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Sales Isn't a Dirty Word: Marketing + Sales Culture Reset Workbook

Former Google Sales leader Katie Wilson helps teams break down silos, improve lead conversion, and create shared accountability for revenue goals.

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As the founder of Serious Moonlight Consulting and a former Head of Sales at Google, the first thing I do with any new client is sit down for one-on-one conversations with department heads and key stakeholders. I want to hear how things actually work, not just what’s written on their org chart.

Nine times out of ten, I hear the same thing.

Marketing leads tell me, “Sales is getting a ton of traffic but not closing any leads we are sending over.” Meanwhile, Sales leads say, “Marketing is sending us junk. None of these leads are converting.”

There’s usually a grain of truth on both sides. But, what this really tells me is that Sales and Marketing aren’t talking to each other. They’re operating in silos and crossing their fingers that leads will magically turn into revenue. What I’ve learned after more than 15 years leading sales teams is that Sales is a full-circle process that requires feedback, testing, and making tweaks in real time. 

Once I am able to set up and facilitate this conversation between the teams, we see that revenue begins to increase, leads become more targeted, and the sales team gets faster at converting leads to sales. 

Through my consulting work, I built this workbook so teams can walk through the same alignment process I use with clients. Use these exercises with your team to help name what’s actually breaking down, agree on what needs to change, and track the impact on lead quality, conversion, and revenue over time.

After 15 years at Google as a Head of Sales, Katie Wilson now advises startups, corporate clients, and individuals on untangling complex go-to-market strategies through her company, Serious Moonlight Consulting.

Katie is a featured speaker at Google Talks, Wonder Women Tech, and Innovation Women, with her expertise appearing in THE BOARD and Fortune. She serves on advisory boards for UCSB's Women in Leadership course and Wonder Women Tech, and co-hosts the podcast Bot Boundaries.

Meet the Expert: Katie Wilson

Katie Wilson's Sales is Not a Dirty Word: Marketing + Sales Culture Reset Workbook

Get the complete Sales & Marketing Culture Reset Workbook—includes alignment audits, language exercises, lead mapping templates, and rituals to keep your teams collaborating for the long term.

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Step One

Setting the Baseline: Reflection Prompts

1. When did you last collaborate directly with sales/marketing?

2. How is your team bridging the gap between Sales and Marketing?

3. How strong would you describe the partnership?

4. Does each team understand each other's role and how changes are made to both targeting and the sales process?

5. Do you feel like you are one team with one common goal?

Step Two

The Alignment Audit

You probably already know that alignment is important, but I want to explain just how pivotal it can be in your organization. It’s the difference between celebrating a spike in conversions and Sales staring at a pipeline full of people who were never going to buy. 

As LinkedIn’s Global Product Marketing Leader Taina Palombo-Price puts it, “The work that marketing does sets up the sales organization to do the part of the job that is theirs. You can’t do one without the other.” 

And yet, when things break down, teams often focus solely on the problem — low-quality leads, missed targets, slow deal velocity — without addressing what’s really causing it.
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Google Advisor and subject of bestseller Trillion Dollar Coach Bill Campbell famously advised leaders to “work the team, not the problem,” pointing out that many business issues are ultimately the result of misalignment, poor communication, or teams not operating together effectively. When we fixate only on pain points, we risk missing the true heart of the issue: how people, processes, and priorities are (or aren’t) working together.

We’ve seen this firsthand. While working with a recent startup, we discovered that a lack of defined sales processes and deal infrastructure was holding the business back. The result? Repetitive manual work, longer deal cycles, and incorrect attribution across the sales team. Rather than treating these as isolated operational problems, we brought together the technical product team and the sales team to audit their workflows, systems, and needs. Together, we outlined and automated a multi-step sales process using their existing tools and built a clear project roadmap for rolling out new features.

Crucially, both teams aligned on shared goals — increasing revenue and reducing time to close — and agreed on the KPIs that would define success. Today, as new features launch, progress is measured against those shared metrics. If both teams see opportunities to add steps or automations, changes are made collaboratively and evaluated over time. Without this alignment, the product team had been building systems in a vacuum, without real insight into how sales actually worked. By auditing both teams and aligning them around common outcomes, the company was able to drive real, measurable revenue impact.

While Marketing and Sales may feel like two separate organizations with different goals, both are part of a single go-to-market motion. Today’s buyers expect a cohesive, seamless experience — something that’s nearly impossible to deliver without strong alignment. 

That’s why the best place to start is by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your current systems and team dynamics.

Exercise

The Alignment Audit

In the next exercise, you’ll complete an Alignment Audit by rating your team’s performance in each category on a scale of 1–5:

1 = Little collaboration, insight, or process
5 = Very strong alignment with robust processes
Category Your Score (1-5) Notes

Understanding Our Shared Goals

How well is each team aligned on a shared goal, KPI, or purpose? Can your team articulate this overarching goal? Do you have meetings to track these goals together?
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Feedback Loop & Process

Are your teams comfortable giving and receiving feedback from each other? Do you have a formal feedback loop or process outlined? Do you take action and track improvements from this feedback?
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Lead Qualification

Do your teams understand how leads are being qualified and what the ICP is? Do they understand the levers and filters that can be implemented to qualify leads? Is there an owner for the lead qualification process and feedback? Is there reporting to show qualified leads and converted leads?
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Lead Conversion

Is your team reporting out on lead conversion and changes over time? Are sales leaders reviewing this by rep and using it to coach them? Is that data being passed back to marketing to help them further refine targeting? Are you taking actions for trends you see in lead conversion and analyzing them regularly?
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Targeted Content

Do you have a shared content calendar and the ability to see current and future ads? Does the team have the ability to provide feedback on content, and are you tracking CTR and conversion rates per campaign? Can you make changes to content quickly if it is not converting or a new image or ad needs to be placed? Are you aligning with seasonal events, industry trends, and consumer behavior?
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Sales Process

Do both teams have a good understanding of all the steps that go into the sales process from initial call to close? Are you tracking lead progress and where in the sales process leads are getting stuck or closing as lost? Are you using sales process reporting to coach your team or have shared KPIs around win rates, revenue, and time to close?
—
—

Total Score: _____ / 30

Your Maturity Stage

  • 5-10 points: Siloed Survivors
  • 11-17 points: Collaborative Climbers
  • 18-25 points: Aligned Accelerators
  • 26-30 points: Revenue Powerhouse

Action Planning

1. Which category scored lowest? 

2. Which category scored highest? 

3. What's one behavior from the next maturity stage you can adopt immediately?

Three Goals to Improve Your Lowest Scoring Areas

1. 

2. 

3. 

Retake this audit in 6 months to measure your progress.

Use the second audit as your checkpoint: what improved, what stayed flat, and where do you still feel friction in the day-to-day work between teams? Let the changes in your scores guide your next round of fixes.

Step Three

The Language Shift Exercise

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Language shapes your company culture. The way teams talk about each other determines how they behave with each other. When the dominant narrative is “Marketing sends junk” or “Sales can’t convert,” both groups operate defensively — and that defensiveness will kill the collaborative culture you want to build.

The exercise below pushes teams to confront the shorthand they’ve adopted over time and replace it with language that drives problem-solving instead of finger-pointing.

Work through the chart together, one assumption at a time. Let the first version be honest and unfiltered. Then ask:

  • What is the data or behavior underneath this? 
  • What would a more accurate and actionable version of this statement look like?

Common Examples to Consider

Assumption

Reframe

Marketing is sending horrible leads. 

We need to provide Marketing with feedback that the leads we are seeing are under our average age and income level, so they can adjust targeting.

Sales is dropping the ball. We are sending a ton of leads that they are not converting. 

Let’s look at the reports on the sales process to see where these leads are dropping off. Are they not being called in a timely manner, or are all leads not moving past the qualification stage?

We are wasting a ton of money on social ads that are not converting.

Can we look at the marketing reports together to understand how social traffic converts and how it may influence organic conversions?

Our Sales process is broken, we can’t convert any leads, and we need to hire new salespeople who can convert any lead.

Let’s look at the sales conversion reporting to see which reps are performing well and their process and pitch. If we are seeing low conversion rates across the board, let’s dive into the qualification numbers to see if the volume of leads nets out to qualified leads. 

We only perform well in highly populated areas and geos, which is why we are going to invest all our marketing efforts in these areas.

Let’s look at our current customer records as well as conversion rates across the country to see if there are some untapped secondary markets. This could be a more profitable area for us to target with less competition and strong potential leads. 

 

Exercise

Try This Prompt

Identify and rewrite one assumption from your own meetings using this chart. What did you learn when you shifted it from a complaint into a concrete, shared action?


Assumption

Reframe













Step Four

Shared Lead Mapping

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Shared lead mapping forces both teams to stop thinking in “my part/your part” and instead sees the lead journey as one continuous story. The journey starts from the first scroll-stopping ad to the signed agreement and beyond.

Shared lead mapping gets everyone in the same room, looking at the same journey, and asking:

  • Where do leads actually come from?
  • What happens to them in the first 24 to 48 hours?
  • Where do they stall, disappear, or turn into closed-won?

You’ll use the table below to outline each step in your lead journey — clicking on an ad, visiting the website, filling out a form, getting routed to a rep, attending a first call, receiving a proposal, and closing. At every stage, ask:

  • Who owns this step?
  • What are the actual touchpoints?
  • What do we track here (if anything)?
  • Where are people getting stuck?

You should get super specific here. For example: 

“We’re attracting a lot of leads from Instagram, but most are younger and at a lower income level than our ICP, so they rarely qualify.” 

Possible action: Marketing tightens demographic targeting and tests a smaller, more precise audience for 30 days.

“We don’t have clear reporting on time-to-first-touch, so we can’t see if speed is affecting close rates.”

Possible action: Sales Ops sets up a weekly report on time-to-first-touch and includes it in the pipeline review.

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Instructions

Choose your approach:

Option A - Separate Rooms: Have Sales and Marketing teams work independently on whiteboards or large tear-away sheets to outline each step in the lead journey. Then rejoin to compare your Journey Maps, highlighting what is missing or what the other team included that you did not.
Option B - Together: Work in the same room and outline the journey together. Then debrief on what parts of the journey were hardest to outline, what surprised you that others brought up, and what assumptions you had going in that were changed.

Exercise

Map Your Lead Journey

Stage

Activities/Touchpoints

Owner

Metrics Tracked

Pain Points
         
         
         
         

Identify Action Items

List three to five pain points you can change and test, with regular weekly meetings between leadership on progress and improvement. Sales Operations and Analytics should be present to ensure you're measuring tests correctly and have the reporting you need.

Example pain point: We're attracting a lot of leads from Instagram, but the demographic is too young and lower income than our target audience, resulting in fewer conversions. 

Action: Marketing adjusts demographic targeting on social media to test a lower volume of more targeted leads for 30 days.

Your Action Items

Pain Point: _________________________________________________________________ 

  • Action: ____________________________________________________________
  • Owner: _________________________ 
  • Timeline: _______________________

Pain Point: _________________________________________________________________ 

  • Action: ____________________________________________________________
  • Owner: _________________________ 
  • Timeline: _______________________

Pain Point: _________________________________________________________________ 

  • Action: ____________________________________________________________
  • Owner: _________________________ 
Timeline: _______________________

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After your test timeline ends, regroup as a team. Review the data together. Did lead quality improve? Did the conversion move? Did time-to-close shorten? Then, decide whether to:

  • Scale the change (if it worked)
  • Tweak and retest (if results were mixed)
  • Retire the idea and move on

Then choose the next set of one to two bottlenecks to tackle. The power of shared lead mapping comes from repeating this cycle, not treating it as a one-time workshop.

Step Five

Rituals for Ongoing Alignment

Rituals are how you can turn all of this into action amongst your team. If you don’t set up a regular cadence, the best intentions from this workbook will get swallowed by quarter-end pressure and “urgent” fires. I’ve seen it happen far too often. 

Ongoing alignment looks like Sales, Marketing, and Sales Ops looking at the same numbers on a predictable schedule, agreeing on which problems to tackle next, and sharing what they’re seeing from calls and campaigns. It also looks like building habits that keep you close to the customer. That includes shadowing each other’s work, swapping stories from the field, and turning your best wins into reusable playbooks.

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Use the menu below to choose at least one ritual you will actually run — weekly or monthly — with an owner and a clear definition of success. (For example: higher lead acceptance rate, fewer “no show” first calls, or faster follow-up time.) 

Lastly, to keep you accountable, write which ones you want to commit to and the tangible impact you want to measure.

Exercise

Additional Rituals (Choose at least one)

Monthly Revenue Roundtable
  • Cross-functional review of revenue drivers and blockers
  • Celebrate wins and analyze losses together
Role Swap/Shadow Days
  • Members of Sales, Marketing, and Sales Ops switch roles or shadow someone for a full day
  • Include kickoff breakfast, lunch recap, and end-of-day reflection with shared learnings
  • Our date: _________________________
Shared Customer Success Stories
  • Build a library of best customer stories for marketing and sales enablement
  • Create content in multiple formats: written, visual, and video
  • Goal: __ case studies per quarter/year
Shared Slack Channel
  • Real-time collaboration and win sharing
  • Quick feedback loops on campaigns and leads
Win Story Library
  • Document and share successful conversions
  • Identify patterns in what's working
Quarterly Strategic Planning Session
  • Review macro trends and adjust shared strategy
  • Set next quarter's priorities together

We commit to implementing: 

Measurable impact we expect: 

Step Six

The Culture Pledge

This is the part where you decide how you're going to work when things get hard. (Spoiler alert: it’s way easier when everyone's fresh off a workshop and feeling optimistic!)

A culture pledge gives you a shared script for those moments. It spells out how you talk about each other, how you make calls on gray-area decisions, and what "good" looks like when targets are tight and deals are complicated. 

Think of it less as a mission statement and more as an operating manual — something that can help you navigate questions when they come up. Who owns feedback on lead quality? What do we do when conversion dips? How fast do we expect changes to get tested?

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Our Culture Pledge

Our Shared Commitment to Revenue Growth

We, the Sales and Marketing teams, commit to operating as one unified revenue team.

Our Shared Understanding

We recognize that sales is a full-cycle journey that requires collaboration at every stage:

  • Marketing's Role: Attract, educate, and qualify leads; provide content and insights that enable sales success
  • Sales' Role: Convert qualified leads, provide feedback on lead quality, and share customer insights back to marketing
  • Sales Ops' Role: Provide data, reporting, and systems that enable both teams to make informed decisions

Exercise

Our Core Commitments

We pledge to:

  • Use shared language and eliminate blame-based assumptions
  • Celebrate wins together and learn from losses as a team
  • Make decisions based on data, not gut feelings or departmental bias
  • Prioritize customer value over internal turf battles
  • Experiment together, test changes, and iterate quickly
  • Maintain regular communication and feedback loops
  • Hold ourselves accountable to shared metrics and goals

Our Shared KPIs and Metrics

Annual/Quarterly Goals:

  • Revenue Growth: _______% year-over-year
  • Percentage to Target: ________%
  • Customer Success Stories: _________ per quarter/year
  • Lead Quality Improvements: ________ new changes or tests
  • Lead Conversion Rate: ________%
  • Time to Close: _________ days
  • Other: ______________

 

Our Action Plan

What we'll start doing:

What we'll stop doing:

What we'll continue doing:

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Sales and Marketing — A Power Duo That Wins

If you've made it this far — and actually done the exercises — you now have something most companies never build: a shared language for how Sales and Marketing work together.

This is a strong foundation, but the work doesn’t end there. If you’d like more support as you build your revenue engine, I share regular stories, sales tips, and behind-the-scenes lessons from my client work in my newsletter, Sales Isn’t a Dirty Word. It’s where I go deeper on how to sell in a way that feels honest and sustainable for you and your team.

You can also visit Serious Moonlight Consulting to learn more and set up a time to work with me.

Free Downloadable Workbook

Sales is Not a Dirty Word: Marketing + Sales Culture Reset Full Workbook
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