Who Should Own the Salestech Budget? Marketing or Sales?

Salestech is the sweet spot where sales and technology fuse together to form the tools that can boost productivity, drive speed to lead, improve lead coverage and ultimately close more deals. When the right salestech falls in the right sales team’s hands, magical things can happen for your cash money…  

salestech budget

Marketing and sales have been drifting closer together in recent years and with such a boom in martech it’s no surprise that salestech is now following in its footsteps.

Martech and salestech are no strangers, in fact, they’ve already crossed paths. While you may be familiar with salestech residing in a featured spot on Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape, as salestech continues to expand it’s inspired salestech experts such as Nancy Nardin to create it’s very own SalesTech Landscape.   

But when it comes to managing the salestech budget, who takes charge? Does marketing maintain authority, or should sales sit behind at the wheel?  

Before we begin to wrack our brains, let’s think funnels. Who sits where and who does what?

Marketing is responsible for building brand awareness and driving demand generation, so their primary focus sits at the top of the funnel, as does much of their tech. Whereas sales are of course focused on selling, sitting at the bottom of the funnel.

So, if martech assists the marketing and salestech assists the selling then is the simple answer: Sales can manage and maintain the salestech budget and marketing the martech one?

If only it were that simple. Marketing and martech have grown in responsibility from a cost centre to a revenue generation and customer experience. What does this mean? In a nutshell, sales have become more integrated in the marketing strategy than ever.

Much like the Marketing Technology Landscape includes salestech as a category, marketing & sales funnels have a critical salestech part to them too. The key to success across both functions is alignment. To think holistically, tip to toe of the funnel, martech to salestech.

Great alignment comes from collaboration, and while having a final budget holder is important the part that comes before that is critical. Understanding the different users of the end technology, be that salestech or martech, who will use the tech and what are they trying to achieve?  

So, the answer to the million-dollar question: Where marketing will already manage the broader stack which is wrapped around the entire customer journey – it makes the most sense for them to tackle the budget for the entire stack, including the salestch. The last thing you want is for your salestech to be siloed. 

But make no mistake, sales should remain in the driver’s seat as the key stake holder. They are the ones who need to decide what tech fits their use case and ways of working, then work collaboratively with marketing to ensure this can be delivered throughout a fully connected stack.

By aligning your marketing team and sales team, your martech and your salestech, you will drive more success to the business. Think of these teams and tools holistically as they all drive to deliver a common goal.

Let us know, who owns your salestch budget? And do you see it staying that way?