BC Startup Sales Podcast – Aligning Sales and Marketing with PJ Bouten (Showpad)

This week we welcomed PJ Bouten, the co-founder and CEO at Showpad, onto the show to discuss the importance of Aligning Sales and Marketing teams. Showpad is a mobile sales acceleration platform that increases the productivity of sales while providing marketing with relevant data on sales interactions. Showpad turns every device – tablet, smartphone and PC – into a powerful sales and presentation tool. The service makes it possible to provide sales reps, partners and customers with the right information in any format and gives insights and analytics on how a customer responds to the information shared. Showpad is the second company PJ has founded. In 2010 he co-founded the mobile development agency, In The Pocket and still serves on its board. Prior to In The Pocket, PJ held senior roles at Netlog and Accenture and holds masters degrees in both Communication Sciences and International Business.

We begin the discussion by covering exactly why aligning sales and marketing is essential to business performance. We then move the conversation into how a B2B business can go about aligning sales and marketing, what systems are needed, checks in place, and meetings should be scheduled to ensure and encourage sales and marketing work together. PJ shares exactly how Showpad’s sales and marketing teams are aligned, the Service Level Agreement (SLA) they have in place, what’s included in the SLA, and how Showpad initially wrote up the SLA. PJ and I discuss the important of compensation when it comes to sales and marketing alignment and he shares how Showpad compensates their teams to encourage teamwork across the entire company. We also dig in on the typical friction that existing between sales and marketing and how to break this down for the benefit of the organization. This episode touches on nearly all aspects of aligning sales and marketing and is worth a listen if you are interested in understanding how your B2B business could be better aligned too.

If you liked “Aligning Sales and Marketing” and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the podcast to get all our new content each week!