Busting Silos: How Snowflake Unites Sales and Marketing to Win its Best Customers

This is an extremely practical book. There’s not really a lot of theory here.

The over-arching point of the book is to create a plan to bring sales and marketing together in enterprise technology selling.

Honestly, I didn’t really know this was a big problem, but apparently it is. The two authors work for a technology company called Snowflake, and they paint a picture of extreme dysfunction in most organizations. Apparently, sales and marketing in most organizations don’t talk to each other, and all sorts of problems and inefficiency result from this.

I’ve actually started reading the book a second time with a highlighter in hand. I have a professional opportunity to do something with the information that I’ve read (the book was recommended by someone inside my company who has put it into practice), so I want to make sure I pick up on it all.

Be aware that there’s a lot of jargon in this book. You need to understand things like ABM, SDR, sales motions, sales plays, etc. If you don’t actually work in tech sales or marketing, the book will confuse you (and probably isn’t much use to you anyway).

In the end, the book is trying to make you take action on a new strategy – it’s is trying very hard to spur you to action by giving you very practical strategies on how to do something.

I imagine that how this works out for you very much depends on your organization. I think it’s tough to make this apply to all organizations, since political differences exist.

But if nothing else, the book is motivational. Knowing that the problem exists is likely half of the solution.