My Tech Sales Journey: James Praise
Meet James Praise Co-founder & Product Marketing Manager at Titaja.
He’s building smart marketing strategies and bridging product value with customer needs.
The line between marketing and sales is often more of a handshake than a hard divide.
How did you get started in tech sales and marketing?
I stumbled into digital marketing during my university days and did a few digital marketing gigs. I knew how to game IG, Twitter and Facebook platforms at the time to get a lot of followers, so my friends who had online businesses or needed the audience for one reason or the other would come to me to ask if I could either help them grow their followers, or sell my accounts to them. That was my first taste of marketing: understanding people, platforms, and how to connect the two.
Around the same time, I ran for Financial Secretary of the Nigerian Society of Biochemistry Students (NSBS) at the University of Lagos. It was my first real experience with structured campaigns. The elections were quite challenging because in my secondary school days, I got appointments on merit. This time, I had to do political campaigns, present manifestos, and engage in public debates to sway the public opinion my way and win against equally competent contenders. The department voted, and the verdict was in. I was elected.
My professional career has taken me across multiple roles, companies, and industries. I’ve been a Chief Revenue Officer, Head of Inbound, Demand Gen Manager, Head of Growth & Marketing, Growth Marketing Manager, Product Marketing Manager, Marketing Manager, Marketing Project Manager, Sales Manager, and Partnerships Manager. It’s been quite a ride — one that’s taught me that the line between marketing and sales is often more of a handshake than a hard divide.
What does a good relationship between sales and marketing look like in a tech company?
Marketing should work hand-in-hand with sales to drive business impact, as they are both cohesive functions of the Go-To-Market team. They should have shared ownership of business goals, OKRs, and align around the same systems in their G-T-M execution.
In a B2B organization, that relationship looks like; jointly defined Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) and buyer personas, shared pipeline goals and regular funnel reviews, collaborative content creation (e.g., case studies, sales enablement assets), marketing delivers qualified leads that sales can act on confidently, sales providing feedback loops to refine campaign targeting and messaging, coordinated Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and event strategies, and using the same CRM and analytics tools to track full-funnel performance.
In a B2C organization, that relationship looks like: marketing drives acquisition and nurtures the leads into purchase-ready users while sales (or support) teams stepping in for high-ticket or complex conversions, continuous testing and iteration on campaigns with shared learning cycles, real-time communication to capitalize on promotions, product drops, or customer feedback to mention a few.
In fact, for the business to deliver the best possible customer experience and drive sustainable growth, all GTM teams — sales, marketing, product, customer success/support — must work from a shared vision. And this responsibility starts at the top.
At the top? How do you mean?
Yes. Company leadership must set the strategy for how the company will make money, or acquire customers, or do both — in the long-term (growth strategy) or in the short-term (G-T-M strategy).
These strategies typically fall into one (or a blend) of three categories; Product-Led Growth (PLG) — The product experience and features drive user engagement, conversion, and retention.
Sales-Led Growth (SLG) — A dedicated sales team builds personalized relationships with potential customers and guides them through the sales journey to close deals.
Marketing-Led Growth (MLG) — Marketing team, channels, and tactics continuously engage and nurture customers across the lifecycle.
Whatever growth strategy and GTM motion is adopted by the business will dictate the relationship among the GTM teams.
Can you share a time when sales and marketing worked really well together to drive results?
I’ve worked in teams that get the unified GTM philosophy, and when I worked in teams that do not get it, I’ve been a very strong advocate.
I’ve seen this alignment play out really well in product-led, SaaS, B2B, and even service-based companies. It’s from these experiences that I’m able to define what an ideal relationship between sales and marketing looks like, just as I have mentioned above.
One standout experience was during my time working as Head of Growth at a B2B SaaS company that had adopted a hybrid GTM motion (product-led with sales-assisted conversion for enterprise deals).
At first, the marketing and sales teams operated in parallel. Marketing focused heavily on top-of-funnel awareness and lead generation, while sales was chasing enterprise leads.
As a result, our growth syncs were not very friendly because marketing reported high volumes of “marketing qualified leads” (MQLs), based on form fills and webinar signups while sales pushed back, saying those leads weren’t “sales qualified” — they didn’t fit our ICP, hadn’t engaged meaningfully with the product, or weren’t ready for enterprise conversations.
There was no shared lead scoring model, so each team defined “quality” differently. Nothing changed until we adopted a unified GTM approach, with shared goals, ownership, systems, and pipeline definitions.
What’s one big myth about how marketing helps sales?
Many believe that marketing’s job is just to generate leads and pass them to sales, as if sales is a relay race that starts when marketing drops the baton.
In reality, great marketing doesn’t just “help” sales. Marketing powers sales, and it does so before, during, and even after the sales process.
Marketing positions the product so that the value is crystal clear before the first sales call, educates buyers, builds trust, and creates social proof so sales isn’t starting from zero.
Marketing also equips the sales team with messaging frameworks, enablement content, and data-backed insights that move deals forward. Not to mention continuing the relationship post-sale through customer marketing and retention efforts.
What’s been your proudest moment in your career so far?
It’s hard to narrow it down to just one moment, but right now, I’m incredibly proud of the initiatives I’m leading to redefine go-to-market execution, especially in emerging markets where access to hands-on, actionable resources is still limited.
Marketing In Action — MIA is the #1 execution-first newsletter for product and growth marketers in emerging markets. It’s built for people who don’t just want theory — they want templates, frameworks, data, insights, case studies, martech & GTM tools. The goal is simple: help marketers put marketing into action and drive real business results. It’s become a go-to resource for marketers who want to scale their skills and their impact.
Titaja — Titaja is an on-demand product marketing service (PMaaS) that helps product-led, SaaS, and B2B companies unlock growth at every stage of the customer lifecycle. From positioning and messaging to GTM strategy and demand generation, we partner with teams to turn vision into traction. It’s a new way to scale product marketing execution — faster, leaner, and without the typical overhead.
Both of these projects were born from a single belief: great marketing should be accessible, practical, and execution-driven. Being able to shape that kind of impact, not just within companies, but across an entire community of operators, is something I’m deeply proud of.
What’s something you’ve learned in tech sales that you wish you knew earlier?
That you control the input, and the input dictates the output.
In GTM, inputs are everything: the research you do before a pitch, the alignment you create across teams, the clarity of your offer, the systems you build to scale your impact. Nail those, and the outputs will take care of themselves.
What’s something you enjoy doing but don’t consider yourself great at — and how do you still make use of it at work?
Honestly, if I enjoy something, I don’t let myself stay “not great” at it for long. I tend to go deep. Curiosity turns into commitment, and that drives improvement.
That said, I’m always aware of the gap between where I am and where I want to be, and I treat that gap as fuel. I stay in learning mode, build systems around the things I enjoy, and keep pushing myself to get better through action. So, rather than settling for “not great,” I use what I enjoy as a platform for growth.
At the moment, I am expanding the scope of my technical marketing competencies and building on the foundations of IT that also play a role in marketing, like data analysis, automation, A/B testing, programming, cloud computing, data science, data engineering, and artificial intelligence (AI).
The goal is to be able to bridge the gap between marketing strategies and technological implementation, without being limited by the constraints of any stack. I believe that this is also the highest leverage for GTM teams in the age of AI — being able to design, manage, and optimize AI tools to drive better results.
How do you keep up and stay creative in the fast-moving SaaS space?
As the founder and convener of Marketing In Action, I’ve built a structure that keeps me constantly plugged into industry innovation. Every week, I curate templates, frameworks, case studies, data, and GTM tools for my community. That responsibility keeps me in a cycle of continuous discovery.
To stay fresh, I actively collect and archive high-value marketing resources — campaigns, frameworks, ideas, templates, etc.
I run weekly interviews with marketers and founders who are in the trenches, experimenting and learning in real time. Their stories often spark new ideas and perspectives.
I follow industry leaders everywhere they show up — Twitter, LinkedIn, podcasts, blogs, conferences, and communities — to keep a pulse on what the sharpest minds are thinking and doing.
I test new marketing tools and workflows regularly — not just to stay current, but to pressure-test what works and what’s hype.
And I deliberately carve out time for upskilling — whether that’s taking a course, reading a deep-dive essay, or joining conversations in niche marketing communities.
How has your MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation helped shape how you approach tech sales and marketing?
My academic background is in biochemistry, which is far removed from the traditional foundations of business or marketing. Despite this, I’ve always been willing to do the hard work to figure things out — and most of the time, I’ve succeeded through hands-on experience, experimentation, and self-driven learning.
However, I’ve always believed that supplementing my expertise with a formal business education could enhance my understanding and broaden my strategic lens. That’s exactly what my MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation did.
It helped me approach sales and marketing not just as functions, but as growth levers tied to business models, build more strategic GTM plans, and understand how to align cross-functional teams (sales, marketing, product, and leadership) around a shared growth vision.
You mentioned playing the piano, cooking, and note-taking, which of those hobbies helps you most in your day-to-day work, and how?
I take a lot of notes — from meetings, content I consume, and miscellaneous things I find interesting enough to pursue down a rabbit hole.
Note-taking does more than just recording information. It helps me process, connect, and remember.
Note-taking is how I build my internal “marketing brain.” It’s made me sharper, more structured, and more prepared to move fast without losing clarity.
What’s something unexpected you’ve learned while taking “endless notes” that changed the way you approach sales or marketing?
Because I take notes obsessively, I’m able to spot patterns across very different inputs and synthesize those into messaging, positioning, or product-marketing plays that actually work.
How has being part of TSPC helped you grow? Why should others in tech sales join?
Communities like TSPC give you access to real-time insights from people actively doing the work. I found TSPC when I was looking for spaces where operators can learn, share, and grow together without ego — and TSPC brings that energy.
For anyone in tech sales, partnerships, or even marketing, TSPC is the community that facilitates collaborative learning through community events, workshops, and shared resources that keep you sharp and up-to-date.
You get to build meaningful connections with others navigating similar challenges — whether you’re closing deals, building pipeline, or refining positioning.
Are you interested in Tech Sales, Business Development, and Partnerships? Join our Slack community today: https://linktr.ee/tspcommunity
