How to Improve Your Marketing-to-Sales Handoff

In this episode, host Chris Hyde sits down with Emily Yepes of Sandler and Betsy Davis of Sandy Alexander to explore the critical handoff between marketing and sales—and how to maximize the value of warm leads through the entire sales cycle.

Discover why sales cycles aren't one-size-fits-all: while transactional deals close quickly, multimillion-dollar contracts can take 12–18 months to mature. Emily and Betsy share practical strategies for demonstrating ROI on marketing investments to leadership, including using real customer journey storytelling to influence C-suite and board decisions. Learn how to combat misunderstandings about lead quality by creating transparency around the long-term nature of enterprise sales.

The discussion also covers building alignment between sales and marketing teams, training younger reps on the true effort behind big wins, and using curiosity-based discovery questions to qualify leads. Emily introduces her Marketing-to-Sales Handoff Playbook, a resource designed to bridge these two critical teams and ensure warm leads convert into closed deals.