Snowflake, Datadog and Unisys ABM leaders share six sales alignment plays
Sixty-five percent of practitioners report sales-marketing misalignment. ABM leaders from Snowflake, Datadog and Unisys share six plays to close the gap.
Updated
The brief
- Forrester's 2024 survey: 65% of sales and marketing professionals report a lack of alignment between leaders, while 82% of C-level executives believe teams are in sync.
- Unisys has cut ABM campaign launch time from three months to a couple of weeks using AI, but warns faster production does not mean better campaigns.
- Snowflake built an internal tool that analyzes sales call recordings and recommends personalized gifts — including a grill set for a VP who mentioned a Memorial Day barbecue.
Sixty-five percent of sales and marketing professionals say their organizations' sales and marketing leaders lack alignment, even as 82% of C-level executives believe their teams are already in sync. That gap comes from Forrester's 2024 Sales and Marketing Alignment Survey, and it framed a recent roundtable where ABM leaders from Snowflake, Datadog and Unisys compared notes on what alignment takes at enterprise scale.
The panelists did not agree on everything. They agreed on one point: alignment is not a kickoff meeting or a shared spreadsheet. It is an operating discipline run every week. Here are the six plays from that conversation.
1. Agree on the account list before anything launches
The most common alignment failure starts before the first campaign goes live: sales and marketing assume they share the same target account list and the same ICP. Many marketing leaders walk into their role with that assumption, only to discover the lists do not match while programs are already running against the wrong accounts.
The fix: reconcile the lists in the first two weeks. Pull the accounts sales is actually working from the CRM and compare them line by line against the marketing target account list, resolving differences with sales leadership directly. Write down the ICP both teams agree on and note who owns changes to it. Set re-alignment triggers — leadership changes, strategy shifts and account assignments each warrant revisiting the list. And earn the first meeting: reps have dozens of people competing for their time, so the first interaction has to deliver something useful.
2. Replace the handoff with a relay
Inbound programs can live with an MQL handoff. ABM should not, the panelists argued, because ABM has no handoff KPI at all. The model should look like a soccer match: marketing and sales pass the ball back and forth until it is in the net.
The coaching principle: take every action as far as marketing can before the rep has to do anything. Research the buying committee. Engage the executives. Prep the ground with programs. Keep going until an opportunity sits on the rep's desk. Even then, deliver a package — what marketing has done in the account, what it says about where the account stands, and a recommended next step, framed as a recommendation rather than a request. Nobody wants another ask in their inbox.
The proof it is working: ABM gets tagged in win announcements. When a rep says the deal could not have happened without marketing, marketing is on the sales team.
3. Build a signal layer that returns actions, not data
Everyone can buy the same third-party intent from the same platforms, which makes raw intent a commodity. Sales cares about the output of signal work, not the inputs. Handing reps a data dump is an ABM playbook from more than a decade ago.
The panelists recommended separating fit signals, which decide which accounts belong in ABM and how much to invest, from action signals tied to individuals and publicly observable — a new role, an initiative an executive discussed, a project the company announced. This matters most in enterprise, where reps may hold 35 accounts that rarely change. Person-level signals give the team something to act on in every account.
Aggregate third-party intent, first-party intent and campaign performance into a single workspace per ABM marketer, so the rep receives the recommendation, not the raw feed. Layer intent with white space analysis and competitive contract renewals. One signal is noise. Multiple signals pointing at the same account at the same moment earn a rep's attention.
4. Sell the support, not the tier
Tell a rep their account is in the 1:few tier and expect a blank stare. Reps do not have tiers; they have accounts. How ABM explains tiering determines whether sales sees it as help or rationing.
Skip the tier explanation and ask which two of a rep's 30 accounts they must win to hit their number, then commit marketing resources to those accounts with extra treatments on top of standard demand programs. Position 1:many as the base layer, not a penalty — even at that level, ABM likely doubles the marketing investment in the account. Tier allocations go to sales leadership, not individual reps, so ABM is not cast as the bad guy in rep-level conversations. The Snowflake leader noted that on smaller teams, where ABM might be a team of one, rep-level wins must come first, with executive buy-in built over time.
Use a scoring rubric tied to must-win revenue, but reserve some 1:1 capacity for big bets: smaller deals that are dream logos with significant white space. In the largest accounts, go many-to-one — some enterprise buying centers are as large as entire accounts elsewhere. The focus is this year's number, not a deal that might close in two years.
5. Enable reps where they actually work
Marketers study external buyer personas closely. Very few apply the same rigor to their internal customer: the sales rep. Reps live in their inbox; marketing lives in Slack or Teams. That mismatch is why enablement gets missed.
Most ABM teams default to email with salespeople — searchable, forwardable, already part of the rep's day. Avoid asking reps to log into a new tool or check a new dashboard. When building account briefs, go broader than marketing activity: partner and alliance footprint, who you already know in the account, recent leads and event attendance, intent activity, white space, and recommended people with suggested cadences. Reps want ABM to be their window into all of marketing, so know enough about every channel touching your accounts to answer questions on the spot.
AI can speed this up: connect AI agents to the CRM and prompt them to assemble this level of account detail. Treat it as a starting point, not a finished brief, and always check the output before it goes to sales.
6. Point AI at workflows and data, then reinvest in 1:1
Every panelist is under pressure to adopt AI. Their advice was consistent: aim it at the unglamorous work.
Unisys runs multiple AI tools but sets aside any tool that does not help deliver campaigns or data that move pipeline, win rates or revenue. Datadog is not satisfied with AI-first creative yet; the gains are in operations — custom dashboards that take minutes instead of analytics tickets, faster data movement between systems, and campaigns launching sooner. One caution from the panel: check the dashboard math before presenting it.
AI has also changed customization. Years ago, roughly half of Datadog's ABM campaigns were effectively generic industry plays. Now nearly every account can get a specific angle, such as a project the company is known to be working on or an initiative its CEO has discussed publicly.
Unisys warned about sameness: it can now launch an ABM campaign in a couple of weeks instead of three months — and every competitor can too. Faster does not mean better, and buyers are more inundated than ever.
Snowflake built a tool on its own platform that analyzes sales call recordings and recommends personalized gifts to the ABM team. When a VP mentioned hosting a Memorial Day barbecue, the tool suggested a grill set, with an API connection queuing the gift for review. No more asking reps what a prospect likes. Snowflake's ROI case to leadership rests on reinvestment: the hours AI saves go into more 1:1 work, new channels and new messages to new lines of business.
The panel also pressed vendors. At renewal, ask whether they offer an API or an MCP server, and whether your agents can act on their data rather than just query it. And test channels beyond email: executives use AI assistants to filter inboxes, making email less reliable as the default ABM channel. The Snowflake team is experimenting with out-of-home, gifting and executive breakfasts.
Measure alignment by shared goals
Asked how marketers can partner with sales as equals rather than as a support function, the panelists pointed to proof and shared goals. Datadog looks for stories of contacts sales did not know existed, surfaced through ABM and turned into real opportunities, and it split-tests ABM against the standard marketing engine to show the difference in account impact. When sales and marketing own the same number, marketing is not supporting sales' goal — both teams are reaching one goal together. Datadog's benchmark for success: it should feel like product-market fit, with sales coming to marketing asking for help.
Based on semrush.com
Filed under account-based-marketing, sales-and-marketing-alignment, abm-strategy, b2b-marketing, ai-in-marketing
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News editor covering industry trends and analytics at Marketing Herald.
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