Over the past quarter on Marketing in Progress, we spoke with CMOs, demand gen leaders, a sales director, an executive recruiter, and a handful of founders. They each hold different seats, chase different goals, and work in different industries, but the same threads ran through every conversation: sales and marketing alignment, marketing accountability, and intentional focus.

The marketing teams pulling ahead are building plans with sales, measuring what the business actually values, and doing fewer things well. Here’s how our guests put that into practice, and how you can apply it as you build your 2027 plan.

1. Sales and marketing alignment is a practice, not a meeting

Everyone says sales and marketing alignment matters, but few organizations give their teams what they need to close the gap. This quarter’s guests agreed on what it actually takes: intention. Effective alignment comes from daily habits, not a monthly sync.

Michelle Randall, CMO at Numeracle (formerly at Onspring), holds one rule above all: Your word is everything, and you never throw sales under the bus. When Jenn Parrino (now at PolyAI) and Candice Wright worked together at Glia, their team met with every sales rep every week to hear why buyers were really switching.  

And in an episode of The Fix, Gayle Birkelund Kalvert and Kristin Allaben made the case for pulling sales into event planning 60 to 90 days out, before the team spends a single dollar.

What it means for you: You build alignment in small, repeated moments. Showing up to quarterly business reviews (QBRs), asking sales why you win and why you lose, and keeping every commitment you make is how habits start to stick. Over time, those habits turn into trust. Trust is what keeps both teams working from the same plan when priorities shift.

Episode recommendations:

•  The Best CMOs Don't Have All The Answers. They Ask Better Questions. with guest Michelle Randall 

• The Fix #2: Stop Treating Events Like One-Offs, co-hosted by Gayle Birkelund Kalvert and Kristin Allaben 

• How to Build Real Sales-Marketing Alignment with guests Jenn Parrino and Candice Wright 

2. Marketing accountability: Measure the job, not the activity

Boards and CEOs aren't asking for more activity. They want results. According to Kate Bullis, Managing Director at executive search firm ZRG Partners, companies want marketing leaders who create momentum.

Building momentum starts with a clear definition of what you’re doing and why. Every campaign or program has its own goals, so it needs its own metrics. You can repeat the foundational prep, but a rinse-and-repeat approach to measurement won’t tell you much.

Consider events. A single event might aim to create pipeline, open a cold account, or speed up a deal already in motion, and each of those goals calls for a different metric. Stephanie Worthington, Head of Events and Field Marketing at Upstart, tracks event influence with her revenue operations (RevOps) team at the 3-, 6-, and 12-month marks. Sam Eitzen, CEO of SnapBar, measures experiential programs on engagement, leads captured, and reach after the event ends.

Each of those metrics ties back to a very specific goal, which is why a one-size-fits-all approach to measurement doesn’t work.

What it means for you: Define the purpose of a program or event before it starts so you measure the right outcome. Then report in metrics the rest of the business already values. If you have to explain why a number matters, it’s probably the wrong number.

Episode recommendations:

• Inside the CMO hiring process with guest Kate Bullis

• Proving Event ROI with guest Stephanie Worthington

• Experiential Marketing: Good Vibes, Real ROI with guest Sam Eitzen

3. Do fewer things, better

AI makes it easier than ever to produce more content, faster. Yet the strongest argument our guests made this quarter ran the other way: do less.

Kate Hamilton, a fractional CMO specializing in messaging and positioning, encouraged teams to notice when marketing starts to feel reactive, then pause and decide what they can stop doing. Cari Jaquet, CMO at P0 Security, pushed leaders to kill their darlings when a campaign isn’t landing, and Cahill Camden, founder and CEO of Digital Vision and Novacast.ai, built a high-growth go-to-market (GTM) motion by committing to one or two channels for a set window and letting the results decide what came next.

What it means for you: Focus is a strategy, not a compromise. Concentrating your team’s time and budget on fewer programs is how lean teams outperform bigger budgets, and how marketing becomes repeatable instead of reactive.

Episode recommendations:

• Focus, systems & AI: How marketers can grow without doing everything with guest Cahill Camden

• Fail fast and pivot faster in marketing with guest Cari Jaquet

• The 5-Person test for brand alignment with guest Kate Hamilton

Taking it into Q4

The end of the year is when marketing teams build plans, defend budgets, and set expectations with leadership. That makes Q4 the right moment to pressure-test your plan against these three threads. 

Before you call yours final, or, better yet, before you really get started, run three quick checks:

1. Alignment: What role did sales play in shaping the plan? 

2. Measurement: Does every major program have a defined job and a metric your CEO already cares about?

3. Focus: Where should your team concentrate its effort to make the biggest business impact?

Head into the new year with a plan that’s built to help you succeed. 

Ready to put this into practice? Start with our year-end marketing gap checklist to help gain clarity on where to focus first.

Listen to every episode from Q3 and more on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, and follow the show so you don’t miss what’s next.