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Breaking Silos: Uniting Marketing And Sales For Growth
What if your next stage of growth isn’t another ad campaign, but a system that turns every good conversation into a clear next step? We sat down with Ashley Howard of DevMar Strategies to map the journey from first touch to raving review—and why uniting marketing and sales inside a single CRM changes everything.
Ashley shares how DevMar grew from solo consulting to a full-service firm by obsessing over systems that actually get used. We dig into the foundations: choosing a CRM your whole team can live in, designing repeatable workflows, and collecting the data you’ll wish you had in five years. You’ll hear how to automate confirmations and follow-ups without losing the human touch, why a shared source of truth breaks silos, and how tracked emails and activity timelines turn guesswork into accountability.
For scrappy teams starting from zero, Ashley outlines a practical HubSpot-first path: spin up the free CRM, define the fields that matter, import your contacts, and build from there. If your tech stack is bursting at the seams, we walk through auditing tools, planning migrations, leveraging native integrations, and consolidating reporting so leaders can make faster, smarter decisions. Most importantly, we show how sales’ real-world pain points should flow back into marketing’s messaging, content, and budgets—closing the loop that drives predictable pipeline.
You’ll leave with a simple mantra: systems should break silos, data should serve the future, and adoption is everything. If you’ve ever felt buried under spreadsheets or worried automation would make you sound robotic, this conversation will reset how you think about growth operations.
Connect with DevMar Strategies:
https://www.bbb.org/us/ok/yukon/profile/marketing-consultant/devmar-strategies-0995-90130002
https://www.facebook.com/DevMarStrategies/
https://devmarstrategies.com/
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Hey everybody and welcome back to the Build With BBB Podcast. I'm your host, Farmer, for BBB serving Central Oklahoma. And today we're talking about one of my favorite topics, considering I am a marketing gal. We brought in a local accredited business, Ashley Howard with DevMar Strategies. Ashley, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Have you too.
SPEAKER_01:So one of my favorite questions always to ask is tell me a little bit about your origin and how you started your business. Sure.
SPEAKER_00:So uh I worked for a really great marketing PR firm for a lot of years and then had the privilege of working at a nonprofit that I loved. And then I had a baby. And it was interesting how everything in my life and mindset kind of shifted around that time. And I had some folks that I'd worked with over the years that were soliciting my support. And I didn't really have the bandwidth with a full-time job, but I kind of was in this perfect life season where a transition just made sense. And so I started DevMAR as a way to be home more with my son. And it's worked really well. But we have grown exponentially in the last two years. So what started off as just consulting, as kind of a side deal to be more present at home has turned into a fully functioning marketing and development firm, which I'm very proud of. I'm not in it alone anymore, which I'm also very happy about. And it's just we've gotten to work with a lot of different groups, everything from technology to nonprofits to education, all types of industries. And so it keeps me sharp, keeps me moving. Really, when we're talking to these groups, it's it's both. You talked about your world being marketing, but it is marketing and development. And how do those two things coexist? How do they align? How do you build strategies that support both sides, brand awareness, and taking people all the way through being a lead to becoming a new client for an organization? So we're having lots and lots of fun and just taking it one day at a time.
SPEAKER_01:So we'll dive into that a little bit later. I'll ask some questions about how these kind of like marketing and like business development teams kind of work together in order to really make a great system. But tell me why that was your focus in your business, why you focus so much on all of the content that you teach to your clients.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So, you know, I've worked, as we all have in our career, I've seen a lot of different setups when it comes to like marketing and development and how those groups work together. And the one thing that I've brought to the table time and time again for different organizations that I've worked for and with is figuring out how to break down silos between those two departments so that um, because really they're one team, right? Your sales representatives, your development people, they're a walking billboard for your brand. Their messaging, what they're saying, the process, they're walking prospects through, all of that is a reflection of who you are and the experience people have when they hear your name. It all starts to kind of combine and add together. And so one of the things that I've really focused on with a lot of these groups I've worked with is what systems are in place that allow both departments to coexist, to share information, to share data, uh, to automate certain processes where it makes sense and to really allow for some synergy that might be lacking otherwise when people exist in different systems. So we always start and focus on those foundational systems. Do you have a customer relationship management tool? Is it providing support to both good support to both your marketing and your sales team? Is there full adoption across the organization? Are you collecting data in a meaningful way that could be used to further market or to better understand your target audience and things that can support your marketing team with developing messaging and targeting new people that look like your existing clients or your ideal client? And so we're kind of working on both of those things simultaneously. And I've seen this over and over and over again everywhere I've been, and it's kind of a differentiator for us. And so whenever we talk to clients, this is why I focus so heavily on systems, because when we're talking to them, we're talking about how do we bring these two groups together and how do we create replicatable steps, right? Things that we're gonna do every single time to make sure we're capturing the same information and we're doing things in a way that is it's gonna support operations when you get the sale. You know, when we're talking about business to business, usually there's an onboarding process, there's data collection that has to happen to make sure that actually executing after you bring them on as a client goes smoothly and well. And so we're looking at this holistically, right? It's not, well, let's just put some billboards out there and get our name out there and market ourselves. Well, that's great, but what do you do when people start noticing you and they come to you and you don't have a system in place for actually bringing them on as a client or onboarding them appropriately? Um, and really we evaluate the full customer journey from a system standpoint and from a strategy standpoint. So it's okay, gain attention so that people know you exist. So when they need you, they know how to find you. Now they've found you. Are you listening? Do you hear their pain points and what they're going through? And does your system allow you to collect that information in a meaningful way so that you can provide a pitch and a proposal that directly speaks to them, aligns with their needs, sets good expectations on both sides so that the onboarding is seamless. And then once you've onboarded them, do you have a process for getting them to sing your praises, to give you a review, to tell people about how wonderful you are? And all of these things, they seem kind of like no-brainer, but they're a lot of work if you don't have systems in place to automate some of it and to to just develop some of it into your workflow in a way that doesn't all have to be done manually, um, especially for smaller teams, right? You've got you got a team of two or three people, their time is precious. And the more you can take the administrative burden off of them and allow them to use their brain and do the things that you hired them to do, the better. And so that's that's why we focus there. We focus, we focus really heavily on systems. And what systems do you have in place and can they scale with you? Do they work for every department you have in place? And so not every customer relationship management tool does that. I find a lot of organizations out there that they'll have a CRM for their sales team, but then maybe they've got all these other marketing tools for their marketing teams because a lot of CRMs are not friendly to marketers, even though all the data the marketer needs lives in that CRM. Um and so we help people evaluate systems that are affordable, that can work for them, that fit all of the needs that they have, that allow all the departments they're working with to live in one space, and really will afford us to automate anything that we can find and evaluate that can be automated. And it's different for every company, right? It's there's not a one size fits all or a one solution fits all. Um, and I think that's what makes us special is we can get in there and really dig deep and understand different business models and help them implement this.
SPEAKER_01:For there's a couple of questions that are ringing around my brain as you were talking. But the first thing is some, and maybe this is an assumption, but a business might come to you and say, like, automation, I don't really want to lose that kind of like client-customer relationship. How do you like give comfort or like provide feedback to the business owner to say, no, like there's a reason we're doing this and it's still it's gonna help your client in the long run?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So one of the biggest things that systems like this provide is accountability. So when I say automation, you don't have to automate every email and every conversation. I'm not talking about like robotic scripts and things like that. But what I am talking about is, okay, is there a process that we lean into every time we do this? So if somebody fills out a contact us form, what is our process? Well, we immediately respond and say, hey, we got your message. We're working on this, we would like to set up a meeting. So maybe you can automate that initial message. But now there has to be a follow-up if that meeting doesn't get scheduled. So can the system automatically create a follow-up task for you to remind you to do that so that you don't have to remember? It kind of frees space in your brain for all of these checklists and to-do lists and handwritten this and that or spreadsheets that one person's keeping or another person has a notebook that they're writing everything down in. It just gives you a place where everything lives centrally. That automated touch point, it's just a task that pops up to remind you to do that thing. So when you're looking at workflows, you you just be really intentional. Okay, this really can be automated. It's gonna say the same thing every time. It's not a big deal. This part here needs to be a little bit more personal. So all we need is an automated reminder that we need to do this thing. You can incorporate internal things, external things. So um, you know, it might just be a pass off internally, right? Hey, I got this meeting scheduled set for so-and-so. Here's everything you need to know going into the meeting, right? And that's an internal prompt that can be automated through a workflow. So don't be afraid of it. It just, you know, you gotta, it takes a human looking at it and really evaluating what makes sense, what doesn't make sense, but you're protecting your process and you're creating systems of accountability because now those tasks exist and you can in your weekly meeting go, oh, did anybody reach out to this person? We have a task here for it. And so it just helps keep things moving. It gives you a visual on things that maybe typically had just been happening behind the scenes and there was no paper trail or specific process in place.
SPEAKER_01:I think you said it really well, especially when it comes to smaller teams. And I'm thinking of like the business owner that's like, you know, he's still doing the selling, and maybe he's got like one or two other people on his team and like trying to keep up with all of that, with that time being so precious, that one reminder could kind of save the day in terms of retaining a client or selling a client.
SPEAKER_00:So I agree. I think it's a great strategy. Absolutely. It also helps when you have a system like this in place, like a customer relationship management tool that works and does all the things. Um, you can send tracked correspondences and I mean it's not just manual notes, right? If you have the right system, you can actually click a button and it'll track that email and you'll know if they open it, you'll know if they click on it. And then over time, you've got this really incredible historical record about every touch point you've ever had with that customer. And that can serve you well in a lot of difficult conversations or upselling somebody on something, or just honoring the length and value of that relationship, right? Understanding, like, oh wow, we've been working together for 10 years. That's worth celebrating. Like there's things you can do when you have that data available.
SPEAKER_01:So going down the line of kind of like clients who come to you for help, what does it look like when you have a client come who has very little or no systems in place? How do you work on onboarding? How do you help them figure out, you know, how to maximize their, you know, budget? What does that look like? Walk me through that.
SPEAKER_00:So it's funny, no systems in place like at the very infancy is sometimes easier than some of the groups that come and they're like, I have 15 systems, and none of them talk to each other and they all serve a but um for folks that have nothing in place, everybody has to start somewhere. And the longer you put it off, the the more data and information you're losing out on. So that's the first thing I tell people is like, hey, we got to get something stood up and we're gonna get smarter as we go through this process. And I keep mentioning CRM, one that works, one that has good um integrations, one that, you know, teams can use across multiple departments. Uh, and I'm just gonna say right now, we do a lot in HubSpot because it's a really great tool. It's not the only tool out there, it's not the only tool we work in. But one of the things I love about HubSpot, if you're just starting, is they have a free CRM. So this is like your homework assignment. If that's you and you are not using a system right now, 399, you need to go to HubSpot.com and create a login. Just um here's where you can start capturing very general customer data. You can start putting your contacts into the system. And then you start thinking about what kind of information, you know, five years from now, what's going to be important to me. If I wanted to pull a report and see, like, okay, how many people bought this type of product? Then you know you need to start capturing that information now. So start looking at building properties where you can actually note certain pieces of information. Um, and and just start with the bare minimum. I mean, just get into the system and start putting your customer information into the system. HubSpot, as you grow with the tool, there's some functionality that you can buy later on. But at least you have a system where you can start making notes. You can start, if you have an email marketing list or people that you're have already been working with you and maybe it exists in an Excel spreadsheet, you can actually import it into the system and have a starting place. You're not starting from nothing. But that system will scale with you. So even if you have zero dollars to invest and you have no idea what you're doing, start there. Create a free login, start looking at some of the tutorials and just see what's available within that system because you will be able to eventually mature into doing email marketing and other messaging types and building out full development workflows and touch points. And those are all things you can do later on if you have that basic system in place. Don't wait. That's my biggest advice. Don't wait. Go ahead and set it up today and start capturing anything and everything you can. Let's talk about the people that are trying. They're doing everything they can. And every time a new need pops up, they're because they don't have this powerful system, right, that can do all the things. Every time a new need pops up, they're going and they're finding a new system that meets that need. And so we get groups that come to us and they're like, well, we have this email service provider, we have this SMS system, we have this CRM, we've got this contract system, we've got, you know, and you start really looking at their tech stack from a marketing and development standpoint, and it is, it's 15, 20 systems. A lot of them have duplicate functionality, but none of them do all of the things that you need. And so with those groups, the first thing we do is evaluate what systems are in place and what functions are they carrying out for us. And then we look at some proposed systems that might actually replace and save that group a ton of money. And that's what's always really shocking to people is they think they've saved a bunch of money because when they first looked at CRMs, you know, maybe$10,000 a year was just out of the question for them, right? So then they started cobbling all these systems together. Well, when you start looking at it, now they're at about$14,000,$15,000 across, you know, 15 different systems that only cost them$1,000 a year, but none of them talk to each other, none of them are together. And slowly you've creeped up into that financial investment, anyways. And so we go through and we figure out which ones, um, which ones can all be gotten rid of. How do we migrate into the system? And so there in most of these systems, there is ways to download the information that's in there, and you can do a data migration. Uh, data hygiene is very important during that. Um, that's something we help groups with. A lot of IT folks can support in this area if you have that kind of infrastructure, or if you're just a roll up your sleeve kind of person, usually you can, you know, go find a step-by-step on how to download the information and then importing in systems is usually pretty simple. It's getting it out of the old ones that can be challenging. So you look at which ones you can migrate data from. And then the other ones, you look at integrations. You know, there's not one system that can do 100% of everything, unfortunately. But there are systems such as HubSpot that have really solid integration libraries. So HubSpot's got over a thousand integrations with other pieces of software. And what I do going forward, once you've implemented a system like that, is if you find a need that your current tool is not meeting, then you look through the integration library and see is there another system that integrates here? So you're still constantly trying to make sure that none of these systems exist on their own. They're all talking to each other, and there's still this one source of truth where every bit of information is flowing in. Um, and so that's what we do. We do the evaluation, we see what we can get rid of, really evaluate the expense of migrating over. And then the beautiful thing about this too is a lot of people are pulling reports and data and information off to the side, building pivot tables or filtering through spreadsheets and stuff like that. But when you get everything into one system, you can build really great reports that are automated that you don't have to manually set and do all that stuff with. Uh, getting everything into one system not only reduces your administrative time that you're spending on those things, but information just becomes readily available. You can make decisions faster, you can see trends faster. Um it just it's a night and day difference when you're not signing into 15 different platforms to execute, you know, two things that you're just trying to do really quickly, but they all are impacted by all these other things. So that gets a little more complicated, doable and worth the time investment, you know, and not all of these things. If you're just starting off, like I said, you can you can just get in and start playing. You're not gonna break it. Don't be afraid of trying new systems. But if you're looking at migrations and integrating multiple systems, sometimes it's worth it to bring somebody in to kind of help evaluate and and look at those things. But your life could be easier. That's all I have to say. If that's where you're living right now, it could be so much easier. He just did a quick systems evaluation.
SPEAKER_01:So we've spent some time talking about like how these systems communicate with one another. Let's move into like departments working with one another. Talk me through that a little bit. How are you helping our business development team and our marketing team who really function together really not stay so separated and come together for the company goals?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So there's a couple things. Uh, one of the things we get into when we're working with development teams is needs assessments and like really, what kind of questions are you asking to truly understand your clients' pain points, right? Like, where does it hurt and how are you going to fix it and solve for it? Well, those pain points, uh, you start hearing trends over time, right? And and as the development person, you're hearing those things firsthand. Your marketing folks need that messaging. They need to understand what these folks are coming to you with because that influences the messaging that they're putting out for your brand awareness campaigns or the content that goes on your website, or um, you know, different campaigns that they might recommend based on your target audience. And so there's just a sharing of information, even anecdotal, that has to happen between those two departments. And so some of what we've helped do is actually process that needs assessment or put process to that needs assessment piece of the puzzle. And there's data collection. And then that data, because it exists in the system, is now available to the marketing team, even if conversations aren't flowing as well as they could be, the information is there for them. We also look at like when you're a year a marketer. So whenever you go to spend advertising dollars, right, and you're like, okay, we have a goal. Let's say event attendance, we need to, excuse me, we need 100 people to attend this event. Well, if you start looking at actual conversion rates and like, okay, so if we get 100,000 people to look at this page and 1% of them click here and another 1% actually register, those numbers over time you can lean into them and say, okay, well, last time, you know, our metrics look like this. So if we want to hit this many people, we we need a budget of X, right? And it helps you to kind of be a little more systematic about how you make budget recommendations and where you spend money. Well, the same is true on general lead capturing, right? If you understand what your development team's conversion rates are, so I gave you 100 leads, you converted 20 of them. We next year we want 30 new clients. So how many more leads do I need to get you, right? And so if you understand close rates and some marketing qualified leads converted to sales qualified leads, converted to actual closed deals, you're giving your marketer data and information that they can use to build smarter, better campaigns in the future. The other piece of this is on the development side, we actually create a development, I guess you could say workflow. It's a journey that you're trying to take your potential client through. So what does your initial touch point look like? What are your follow-up touch points? How do you collect data? Are there things you need to educate them on along the way? And you figure out what each of these touch points are, and then you start looking at is there some collateral that might make communicating this a little easier? Or is there for the onboarding piece, are there some touch points where we can have a welcome email and maybe a, hey, you've been assigned this person to work on your account and all these different touch points. And your marketing team builds those, right? Your development team has to lean into it and communicate that this is the process, these are the steps, but your marketing team actually is building the workflow and the automations and the messaging that goes along with those things. And so they can't exist without each other. So we put everybody in a room. We do map all this out together, marketing and sales, and then lean into okay, here are the things that we need to stand up and do. And this is marketing ownership and this is developments ownership, and here's how these things work together. So even without bringing an outside group in, my biggest recommendation to organizations that are just starting to think about how marketing and and development coexist is to start there and figure out what are all the touch points from a person figuring out who you are all the way through to becoming a client and then onboarding. What are all those touch points and what information should be available? Who's owning what communications? And then you'll start to see this path develop in front of you. Like, okay, we need to develop these items and we need to put together this workflow and these touch points. And we help facilitate and walk people through that, but it doesn't mean you can't do it on a smaller scale starting from the very beginning and just mature in that process as you grow as an organization.
SPEAKER_01:Uh a business who might be listening today who says, I kind of like some of the stuff Ashley is saying. What is your ideal client? Come to you who's looking for help, who should reach out to you if they say, I need help with systems, I don't even know where to start.
SPEAKER_00:Well, if you're saying that out loud, like I don't even know where to start, I love to just grab coffee and I can at least, even if if I'm not the starting point, I can at least tell you like this is where I would start. But I think for if you're just getting started, you know, creating that free hub spot login and getting in there is a great first step. And then reaching out to somebody that's done it and having a mentor that you can kind of, okay, what worked, what didn't, lessons learned, things like that. Or an organization like DevMar that does this, this is what they do, and they go in and do a full evaluation and actually lean into your business. I say this because like HubSpot, you can go, um hopefully I don't get in trouble for saying that, but you can go to HubSpot directly and get the tool and they'll do an onboarding. And what they're doing is they're training you on how to use the tool. They're not setting anything up, they're not doing the data migration for you. They're not, and so uh it really depends on what expertise you have in-house that should define how you, you know, what your next step is. If you don't have IT or people that understand your current systems really well, and then you probably would want to engage somebody like Devmar to come in and evaluate. Um, but I think the first step, I mean, honestly, I don't know if that sounds weird, but like just I just let's just get coffee and talk about it. You may not need me, but at least you'll have a starting point because it's gonna look a little bit different for every group. Uh, and I don't know if that was a good answer.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, industry for that matter, depending on who you're serving and your client base and how niche it is or not. I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, we've done this for gosh, big medical practices that had like multiple hospital locations, full implementations there, very large nonprofits that had to migrate from existing donor management systems. Um, and and nonprofits are notorious for existing in a bunch of siloed systems because they're trying to be frugal with money, right? But af again, over time you start to evaluate it and you're like, oh, we're spending more than we maybe would have. Um you're absolutely right. Every industry, every group is a little bit different. So just having that first conversation can go a long way in mapping out what the next steps are gonna be.
SPEAKER_01:Any other tidbits of information you want to share with our listeners about our chat today?
SPEAKER_00:Why? I just, you know, I think the three biggest things are your systems should be breaking down silos, not creating them. Um, so if if your sales and marketing team aren't living in the same system, that's a problem. The same world even. The same world even. Yeah, especially when you talk about remote work and and things that have kind of changed and evolved how companies work, uh, that system might be the only grounding point that's keeping everybody on the same page. It should break down silos, data collection, data collection. You may not think you need it now, but if if it might serve you later, like always be thinking ahead, always be thinking bigger, thinking to scale, uh, not right now in the moment. Collecting as much information as you can along the way is a huge deal. And then honestly, the user experience matters. Adoption of the tool matters. If you're paying for systems and people are avoiding them like the plague because they're hard to use or they don't understand, then you're not gonna find success there. So really paying attention to the user experience, something that's intuitive and easy to use is gonna be a big deal too. So I think those are the three things I would really just emphasize for people uh that are looking to step things up a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:Um so down in the show notes we'll have your contact information. What's the best way somebody can reach out to you if they have questions?
SPEAKER_00:Oh gosh. You can go to our website, uh Debmarstrategies.com, or my email address will be down below as well. You can email me or call us. Our phone number is on the website, and any of those methods of communication will work just fine and we'd be happy to connect.
SPEAKER_01:Great. Thank you for being here today. I had a lot of fun filming. If you've got questions about this episode or want to connect with Ashley, you can find information down in the show notes. We'll also have a recap of all the tips and tricks and resources you recommended in today's episode. Make sure to find Ashley or DevMar Strategies on DMV.org. Connect with them on social media, and we will see you in the next episode. Bye, friends.