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This is your go-to podcast for all things marketing, branding, and customer experience. We’re bringing you honest and fun conversations with bite-sized insights. Hosted by BrightSign’s CMO Brian Rowley and Head of Integrated Marketing Laura Smith, you’ll hear from industry pros, creatives, and innovators about what’s actually working in today’s evolving, digital-first world. No fluff — just real insights on how brands are connecting with audiences and driving growth. Tune in for fresh ideas, big thinking, and all the tips you need to take your marketing game to the next level.
If you really think about what drives business success, I think of it in terms of sales velocity. And I'm I'm no genius. I've never invented that term, but I find it really, really useful to describe how the teams can best work together. Pros and Comms.
Laura Smith:Welcome to Prose + Comms: Engagement, Unplugged. I'm Laura Smith.
Brian Rowley:And I'm Brian Rowley.
Laura Smith:And before we get started, we want to start with just a happy New Year to everybody, wishing everyone an awesome 2026. We had a great 2025, so now there's so much lies ahead, for pros and cons and just business in general. So we're gonna kick off this year with a very fun and very engaging topic. As marketing professionals, we've all experienced the oftentimes, quote, unquote, dysfunctional relationship between sales and marketing. Some organ organizations manage to achieve synchronization between the two while others can't break through the silos.
Laura Smith:So today, we'll explore what really drives collaboration between sales and marketing and the steps organizations can take to achieve that harmony.
Brian Rowley:But before we get started into that discussion, we're actually gonna do one of our favorite segments, which is blasts from the past. Woah. That our producer Joey is off to a hot start in 2026. We're hitting it strong. Wake it up.
Brian Rowley:So Laura, on blasts from the past, what was one of your first big interactions with sales early on in your career?
Laura Smith:So I primarily started in my career in agency and consulting work from a marketing perspective. So I didn't really have a lot of sales interaction, but one of my earlier jobs in my career, so I was probably 25, so I was young, was in house where I played a role as leading up some marketing, some B2B and B2C marketing for an organization that was pretty well established in the industry that I was in. And I was young to basically be owning a lot of those responsibilities for marketing, but I partnered with the person that led sales. So he was very experienced in the industry, you know, had been doing it for a long time. I've been doing marketing for four or five years.
Laura Smith:So it was actually a really good partnership. I would say that in that time though, it felt like a little more of the antiquated model of sales and marketing where, you know, sales kind of looked at marketing for true support only. But I would say that because we were such a small team, and then we went we had to go to trade shows together, for example. I had to turn my sales hat on because it was me and him behind the table, and I had to really kind of, like, sell as a marketer, you know, even though that was maybe not what they were needing me or asking me to do, but it was something I had to do in the moment. So I really got an understanding of what all sales really had to do, and trying to obviously use the marketing materials, speak the brand message, but then just really sell.
Laura Smith:And I realized that I really like the marketing side of it, don't like the sales side of it, but it was a good relationship. I would just say it felt like it was by looking back now, it still felt like an antiquated model where I don't know if I was looked at or viewed as the same kind of like responsibility or contribution to the revenue side as maybe him and his team were. Interesting.
Brian Rowley:Yeah.
Laura Smith:That makes sense?
Brian Rowley:Yeah. No, it definitely makes sense. And I think that's actually, and we'll get into that, but I think some of that is actually some of the challenge that a lot of people face. Interesting.
Laura Smith:Yeah. So it was interesting earlier on just being in, coming from agency and going in house and really having that experience. I do feel like I got hands on experience from it in understanding and appreciating the sales, but it was it had a ways to go, I would say. But Brian, have you ever worked in an organization where there has been true harmony and good synergy between the two groups?
Brian Rowley:Well, and I would say I think where we are right now at BrightSign, I think there's actually some really good synergies. I think that, I think both of our sales leaders, Misty and Pierre are actually very embracing of the things that we present to them in terms of like ways to approach different challenges that they may have and understanding some of the work that sales does, because I will tell you, I'll blast back for a second. In my prior role, I can remember I was speaking on a panel for a Bloomberg event in New York. And I can remember one of the other panelists that was there was actually a marketing person, but their head of sales was actually in the audience and incredibly supportive of that individual and, you know, very, you know, everything they said, they were like super excited about the two of them left, you know, walking out, talking, having a good conversation. And at the time, the sales organization that I was in was not like that at all.
Brian Rowley:So it was just, you know, it was very much sales and marketing and the two were very different and they didn't support each other or any of that. And so I looked at that and I was like, God, I wish I had that at some point because that was really powerful for me. Like it made an impression on me. And I don't know if you agree, I'm pretty sure you do, but I think that's kind of what we have today. I think we're very supportive of both of those, you know, functional departments within BrightSign.
Brian Rowley:So, I think this is a good example.
Laura Smith:I 100% agree. I think from what it sounds like, maybe it wasn't always that way at BrightSign, but now, like the relationship is super strong. And I think, you know, they're really good about articulating the value they see we bring. And obviously, we, you know, return that same that same, you know, kind of feedback. Think, honestly, looking at 2026, I can see it only getting better just with a lot of our plans that we're putting in place.
Laura Smith:So totally agree there. Totally agree. But enough with me and Brian. Today, we need to introduce our guest who, when we dive into this critical relationship conversation between sales and marketing, we have a guest on today that is a seasoned expert in breaking down silos to help organizations align these functions and hit their goals. He has a career rooted in b two b marketing.
Laura Smith:He's seen firsthand what harmony looks like and what happens when teams can't get there. He's here to share his experiences and offer practical best practices for building a stronger sales and marketing partnership. Welcome to the show, Gary Schwartz.
Gary Scwartz:Laura, thanks so much for, you know, that kind introduction. And, Brian, it's great to be joining you both and, to share some some good experiences, some lessons learned, and and ways to build, something that I'm really, really passionate about, which is building what's the opposite of dysfunctional? Functional? Go to market organizations.
Brian Rowley:Yeah, well, We're incredibly excited to have you there. And I wanna jump right in and I wanna jump in at a very foundational point and that is to ask you from your perspective. The question of why does sales and marketing tend to have such a dysfunctional relationship and sort of what are some of the most common, I would say misperceptions each of them has about each other. I know it's a twofold question, but I think let's start there because I think that will help us set the framework for the rest of our conversation.
Gary Scwartz:Well, it's great question, Brian. If I were ever to write a book about this, think it would call it Sales is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus And that may get to, you know, the first question. You know, in terms I I think the whole thing is grounded on lack of communications and poor expectation setting between the groups in in an organization. And I think that causes, you know, a lot of the misperceptions. If if I were to say things that I've heard throughout my career, and I'll just say one thing, I'm really fortunate to be in an organization today at NetRise that is probably the most collaborative and the least siloed go to market organization I've ever been a part of.
Gary Scwartz:It's an absolute pleasure. But the kinds of perceptions I've heard marketing people say, you know, salespeople just wants to fed to them, they call them lazy. And, you know, if you've ever been a salesperson working really hard to corral all the people involved in getting a B2B deal going and all the nuances of that, it's an insane insult and it's it simply isn't true. Right? It's a you know, as we say, it's one of those misperceptions.
Gary Scwartz:And then the other one is the salespeople say marketing just don't know what's going on in the real world, which again is it's it's not really valid as long as there's great communication. Early in my career as, you know, as a salesperson, probably about twenty years ago, I had been doing some marketing and took a sales role. And I found at that organization that marketing was was creating from what I call the ivory tower. They they really didn't have a good sense of what was going on for us in the field. And the very next job that I took was a product marketing role where I was embedded with the sales organization and I got a really solid sense that sales is the eyes and ears of the business.
Gary Scwartz:And that started getting me thinking about what that collaboration needs to be and how you break down those misperceptions. Because the misperceptions are they're they're generalizations and then they're very rarely generally true. Right? And to me, the key is that close collaboration, close communication, and respect for what everybody brings to the business.
Laura Smith:Yeah. I think it's it's interesting because I think, you know, like, how like, you're saying it's so great where you are now in NetRise. And why do you think that is? Is it is it truly the communication is just flowing both ways? Do you find it to be that, like, there are certain strategies or certain approaches you're using there that make it more functional?
Laura Smith:Like, I'm just curious because you don't hear that it's, you know, like if Brian and I were saying earlier that, you know, bright sign, it's good. Like, it feels good. But is it perfect? No. I think there's room for opportunity.
Laura Smith:So us a little bit more about, like, what's working within your own organization that you feel others can, you know, benefit from.
Gary Scwartz:So I think a lot of of what we experience, the culture is driven from the top. And it's not just the culture that comes from the one person at the top, the CEO, but the alignment in leadership is is critical because, again, those perceptions find their way down throughout the organization. At Netrise, our co founder and CEO, Thomas Pace, has a very open and transparent way of working and viewing the business. And that transparency leads to others exhibiting the same kind of transparency in their thinking in all of us. And that starts, I think, to begin that really kind of collaboration amongst the teams because we're not competing with each other.
Gary Scwartz:Everybody knows that we are here for one purpose, which is to, you know, make NetRise great, build a fantastic product, build a very strong go to market organization and get that market that product into the market. So, the culture coming from the top is one thing and the alignment amongst myself, Tom, and our CRO, Rick Beatty, it's again, it's it's beyond anything that I've seen before. I've used the word shared brain in other organizations. I think the three of us had shared brain and approach from the first time we we started working together. And a big component of that relates to where I've seen some of that dysfunction really happen in other places, where marketing is thought of oftentimes as just the generator of leads for the sales team to go after.
Gary Scwartz:It makes marketing a service organization as opposed to one that's really contributing to the value of the business. And we've never had that approach here at NetRise. I've actually been told by CEOs in other organizations, marketing is just leads. Or I've heard you just give us the leads and we'll take it from there. But if you really think about what drives business success,
Gary Scwartz:I think of it in terms of sales velocity. And I'm I'm no genius. I've never invented that term, but I find it really really useful to describe how the teams can best work together. Sales velocity, it's a simple math equation. It's the number of opportunities times the average deal size times the conversion rate divided by the time to close.
Gary Scwartz:And if you can increase those numbers on the top on the numerator and decrease the time to close, you're gonna get where you're looking to go much much faster. And I've in one organization, again, I was told you just get us the leads, we'll do all the rest, but there's really rich opportunity for marketing and sales to collaborate after you're in an active selling opportunity? How do we accelerate that opportunity? How do we give work together to give you what you need to close that opportunity faster? And so we don't think about it from a leads point of view.
Gary Scwartz:In fact, I'm not measured on lead generation or MQLs or, or any of those lovely, you know, KPIs, that twenty years ago were the norm. I'm measured on pipeline. I'm measured on how much are we bringing in terms of active deals and everyone on the marketing team is measured on that. So we use a lot of different strategies to build the pipeline and it's really not just around how do we talk to individuals, how do we understand the target organizations, Do we understand our ICP? Do we understand the key personas and the messaging?
Gary Scwartz:In our world, in cybersecurity, there's a variety of people in global enterprises with different points of view on what they're trying to achieve. We need to be really sharp in creating material and working with sales because remember, sales is the eyes and ears of the business. So we meet regularly to discuss messaging. What works? What doesn't work, how do we work together.
Gary Scwartz:Because I'm not in all of those meetings. Our sales team is and that's part of how you build that. I know it's kind of a long winded answer, but I hope that's that helps.
Brian Rowley:No, I think you touched on a couple of really good points. I mean, the shared brain concept is also a shared understanding, I think of what each role entails. Because I think, we talk about it all the time and especially with our marketing team, right? Like, one of our jobs is, you know, to make sure that our sales teams who are out in front of customers and are on the frontline are prepared and can represent quote unquote the brand, right? As well as themselves at that point, they are a piece of the brand in the best light possible so that people instill confidence and trust in them, which ultimately translates to your point, right?
Brian Rowley:Of moving things through the funnel in a more timely fashion, because it's a clear statistic that's out there everywhere, right? People buy from people they trust and that happens a lot faster. So I think understanding and sharing brain, but also understanding and understanding of what each role is about and having respect for that role is important because each of them is critical in the process of driving revenue, which at the end of the day, to your point is what everybody is here to do. And so however we get there, we have to get there together. That's just a successful organization.
Brian Rowley:The silos don't work. So I think it's, yes, to your point, right? Like it's not easy. You can't necessarily articulate that in three words but there's a lot of moving parts to it in order for it to be successful.
Gary Scwartz:Absolutely. It's very much a two plus two equals five, you know, kind of situation.
Brian Rowley:For sure.
Gary Scwartz:Everybody on the team, no matter how senior, no matter how junior brings a unique experience, unique skills, and unique value to the business. And you're right, it's about respecting that everybody's got their part to play. And also respecting that, you know, there may be some times where somebody in a different role may have more experience with a particular framework, for example, for messaging. And if they come in with an idea that, you know, have we tried doing things this way? Doesn't mean they're trying to, you know, step on our toes or impinge on our ability to do things.
Gary Scwartz:It's sometimes everybody has good ideas and part of that collaboration is is about being accepting of things that other people might bring and it may overlap what you think you can bring, but there's always opportunities to learn and improve. So that that's another part about, you know, respecting people. It's, you know, not just what's in their swim lane, but how they can contribute to everybody's swim lanes, you know, when that's appropriate.
Laura Smith:Yeah. I have a question for you that's kinda digging you know, taking this a little further as it relates to, like, tools. Right? So we have CRMs. We have a lot of tools that we're using.
Laura Smith:We have multiple systems in our own that the sales team has access to that marketing has access to. Do you think that helps alignment, or do you think those tools potentially can make it worse by exposing the gaps as to where things maybe aren't working together, between marketing and sales?
Gary Scwartz:Well, my answer to that is that exposing the gaps can create alignment. Does that work?
Laura Smith:Yes. It totally does.
Gary Scwartz:So we're we're going through an exercise in that right now. We're creating a whole bunch of dashboards. We've just finished creating a whole bunch of dashboards that allow us to understand where gaps are and allows us to fill those gaps because the data is gonna tell the story about where we're going to go. So having the the tools, the CRM, you know, the variety of tools in in in the tech stack to to provide that information not only about what's working but about what's missing, that helps us understand how do we get better, how do we create a clearer picture of what our pipeline looks like, what our conversions because at the end of the day, not only is it important for us to just grow revenue full stop, but our board, our investors want us to be predictable, they want us to be repeatable and scalable, and the only way for us to understand how to do that is with a very, very strong foundation in our data. If we don't have good data, we got nothing because then we don't know where we're off and where we need to fix.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. I think the opportunity side to that is very interesting because I do think, you know, it's funny, we say all the time internally, you know, don't deceive ourselves. That is actually being able to acknowledge the gaps that do exist and then figure out how do we fill those gaps and who's responsible and how do the teams work together to make that less of an issue? You know, it's an opportunity, right? It's an opportunity for us to improve.
Brian Rowley:And again, at the end of the day, it gets us all to where we want to be, which is a revenue conversation. You've touched on pipeline a couple of times. And so I think, you know, I know the answer to this, but I'd ask you to speak from, you know, experience because it sounds like you're in a really good spot now, but I think many of us see the pipeline ownership debate, right? That constantly comes about, right? One's responsible for it, the other's responsible for it.
Brian Rowley:And some say that, you know, the debate exists because there's, you know, people are trying to avoid accountability. Is it real? Is pipeline ownership, is that a real, like, is that a real thing? And that debate between who's responsible for it?
Gary Scwartz:Somewhat it's real. And here's, here's where it is. Think, think about, think about what it takes to get a potential buyer engaged in a conversation with you. The there's sort of like the general conventional wisdom says it's 37 touches. What whatever whatever that means.
Gary Scwartz:There's really good data from marketing automation company that that indicates that 70% of the buyer's journey is done before it's completed, before they speak to a vendor, and 84 of the time the first vendor they contact is the one that's going to win the deal, which takes it almost completely out of the vendor's hands if you kind of take that to its extreme. Now let's figure there's 37 touches. So the challenge for us as a vendor is to build awareness amongst our buying audience and then to send information to them at the right time that they happen to be thinking about their solution. We just bought a new, Martech, product last week and the sales rep sent me an email. I actually looked this up because we were talking about this point.
Gary Scwartz:She sent an email to me in, like, the October 10. And I replied to her. I actually said, you know, you actually hit me at the right time. I never reply to these cold outreaches, but I have to be thinking about this. Let's start a conversation.
Gary Scwartz:And she won the deal. Now she had been emailing everybody that she could find in our company and making loads and loads of touches. And I'm sure there were other ways that this company was trying to get a hold of us, But imagine how much work there is to get there at the right time. Right? When the person's thinking about it and this leads, you know, this this reinforces that other wisdom, which is 70% of that journey is done.
Gary Scwartz:Right? I was aware of this business, was probably looking at them, and then she hit me at the right time. So you to go back to your question of who gets responsibility for pipeline, the answer is everybody. Right? Because marketing is making those touches, our SDRs are doing outreach, our account reps are doing their own outreach, we meet people at events.
Gary Scwartz:And then everybody thinks, oh, that last email that they responded to, that was the magic email. We got to do more of that. I mean, that's ridiculous. That last email happened to be the one that got there at the right time. And so everybody in effect is collectively responsible for pipeline.
Gary Scwartz:I am not at NetRise, my team and I are not responsible for marketing sourced pipeline. We we don't look at it that way. In fact, I'll go back to suggest that doing it that way tends to create silos. If marketing was responsible for marketing sourced pipeline and they were bonused on that, well, wouldn't you expect them to only work on the things that get them paid? And there's if marketing's expected to do x percent of pipeline, well, 100 minus x is what everybody else is responsible for.
Gary Scwartz:I want marketing working on everything. You know, not working on everything but being responsible for pipeline for the whole business. We generate messaging. Sales uses our messaging. Who gets credit?
Gary Scwartz:Right? So the credit, in my view, doesn't and shouldn't matter because assigning credit causes silos because people are protecting their turf. Now, do I want to know what generated awareness and what generated a response? Yes. But the reason I do that as a marketing leader is that helps inform me, well, what things do we double down on?
Gary Scwartz:What things do we stop doing? Right. It's not about generating credit. It's about how do we use our budget and our programs and our activities and our time most wisely. And so that's how I think about credit for pipeline.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. We actually had a similar exercise earlier in 2025. And it was, you know, we have these dashboards that talk about, okay, there was a marketing campaign associated with, for example, this win. And as a result of that, we have X amount of revenue that came from that. And one of the things was, you know, one of the leaders within our business had said, you know, well, let's figure out like, did that really, was that a marketing related activity or was that a sales related activity?
Brian Rowley:And this is why I say that, and Laura and I both say that I think we're in a really good spot as well, because we came together with the sales leaders and as a result of it, it was like, Hey, why don't we just agree that without either one of us, the potential for that might not have happened because there were emails that went out, there were events that people showed up at, there were individual emails that a sales rep may have done or engaged with or provided information. Our website provides a level of contact and, you know, of information that they may have been looking for. So there's a bunch of different things there that we can say, yes, marketing did have a hand in it, sales did have a hand in it, but without either of them, it might not have happened. So it's a really good point. And I think one that a lot of organizations need to step back at and just truly be honest with themselves and say, you know what, I think we'd be much more successful if we went at this together than if we went at it separately, because together we're a really powerful force on our own, we've only got so much.
Gary Scwartz:100%. 100%. It's everybody's in it together and then we just measure individual activities to know which ones work and which ones don't work. But that's, again, that's different from the credit. Everybody's doing this together and everybody's contributing.
Gary Scwartz:We we do better messaging when we hear from the sales team what works when they're speaking to people. Right? Who gets credit for that? You know, everybody does.
Laura Smith:Right. I think it goes back to one of the points you made though on those stats because they're very familiar to me as well. And, like, we know that people are like, they don't wanna be attacked by salespeople. They don't want those emails. They don't want you know, they wanna do their own research.
Laura Smith:They wanna understand something, be smart, then come to you when they're ready. And that's what we always say, and I feel like I've been saying this for years, but, like, surround those buyers no matter where they are, and marketing can't just do that by themselves. And sales can't do that by themselves because they're physically places, they're online places. So that's where together, we're surrounding them with our message and our story ideally, you know, our target audiences. So they're getting it from all angles, and then when they're ready, that's when they'll come forward.
Laura Smith:So I think it just all ties together nicely where these the it's not just in theory, it's truth. Like, we have to be smart about where our messages exist, what that message is, at what points of the day, of their, you know, common behaviors, all that, and it's just that well, it's hard because financially, you can't really be everywhere. You know? But it's it's just having that mindset to know that it's not just at that event or on that phone call, you know, sales having. It's through all these other touch points that marketing is helping fuel.
Gary Scwartz:A 100%. And and that may need to lead to another podcast episode of seriously, brand awareness. Right? And, you know, again, this is maybe for another time, but you talk to CFOs who want to know how much value you're getting for each dollar that you spend and how do you quantify the money that you're spending on awareness. That's a challenging question.
Gary Scwartz:That's not something that I discussed that that comes up in the sales and marketing conversations, but it's one that really defines what your programs and what your budget looks like. And and part of that is the attribution to pipeline. I mean, can I attribute my analyst real analyst contracts, to pipeline? Mhmm. I can't directly, but I know that analysts are talking about us Yeah.
Gary Scwartz:Because of the outreach we've done there.
Laura Smith:Yep. It's that a 100%. We we experience that same thing. Doesn't mean it has to be a one to one. It just knows that we are influencing people's, you know, decision making.
Laura Smith:We're influencing their research, but you can't always measure that like a one to one. But okay. But I wanna move on, and I wanna ask you, what are some things marketing can do to immediately help sales? Like, what are those things that, like, you know, that marketing like, where sales are gonna say, yes, without marketing, we could not get this done?
Gary Scwartz:Be responsive. That's that's probably the first thing. We one of the most common complaints that I see, you know, from from marketing teams is we get thrashed by sales. They need all this stuff. At the end of the day, if sales is trying to close a deal and they've got a meeting and they need some material or they need some slides or they need some messaging and it's happening tomorrow, sometimes we kinda gotta suck it up and do what we need to help our colleagues succeed because that's how we all succeed together.
Gary Scwartz:At the end of the day, we are here to generate maybe generate is the wrong word. We are here to help our sales team succeed. That that is the goal. And that may be counterintuitive and a bunch of marketing teams may hate me for saying that. But, know, as long as long as it doesn't turn into you're working twenty four seven and that we can reprioritize things that you're doing, there are times when things are going to come up and people need help.
Gary Scwartz:And I think being willing to be responsive, it's, you know, it's more than the cheerleading be a team member kind of thing. It's it's just remember where our priorities are and what we're here for. And, you know, we get loads of requests all the time. I've got a big meeting with this client in a couple of days. Can you help me put us up on a couple of slides together?
Gary Scwartz:And that might take several hours out of my day, of our creative director's day, our visual designers. But if that helps push that deal across the line, that's time well spent.
Brian Rowley:So let's flip that for a second. What about sales? What can sales do to help marketing?
Gary Scwartz:Provide the feedback when we are looking to ensure that we're getting it right. One of the things that I've been doing, you know, several of my last stops including this one. If you remember, I said, twenty years ago, I was a sales guy where marketing was selling or was creating material from the ivory tower. I don't want to be that ivory tower. And so what I and my team do is we'll create content, we'll write a blog, we'll write copy for a web page, we'll build some campaign material, we'll create a data sheet, and we will ask our sales team, does this match up to what you say and to what you hear?
Gary Scwartz:And getting that feedback from the sales team is invaluable. So again, it's it's, you know, part of that collaboration is we're all, you know, we're expected to collaborate with our colleagues. We expect our colleagues to collaborate with us And that's super helpful because I can tell you not at Netrise but at a previous stop, one of my marketing people created a copy for an interactive web page. It was designed to be some kind of ROI calculator and I shared it with our solution architects who told me, that's ridiculous. People don't think about it that way.
Gary Scwartz:You need to change the way you've built that calculator. So we did what was suggested and, you know, it results in a couple of things. It's it's more buy in from your colleagues when, you know, you ask them to provide guidance on what you're creating. They're like, yeah, you know, we helped with that and they will help with others in their organization to do the same, to accept what's being, you know, worked on together and it gets us to a better place faster. So those kind of that's really important.
Gary Scwartz:That's something that I look for for sales is when I'm asking for guidance just as when they're asking for whatever they're asking for, we we both respond, you know, fairly quickly to one another. Again, that's open communication and that's collaboration. Those things are critical.
Laura Smith:Is there one stereotype that's actually true you'd say about the relationship between marketing and sales or the roles of each?
Gary Scwartz:I don't know. I mean, I think the stereotypes that I mentioned earlier, I don't think those are true. I think no. I wouldn't say they're generally true simply because I've been in places, I'm in one now where that doesn't exist. So I wouldn't say that those any of those stereotypes are generally true.
Gary Scwartz:You get the right people, the right teams, the right leadership, the right culture, you're gonna crush it.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. I think some of the stereotypes like some that you brought up earlier around like laziness and those types of things. I mean, I think those could apply to either role. Right? You've got lazy people in marketing, you've got lazy people in sales.
Brian Rowley:Like, I mean, I think People
Gary Scwartz:can be lazy.
Brian Rowley:People can be lazy. Right? Like, so I think that's part of it. I think the other side to that though is I think the communication piece. I think a lot of the stereotypes that actually have this, that create some of the silos is just because there's actually not enough communication between the two and at a better understanding of what each role is.
Brian Rowley:I have to be honest with you, I've done both roles. There's nothing worse than being in front of a customer and in a situation where you're not prepared. And I think anybody who supports a sales team, who's ever been in that situation would do anything they can to make sure that they don't put someone else in that role because it's an awful position to be in. And so I think we just have to, again, respect and understand it. And I think if teams do that, I think, you know, a lot of the stereotypes that exist become non existent.
Gary Scwartz:Yeah, that's exactly what I was just talking about, you know, when marketing needs to be responsive, like when my sales guys need slides to be prepared for a meeting And that meetings tomorrow, well, we got to do it. Got to take care of them.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. Well, I will tell you that this is great conversation, but Laura and I love to have a little fun on this podcast. Not that this conversation hasn't been fun up until this point, but we love to do something with our guests. It's a little segment that we call the hot seat.
Gary Scwartz:So I love it. Yeah.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. Joey's Hold on a second. Let's listen to that again. We know it's a bit scary. Won't you please indulge us Gary?
Brian Rowley:Hot seat. That's our producer Joey on the banjo. Like he's unbelievably talented. Love the work. Love it.
Gary Scwartz:Love it. Yeah.
Brian Rowley:So, in this segment, Gary, what we ask is for, our guests to create a jingle similar to what Joey just produced. Just kidding.
Laura Smith:That is not true. Don't let him fool you, Gary.
Gary Scwartz:I'm gonna start singing. So be careful. Careful what you ask for, you might get it.
Brian Rowley:What we like to do in this segment is just obviously introduce you to a question that you're not aware of. And we're actually gonna ask you for a hot take today. And it's actually about, you know, we've had the conversation about the marketing misperception sales teams have. You know, the question that we have is what is the most off based marketing request you've ever gotten from a sales team? One that made you instantly think absolutely not.
Gary Scwartz:I'm sure I've been asked to do some inappropriate things in managing events, things that may have thought to have been acceptable twenty years ago, but would absolutely not be acceptable today. And so that's, without going into any details, that's
Brian Rowley:Yeah. We wanna ask for details.
Laura Smith:I'm like, I want the details. Clear.
Gary Scwartz:A clear no thank you.
Brian Rowley:That was another podcast.
Laura Smith:What are all the inappropriate things you've done as a in the marketing career?
Brian Rowley:Yeah. Marketing, especially around trade shows and events over the years has changed dramatically in terms of some of the things that you used to see and what you don't see today, thank goodness.
Gary Scwartz:And and with social media today, you know, when organizations do find a way to do those inappropriate things, and there are some examples of it in the last couple of years, the vendors don't come to mind, but I I can I'm not gonna tell you about the incidents, but that goes viral very quickly on social media and that's not a good brand experience to be creating.
Brian Rowley:Right. For sure.
Laura Smith:It's it's again, it's all the employees represent the brand and the brand, you know, all ladders up to the overarching brand. So we did a podcast, on earlier this year just about how people show up in LinkedIn and what really matters. So it all kind of intertwines together, so it's very relevant.
Gary Scwartz:Everything's connected.
Laura Smith:It is.
Gary Scwartz:More connected than ever these days.
Laura Smith:That's right. Well, Gary, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a super interesting conversation. We've already clearly setting up for some future content to have and future podcasts. So we do appreciate your time here, and we hope you have an awesome 2026.
Gary Scwartz:Well, thanks, Laura and Brian. It's been and and producer Joey. It's been a fantastic conversation. I've really enjoyed it, and it's great to hear your insights and and learn from you all as well. So thanks very much for having me today.
Brian Rowley:Yeah, Gary, thank you so much. You know, it's interesting, Laura, we started this off and maybe this will be the name for this podcast is sales is from Mars, marketing is from Venus. But as we kind of look at this, I mean, I think it boils down to, you know, a couple of really basic things that's respect, transparency and communication. And I think that if we can achieve that across organizations, I think that it is, I think that's incredibly powerful. The one thing that really stood out for me, which I really love, and I would highly recommend this to any team that's out there from a sales perspective, giving, you know, any type of feedback back to marketing is provide feedback when we're actually looking to get it right.
Brian Rowley:That was something that Gary said that actually really resonated because so often, right, we are out there trying to do our to get things right. And without feedback, you never know if that's actually happening. The only people that can really do that are sales. So for me, I don't know, that stuck out as something that was really, really powerful for me.
Laura Smith:Well, know what they say, feedback is a gift.
Brian Rowley:I knew you'd tie up Bobbism. Well, first episode twenty twenty six, and we're already talking about Bobbism. Alright.
Laura Smith:It worked. You set me up for that one. But no, but I I totally agree because respect, I feel like, you know, that that, like, exists. Like, we can never say that doesn't. You know, my organization, hopefully in most organizations.
Laura Smith:But it's the transparency and communication. And I think as the more and more Gary talked about that and how it is so functional within his organization, to me, I'm like, those are easy fixes. Like, we have good communication. We can have better communication. We have decent transparency.
Laura Smith:We can have better transparency. So for me, I'm like, that's like, I hate the saying, but low hanging fruit because we just need to have more of that open conversation, more of that dialogue, more of that, like, partnership in some of those, the creation of materials versus creating it and sending it and say, here it is. It's like, no. No. Like, put them in the process along the way.
Laura Smith:And sometimes we do that, and sometimes time isn't on our side, but I think those are too easy things to fix if an organization doesn't have them already, you know, existing. So, yes, super interesting, and I feel like we can take away some of that. So it was very helpful to learn, from Gary.
Brian Rowley:Agreed.
Laura Smith:Okay. Well, thanks everyone for listening. And most importantly, if you liked what you heard today, be sure to follow us. If you wanna hear more from Gary Schwartz, you can find him on LinkedIn.