Being a marketer is like being an octopus – we have our hands in everything across the organization.
This analogy was shared at the Product Marketing Summit in Toronto last year — it resonated with me, and of course, led to a unanimous tickle across the room.
Using a food-based analogy (because why not?), being a marketer is like being that one spice that brings the whole dish together. While this is a great position to be in, it does come with the responsibility of constantly representing a vision to different key stakeholders across the organization.
Whether it's launching a major demand gen campaign, long-range revenue planning, or ensuring consistent messaging, revenue marketers must work hand-in-hand with cross-functional teams every step of the way.
While it's crucial to partner seamlessly with these teams, an often underrated skill is the ability to work effectively with the leadership across sales, marketing, product, and customer success.
Teams naturally have different priorities reflected in their key performance indicators (KPIs) – sales focuses on pipeline, revenue, and close rates; product on adoption, usage, and feedback; customer success on retention and renewals; and marketing on engagement, brand awareness, and lead generation.
Saima Chadney
With this in mind, revenue marketers must build the soft skills to navigate these different perspectives, align incentives, and drive teams toward the organization's overarching revenue objectives.
What is stakeholder management and why is it important?
As a revenue marketer, it’s essential to be the champion for your company’s value proposition and revenue strategy. This means articulating key benefits, how you stand out from competitors, and most importantly, how your efforts tie into the broader business goals.
"Stakeholder management is the process of engaging with and influencing stakeholders to achieve the desired outcome."
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon
Many revenue marketing roles emphasize the need for exceptional relationship-building abilities, underscoring just how vital stakeholder management is for driving revenue success.
It requires equal parts strategic vision and influence to align sales, marketing, product, and customer teams around your revenue initiatives and campaigns.
Timing is key for building this essential skill
Mastering stakeholder management should be a top priority from day one of your marketing career. It's not something to brush aside as an afterthought.
This is a muscle that takes years of conscious effort to build and refine. But if you ingrain it into your professional skillset early, stakeholder management will be a key differentiator in your success as a revenue marketer.
Don't wait until you're in a leadership position to start leveraging this invaluable skill. Whether you're an individual contributor or on a management track, make stakeholder management a core focus area for your growth.
How to build this skill: A guide for early career professionals
1. Nurture cross-functional relationships early on
Early on, you may not have a seat at the executive table where strategic decisions get made. But don't let that deter you from developing stakeholder management skills.
Look beyond your immediate team and prioritize building connections across sales, product, customer success, and other marketing disciplines. Network proactively and find opportunities for cross-functional projects that create shared wins.
This’ll keep you plugged into the pulse of the business and shed light on upcoming initiatives where you can lend your revenue marketing expertise. Strong relationships are your gateway to influencing decisions that drive revenue performance and sustainable growth.
2. Knowledge is power
When it comes to making urgent or strategic decisions that impact multiple teams, there’s no substitute for knowledge.
Executive leaders often have their hands full, so for any major decisions it’s important to make sure your presentation or communications contain succinct and compelling points.
Having access to all the necessary data, being able to analyze it, and presenting it clearly and concisely can help the leadership team make informed decisions quickly and efficiently.
3. Data is your friend
Making strategic business decisions requires data that is current, precise, and reliable.
Working with data can be a daunting job; assembling complex information, verifying the accuracy, and making sure everyone is on the same page about interpretations are all time-consuming and demanding tasks.
Having strong relationships with your colleagues can be incredibly beneficial when deadlines are looming and you need to quickly gather data.
Even if there isn't a dedicated analyst in the company, having an understanding of who’s playing those roles makes it much easier to put together pieces from all around the organization – it's like gathering pieces from all corners of your organization until they form one useful picture.
The secret is placing equal importance on both pressing deadlines as well as insight-led plans, allowing you to hone in on objectives more efficiently and quickly reach tangible outcomes.
4. Present the worldview
With so much data and business outcomes to consider, decisions can be difficult.
We use smart strategies designed not just to provide executive leadership with the facts they need – but also to take into account potential challenges that could affect our final outcome.
We gathered the pros and cons of each option to gain a full understanding of all possible impacts on the chosen path forward, giving ourselves clarity when deciding what’s best for future success.
5. Don’t go empty-handed
As the revenue expert, you can't just highlight challenges – you need to come armed with potential solutions.
When presenting to leadership, don't merely rehash the data. Provide clear recommendations that weigh pros and cons, anticipate risks and contingencies, and account for stakeholder impacts.
Your proposals should be rooted in deep market, customer, and competitor understanding. Support your ideas with relevant case studies, benchmarks, and best practices. Make it turnkey for leaders to buy into your solutions.
Your indispensable edge
Mastering stakeholder management is what elevates a revenue marketer from a tactical vendor to a trusted strategic advisor for the business.
The ability to build solidarity across teams, proactively address conflicts, and architect end-to-end revenue solutions is incredibly valuable and often overlooked.
While focusing on campaigns, funnels, and numbers is essential, meticulous stakeholder management allows you to break down organizational silos and propel the business toward its growth goals.
Prioritize this skill early and continuously hone it – before long, you'll become an indispensable revenue driver.
Stakeholder management: Key takeaways
Stakeholder management is the lynchpin for revenue marketers to unlock organizational alignment and impact.
Nurture it as a core competency from the start of your career through consistent practice of:
- Building cross-functional relationships and operating as the connective tissue across the revenue engine.
- Using data fluency to bring divergent perspectives together and facilitate productive dialogue.
- Providing holistic revenue solutions that balance competing priorities toward broader goals.
With stakeholder management mastered, your value transcends any one campaign, channel, or initiative.
You become the catalyst that propels sales, marketing, product, and customer success into a high-performing revenue-generating team.
