Creating a Sales and Marketing Strategy for a Scaling Business

Scaling a business is equal parts, opportunity and complexity. For founders and leadership teams, product–market fit might get you off the ground,  but the real challenge is building and executing a sales and marketing strategy that grows with you.

Without a clear, data-driven plan to communicate your value, reach the right audiences, and turn prospects into loyal customers, even the most promising scale-ups risk stalling.

At YFM, we work closely with ambitious scale-ups, particularly in the SaaS space, and one truth stands out: alignment is everything. The scale-ups that grow consistently and sustainably are the ones where sales and marketing work in sync, sharing goals, a unified voice, and a razor-sharp understanding of their ideal customer.

To dig deeper into what works,  and what to avoid,  we spoke with Jess Denny, Head of Comms and Marketing at Xapien, for her top lessons every growth-focused founder should know.

Your value proposition should feel essential, not optional. It’s not about showing every feature,  it’s about proving how your product solves a real, urgent problem.

Jess stresses the need for absolute clarity on:

“Why [your company/solution]?”

“Why now?”

To answer those, you must know what’s true to your brand, the market need, and what differentiates you from competitors. Combine that with data on where your ideal customers are, how they hear about you, and how they convert, and you’ve got a winning formula.

Practical Tips:

Obsess over customers: Join as many sales calls as you can. At Xapien, the team uses Gong to capture real customer language and see what excites them about the product.

Stay true to your brand: Speak your customer’s language but keep your mission and identity front and center.

Watch the competition: In scaling mode, competitors will be chasing you — keep refining your positioning.

Tailor demos: Make every product demo personal to the buyer’s role, challenges, and goals.

Tell stories: Use real-life case studies and analogies to help prospects picture using your product.

Make it interactive: Encourage questions and hands-on exploration to build trust and buy-in.

One of the fastest ways to waste budget and energy is chasing the wrong leads. A clear ICP keeps you focused on the customers who need, understand, and stay with you.

Jess warns: qualifying out the wrong leads is the hard part, but crucial for scalability.

Practical Tips:
Analyse your best customers their sectors, pain points, and decision-makers.
Segment beyond demographics,  include behaviours and motivations.
Use your ICP consistently across sales and marketing.
Disqualify fast if a lead doesn’t fit.
At Xapien, this focus has shortened the sales cycle and improved conversion rates.

Silos kill growth. Sales, marketing, and (if you have it) customer success should operate as one team. Without a feedback loop, you risk wasting valuable insights and creating disjointed customer journeys.

Practical Tips:
Share a single source of truth: Use an integrated CRM/marketing automation stack like HubSpot or Salesforce.
Agree on shared metrics: Marketing doesn’t need revenue targets but should align activity to sales outcomes. At Xapien, marketing is measured on qualified opportunities.
Meet regularly: Hold joint sessions to review pipeline quality, messaging performance, and customer feedback.
Build empathy: Understanding each team’s day-to-day strengthens collaboration.

If you’re often discounting to win deals, you have a positioning problem.

Practical Tips:
Brand-led content: Articulate your vision, mission, and identity so customers buy into the brand, not just the product.
Useful content at every stage: Combine trust-building top-of-funnel assets, ROI-focused case studies, and “how-to” guides.
Outcome-driven messaging: Anchor benefits in the results you deliver, not the features you have.
Discovery first: Early conversations should be about understanding the customer, not closing them.

Rushing to fill gaps without strategy can slow you later.

Practical Tips:
Hire adaptable people with a growth mindset, start with generalists, then add specialists as you scale.
Prioritise cultural fit and collaboration skills as much as experience.
Clearly define roles to avoid overlap, gaps, and burnout.
Equip your team with the right tools early, small investments now prevent bigger issues later.
Set core principles before rapid growth, at Xapien, these guide hiring and strategic decisions.

A sales and marketing plan is useless if it’s not reviewed regularly and backed by data.

Practical Tips:
Decide your key metrics early and stick to them.
Avoid vanity metrics, focus on numbers that influence decisions.
Balance revenue data with leading indicators from marketing and customer success.
Share your campaign and content roadmap across teams to keep everyone aligned.

You need tools that make your team faster and more effective, not overloaded.

Practical Tips:
CRM: Your single source of truth for sales and marketing data.
Automation: Use it for lead nurture, outreach, research, and admin.
Analytics: Track what’s working and tie it to revenue outcomes.
Integrate tools properly from day one: Before adding a tool, ask if it will genuinely help the team and if it can automate a repetitive task.

Stay obsessed with customer needs but don’t lose your brand identity.
Define your ICP and be ruthless about qualifying leads.
Align sales, marketing, and customer success around shared goals.
Lead with value and vision, not discounts.
Build scalable systems, people, and processes early.

Your sales and marketing strategy will only work if your culture supports it. At Xapien, sales, marketing, customer success, product, and engineering work as one, never losing sight of the people behind the data.

The companies that scale successfully are the ones that listen, learn, and evolve in real-time.

Think strategically. Act collaboratively. Keep your customer at the heart of everything you do.