Sales and marketing are meant to be on the same side.
In B2B fintech, everyone agrees with that in theory. But in practice, it often feels a lot messier.
Sales teams say marketing is too far removed from real buyer conversations. Marketing teams say sales is not using the assets, not following the process, or not giving enough feedback. Messaging gets built in one part of the business, tested in another, and somewhere in the middle, the disconnect starts to show.
And that is exactly why I wanted to have this conversation with Cristina Ciaravalli.
Cristina is the founder and CEO of Valli Ventures, where she works with Series A and Series B founders on go-to-market strategy, sales hiring, advisory, and events. Before that, she led enterprise sales and strategic partnerships at Unit, worked in sales at Plaid, and earlier in her career was in sales and trading at Goldman Sachs and BlackRock. She has worked at the intersection of fintech, revenue, and high-stakes selling for years, and what makes her perspective especially interesting is that it comes from the sales side.
That matters because if you are a fintech marketer, hearing how sales actually experiences your work is incredibly useful.
Not the polished version. Not the theoretical version. The real version.
And one of the clearest themes from our conversation was this: when sales and marketing do not work well together, it is rarely because either team is wrong in principle. It is usually because they are operating too far from each other, too far from the customer, or too far from the reality of the deal.
In fintech, where the product is more complex, the stakes are higher, and trust matters more, that gap gets expensive quickly.
Why sales and marketing often fall out of sync in fintech
One of the most useful things Cristina did in our conversation was explain why fintech sales is so different from many other B2B categories.
You are not just selling software.
You are often selling into regulated environments. You are navigating risk, compliance, multiple stakeholders, and long buying cycles. Sometimes the deal itself is more complex because it involves more than one party. Cristina shared that in some cases, a seller is not just trying to get one company aligned internally. They are trying to get several organizations aligned at the same time.
That makes the job of sales harder, but it also raises the bar for marketing.
In a category like fintech, marketing cannot just create surface-level messaging and expect it to carry the weight of the sales process. Buyers are more skeptical. Internal approval chains are more layered. Messaging needs to feel accurate, credible, and grounded in the kinds of conversations that actually happen in live deals.
That is where the relationship often starts to break down.
Sales is hearing objections all day. Sales knows what buyers are confused by, what they care about, what language they trust, and where momentum gets lost. Marketing, unless there is a strong feedback loop, often has less direct exposure to that reality. And once there is distance between those two worlds, the output starts to drift.
The positioning may sound good on a website but not work in a sales call.
The campaign may generate attention but not help move the right conversations forward.
The asset may look polished but be difficult for a seller to actually use.
In fintech, those small mismatches matter because there is less room for generic messaging and more need for precision.
What sales actually needs from marketing
A lot of marketers assume that what sales wants most is more leads.
That is too narrow.
What Cristina described was something more useful and more practical. Sales wants support that helps create trust, move deals, and make selling easier in the moments that matter most.
That starts with messaging.
Sales wants messaging that sounds like the market, not just like internal brand language. One of the most common tensions between sales and marketing is that the marketing version of the story can feel slightly too polished, too simplified, or too detached from how buyers actually talk. The seller is the one who has to say it out loud to a prospect, handle the follow-up questions, and keep credibility in the room. If the language does not feel usable in conversation, it does not matter how good it looks in a deck.
Sales also wants assets that help close, not just assets that help attract.
That might mean one-pagers, case studies, deal-specific materials, customer stories, or resources that a prospect can easily circulate internally. Cristina made the point that the best marketing support often shows up around real opportunities. A salesperson is trying to move a live account forward, something is getting stuck, and marketing helps create the material, story, or experience that unlocks progress.
There is a big difference between marketing as a handoff function and marketing as a revenue partner.
The first says, here is the content calendar.
The second says, what are you hearing, where is the friction, and what do you need from us to help get this deal done?
That is much closer to what sales actually wants.
The other point Cristina made, which I think fintech marketers should really pay attention to, is that strong support from marketing is not just about generating pipeline at the top. It is also about showing up deeper in the funnel, especially around strategic accounts. In fintech, where deals can be large and cycles can be long, that support can be the difference between being remembered and being ignored.
Why so many marketing efforts miss the mark
One of the reasons I found Cristina’s perspective so refreshing is that she was very specific about how marketing can miss in both directions.
Sometimes the message is too simplistic.
It sounds neat and clean internally, but when a salesperson tries to use it with a serious fintech buyer, it feels thin. It does not capture enough nuance, or it glosses over the very issues the buyer is most sensitive to, whether that is compliance, risk, or operational complexity.
Other times, the opposite happens. The message becomes too dense, too technical, or too formal. It may be accurate, but it is not persuasive. It feels like it was written for internal approval rather than for human conversation.
Both versions create the same problem. The salesperson ends up not wanting to use the language.
That is a useful gut check for marketers.
Are we creating messaging that sales can actually use in a real conversation?
Not just on a landing page. Not just in a campaign. In a conversation.
Cristina also pointed to what is often the root cause of all this: communication. Or more accurately, the lack of the right kind of communication. Sales is on calls all day. Marketing is usually not. If marketers are not listening to calls, not hearing objections, not seeing where buyers get excited or confused, and not learning the product deeply enough, they are naturally going to be at a disadvantage.
This is especially important in fintech because you cannot fake category fluency for long.
If the market is sophisticated, the messaging has to be sophisticated too. That does not mean jargon-heavy. It means informed.
What strong collaboration actually looks like
So what does good look like?
Cristina had a very practical answer: it looks like real collaboration around real deals.
Not just sales and marketing being generally aligned. Not just shared goals written on a slide. Actual working relationships where both teams understand what the other needs and where they can contribute.
She talked about the value of weekly sales and marketing meetings, but not the kind that are just status updates. The useful version is where a salesperson can say, I am trying to move this account forward, here is where it is stuck, here is what I think could help. Then marketing can jump in with ideas, content, structure, or campaign support tied to that actual opportunity.
That changes the nature of the relationship.
Marketing becomes less of a service function and more of a strategic partner to revenue.
Cristina also mentioned something that should probably be standard, but still is not in many companies: marketers having access to sales calls through tools like Gong and actually using that access. If you are responsible for messaging, content, events, or positioning, hearing buyers speak is not optional. It is one of the fastest ways to improve judgment.
Another useful example she shared was around ABM. One of the strongest takeaways from the episode was that real account-based marketing is far more than just LinkedIn ads aimed at a target account list.
At its best, ABM is sales and marketing working closely together to create an experience around a specific account. Cristina described examples like custom landing pages, tailored materials, and thoughtful creative touches designed around what would resonate with a given buyer. That is a very different level of partnership. It is not just demand generation. It is deal support.
For marketers, that is a powerful reframe.
If you want stronger sales alignment, get closer to the moments where revenue is actually being won.
Where marketing can make the biggest revenue impact
One of the strongest subthemes in the episode was trust.
Again and again, the conversation came back to the idea that in fintech, trust is the real currency. Buyers are not just evaluating product features. They are evaluating whether you understand their world, whether you can navigate complexity, and whether they can believe what you are saying.
That is why the best marketing often has its biggest impact not just in awareness, but in trust-building.
Case studies matter because they reduce perceived risk.
Good storytelling matters because it makes value easier to understand.
Targeted campaigns matter because relevance earns attention.
And events matter because they create a space where relationships can move faster than they do through cold outreach alone.
Cristina was especially strong on events. She sees them not as a side activity, but as a real go-to-market lever. But the nuance is important. She is not talking about generic events for the sake of visibility. She is talking about thoughtfully designed events with the right guest list, a clear reason to attend, and enough intentionality that people walk away feeling it was worth their time.
That is very relevant for B2B fintech marketers right now.
As more channels become noisier and more automated, trust-based channels become more valuable.
That is part of why curated events and community-led strategies are getting more attention. They feel more human. They create stronger memory. They can generate better conversations than a lot of scaled outbound ever will.
And that leads directly into one of Cristina’s clearest points.
Why warm outbound and curated events are outperforming cold outreach
Cristina has a strong view on warm outbound, and I think a lot of marketers will find it refreshing.
Her argument is basically this: if founders and early teams are not exhausting their warm network first, they are leaving one of the highest-converting channels on the table. She said founders are often only one connection away from the person they actually want to reach, whether that is through their investors, past colleagues, existing customers, community relationships, or broader network.
That matters because warm outreach is not just another channel. It starts with more trust.
And in fintech, trust changes everything.
Cristina contrasted that with a lot of AI-driven outbound that is optimized for volume. More emails, more touchpoints, more automation, more activity. But as she put it, volume is not the same thing as trust. If the messaging feels generic, automated, or clearly written by a system with no real understanding of the buyer, it may generate noise, but it is unlikely to build the kind of credibility that complex fintech sales require.
She was not anti-AI. In fact, she was quite pragmatic about where it can help. Summarizing calls, helping reps stay organized, building decks, streamlining admin. All of that makes sense. But when it comes to persuasion, trust, and relationship-building, her view was much more grounded. People still buy from people.
That is also why events matter so much in this conversation.
Cristina described curated dinners and smaller gatherings as one of the most effective ways to build real connection. Not just because people like events, but because the format creates better conversations. A smaller room, an intentional guest list, a clear theme, and thoughtful facilitation can create the kind of honesty and trust that rarely happens in a large, generic networking event.
For marketers, the takeaway is not just that events are good.
It is that channels which help trust compound are becoming more strategically important than channels that only optimize for reach.
Key takeaways
- In fintech, sales and marketing misalignment is often a communication gap made worse by product complexity and long buying cycles.
- Sales does not just want leads from marketing. It wants messaging, assets, and collaboration that help move real deals forward.
- The best marketing is grounded in real buyer conversations, not just internal positioning or campaign plans.
- Warm outbound and curated events are outperforming colder, more automated channels because trust matters more than volume in fintech.
- Strong sales and marketing alignment is built through shared visibility, regular working sessions, and actual partnership around accounts and pipeline.
Show notes
In this episode, we cover:
- Why sales and marketing often struggle to work well together in fintech
- What sales actually wants from marketing beyond lead generation
- How to think about messaging, ABM, and sales enablement from a seller’s perspective
- Why warm outbound and curated events are becoming more effective growth levers
- What marketers can do to become more useful partners to revenue teams
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:56 Founder League Explained
03:39 Going Solo in GTM
06:30 Why FinTech Sales Is Hard
08:30 Early Revenue Team Mistakes
13:14 Sales and Marketing Timing
16:32 ABM Done Right
23:52 Bridging Sales Marketing Language
27:15 Weekly Loops and Shared Tools
30:17 AI Outbound Trust vs Spam
35:11 Events as Warm Outbound
40:38 GTM Hot Take and Wrap Up
Show links
- Valli Ventures on LinkedIn
- Cristina Ciaravalli on LinkedIn
- Araminta Robertson on LinkedIn
- Mint Studios on LinkedIn
- Mint Studios Website
- Mint Studios Newsletter
About Araminta Robertson
Araminta is the Founder and Managing Director at Mint Studios, a content marketing agency that helps financial services and fintech companies acquire customers and position themselves as experts with content marketing.
