Building Strong Sales and Marketing Collaboration with Matt Collins
Sales and marketing are supposed to work together, but that doesn’t mean they naturally understand each other. Sales is focused on the number in front of them. Marketing is often working on a different timeline, with a different set of priorities. If the leaders of those teams don’t take the time to understand what the other side is dealing with, it’s very easy for both teams to stay in their silos and blame each other when something isn’t working.
Matt Collins and I worked together as leaders in marketing and sales, and this episode is a real look at what that partnership actually required from both of us. We didn’t always agree. We had different perspectives, different pressures, and plenty of conversations where we had to work through what wasn’t working. What made the partnership strong was that we trusted each other enough to have those conversations and stay focused on what the business needed.
In this episode of The Real Work of Leadership, Matt and I talk about what it took to build trust between sales and marketing and disagree without losing alignment. We also get into sharing feedback across teams and creating stronger collaboration when both sides are responsible for moving the business forward.
5:12 – Where the tension between sales and marketing really comes from
8:07 – Getting out of silos by understanding what the other team needs
12:30 – Staying aligned even when sales and marketing disagree
17:33 – Why fixing a cross-functional problem usually means looking at both sides
20:48 – Building the trust that makes harder conversations possible
28:23 – How poor collaboration between sales and marketing eventually affects revenue
33:04 – The leadership trap of trying to solve everything yourself
35:59 – Using pilots to test new sales messaging before a full rollout
37:19 – Leading teams through decisions you didn’t get to make
42:20 – Sales and marketing misconceptions, win rate, and the role trust plays in collaboration
Connect with Matt Collins
Matt Collins is the Vice President of Product Marketing at MNTN, a connected TV advertising platform for performance marketers. He has spent his career in technology marketing, beginning in the video game industry before moving into B2B roles at companies including Nokia and Microsoft and, more recently, venture-backed ad tech companies. His work in product marketing often puts him at the center of collaboration across sales, product, engineering, customer success, and broader marketing teams.
Connect with Matt Collins on LinkedIn
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Elisa Hawkins: Leadership theory is easy; leading actual people while you’re managing up, putting out fires, thinking strategically, and still trying to hit the number, is something else entirely. Hi, I’m Elisa Hawkins, and welcome to The Real Work of Leadership. We’re getting into the conversations, decisions, organizational dynamics, and real-life pressure that come with leading a team and being responsible for the results.
Hi, welcome to The Real Work of Leadership, I am so excited for today’s guest. This is going to be a true love-fest about cross-collaboration with marketing. Between marketing and sales, specifically product marketing. My guest today is Matt Collins, and we’re gonna really dive into how he and I were able to achieve such a great partnership when we worked together as leaders in marketing and sales. So, I hope you enjoy and here we go, off with the show!
So we’ve all heard the phrase “Sales and marketing needs to work together.” But what does that actually look like? And why do so many organizations struggle to make that happen? Because let’s face it, marketing blames sales. Sales blames marketing, and then leadership wonders “Hey, where the heck is the revenue?”, right? Why is it not growing? Today I’m sitting down with a former and amazing colleague and marketing leader, Matt Collins, to pull back the curtain on what real cross collaboration actually looks like. Because let’s be honest, everyone talks about cross collaboration, but few know how to really get it well. It’s not really a conversation about getting everyone to agree, but about learning how great leaders can disagree well, align on business goals, and move the company forward. So, Matt, thank you so much for joining me today, tell the audience a little bit about yourself.
Matt Collins: Well, Elisa, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. It’s a real pleasure to see you again, and to be able to talk about something that you and I chatted a lot about in the trenches for quite some time. So, I am the Vice President of Product Marketing for Mountain, it goes by the acronym MNTN, and to the extent that folks might know us in the mainstream it’s because the actor Ryan Reynolds is our Chief Creative Officer so I like to say that Deadpool is on the, in the C Suite.
Elisa Hawkins: That’s right!
Matt Collins: And for those who may not know what we do, MNTN, is a self-serve connected TV advertising platform built for performance marketers. So if you’re a brand that’s trying to drive more sales, more subscribers, more website visits, whatever the objective is. MNTN is a resource that can help achieve that through connected tv.
I have had, I think, in some ways, an unusual journey to this role. And other ways, very common, from what I’ve observed. Maybe starting with the common part. I’ve been in technology marketing my entire career. I actually started off doing six or seven years in the video game industry. Managing a portfolio of titles for PlayStation, XBOX, and Nintendo and PC’s. And what that really taught me, back in the day, was the importance of endowing marketing with emotion. Of course, that’s a very emotional space, it’s a very playful space, and so you have to hit on that. But I found that to be a very powerful lever in how I think about and execute the marketing even in the world of B2B, which I did pivot to. I’ve held jobs at Nokia and Microsoft, and for the last eleven years in venture backed, mostly venture backed, ad-tech startups that have now matured into larger companies. And what I’m so excited about, to talk to you here about, is this partnership, this collaboration between sales and marketing. Because to be honest, it’s one of the things that has been most challenging for me, but also the most rewarding. I love that product marketing, oftentimes, finds itself sitting at the center, and leading from the center through engineering, product, customer success, the rest of a broader marketing organization, and of course, sales. And so I’m really excited to dig into this and, share perspectives and kinda hear what you took away from our partnership, but also maybe hopefully impart some useful nuggets for the audience.
Elisa Hawkins: I love that. Thank you so much. And so the audience knows, Matt and I actually worked together and collaborated together at MNTN. I had a phenomenal career at MNTN, for many years. And Matt and I were able to really bring that collaboration of sales and marketing. Where I, as a sales leader, had struggled with that a little bit, and Matt came to town, Matt came to MNTN and things really, really took a turn but it took a turn in the best way. From us having thoughtful conversations surrounding what each of our teams needed from one another to move our goals forward.
So Matt, let me ask you this question because you’ve been with many companies, I’ve been with many companies. And we, I always see the struggle between sales and marketing. Why do you think there’s tension there, or there seems to be tension between sales and marketing?
Matt Collins: I trace the tension back to time-to-impact. That revenue teams have a number to hit. And that number to hit is set to the month, maybe to the quarter, but they have monthly numbers on their backs. And they have to hit it. And that requires resourcefulness, and agility, and speed, and precision. That ultimately, culminates in, you know, better win rates, and time to close and more revenue. Marketing operates on a different time scale, oftentimes. Marketing is there, typically, to do everything from driving leads into the engine that sales and revenue teams ultimately will harvest but, also they are thinking about how do we grow this brand? How do we stand for something durablely so that in 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, when sellers are going to market they’ll hopefully have an easier time, because the market understands and knows what the brand stands for. As some people have said, militaristically, this sort of softening up the targets or softening up the beaches so that when sellers land, they have easier conversations. But that time-to-impact, and I think, that the difference in the impact, and how we achieve impact, can be at the root of a lot of the tension that sales and marketing teams experience.
Elisa Hawkins: Yeah, I completely agree with that. Because sales is, we are on a , I mean, obviously, we had monthly numbers to hit, we had quarterly numbers to hit, you have a yearly target on you. And so I think that that’s very true. Because whether we’re talking about lead generation, demand gen, or whether we’re talking about product marketing and the slides used for the deck, or like the script that needs to be evaluated or used. And that’s something that you and I worked specifically on those two things. We worked very deeply together on, and I worked with your marketing partners on lead, lead gen. But that is something that, I think that because we’re in silos and we don't stop to understand each other like sales is not stopping to understand, like, “Hey, marketing has to be really cognizant and careful about how we go to market with our product.” With any type of new launches, or any type of, you know, new additional things that we talk about. Or when we’re changing up how we speak to our prospects, right? They, sales is just like, “We need to do it now.” Because they’re in constant, constant run mode. Not stopping to understand that marketing, hey, needs time to build it out so that everything fits with everything that the marketing engine that's driving for the organization. And I think that one of the things that you and I did very well, is really stopping to ask questions and understand from each other, like, and get out of our silos. Really, you know, ask questions to understand and be curious about each other's roles and, you know, “Hey Elisa, what are you so hellbent on this?” And “Matt, why is it taking so long to get this deck approved?” Right? So I think that that was something that you and I did, were able to do very well and something that more organizations can do more of.
Matt Collins: Yes absolutely. Both in the general sense and in the specific sense. I always did feel seen and our marketing colleagues did feel seen when you were in that seat. And it showed up in your appreciation, which you expressed generously. When something had gone well, and you could share some portion of the credit with marketing, you did. And it meant a lot. It, it not only made people feel better about the work, and showing up the very next day but it also prompted conversations about, well, what did happen and what exactly were the details behind whatever the win was.
We, in marketing, also spent a lot of time, for example, thinking about the target customer, the ideal customer profile, their qualities or attributes both the things that we can measure demographically and the things that we can maybe sense demographically. And the insights that we get from the field are so valuable.
Elisa Hawkins: So Valuable.
Matt Collins: And so, Oh my gosh, and they may not pass the quantitative validity test when we’re hearing from a seller or listening to a gong call, as they're expressing, you know, or going through a particular exchange with a prospect that becomes a customer. But even one call can be illuminating –
Elisa Hawkins: Mm Hmm.
Matt Collins: – directionally. And marketing treats that information as gold, relationships with our colleagues in the revenue team and we can sit down and say “Hey, what happened in that call? What was the pivot point that turned skepticism into buy-in?” That can be so valuable in refining the way the rest of the marketing engine works.
Elisa Hawkins: Yeah. Absolutely, and I have to give a special shout out to Alexa too, because Alexa was also a phenomenal partner when I was at MNTN, and one of the things you, you pulled on a thread, I’m gonna pull on it a little bit, especially when we're talking about ICP’s, right? Because one of the things that we collaborated a lot on, was, and Alexa and you were really, really integral on was building out the, basically, knowledge base for specific types of buyers in specific types of industry. Whether it be beauty, or whether it be health and wellness, and really understanding not just the industry but those particular ICP’s, those buyers who we were speaking to, what was important to them. What challenges were they facing? And that allowed us to really train the sales team so they could, as you know, as near and dear to my heart, speaking to the, our potential clients or our prospects in their language. Like, we are here to solve a problem, we have a great product, but this is the solution, we are here to solve your problem. And so how can we speak to them on that? And so that was really integral, and that came out of us having those really strategic conversations, about like “Hey, I’m noticing this on the sales team and the conversation, y’all were noticing certain things, in the conversations y’all were listening to. How can we come together and make this better? How can we have better conversations with our customers, and with our potential customers?” And I think that that’s huge, and marketing and sales can be such a partner to each other by doing such great knowledge share, and really coming together to work on that. Not just pointing fingers at each other, but really, because I view, and this is something that I said throughout my career, I believe marketing sales are integral to one another, they are so aligned and so intertwined, that they should not feel siloed or separate. They should be working as one together. So for you, can two departments be aligned, as we were, but still disagree? Because I remember a couple of conversations that we had, where we were not necessarily, we didn’t agree on maybe a couple of different things. Whether it was the pitch deck or something of that nature? But we were able to align. How does that work, what does that look like to be aligned, but still be able to disagree with one another?
Matt Collins: Well, I would start with every successful marriage, illuminates this dynamic.
Elisa Hawkins: Right.
Matt Collins: Do you know any couples that don't have an occasional fight? Don’t disagree from time to time about something, but then also find how to reconcile and keep moving forward? I mean, that’s like, it’s some of the same dynamics, honestly. I remember having a conversation with an HR leader of mine, way, way back. I had just become a people manager for the first time and I was passing her in the hallways and she could see that I was looking anxious, and I had also become a dad relatively recently, back in those days, and she said “Hey, whats going on? You look a little worried.” I said “I, you know, I don’t know, I’m realizing that becoming a manager is a very different thing than being an IC, an individual contributor, the things that made me successful as an individual probably not going to work so well as a manager necessarily." She said “Let me ask you a question. D’you think you’re a good parent?” I said “It’s a little early but yeah, I think I am a pretty good parent.” She said “Then you’re going to be a fine manager.” A lot of the same muscles are there, and that's true about our most prized relationships, best friends, our spouses, partners, parents, siblings, you name it. We disagree all the time. And if you didn’t, it’d be weird and probably not healthy. I draw upon lessons that I learned from Arthur Brooks, who is a professor at Harvard university he studies happiness. But has also studied how people disagree but still remain respectful of one another. And what he commonly refers to in this dynamic is, having a common view of the what, but a different how. And so if we apply that in the realm of sales, you and I might be looking at a dip in win rate. Or maybe an elongation of time to close. And we might go to our separate corners, study that and then you and I might meet and say, and I might say “Hey Elisa, what do you think’s going on here?” And you might say “Well, you know, I think as I observe it, folks, our sellers are stumbling over these two slides. Or they’re in the demo, and they can’t get past this one thing.” And I might go “Huh, it really seems like the seller, like, botched the talk track. And couldn’t, like, dig themselves out of a hole they had prepared. ” And we might then, therefore, disagree. We can both can see that there is a problem, we have a shared view of the what. It’s the how that we disagree on, and thats the part where trust, respect, and being generous, as you always were with the marketing team, and sharing your kudos. Makes us know that hey, we may disagree but we’re also friends here and we’re trying to accomplish the same sorts of things. So the answer to your question in a very longish way is of course we can stay collaborative and aligned, even if we may disagree from time to time.
Elisa Hawkins: Yeah, absolutely. You just jogged my memory, ‘cause I remember this happening ‘cause it was a new way of us speaking about a specific product, a specific way that we talked about something. And it was very new to the sales team, it was very different. And they were, they were struggling mightily. And after you and I had that conversation, that led to us getting the sales team more training on that said talk track, and helping them to understand a new way to talk about it. But had you and I not had that conversation and be able, ‘cause your like, “Elisa, they gotta talk about it in this way” and I’m like, “They’re struggling, I don’t know.” Like, it was a point of conflict because it wasn’t just you and I noticing that, it was our executive leadership noticing it as well. And not being excited. As a mild word to put it, but not being excited about the way it was being talked about. But, that led to the sales team getting more training and then it also, if I remember correctly, led to a more simplified way for it to be explained not only on the particular slide but in the script we’re asking the team to deliver. And so that’s a great example on how we can come together and, hey, I’m still gonna have the view that “It was complicated, that it was difficult for the sales team.” And you're like, “That's great but we've gotta talk about it this way, Elisa.” You know, but as a lining on that to really empower the sales team and get the sales team to where they need to be. So we could talk about it appropriately. Because we were confusing our customers, is what was happening essentially.
Matt Collins: Yeah and it so often is the case, when there is a problem, it’s not just one thing. It's our brains. Our Human brains are oftentimes looking for the one thing. What’s the one thing that’s causing, you know, this pain in my knee, or what’s the one thing that's causing the plants in the garden not to grow. And very rarely is it just one thing. And so if we can take a step back, and look at these things dispassionately so that, I as a marketer, don't come to a conversation with my revenue leadership colleagues already with my defenses up. And saying “Whatever it is I’m going to hear it can’t be anything about marketing.” I need to train myself and prepare myself to go into those conversations, to say “But it might be.” And that the road to improvement, very often, will touch both how a seller shows up in the room, but then also what they bring to the room. And that's oftentimes marketing's job and we have to be willing to take that feedback. And let the data, and let the input lead us where it may.
Elisa Hawkins: And I think that’s so true, also from the sales side of the house. Because I could come to calls being very passionate about, because I’m getting, you know, at the time I was leading, what, a team of almost, almost thirty. So I had three teams, I had thirty people and, like I was getting it from all ends. I was getting it from my sellers like “Oh my god, I’m struggling with this we need to go back” and like “ No we can’t go back. We’re moving forward because how businesses grow is they are, they’re evolving and changing, and this is how we’re evolving. And it’s a great way to evolve. We’ve gotta just understand.” And so I, you know, but as a sales leader I have to not internalize all of the feedback that I’m getting from the sales team and they’re ticked off, you know, about, like hey, because lets face it, sellers don’t wanna change. They get into their own mode of talking about something. And they don’t want to change, because likely, they’ve been successful. Because there were a lot of really top sales professionals on the team and they don’t want to change ‘cause, why fix if it ain’t, if it’s broken, right? I've been successful. But you have to change, because as engineering evolves, as the product evolves as things evolve within the business we have to change how we speak about something. So you can’t complain about that and complain about the marketing team. You have to really take it, and sit back and analyze, and really listen to calls, and before you get on with another leader. Whatever leader of whatever team your speaking with, whatever team you're collaborating with, specifically in this case marketing, really understand “Oh yeah, sellers are really not understanding. Ok this is the problem and we have to fix it.” I think it goes both ways in that aspect. So I truly appreciate you saying that, and then from my aspect it, in that, as a sales leader you have to look at it as well, as really asking questions, and understanding what to really internalize and what not to.
Matt Collins: And you’re reminding me why I liked working with you so much.
Elisa Hawkins: I loved working with you too. It’s a mutual admiration society here folks. So when you came on, I was already on the team at MNTN. And when you joined and we started working together what was the biggest thing that you felt helped us to build trust?
Matt Collins: Yeah. I’ll go back to the personal stuff. By the way what I’m about to say is, for me, relatively new thinking that has emerged in the era of remote work. If we think about shared spaces, and going into an office. And Elisa, you might have had, in this hypothetical world, you might have had an office down the hall from me. Or a workstation down the hall from me. And if I wanted to talk to you about something, I’d push away the chair from my desk, I’d maybe grab a coffee mug, I’d walk down to you and I’d say “Hey Elisa, how’s your weekend?” You know? Or “I understand you're launching a podcast, can you tell me how that’s going?” You know, like, we would have had a conversation and we would’ve maybe walked over to the cantina, and we would’ve grabbed a soda or something and then eventually, we’d get into why it is that I felt I had to come over and talk to you. But in the remote world, we are oftentimes reduced to avatars of one another. Where we’re just shoulders up, that’s all that we see. We’re deprived of the whole human body language experience. And our meetings are highly regimented throughout the day. We are deprived of the serendipity that oftentimes comes from colliding on the way to the kitchen. So that dynamic of moving to a virtual environment as the, as the predominant way we interact, can deprive us of the human parts of, and the social parts of work. And so for me, the building of trust in the first place has to begin with seeing the person. I can’t ask anyone to follow me, at work, if I don’t know a little bit of something about what motivates them, what do they look forward to when they shut the laptops in the evening? What are they excited to do with their families, with hobbies? Where in the world are they wanting to travel? Are they foodies, do they love streaming and movies? Whatever the thing is, getting to know that and understand it. And then to see people for those things, as a part of the whole person, and not approaching work relationships purely as a transactional exercise. To me, is the essential bit to understanding, and how to build trust. If I don’t do that, if I don’t take that effort with you. And then I come to you, and I have a problem, like, “Hey, sellers are stumbling. I think maybe it's a training problem.” Or “I think, maybe you know, sellers are sticking to old talk tracks and old slides instead of adapting to the new ways that we've agreed, Elisa, how do we fix this?” If I haven't taken the moment to figure out a little bit about you and understand you, you might look at me, coming in hot like that, and go “I don’t know where he’s coming from. I'm not so sure that I want to, you know, I'm not so sure I'm ready to sit down and go figure this stuff out.” So to me, it starts again with this very basic human nature, and this need to be seen. And if we can do that, then it makes the hard stuff at work a lot easier.
Elisa Hawkins: That’s so true, Matt. And with, it's a human element, and really understanding because, I think oftentimes people can get into their, like, corners and, like, fight, fight, fight and had we not built the trust and, what I remember about our beginning of our relationship was, that you were very curious. Not only about me, but about our team. And you were very curious about, what can we do better? Like, what, how can we improve? And then one of the things that you and I decided to do was have a weekly call and that helped us to build that rapport, help us to build that partnership and collaboration and to trust one another. And this is what I advise companies to do ‘cause it all starts from the top, right? And if your leaders aren't speaking, then that, that is going to bleed down to the rest of the organization, right? So it really, to understand, and it's and it's can be difficult to do because, hey let's face it. You're so right Matt, we're running from Zoom call to zoom call, to zoom call, to zoom call, right? And so, sometimes it can be back-to-back and you're barely walking away, going to your own kitchen to get a glass of water, much less like if you were in an office, right? And so, I feel like being open to building that relationship, whether it be a weekly or bi-weekly call, and really asking questions of each other about “Hey, what can we do well? What are we not doing well?” Because, you know, you were able to tell me, and I remember having to go to the team and say “Hey”, like, and really put some heavy duty parameters around some things because, after many conversations some things were still not being said correctly. Even though we train them. And so we really had to take each team, personally, and talk to you about it. I had to get with the leaders and say “Hey we cannot move forward this way.” And there's difficult conversations and candid conversations, but we had to do it to move the business forward. And it, had it not been for the collaboration between you and I, I could have gone into my corner and said, and said “Marketing’s saying this, and Matt’s saying this and he's just wrong.” And no. I, I know by listening to the calls by listening to the certain things that, that you were actually correct and that this was not the way it needed to go. So. But had we not built that long-standing relationship of having conversations on a weekly, or bi-weekly, basis and asking questions and being curious of each other as humans, as well as what we needed, I don't think that it could have worked either.
Matt Collins: You're right. It's counterintuitive though, if I say I've got 30 minutes with you and they're actively, or passively, you and I take the first 10 minutes to swap stories of our weekends. Now our meeting is only 20 minutes long. And now we might be feeling a little bit of pressure like how are we going to get 30 minutes of agenda into 20 minutes. But if we start those meetings with these 10 minutes of catching up on the important stuff, or the casual stuff, or the weekend stuff, it might make it possible so that when you're reading me in a meeting some point down the line, you might be able to detect a little bit of worry, a little bit of anxiety, or you might be able to sus out of me something that I'm thinking about that maybe I would struggle to articulate to someone with whom I didn't feel so comfortable being vulnerable, and vice versa. And so, you know, that investment of that time and I get it 10 minutes out of 30 minutes, that’s 30% of your time, 33% of your time gone shooting the breezes, or what might feel like that. But you're building up a rapport that can help make the agenda part of your conversation, not only in that meeting, but the meetings down the line, a lot easier to access.
Elisa Hawkins: And sometimes it may not take 10 minutes, sometimes it may take five. You know? You and I, you know, would get on a call, but because we had built, and, built this for so long we would get on a call it’s like, “Hey, love you mean it, but we got it we got a problem, you know, Houston.” Or “Hey, love you mean it, I need to tell you about this wonderful win that we just had.” Because of, you know, but really getting to that human element, as well as understanding each person's, you know, responsibilities ‘cause we both have responsibilities to our senior leadership, and responsibilities to the organization. As well as responsibilities to our teams. And so I, so I love that we were able to do that. Let me ask you this question, the impact of not having that collaboration and the silos, how have you seen that in your career when there is not that collaboration between sales and marketing affect revenue? ‘Cause I might, I have, I have my own answer to that but I'd love to hear from your perspective how you've seen that affect revenue in an org.
Matt Collins: It’s a great question. The revenue impact is something that, I think of, is a lagging indicator. The leading indicators for me are isolation. Defensiveness. That comes with, sort of, feeling like we're lone wolves in an exercise that should be a team sport. And distance. Sometimes passive aggressiveness that can form in those kinds of environments. So we think about when people don't have that rapport and don't have the trust, and maybe are actively in a mode of distrusting. It makes it really difficult to break down problems without feeling like “I got to make sure that the other person takes more of the blame than me.” That is not constructive. That may be a lot of things, but that's not going to be a problem solver. So the leading indicators to me are probably more human and emotional, but certainly on the lagging side.
I remember working once with a seller who, a sales leader who was extraordinarily gifted. One of the best that I'd ever seen. But he had a very unique style that, he could adapt to almost any environment, and he was intellectually pliable enough so that, getting back to something you said earlier in our conversation, he could meet the marketer wherever the marketer was. It was brilliant, what he could do. But he always struggled, at least while I worked with this person, he always struggled to be able to scale that ability to anybody else. And it showed up in the form of “I'll take care of it, I'll fix it.” You know? “I've got this.” Like you know, what he was saying, what he was really saying is like “Hey marketing, thanks but no thanks, I've got it” and there's no question that when we sort of, taking that approach of denying help, pushing that aside, going into override other Revenue leaders who were struggling. And, and sort of like “I'll take care of it I will fix it” rather than “I will train you”. The old adage “Teach a man to fish rather than, give him a fish” and all of those sorts of things. Then ultimately put a cap on scaling the organization because we have a single point of failure on the revenue team who was, with all the right impulses by the way, was trying to fix a bunch of problems on, on his own. And, I also, I will admit I have been in my, in my time, I've been put in the corner. Where I've come across a hard charging salesperson who, a type A, a fighter pilot, right? We all know these people, like they'll break down, they'll go run through brick walls to go get a deal. And they've come in after one of those conversations, come in hot on me. And my first reaction is to say “Well, how dare you.” Rather than to say “Well, wait a minute let's think about what this person's day is like?” You know? They're going into the hardest conversations, they're winning probably more than the average person is. Maybe cut him some grace here. And rather than take it personally when they come in rough and, and ready. And so these are all things that I've seen sort of play out. And that can ultimately put a wet blanket on the collaboration that we need. And for sure, when I think about that last example it made me not want to show up with my best marketing help for that person, because I felt offended in some way. Like I was fragile in those conversations. And the benefit of hindsight, I recognize that now. And I like to think that I'm not quite as vulnerable to it, but these are all things that have crept in, and can impair the revenue results, on both the sale side, but also on marketing teams that are not doing what they need to do to push through.
Elisa Hawkins: You know, it’s so true. For that seller, he should not have come in hot. But he's operating in his, like, “I've got a I've got to win business. I've got to close revenue, I've got to hit goal, I've got to do this, this and this.” Or I have to, you know, “I have to talk about it in this way. Or this is not working for me”. And then I want to go back to the leader who was like the lone wolf, who wants to solve all the problems. I coach to this so much with leadership, and I talk about this in my advisory work. It’s that top sellers, top sales professionals that make the move into leadership often get into that, that trap because they, that the same talents that got them to being a top sales professional are not going to be the same talents that are going to make them great leaders. It doesn't mean that they're not trying, it's just that they're approaching it in the same way. And whereas they need to change their approach, and look at it differently. And also, I think this leads to leader burnout when you're trying to fix everything and you don't have to. You can ask for help from your partners, right? From your partners in marketing, if it has to do with you know, something within the marketing wheelhouse, if it has to do with operations or product. Like asking for help, asking for guidance, whatever that looks like. I want people to come away with this, this is the real work of leadership and one of the reasons I, I think this conversation is so important is because cross collaboration alignment is not just, it's not just about the teams coming together, but it's also about helping one another when we need it. Because, you know Matt, I've always said two sets of eyes, two sets of ears, two brains, or multiple of all is better than one. Because we're approaching it from different perspectives, and we may see things that others don't. And I think that that's so important to really think about, in organizational alignment, writ large, that really needs, that every organization should strive for sure.
Matt Collins: Oh, you’re exactly right. On the marketing side as well. There have been many instances in my career where we have shown up with what we think is a well researched, well conceived, well-designed slide deck, or piece of collateral, or slide deck/talk track/demo, and we run it, and it doesn't work. Or it doesn't work as well as we thought. And it's easy for myself, speaking for myself as a marketer, to think back about “how long did that take?”All the hours that we spent, and not just that I spent, that we asked designers to spend on it. And, and enablement people to train on it. And when it doesn't work it can be easy to get defensive, and to think about all of that time and effort as something you can somehow save, instead of seeing it for what it is. It’s a sunk cost. It's gone, you can't get it back. And the only thing that would be worse than going at it and, you know, figuring out “Okay, how do we evolve, how do we change it.” Recognizing we put in all this effort, would be to do nothing, and to be defensive, and to hold on to this, the fallacy of we worked so hard on it, it doesn’t matter. It's not working, if it’s not working, it doesn't matter.
Elisa Hawkins: It doesn’t work. And I think one of the things that we, that I really love that we did was we started running pilots. When there would be new decks or new talk tracks cuz that saves so much time, Matt. And by running pilots, that we could listen to, but executive leadership could listen to, and like, say “Hey yeah, this really isn't working.” But we chose appropriately. We chose the top sales professionals that really were at, were adaptable to change, could really speak well, the customers that were the top of their game. We, and we chose a couple of different ones so we can see different approaches to it, because each seller is different in how they speak, and how they engage with customers. And that was able to really give guidance to marketing and to leadership on what was working and what wasn't. And I know that saved us a lot of time, and a lot of headache by rolling this thing out and “Hey, it's not working”.
Matt Collins: Oh, you’re right. I mean, any company that has any kind of engineering culture at all, will recognize this is beta culture.
Elisa Hawkins: Yes absolutely.
Matt Collins: You know, it's the same thing, it's just applied to a revenue environment. Like, rather than roll out a feature, an all new feature, to everybody all at once most organizations say, “Well let's just make sure it works right, so let's roll it out to a few.” It's the same thing.
Elisa Hawkins: It's the same thing. Love that. And speaking of, as leadership. So, like, I really want to talk about, because like, there are times where neither you or I had any say in what had to happen, right? And so sometimes we just have to, like, our leadership, our executive teams decide things, and like “Hey this is the path we're going.” And whether we agree with, whether Matt and Elisa agree with it or not, it's not up to us, we're not paid the big bucks and we don't, we don't lead the company, right? We lead our teams. But sometimes we have to come together and say, “You know what, this is the direction.” And, you know, leadership and this is where we're going, and how do market, the marketing team and sales teams come together and, and, effectively manage that change. Or. And really, like, move our, both of our teams toward something that may be really uncomfortable, because it's change. It may be a big change. It may be a big evolution in the business, but we have to move the business forward. How can we come together and say “Hey, listen. It is what it is. Let's align and let's get all together on that.” How can, how can teams best do that when, you know, hey, it's not up to, it's not up to the marketing and sales team. This is coming from, you know, the C suite, or the board, or this is what we have to do, and this is the way we have to go?
Matt Collins: I think the first step in any of this, in any change management, is giving space for people to be uncomfortable with the change. It's so hard for any of us to, immediately when confronted with the need for change, to just immediately, just go leap into it. We might feel anxious about it. We might have doubts about it. We may want to do, what so happens, happens so often in so many other companies, which is relitigate it. “Well I think that's the wrong decision, who do I talk to?” No. The decision is made. So create space for it. And what leaders can do here is simply acknowledge “Yeah, sorry this is hard, and if you feel anxious about it, you know what, I do too.” And it's okay. But what we all need to do is give ourselves a finite amount of time to reckon with that discomfort. But then comes the second step which is as leaders, we can't say “Yeah, you know what, it’s coming from the boss, I'm sorry there's nothing we can do.” because now you're subtly, in a passive way, undermining the decision that's come down. You’re saying “Well, it's not really my call. That's the person above me on the org chart, they're the ones who’s really doing this, so if it goes wrong don't look at me.” It's, no. So we have to say “Hey, look, the decision’s made, we're not going to re-litigate it, we're going to find a way to make it work. And, and so, let's get those ideas on the table.” And so, to me, those are the two things that we all have to do as leaders; is acknowledge that change is hard, give people a space, a finite amount of space to recognize that discomfort and settle into it. And then we need to make it very clear, that the time for debating is over, and that we all now own it. And so, how do we then shift to activation. To now acting on this thing, and where there are, there's no one who might have an idea on that, who's off limits to contributing to the conversation.
Elisa Hawkins: Yeah, it’s so true. And I give space to the teams. And I advise the executive leadership of companies I advise with, you have to give space. But give that a timeline, right? And then, I also say, too, one of the things is, is that if someone's coming to me, you, what's the problem? Tell me what the problem is, why it's a problem, and what's your proposed solution? I'm not saying that we're going to, that that's on the table, but what do you see as a way? ‘Cause this is the direction. What do you see is something that could help navigate this. And also being transparent is, like, “Hey, this isn't changing, but how can we help to navigate this and make this a better experience whether it be for the customer, for the team. Whatever that looks like, where you're seeing the issue.” Because really when I had those conversations with, with people once they started drilling down, there wasn't a problem. It was that change piece where they had gotten so comfortable and talking about something a specific way, or in what we were doing like that, and that goes for most companies I've ever worked for. I've always had that issue and the companies that I advise, I see that 100% of the time when there's change happening, right? So I think that that's super important. What you said to give the space, but then also say “Okay now how do we navigate this and move this forward, in this direction to, that really will benefit our teams?” and I think that's the most important piece of it. So Matt, I have a lightning round for us.
Matt Collins: All right, here we go.
Elisa Hawkins: So, ‘cause we're ending, we're ending our time together. So I feel like you and I can really talk about this for like, hours upon hours –
Matt Collins: Same Here.
Elisa Hawkins: –honestly. What do you think that sales’ biggest misconception is about marketing?
Matt Collins: Oh, that marketing designs pretty logos, that we are constantly obsessing over colors and font types.
Elisa Hawkins: That’s so true. And y'all, that is not what marketing does. Their marketing does a whole lot. So that is, absolutely not. What do you think marketing's biggest misconception is about sales?
Matt Collins: That sellers will do absolutely anything. That all, all revenue, and all dollars are green. And so, we think that no matter what it is, it doesn't really matter what we put in front of them, and say who the ICP is, and how to sell it, they're going to just do whatever it is that they're going to do, and not be answerable to it.
Elisa Hawkins: Yeah. And you know what? Sometimes that's true, but it's up to the leaders to manage that, right? And that is just something a leader has to do, right? Has to have candid conversations, which is going to be a whole, another podcast. But have candid conversations with the team about, about these things. But yes, that is a common misconception about sales. What do you think is one metric that every team should care about in an organization?
Matt Collins: Win rate. To me it’s, it’s the most important thing. Are we winning, are we winning? And then, you know, you can ask questions later about, well, who are we winning, and the deal size is the right one? But I think the first order of business is, are we, are we closing and are we, are we heading our expectations for closing.
Elisa Hawkins: It’s so true. And win rate says so much about everything. Because if you're running a 100 demos a week, but you're only winning 30% of them? Something's wrong. Because people are not. What I used to tell my sales team all the time, people aren't on the phone with us because they have 30 minutes in their day to just get on and talk with us. That is not, they're on a call for a very specific reason. ‘Cause I guarantee you, I'm not taking a call unless there's something I need to get out of this conversation, right? So I completely agree with that.
Finish this sentence: Collaboration starts when?
Matt Collins: We trust.
Elisa Hawkins: 100, that was what I was going to say, Matt. It is when you, when you trust, and, and trust isn't built in 5 minutes either. Trust is built by really coming to conversations, being curious, and being open to listening, and hearing, and truly internalizing what each other is saying. I definitely agree. Thank you so much, Matt. You are amazing. Do you want to tell the people where they can find you?
Matt Collins: Well, thank you for the opportunity. Yes, I'm happy to do that. People can find me on LinkedIn. I am, I believe my profile, like the, the suffix of my profile, linkedin.com/in/mattcollins1 , so I got in early on LinkedIn. So that's what that tells me. But you can find me on LinkedIn. I also host my own podcast, in a very different realm. I interview my college classmates and we talk about life since graduation. You can find me on Spotify and Apple, the podcast name is ‘After Amherst’.
Elisa Hawkins: I love it so much, and I love your podcast. It’s a great podcast. Go check it out everybody. It's a phenomenal, phenomenal podcast. All right, thank you so much, Matt. Have a great rest of your day.
Matt Collins: Thanks Elisa, great to see you.
Elisa Hawkins: Thanks for listening to the real work of leadership. If this episode resonated because you’re navigating the real challenges of leading, you know, building trust, managing up, making difficult decisions, and delivering results then our leadership accelerator was built for you. Applications are now open for the fall 2026 accelerator. Visit herrevenue.com to learn more and apply. And if you're enjoying the show, I'd be grateful if you would rate and review it at ratethispodcast.com/realwork. See you next time!
