One Team, One Story: How to Build Shared Purpose

At FluentStream, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when go-to-market teams are brought together to operate as one. Let me tell you: it's amazing.

We’re not the biggest company in our space yet we consistently win deals against much larger competitors. We may not have more budget or more features, but our customers experience a seamless, unified journey from the time they learn our name to their first conversation with Sales to onboarding with Success to ongoing campaigns from Marketing.

That’s not luck. That’s alignment. And it starts with shared purpose.

When I joined FluentStream, Sales, Marketing, and Success each reported into different departments. Today, I lead all three as a cohesive GTM team. I treat that structure as a responsibility to create deeply shared purpose, not a convenience or boxes thrown together on an org chart.

At FluentStream, we often talk about GTM alignment but in practice, what we’re building is something bigger: company-wide alignment around customer impact. It starts with Sales, Marketing, and Success speaking the same language. But it doesn’t stop there. Our cross-functional leaders, from Operations to Product to Finance, show up in the same virtual rooms, emphasize the same priorities, and reinforce the same story. Our teams don’t just understand the what of our strategy, they believe in the why. And most importantly, the entire company feels like we’re solving the same problem, together.

Shared purpose isn’t a slogan or a campaign. It’s a daily commitment built through the language we use, the incentives we structure, and the rituals we uphold.

The Challenge: One Product, Too Many Stories

Before FluentStream, I worked at Adobe during the integration of Magento into the broader Adobe product suite. The product was renamed Adobe Commerce and introduced to an entirely new set of Sales, Marketing, and Success teams.

It was a textbook case of potential getting diluted by misalignment.

Each team was working hard—but we weren’t working together. Marketing elevated brand messaging, Sales leaned on blue sky capabilities, and Success focused on enablement tools. The result? Different stories, different priorities, and a confused customer.

That experience stayed with me. Even the biggest of the big can’t scale growth without shared purpose. No matter the company, shared purpose depends on cross-functional clarity, consistency, and connection. 

So, how do you build it?

Here are the three levers we focus on at FluentStream: language, incentives, and ritual.

1. Language: Say the Same Thing, the Same Way

It starts with how we talk about our business, our product, and our customers. We anchor our teams around:

• The full customer journey, from awareness to loyalty
• Our ideal customer profile (ICP) and why they win
• The key challenges we solve—and how we solve them differently
• The “why” behind our churn, so we can close gaps proactively

We use Company-wide Training Days and platforms like Cooleaf to make GTM education accessible to the whole company. For example, this month we’re launching a Pitch Competition + Quiz:

• Team members record or write their FluentStream elevator pitch
• They answer quick-hit questions to test their understanding of product and customer impact

It’s lighthearted and fun while remaining deeply intentional. Because the more fluency we build, the more aligned and confident we all become and the more we win.

2. Incentives: Reward What You Want to Repeat

People take cues from what’s rewarded—formally and informally. If your incentives only highlight individual wins, you’ll build silos by default.

At FluentStream, we design our incentives to reflect shared wins achieved through individual action. Here’s what that looks like:

• Company-wide bonuses tied to Net Revenue Retention (NRR), so everyone sees value in retaining and expanding existing customers, not just closing new ones
• Cross-functional collaboration credit, so teams are eager to jump in and help even when it’s “not their job”
• Customer referral programs open to every department because growth can come from any corner of the org
• Recognition systems that spotlight behind-the-scenes contributions that move deals forward, change process so work gets a little easier, or improve customer experience

This isn’t just a comp philosophy—it’s a message: we all play a role in growth, and we win when our customers do.

One example I’m especially proud of: For over a year, our head of Sales partnered directly with the Customer Success team on cross-sell opportunities. A Sales leader is always focused on the next deal and ours is no different. But for that year, he was incentivized outside of his commission model to help with expansion. This wasn’t about taking over the deals, it was about modeling strong sales techniques like discovery, negotiation, and pricing strategy.

Now, our CS team runs those plays confidently on their own. That’s the power of intentional, repeated collaboration.

When incentives point in the same direction, silos disintegrate and cross-functional teamwork becomes the default, not the exception.

3. Rituals: Reinforce It Until It Sticks

Shared purpose doesn’t emerge from a single alignment meeting. It’s built over time through repetition, visibility, and shared ownership.

We’re a fast-moving, fast-growing tech company. Everyone’s juggling a lot. Add in the realities of hybrid work and multitasking, and it’s clear: saying something once just won’t cut it.

That’s why we reiterate our core themes at every opportunity. Our CEO and executive team spotlight them in monthly All Hands meetings, where we review:

• Revenue performance
• Sales and retention programs in flight
• Clear, repeatable language about how every team contributes to our growth

Managers are also equipped with messaging to reinforce at the team level. As leaders of teams, we all make it a point to come together regularly in ways that foster understanding and alignment:

• Weekly team meetings that include rotating guest speakers from across the business
• Near-daily standups ("bursts") to tackle in-the-moment needs and surface quick wins or blockers
• Shared Slack channels that keep the conversation flowing and reduce silos
• GTM metric reviews that make business health visible and shared
• Storytelling challenges, team shoutouts, and mini-trainings to reinforce best practices and celebrate progress

The Result: Efficiency via Fewer Meetings, Faster Buy-In

When your teams are aligned in purpose, communication gets sharper, collaboration gets faster—and things simply work better.

Last week, our Head of Business Operations and our GTM Operations Lead joined our team meeting to walk through updates to how we process orders internally. In many companies, a change like that might require six different meetings: Sales enablement, Marketing heads-up, Success team alignment, process walk through, plus a few one-offs to clarify next steps.

But not at FluentStream.

Because we operate from a foundation of shared purpose and we regularly bring teams together in the same virtual rooms, we handled it in one meeting.

• We reviewed the new workflow
• We learned the "why" behind the changes
• Leads highlighted how it supports our customer experience
• Questions were answered live in front of the full GTM org

What could have been a fragmented, time-consuming rollout turned into a 45-minute alignment session that left the team informed, energized, and ready to execute.

Why? Because our cross-functional leaders speak the same language as our Sales, Marketing, and Success teams. They emphasize benefits in ways that resonate across functions. And the whole company feels like they’re solving the same problem.

That’s the kind of operational efficiency shared purpose creates. It’s not just about morale or messaging. It’s about speed, clarity, and smarter use of time.

Alignment Isn’t a Buzzword. It’s a Business Lever.

Go-to-market success doesn’t come from siloed excellence. It comes from cross-functional clarity, consistency, and commitment to the same story.

Language. Incentives. Rituals.

They’re simple, powerful, and repeatable. And when done well, they turn alignment into your competitive edge.

What’s working for you when it comes to GTM alignment? What’s still a work in progress? I’d love to hear what’s worked—and what you’re still working on.