As the number of martech companies putting out their shingles hits critical mass, many marketers are taking a look at how they can organize their teams to make the most of their martech stacks.

For Shiva Mirhosseini, vice president of marketing technology and digital experience at health insurance giant Aetna, it’s about helping the teams to form the perfect working partnership, or “marriage” as she puts it.

Mirhosseini will be giving a keynote speech at our Martech Conference in Boston about the convergence of marketing and sales technology in early October.

When asked if her marketing and sales teams were too siloed, Mirhosseini said that silos aren’t the issue.

“I don’t know if it’s about combining the silos or that they shouldn’t exist,” Mirhosseini said. “I mean, there’s a reason why things exist and you can’t forcefeed any particular organizational structure. I think the bigger question is less around the structure, but it’s more around incentives.”

Mirhosseini said that martech and sales tech teams speak a different language, using the iconic 90s self-help book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus as a metaphor for the divide.

She said that just like a relationship, the teams must have an incentive to connect.

“It’s two organizations that by design should be working very closely with one another, but they’re completely different,” she said. “They’re fundamentally different and so they need a little bit of coaching in order to come together. As is the case with families — men and women come together and you have to have incentives. Like, why’d you get together? Why? There has to be greater cause and for marketing and sales, it has to be growth.”

Mirhosseini believes that customer data used by marketers provide the “peripheral vision” for a business as a whole, while sales tech provides more objective data in the form of sales metrics, creating a complementary partnership.

Mirhosseini said:

So, I think what’s happening with marketing is that with all these technical capabilities, it has a peripheral vision for the organization as a whole,” Mirhosseini said. “It has to bring that insight and foresight to sales. But then in return, we also have to observe some of those sales metrics, if not all of them. Marketing in this day and age with just the goal to just create and generate leads cannot happen.

[Article on MarTech Today.]

About The Author

Robin Kurzer

Robin Kurzer started her career as a daily newspaper reporter in Milford, Connecticut. She then made her mark on the advertising and marketing world in Chicago at agencies such as Tribal DDB and Razorfish, creating award-winning work for many major brands. For the past seven years, she’s worked as a freelance writer and communications professional across a variety of business sectors.