Appendix 1: Marketing and sales work together from day one

Last updated: June 9, 2026

Here’s how most companies handle intent data: Marketing waits. They collect account-level signals, wait for enough to accumulate, score the account, and then pass it to Sales. By the time you get the lead, weeks have passed. The person who showed interest has moved on.

Contact-level intent flips this completely. Because you know who showed intent (not just which account), there’s no reason to wait. One signal with a name and a topic is enough to act.

The old way vs. the new way

Account-level (old way)

Contact-level (new way)

Signal arrives

Marketing sees “someone at Acme” is researching

Marketing sees “Jane Smith, VP Marketing at Acme” searched for team performance software

What happens next

Marketing waits for more signals to improve confidence before involving Sales

Signal goes to Sales immediately via Slack/CRM. Marketing continues running ads in parallel.

Time to sales action

Days to weeks

Within 24 hours

Sales experience

“Here’s a list of accounts that might be interested. Hope you’ll figure out who to call.”

“Jane Smith searched for X yesterday. Here’s her role, her company context, and what she cares about.”

Why this matters to you

In the old model, you’re always behind. With contact-level signals, you and marketing are working the same contacts at the same time:

  • Marketing is running contact-level ads targeting your prospect’s buying group, building brand familiarity and generating engagement signals.

  • You are acting on those signals in real time — sending relevant emails, making calls, engaging on LinkedIn.

  • The prospect sees your company in their ad feed AND gets a relevant email from you. That’s a coordinated play that makes your outreach feel like a warm conversation.

The key idea:

Stop thinking of marketing and sales as sequential stages. Start thinking of it as parallel and continuous. Marketing and Sales work the same contacts from the same moment a signal fires. Marketing is giving you air cover, and you're capitalizing on it in real time.