The Marketing Share
Running a marketing department requires expertise in many domains, from branding, media and positioning to demand generation, sales enablement, and much more. As a business leader or a new department head, you may be an expert in one or more marketing areas but usually not all of them. The Marketing Share aims to close this gap.
Co-hosts Barb VanSomeren and Alec Cheung are experienced marketing leaders who have been down the path of learning on the fly while managing a marketing team. They interview domain experts and ask the right questions so business leaders can learn what they need to know to run marketing.
The Marketing Share
This is What Sales Teams Actually Need From Marketing (Ep 63)
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What does it actually take for marketing to earn influence inside a business?
In this episode of The Marketing Share, Alec Cheung and Barb VanSomeren talk with Saurabh Kothari about one of the biggest challenges modern marketing leaders face: proving impact while building alignment across sales, product, and leadership teams.
Drawing from his experience leading marketing across enterprise organizations, agencies, and high-growth companies, Saurabh shares why marketing cannot operate in isolation anymore and why the best CMOs know how to combine data, storytelling, and persuasion to move the business forward.
The conversation explores the tension many marketers still feel with sales teams, why attribution alone rarely tells the full story, and how marketing leaders can better communicate their value internally.
They also unpack the balance between creativity and analytics in modern B2B marketing, what makes certain marketing leaders more influential than others, and why strong communication is often the difference between a marketing team that gets ignored and one that drives strategic decisions.
If you work in B2B marketing, lead generation, demand generation, or marketing leadership, this episode offers a practical look at how modern CMOs think about growth, influence, and business alignment.
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
02:17 Meet Saurabh Kothari
05:12 Why marketing and sales often misalign
09:46 The challenge of proving marketing impact
14:03 The balance between creativity and data
18:27 Why persuasion matters in marketing leadership
22:41 Building stronger alignment across teams
27:18 What modern CMOs need to prioritize
31:54 The role of storytelling inside organizations
36:22 Why attribution alone is not enough
40:11 Final thoughts and advice for marketing leaders
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Connect with our guest:
👉 Sourabh Kothari: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sourabhkothari/
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Want to be a guest on The Marketing Share Podcast? Send us your bio and proposed interview topic to marketingsharepodcast@gmail.com, and our Podcast Manager will get back to you.
Want to connect with Alec and Barb to talk all things marketing and how they can help you leverage the marketing wing of your organization?
Connect with Alec here
Connect with Barb here
Connect with Cinthya, Podcast Manager, here
Cheers.