Embedding SDRs in Marketing: The New Growth Engine with Nancy Chou

Why Companies Are Moving SDRs Into Marketing With Nancy Chou

Introduction

Nancy Chou has spent over 20 years in marketing and communications leadership, most recently representing Belkins at MOps-Apalooza 2025, where she spoke on one of the event’s more debated topics: embedding sales development reps directly into the marketing org.

On this episode of Ops in Motion, Nancy joined Kawal to unpack what that shift actually means in practice, what breaks when it’s done without a plan, and how organizations like Intel and Snowflake have made it work.

Who should read this: marketing and sales leaders considering restructuring their SDR function, or already dealing with the tension that comes from splitting pipeline credit between the two teams.

Key takeaways

• Embedding SDRs into marketing changes their job. They stop being appointment setters and start functioning as a market intelligence hub, feeding real objections, messaging gaps, and persona insight back into campaigns.
• The old SDR metrics (emails sent, calls dialed, meetings booked) are vanity metrics once SDRs sit inside marketing. The new ones need to track pipeline outcomes, not activity volume.
• The tension that comes from this shift is real and predictable. It’s manageable with a specific framework, not just good intentions from leadership.
• Most organizations that make this work land on the same reporting structure: SDRs under a demand generation director or manager, inside the CMO’s org.

SDRs stop being appointment setters once they sit inside marketing

Kawal’s framing of the shift is direct: marketing today isn’t just about capturing demand, it’s about creating it, and SDRs sitting inside that function change what they’re actually for. Instead of being measured purely on meetings booked, embedded SDRs become a feedback loop, turning campaigns, content, and intent signals into pipeline faster because they’re the ones hearing real objections and persona details in the field.

That feedback loop runs in both directions. Outbound activity reinforces inbound, and inbound reinforces outbound, instead of the two motions operating as separate, uncoordinated efforts competing for the same prospects.

The metrics that made sense for SDRs in sales don’t work once they move to marketing

Nancy was clear that a new operating model needs a new scorecard. The metrics SDR teams have traditionally been measured on, emails sent, calls dialed, meetings booked, email open rates, are what she calls vanity metrics. They measure activity, not value created.

Once SDRs sit inside marketing, the metrics that actually matter shift toward pipeline outcomes: touch points created, intent signals captured, pipeline velocity, cost per opportunity, and ultimately pipeline created. Kawal’s shorthand for the same idea is worth keeping: it’s the difference between output and outcome. Volume of activity isn’t the goal. Value generated is.

“Going to market is a team sport. Sales and marketing have to be aligned and share common goals, and tension eases when leadership demonstrates from the top that they’re committed to that.”

— Nancy Chou

Moving SDRs from sales to marketing creates real tension, and it’s manageable with the right framework

Reorganizing SDRs under marketing isn’t just a reporting-line change. Sales and marketing run on genuinely different processes and different instincts, even when they’re working toward the same goal, and that friction shows up immediately once the org chart changes. The same tension that causes sales to ignore marketing leads in the first place doesn’t disappear when SDRs move desks. It just shows up in a new form.

Nancy pointed to real examples of companies that made the transition work. Intel successfully moved its SDR function from sales to marketing. Snowflake’s CMO and former CRO co-wrote a book on how the two functions worked in close alignment as the company scaled. In both cases, the common thread wasn’t a perfect org chart. It was leadership demonstrating, visibly, that sales and marketing were operating as one team with shared goals rather than two departments competing for credit.

Nancy’s three-part collaboration framework is what makes that alignment operational instead of aspirational:

• A daily stand-up reviewing content performance, engagement data, intent signals, and which high-priority prospects are ready for a sales handoff.
• A shared attribution model that tracks pipeline across every touchpoint instead of letting marketing and SDR activity get counted separately, which is usually where the credit-fighting starts.
• A unified knowledge-sharing habit, where buyer insights actively shape marketing strategy, content gets built from real prospect feedback, and sales objections directly inform what SDRs are saying in the field.

Where SDRs report matters less than the mindset shift they need to make

Asked where SDRs should sit operationally, Nancy’s answer was that the reporting line matters less than the mental model behind it. The most common setup she’s seen work is SDRs reporting to a demand generation director or manager, inside the CMO’s organization. But the structural placement only works if it comes with a real shift from what she calls hunters to gatherers, or as Kawal put it, from lead chasers to demand shapers.

That shift only sticks when leadership sets clear expectations, celebrates the new pipeline-based metrics together across both teams, and treats the SDR function as an extension of both the brand and the revenue engine, not a headcount line that got moved from one budget to another.

Action items

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If sales and marketing are still arguing over lead credit, that friction doesn’t go away just by reorganizing the team. See how we approach why sales ends up ignoring marketing leads, or talk to our team about your setup.