How can sales & marketing work better together in 2025? (Part 1)

Summary: In this episode of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer and her friends Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing and Partnerships at Mercury, and Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon, explore the complexities of aligning sales and marketing teams. The discussion highlights the rising pressure on marketing to show ROI, the shift from MQLs to pipeline-focused metrics, and the increasing blur between sales and marketing roles due to AI and automation. Special guest Jaleh Rezaei, CEO and co-founder of Mutiny, shares insights from her recent report on sales and marketing alignment, emphasizing the importance of data integration, feedback loops, and treating marketing initiatives as products. The episode also features a debate on whether moving SDRs under marketing is beneficial.

Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 5 is sponsored by Framer and Brand24.

About our hosts

Emily Kramer is the creator of MKT1 Newsletter, a marketing advisor, and an investor. She previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly. She’s helped hundreds of startups with B2B marketing, has over 50,000 subscribers on Substack, and has reached millions through her content. Kramer’s known for her pragmatic advice, first principles approach to marketing, and her “krameworks”. When not marketing “marketing”, you can find her with her dogs in Oakland, CA or eating ice cream on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.

Devon Watts is a long-time startup marketer currently leading Product and Partner Marketing at Mercury. Previously, she ran marketing for the high-growth fintech Anrok, and spent time building her PMM, content, and brand expertise at companies like Yammer, Asana, and Carta. Devon has led B2B marketing teams with anywhere from 1 to 25+ people, and has experience in PLG and sales-led motions. In addition to marketing, Devon loves her kids, being on/in/near the water, her dog Dolores, and eating cheese.

Grace Erickson is a true marketing generalist with 10 years of experience in B2B startups, spanning functions like growth, brand, product marketing, and most things in between. She's currently the VP of Revenue at Cocoon, a Series A employee leave management platform. Prior to Cocoon, Grace led marketing programs at Asana, Carta, and Cleo in various roles, but always with a focus on an integrated customer journey. Besides being a marketing nerd, Grace spends her time coming up with (but not executing) elaborate schemes and browsing Zillow.

This episode features an expert segment with Jaleh Rezaei, CEO and co-founder of Mutiny, which helps B2B companies generate pipeline and revenue from their target accounts through AI-powered 1:1 microsites and account intelligence.

We also hear from Kira Luscher, Head of Marketing & Growth at Valence, the AI-native coach for enterprise, who asks us “How can sales and marketing work better together in 2025?”

Quotes

*”Marketers are so full stack and do so many things and it's often not recognized. So one of the saddest things for me is when organizations treat marketing like a service organization to sales or like a channel feeding sales. 'Cause that just starts this problem. If that's the culture of your company as a marketer, you're gonna have a real hard time driving sales and marketing alignment no matter what happens. So the first thing you need to do is really reflect on if this can shift. If you're leading a marketing team, how do I make it not be seen as a service organization to sales? And that's gonna take a lot of time. The biggest deal breaker for sales and marketing alignment is when marketing is thought of as a channel or a service organization to sales.” - Emily Kramer

*”Now that I've spent so many years in product, it’s like when you ship a product, you spend so much time iterating it. Whereas in marketing and sales, we ship these huge programs that are the interface between two teams that we've never done before. And then nobody optimizes it. There's no feedback loop and feedback was a huge theme for both sales and marketing. They just feel like they don't have avenues to provide feedback to one another.“ - Jaleh Rezaei

*”A buyer can have like 20 interaction with a company's marketing material, and that buyer can be from a major company like Disney or Walmart, and they could have no idea who is the person at that company that's dedicated to them. That's building account plans for them.” - Jaleh Rezaei

*”An area where tech can help is around analytics. We spend a lot of time on target accounts, and attribution-based type of analytics really does not work for sales. If you're trying to build a relationship with sales, they do not give a s**t about the funnel. What I do in these conversations, I'm like, ‘Can you tell me about the last time you had an interaction with a sales leader or a salesperson?’ And every single time the answer is win stories. So talking about specific deals that were closed with credibility, where marketing actually closed the deal.“ - Jaleh Rezaei

Time stamps

[01:17] Meet Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Mercury and Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon

[05:17] Question from Kira Luscher, Head of Marketing & Growth at Valence: “How can sales and marketing work better together in 2025?”

[6:05] Initial Reactions and Hot Takes

[17:13] Expert segment with Jaleh Rezaei, CEO & co-founder of Mutiny

[29:19] Leveraging Early Adopters in Sales

[30:00] Solving Marketing and Sales Alignment Issues with Technology

[30:33] The Importance of Sales and Marketing Alignment Meetings

[32:51] Integrating Seller's Context into Marketing Campaigns

[34:25] Bringing Marketing Context into Sales

[36:23] Challenges in Sales and Marketing Attribution

[41:56] Tips for Sales and Marketing Collaboration

[49:51] Moving SDRs Under Marketing?

Recommended products & agencies

Typeform: Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan

Framer: Use code “MKT1” for 25% off

Brand24: 10% off for 3 months

Caspian Studios

Connect with: 

Emily Kramer

Devon Watts,

Grace Erickson

Jaleh Rezaei

Kira Luscher

Subscribe to MKT1 Newsletter for a companion newsletter for each episode. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newsletter.mkt1.co/subscribe