I would say just the purpose of each type of content, understanding what the strategic value is for each, both in terms of the front end more thought leadership that might not be driving immediate leads, but will help you down the road for this very long complex sale, as well as the content that you get further down the funnel. Then the reverse, I would also say for sales leaders, if they feel like the marketing content really isn’t helping them, then you do need to have a conversation to better understand what’s happening in those meetings that you’re unaware of, so that way you can help make it better.

Fred Diamond: Like you said last week on your final bit of advice, was meet for coffee. You got to be talking in person these days. We keep pushing that. Thanks, Julie. Gina, bring us home. Give us your final thought on what do marketing leaders need to know what sales leaders and sales professionals are dealing with right now?

Gina Stracuzzi: To bring home a lot of what we talked about, quality content, it’s not just for lead generation. It’s what sellers send. The best content can really shorten the sales cycle, build trust, and position reps as advisors rather than order-takers. The bottom line really is that if sales and marketing teams aren’t strategizing together, they’re potentially creating friction for the buyers who are seeing one thing in the marketing, but hearing something else from sales, which is already, to your point, Julie, eroding trust. That’s going to leave revenue on the table. It’s got to be a real compromising, working together situation. It can be the salesperson’s competitive edge if it’s done right.

Fred Diamond: Once again, Gina, I want to thank you, Julie Murphy, thank you so much. This is the Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 773: Marketing’s Role in Producing Content That Builds Trust and Closes Complex Sales with Julie Murphy first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is the first episode of the “Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.” Every other Monday, the IEPS posts a new show with Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Julie Murphy from Sage Communications.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

On today’s show, Julie shared some of her ideas on how Marketing organizations are evolving in their critical need to work with the Sales organization to accelerate the path to revenue.

Find Julie on LinkedIn. 

JULIE’S TIP: Grab lunch with your best friend in marketing. Or if they’re not your best friend, if you barely know them, you especially need to get lunch, maybe a few lunches. The first step to putting together a really cohesive, effective plan is regular communication.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Julie Murphy, I’m really excited. This is a new sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. We’re going to be posting this show every other Monday. It’s the Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast. I got Julie Murphy. She’s the president of Sage Communications. Julie, every other week we’re going to be doing a show where we’re going to be talking about how critical it is for sales and marketing to work together to help the company achieve the goals. Some people might be thinking, “Well, yeah, sales and marketing should be working together,” but you and I have known each other for a long time. Sage Communications has been a great friend of what was the Institute for Excellence in Sales, and now the Institute for Effective Professional Selling. Sage Communications is a participant in our Selling Essentials Marketplace, which we’re very excited about.

Julie, it’s great to see you. You’ve been a good friend. You are a sponsor many times of the IES. We just had our 15th Annual Sales Excellence Award event, and you were there and you’ve been a great friend of the institute. For people who don’t know you, tell us a little bit about Sage and tell us about how your services support your clients’ selling efforts.

Julie Murphy: I am equally excited to do this podcast with you. We’ve been a huge fan of the IEPS since its inception. We work with sales leaders all the time. I think it’s critical for marketing and sales to be in alignment to maximize revenue. I’m excited to do the new podcast series.

As far as Sage Communications, we are a full service public relations and marketing firm. We work primarily with technology companies and government contractors, and we also do some work with the government themselves. Because we’re full service, it means that we do everything from media relations, speaker placement, award programs, all the way through branding, messaging, lead generation, advertising. I really consider us in terms of sales to sit at the top of funnel. It’s our job to increase your awareness, build your credibility, garner thought leadership, so that way by the time you’re meeting with your customers, they know who you are and they feel good about you. They know you’re an expert.

Fred Diamond: People will get to know you more through the course of the podcast, but Sage has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world to deliver them into B2G and B2B markets. As we go through the shows, we’re bringing on some of your clients and some companies you’ve worked with and talk about how critical it is. I love what you just said, marketing as top of funnel. Marketing is so critical right now, and actually, I’ve known this for a long time, and I’ve talked about this before. There was a classic article in the Harvard Business Review, believe it or not, Julie, in 2004 called Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing. It was a piece written by Neil Rackham, who wrote SPIN Selling, and Philip Kotler, who’s one of the great marketing professors and writers of all time, Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing.

We still see silos and we still see disconnects, and it can’t happen anymore. We’re doing today’s first show in June of 2025. Companies are under pressure to perform. It gets harder. So many things need to happen correctly. We don’t have time. Companies don’t have time to doddle. Everything needs to be about achieving revenue goals, growing markets, launching successful products, et cetera. Let’s get a little bit deeper. Why is it important for sales and marketing to come together today more than ever?

Julie Murphy: One of the biggest reasons why is because your buyers are self-educators now. They’re doing so much of their research before they even get to the sales meeting, that if you are not present where your buyers are learning, there’s a huge opportunity cost. When I say that marketing sits at the top of the funnel, it’s not just for consumers who are buying cars anymore. Technology decisions are very complex, usually lots of layers and nuance in there, and they’re doing all this research before they even sit down with their sales executive. If you are not on that short list because of what they’ve read or heard about you, it’s a real challenge.

When there’s message inconsistency in the sales funnel, so the top of the funnel is talking about issues and trends that are really not the same issues and trends that your sales team is hearing when they’re actually having conversations with their customers, there’s a huge disconnect. The revenue generation is so much more powerful when everything is in sync.

Fred Diamond: You do a lot of work in B2B, but you’re also well known in B2G, business to government. For people who are new to that term, the federal government, it’s Fortune One. It’s the biggest market in the world. It’s a challenged market in a lot of ways. Right now there’s things happening within the government to decrease the size. A lot of companies are faced with some challenges on how to approach the marketplace. Also, other public sector markets include state and local, some cases education, some cases healthcare. It’s a very interesting market in that the mission of those markets, it’s not to grow revenues, it’s not to have profit. It’s to achieve mission. I’m just curious, what are some of the specific ways that you’ve seen and that you’ve helped companies on the marketing side drive sales?

Julie Murphy: You bring up a really good point because marketing has gotten as close to one-to-one as possible. What I mean by that is you really have to speak your customer’s language into their specific challenge. If marketing is very generic, or in the case that you just mentioned, for a public sector organization, if you’re using commercial terms, it’s really not going to be relevant and you’re going to lose that sale pretty quickly. Our goal is to be in sync. There’s lots of different ways that marketing can help with that.

For example, federal agencies, like you said, they’re not revenue driven, but they have specific missions. They may need to meet a specific federal mandate or say a specific deadline. Maybe it’s a cybersecurity deadline that they have to meet. Marketing can do a great job of warming up the market and warming up leads by providing a very well-timed thought leadership campaign. You’re getting those federal agencies information that they really need and want in a very specific window of time, and you’re positioning yourself as the expert, as the go-to helper to these federal agencies. That can be very effective in generating leads.

The other piece too is, as you know, in the public sector market, this is not a quick sale. The sales process is sometimes months, sometimes years. Thought leadership and marketing, it’s another way to keep in front of your customer. You’re not just always knocking on the door like, “Hey, don’t forget about me.” You’re providing a white paper on a timely topic. Or something has come out in the news and you’re providing your perspective on it. You’re there to help your customer learn and educate themselves and you stay top of mind throughout that whole process.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. A lot of B2B and complex B2G sales, it’s a long process, and even B2B, you have to hit multiple places along the way, and you need to keep demonstrating to your customer and prospects that you know what they’re going through and you know the challenges that they’re facing. You can’t just show things like, “We offer great technology that does X, Y, and Z.” You’re right. I love the way you just said, it’s one-on-one a lot right now where the great sales professionals and the great sales organizations, they’re focused specifically on, how am I going to help this customer achieve this goal, or get to this mission, or provide this type of service out there?

You alluded to this in your previous answer, but marketing’s a very broad term. A lot of people, when they think of marketing in the sales world, they think about lead generation and they don’t think a lot more beyond that. That’s a piece of it. You mentioned thought leadership. What are some of the other ways that marketing now has to accelerate the sales process?

Julie Murphy: There’s a whole spectrum that marketing can help you. From the very top line, strategic is the thought leadership. Are you talking about the topics and the challenges that are going to be most interesting to your buyer? Are you really helping them from a topical standpoint? Down to lead generation, if your sales team needs some qualified leads, all the way through what we call sales enablement. We do this with a lot of our clients. This is when you’re really in lockstep with the sales team. You’re helping with everything from pitch decks, preparing for major RFPs. Maybe you have a landing page or a specific campaign around a major RFP, you’re regularly meeting with your sales team on pipeline review, to very specific materials that can be around a specific federal mandate. It can be ROI calculators. It could be scripts and talking points to help frame the pitch.

To me, the marketing team is really embedded into the sales team, and that should be a really close process. Everything from top of funnel awareness building, credibility building, all the way through lead generation and preparing them for the actual sale and conversation.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. It’s gotten so much easier for people on the marketing side to understand a lot of that. A lot of times the marketing people were either in the office or they were at events, and the salespeople were on the field. It wasn’t always easy to bring people together. But now, with all forms of communication, and of course AI, the ability for everybody to get smarter about what the specific customer needs, there’s no excuse for both sides not to enable the other side.

Julie Murphy: Customers are skeptical if they get something that’s too generic, especially in the public sector market. The best way to earn trust is to show that you truly understand your customer. To show that you truly understand your customer, it’s got to be very customized communication. It’s what I call the Super Bowl of marketing. You’ve got a really wide reach. It’s a more generic message across a wide audience. The good news is, is you don’t have to necessarily even have a massive marketing budget in order to reach your goals. You have to have a very targeted, really aligned marketing plan that’s well aligned with sales in order to reach your goals on just the high priority targets.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. As you know, I was the marketing director for Compaq’s federal Marketplace in the mid-nineties. Our big challenge was showing the government market that we were committed to it, that we understood words like GSA, GWAC, Government-Wide Acquisition Contract, IDIQ. You have to get specific, not just into the program, but where the government customer wants to go, and the specific service that the citizens are needing, et cetera. It requires just pinpoint type of precision to get those messages across.

One thing that you talked to me about, you mentioned to me that a lot of times Sage Communications was brought in to a company by the sales leader. Talk a little bit more about that.

Julie Murphy: Many of our clients, a lot of times initially through a sales leader, maybe he or she has worked with us in the past and has gone to a new company. To me, that really validates how well it works when marketing and sales work together. In public sector, it’s not going to work to use the commercial marketing language or something that sounds too corporate or too generic. You have to showcase that you know and understand your customer in the market. A lot of times Sage serves as the arms and legs and the eyes and ears of the companies we work with. We’re also news junkies, so we’re following the stuff 24/7. The federal mandate comes out or something hits the news cycle that’s really relevant, we flag it to our clients, and we’re immediately reaching out to the reporters to help our clients provide expertise on timely topics that are the news of the day. Being able to provide that really positions our clients as experts.

In order to really do that, you have to live and breathe this stuff. It’s got to be something that you understand, that you enjoy, that you’re passionate about. Marketing programs that are built within this context of really deep knowledge of the government and their customer are the most successful, I think. A lot of times it is true, a lot of the sales leaders are sometimes our biggest fans and will bring us in, which we of course really appreciate, but we love working with the sales leaders. I look at it as, if we’re not making our sales leaders successful, if they don’t feel I’m helping them, I’m not doing my job well.

Fred Diamond: You as a marketing agency and the whole marketing organization, the reason that you are around and they’re around is because you got to drive sales. If sales are driven and revenue is driven, we say this all the time, then the rest of the organization can be supportive.

It’s interesting, something you were just saying, the average sales rep needs to understand intimately where his or her customer and where their industry is going. A lot of times when people ask me, how can I have a great career, a long successful career in sales? I’ll say, you got to have one or two things. You got to be really deep in a market or an industry, where you understand where it’s going and you’re embedded in that market. The other thing I say is, or you could be a real expert on a technology or some type of service that will be needed by that marketplace.

Marketing more than ever, I like the way you say it, has to really be students of the market, has to understand globally. Specifically, as you’re working with the sales professionals to understand where their customers are going, all sales is built on accounts. It’s built on how are we winning this business and this account. There’s a global number of what we’re bringing in, but it all gets driven up.

I’m just curious, how detailed do you think marketing needs to be to understand at the account level? Is it important? Let’s say for example, federal, do you need to know department level, or is it important to get down to agency level and maybe even programmatic today? We’re doing today’s interview in June of 2025.

Julie Murphy: Absolutely. You should get to agency and programmatic, and obviously there are so many of those that you can’t know all things. That’s why it’s important to get with your sales team and do that pipeline review, because if there’s one particular huge RFP that’s coming out with a specific federal agency, then we can get smart on that individual agency. What are their specific challenges they’re facing? When is the contract up for renewal? All of these details so that we can put together a really customized campaign. I do think it’s really important to get down to the agency and programmatic level.

Fred Diamond: Once again, this is the first Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast. Every other week, Julie Murphy from Sage Communications is going to come on the show with me, and we’re going to talk about these topics and how marketing and sales can really add significant value to what the company’s trying to achieve. Then we’re going to be bringing on some sales leaders and some marketing leaders to talk about some specific things that they’re doing.

Julie, before I ask you for your final specific action step for people listening to the show, let’s get a little bit detailed here, a little more specific on some joint planning sessions. How can joint planning sessions and feedback loops between marketing and sales improve targeting and messaging for highly specific government or enterprise accounts?

Julie Murphy: I think that the sales and marketing team should be getting together on a regular basis. At minimum, you’re getting together quarterly to talk from a strategic standpoint. Who are our biggest targets? What topics are we aligning with? Is the messaging still resonating or do we need to tweak it there? I think on a monthly, or even a weekly level, you’re looking at pipeline. You’re looking at the tactics that are being used. Are they being effective? Is the market responding how we want them to? Because if you wait six months to have a meeting to say, “Okay, this isn’t really that important to our customer,” and we’re only changing course halfway through the year, it’s a huge disservice. You’ve burned through a lot of budget during that timeframe. Meet on a regular basis is my recommendation.

Fred Diamond: I told this story before. When I was at Apple Computer in the beginning of my career, I was in a junior marketing role, and the various sales organizations in public sector had sales meetings. My boss said to me, he said, “For you to be valuable, you need to be in those meetings.” I started going to the meetings and I would sit on the periphery, not at the big table, on the chairs lining the big table, right by the window. The sales people would look at me like, “What is he doing here?” Then I dug in and started studying the market, and then I would raise my hand at the third or fourth meeting and say something, and then eventually I would be sitting at the table, and then eventually I would be contributing so much. Most of those sales meetings were about the accounts and the pipeline.

My message here to the marketing professionals who are listening to this is salespeople are on the front line trying to get your products and services and solutions into accounts. You got to put in the time and energy and effort to understand the stuff that we’re talking about here. I like how we’re talking about specifically how you can add value to what the sales professional is trying to achieve. Of course, it’s to grow their accounts, pursue new ones, and provide more solutions to them.

This was fun, Julie. I’m really excited for the show that we’re going to be posting every other week. Again, Sage Communications is a participant in the IEPS Selling Essentials Marketplace. If there are people who are listening out there, the IEPS is the resource for all things related to sales. If you want to know more about Sage, reach out to me, Fred Diamond, and we’ll connect with Julie and get her in front of your company. This was fun, don’t you think?

Julie Murphy: This was a blast. I’m really looking forward to it, Fred.

Fred Diamond: It’s going to be great. Julie, as we end the Sales Game Changers Podcast, you’ve given us so many great ideas. Give us one final action step, something specific our listeners should do to take their sales career to the next level.

Julie Murphy: Well, the next step, especially if you haven’t done it recently, is to grab lunch with your best friend in marketing. Or if they’re not your best friend, if you barely know them, you especially need to get lunch, maybe a few lunches. The first step to putting together really cohesive, effective plan is regular communication. That’s the best place to start.

Fred Diamond: That’s smart. We talk a lot about building relationships. Sales also has to help marketing. We’re talking here, there’s a lot of tools, obviously, but tell your marketing people what you need, what you think you need. Again, marketing needs to have the initiative. I think that’s one of the key messages here, to be proactive, to understand the accounts, understand where the company’s going, listen to what they talk about from a pipeline perspective, but yeah, get together, talk, understand, and promote and grow your company.

Once again, I want to thank Julie Murphy from Sage Communications for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 768: Marketing’s Evolving Role in Driving Sales Effectiveness with Julie Murphy first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.