A Radical Approach to Cross-Functional Harmony in Startups

While every startup is unique, it's always intrigued me how revenue functions inevitably stumble into the same cross-functional friction points. It's not a question of if friction will occur, but when.

Should we simply accept this as an unavoidable part of the startup journey? Or is there a more innovative, unconventional approach to incentivizing cross-functional success?

Currently, businesses seem satisfied with tactical solutions: recurring cross-functional meetings, improved leadership rhythms, pipeline committees, or company-wide Slack channels. The assumption seems to be that if you set up the meeting or create the Slack channel, everything will fall into place.

What if we took a radically different approach?

Imagine your company dedicating an entire quarter to exploring unconventional ways of fostering cross-functional harmony. Picture a scenario so bold that it requires a complete reprioritization of each Go-To-Market function's core purpose:

•          For Sales, closing deals becomes a secondary priority.

•          Marketing puts driving awareness and demand on the back burner.

•          Customer Success considers customer retention an afterthought.

Instead, YOU get to decide what each department should focus on that will lift revenue growth and retention efforts across the board for the remaining year.

In this hypothetical scenario, what would you wish for other departments to do that would most significantly impact your performance?

Here’s mine..

Marketing’s Project – Required to Know the Customer

Priority Project: ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) will no longer just be an acronym that sits on an outdated brand playbook.

What is it: Listen to each call from initial call, discovery call, closing call, success calls (check-in/cancellation) and provide an accurate summary of the business/buyer persona’s needs, business case and expectations. Miss one of these calls or glaze over the EQ components of the prospect/customer, and the project is deemed failure.

My prediction for cascading impact: Messaging, content & the micro elements of direct response marketing campaigns suddenly resonates that much more leading to a cascading lift on revenue lifecycle conversion. True empathy for sifting through MQLs and cold outreach gets real, data enrichment takes a larger priority, MQL volume decreases significantly but the conversion is so much stronger that finance doesn’t vomit at the thought of rejiggering their 1-3HAG projections. Sales Forecasting accuracy makes a notable improvement, “Commits” become actual “Commits”, and no one second guess the probability of pipeline stages anymore. Also, CS wonders why customers suddenly desire viable outcomes from the service/product they just bought.

Sales’s Project – Required to Act on Failure

Priority Project: Do everything in our power to succeed from facts of failure.

What is it: Flip the sales culture on its head from a mantra of "why we are winning" to a mantra of "how we learned from failure". All closed lost deal reasons, lead disqualification reasons, meeting cancellation reasons, and any other proof of prospect objection becomes the new daily, weekly, monthly narrative for the sales team.  Any disposition marked by a sales rep without demonstrating world class vulnerability and honesty is deemed a failure.

My prediction for cascading impact: Average tenure of each member of the sales team instantly doubles, probability of 'successful future CEOs' on the sales team quadruples, a massive fully integrated marketing attack on 'much warmer' old prospects lead to increased conversion and adds in a record numbers of referrals deals for the year, ROI on Revenue Operations skyrockets to 20x (Only the CFO knows it, because the term 'revenue operations' still confuses), and engineers proactively congratulate sales people with genuine eye contact.

Customer Success’s Project – Land Testimonials & Case Studies at All costs

Priority Project: Land as many testimonials, sales referrals, and case studies as you can.

What is it: No more expectations to “control the wind” by maintaining your “book of business”. This project is all about how much tangible praise you can extract from the customer base. 3 Categories: Snippets, Referrals, and Case Studies. If this praise isn't authorized to share, properly categorized for Sales & Marketing co-horting (business case, business profile, team profiles), and include measurable proof from the customer.. then they don’t count.

My prediction for cascading impact: Marketing's demand generation strategy shift from spray and pray to more targeted Account Based Marketing (ABM) approach which serves a much more relevant story to a relevant buyer. In turn, fewer MQL false positives but higher Lead to Close win rates. AI functionality on Gong and Salesloft Sales Recordings report back that the words "Don't take my word for it.." is the number one ranking phrase said by sales reps on closing calls. By year end, Finance & Revenue Operations have enough data proof of justify the revenue multiplier and retention impact of a single Customer Praise that it becomes a strategic metric shared with the board.

These 'lofty' ideas might already sound familiar. In fact, I can nearly guarantee that each of your current functional leaders will claim they are already engaging in such activities to some degree for the business.

However, as the 200 year old saying goes,

"What is not defined, can not be measured. What is not measured, can not be improved." - William Kelvin

This principle holds true in our context as well.

While it's relatively easy to engineer and deploy such initiatives in your current business systems, the true challenge lies in managing perceptions. Convincing stakeholders of the value in unconventional strategies requires not only data but also a compelling vision of the potential long-term impact on your organization's success.

But imagine how fun it would be if it worked! Beating the status quo on effective compensation structure design, fostering team collaboration, killing your revenue goals, and strengthening employee relationships along the way?



Sometimes, the most rewarding outcomes come from daring to think differently and taking calculated risks. Just remember, you work in startup land for a reason.