How Smart CMOs Integrate Marketing into Business Growth Strategy

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, the ultimate resource for business leaders eager to skyrocket their company's growth! I'm your host, Kerry Curran, and this episode is, “How Smart CMOs Integrate Marketing into Business Growth Strategy” with special guest Collin Colburn, Senior Account Executive at Forrester.

In this episode, we delve into the critical role of marketing in shaping business strategy and driving value. We discuss how smart marketers can position themselves as key players in strategic business discussions, emphasizing the importance of aligning marketing with the overall corporate vision and goals. Whether it's enhancing customer retention, fostering new business growth, or navigating the ever-evolving landscape of sales and marketing alignment, Collin shares practical advice and real-world examples to help you elevate your marketing game and ensure your organization thrives in today's competitive environment. Tune in to discover how to leverage marketing for sustainable business growth.

Transcript

Podcast Guest: Collin Colburn

Host: Kerry Curran

Topic: How Smart CMOs Integrate Marketing into Business Growth Strategy

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, the ultimate resource for business leaders eager to skyrocket their company's growth! 

I'm your host, Kerry Curran, and this episode is, “How Smart CMOs Integrate Marketing into Business Growth Strategy” With special guest Collin Colburn, Senior Account Executive at Forrester.

In this episode, we delve into the critical role of marketing in shaping business strategy and driving value. We discuss how smart marketers can position themselves as key players in strategic business discussions, emphasizing the importance of aligning marketing with the overall corporate vision and goals. Whether it's enhancing customer retention, fostering new business growth, or navigating the ever-evolving landscape of sales and marketing alignment, We discuss practical advice and real-world examples to help you elevate your marketing game and ensure your organization thrives in today's competitive environment.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:02.726)

Welcome Colin, why don't you take a minute and introduce yourself.

Collin Colburn (01:21.429)

Thank you, Kerry. So excited to be here. Colin Colburn over at Forrester was an analyst here for six years and now on the commercial side of our business working with lots of Fortune 500 organizations across marketing, IT, and customer experience. So very, very excited to be here and excited for our discussion.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:42.79)

Great, awesome, thanks Colin and thank you for joining and I know you have a lot of experience in this space looking at marketing and how it affects business strategy and the overall corporate planning. So talk a bit about how you're seeing the role of marketing in relation to business strategy.

Collin Colburn (02:06.933)

Yeah, it's a great question and one that's very top of mind for a lot of the CMOs that I meet with today because many of them are trying to figure out how they can include themselves in these conversations around business strategy. And so much of it is around how marketing can be the center function that delivers value.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:24.998)

Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (02:35.573)

For the business, so that's really the, I think the wedge that a lot of smart marketers that I work with are trying to drive is that marketing is the value delivery orchestrator within the company. So that's, I think, how they're trying to wedge their way into being more involved in those strategic business conversations about growth, about go-to market, about everything.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:48.966)

Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (03:03.573)

Kind of across the traditional four P's, if you will, product, price, placement, promotion, promotion kind of being the one that marketing always is thought of being included in or owning. But many of these marketers are trying to be included in all four of those facets.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:20.262)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I know over the years we've had a lot of conversations in regards to mission, vision, values, and kind of how that represents your brand identity, your company positioning, and what ultimately, from my perspective, that kind of comes into play as the company's North Star, so that, as we were talking about before, if everyone understands what the company represents, where...

Where are we trying to be in three years? Who are we as a brand as we're communicating to our customers, our prospects out in the industry? And that, you know, for me, my perspective really marketing needs to have a strong role in developing that. And I think that's often when I'm talking to people, it's not always the case, you know, that should come from the CEO or someone, but it should really be. The brand and marketing, but what's your take on that?

Collin Colburn (04:24.629)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, marketing really is the function that manages the business ecosystem and the relationships around the ecosystem. So whether it's the way in which employees are engaging with customers, the way in which you work with outside partners and channel partners or… even influencers or whoever is representing your brand and your organization. Marketing really is responsible for managing and orchestrating all of those relationships and being a strategic partner with all of those partnerships. So one of the things that's really interesting when I think about the mission vision values, and there's lots of different ways in which companies and people think about.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:55.078)

Right, right.

Collin Colburn (05:19.413)

You know, some call it mission, vision, purpose or whatever, but really the structure there is to really use those three pegs on a stool, if you will, to prop up what that relationship building looks like from marketing. You know, vision really being, that's the thought leader engine of like, where is the business going? Where's the market going that the business is operating in? And making sure that your organization has a voice in that discussion.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:34.694)

Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (05:49.813)

The mission being really internally facing what are the things that the organization is going to do? What are we trying to have all of our employees do on a day-to-day basis that is going to get us to that vision? And then the values or the purpose or whatever you want to call these things, these are really like the principles that we have internally that we expect our employees to enable and sort of...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:12.774)

Thank you.

Collin Colburn (06:19.541)

… be the stewards of and for our customers to kind of expect from us. So really quick example, you know, at Forrester, we, you know, our vision is really we help organizations be bold and we help leaders at organizations be bold at work. Like make bold decisions to lead growth and to lead change within their organization. And then our mission internally is really to be on our client's side and by their side.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:25.158)

Yeah. Yeah.

Collin Colburn (06:49.077)

Like it doesn't necessarily mean that we're gonna do everything and head nod all along the way about everything that they think they should be doing. We're gonna validate or invalidate some of the things that they're doing based on our research that we have. But it really means to be like a partner on their side and by their side. And then we have values that we've had, gosh, I think since the company was founded, it's really making sure that we are courageous, that we're the org...

We're the partner that's going to speak up when maybe no one else is going to tell the truth. We're client first in terms of really everything that we do. All the research we produce is in stewardship of delivering value to our customers. It's about collaboration. It's such an important principle that we hold here. I talk to, again, marketing, IT, CX folks and… In order for us, in order for them to be successful, they need to align and collaborate internally. So we also have to align and collaborate internally to really live out that principle. And then there's quality. We want to make sure that all of our research is high quality. And then the last thing is integrity. Like that's super important as well, because we want people to trust us. And we have to make sure that we are instilling integrity internally in order for people to be able to trust us.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:11.27)

Yeah, no, and that, and it definitely aligns to your point of who Forrester is as an organization and everyone lives and breathes in while you're there and integrated with them. And so I know when you and I used to work, partner together in the Forrester wave analysis, you had mission vision values, was the X axis, correct? The Y, I always forget which one, but.

The point is that that was such a critical, of course. Mike, edit that out. I'm pretty sure that's all right. So Mission Vision Values was a core, very, the Mission Vision Values, the go-to-market strategy, like that was a very core component of the overall score that would allow a company to be ranked in the leader …

Collin Colburn (08:42.069)

The horizontal.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:09.83)

… a contender, et cetera. And so what I learned from that and from you in that process is that the and, you know, tell me the forester perspective, but that it gave indication to the strength of the organization, right? If the team was clear on if they were able to articulate those aspects, you were able to give you an idea of the maturity of the organization, the alignment within the organization and just kind of how they were going to service clients going forward by staying innovative and planning for the future.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:53.958)

Is there anything to add on that? 

Collin Colburn (09:59.093)

No, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It really is like that strategic side of the evaluation was really to be about who is this company? And especially in the, you know, when I think about like service providers, like agencies and consultancies so often, and this is something that I've had a lot of debates about over the years, but I truly fundamentally believe that most buyers, so that would be marketers at brands who, by agency or consulting services, at the end of the day, the thing that gets them to purchase, the thing that gets them to say yes to a particular service provider isn't necessarily checking the box of their capabilities. That gets them to say yes to the next conversation. It doesn't get them to say yes to, I want to partner with you, I want you to run my media, or I want you to run my website, or I want you to be part of my organizational design, or whatever it is.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:31.398)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Collin Colburn (10:58.837)

The thing that gets them to say yes is, do I buy into the vision that you have as an organization? Do I buy into how we are going to evolve together as partners? And that's why that strategy access is so critical because that is where all of that sort of forward-looking vision and assets that you have that tell your story lives. And if you can't articulate that really well into the marketplace …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:04.038)

Right.

Collin Colburn (11:28.885)

… you're never gonna get to the sort of next rung of growth on the ladder. It's gonna be very slow and very, it's a tough way up in my opinion, especially for agencies that are at a certain size, right? Like that's where vision can really accelerate your next level of growth is being able to articulate that well and to drive it into the market to give yourself a …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:47.43)

Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (11:58.197)

… competitive advantage against others in the marketplace.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:02.982)

Yeah, for sure. And I definitely see it. You want a partner that you know is going to grow with you and bring you the latest and the greatest and the benefits of that. So I definitely agree. And actually, one other component of that is that as I've been having a lot of branding conversations, you know, you're in historically one of the agencies that I worked with when we were partnering together, the differentiator was always we're the biggest.

We're the biggest globally. And I remember you saying very specifically is, so what? Like make sure you're bringing forward like what does that mean for your customers, for your clients? Like being the biggest, so what? It's like, do you have better negotiated rates? Do you have access to more platforms? Do you have access to more trainings and experts? So it's something, you know, tying into that that I've always, always remember when people give a very...

very basic or generic unique value prop, the so what, and that ties into that whole story. So I know you talked to a lot of CMOs and, sorry, go ahead. 

Collin Colburn (13:08.885)

One of the … I was just going to say one of the things about like big that I've seen in a good example, I can't name the company, it's actually not in the digital agency space, but another organization that I've worked with recently, like their marketing organization sort of used the idea of like, we're the biggest in our space and flipped it on its head and sort of said, we're the biggest, but it means that we can also be very, very tactical in terms of understanding you as a business in the industry that you're in really well, because we know a lot of other companies that are in your industry or in industries that are parallel to the one that you're in. So we're gonna get to know you even better and really understand the market that you're in. So I think that was such like a smart way to think about like how to talk about scale in a relatable way. That's what I always like look for is, are you talking to people just to say like, we're the biggest?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:43.974)

Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (14:10.933)

Or is it using big as a, again, as like a differentiator and advantage against others?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:10.95)

Mm -hmm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:17.286)

Yeah, definitely. And so in your conversations with the CMOs that you have or other executives that you're speaking with in your role, what are you seeing kind of in the marketing role? Have you seen the role shift over the last few years, especially in relation to business development and sales?

Collin Colburn (14:43.957)

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because there are many flavors of companies in terms of the type of relationship that marketing has with sales and vice versa. And to me, I've seen as the economic situation that we're in, and I don't think either of us are gonna claim that we're economists or formal economists here.

But we are in a strange economic environment. We've seen it's no secret that marketing organizations have been somewhat ransacked in certain areas in terms of the amount of resources that they have, the budget that they have. And that's really been a challenging uphill battle for a lot of marketing organizations that I've worked with because, you know, especially if you're in sort of those situations where you're a sales led organization.

And now you're in a position where not only do you have fewer dollars to spend, you have fewer resources to be able to work with sales. Like at the end of the day, sales is a sales-wide organization when sales has the largest number of employees, which is very common in B2B organizations. And it's really best practice, I think. But marketing needs to have...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:58.598)

Right, right. Yes.

Collin Colburn (16:07.029)

… not just as many, but it needs to have a certain level, a certain watermark of resources available to be able to work with the different sections of sales to really understand what are the needs of sellers today, to also have an ear to the ground when it comes to buyers. But the environment that we're in is not allowing that to really happen in certain sectors. So that's our huge challenge. And then the other thing I would say is that, you know, it's interesting what's going on with like …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:12.582)

Right.

Collin Colburn (16:36.565)

And you've even seen this firsthand, the development of CROs and CGOs and these titles and roles that have kind of taken over both sales and marketing. Sometimes that's really good. Sometimes that's amazing because it means that there is going to be really strong alignment between sales and marketing. Other times, it's kind of like a, it's a little bit of like a smoke and mirrors thing where you're like.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:44.646)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (17:02.005)

What's actually going on here is that marketing is basically just being folded in here and sort of just said, like, you just keep on running those demand campaigns, keep filling the funnel, and it's really in service of sales. That's the situation where it's very clear and obvious to me, like, marketing does not have a seat, a strategic seat at the table within the highest levels of that business.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:13.542)

Right.

Yeah, and that's what I'm seeing and hearing as well. And I think that goes back to what we were just saying earlier, though, is that marketing needs to know the industry, know the business, and be able to communicate and be involved in developing and communicating the company presence, the mission, the vision, the brand. And that needs to be part of the corporate growth strategy.

What's interesting to me about that, and I've heard that as well, is like marketing, a VP of marketing rolling up to the CRO maybe, and to your point, like that's fine, but you're going to make it a lot easier for your sales organization if your marketing team has budget, has the resources. Can be out there building awareness so people have heard of you, building that, communicating to the audience your value, your differentiators, so that when they connect with your salesperson, they've already heard of you. And I keep thinking about the concept of the BDR or the SDR. When they cut back on marketing so much, you don't want your SDR, I mean,

I know there's a lot of different levels and experiences of SDR, but I think of like the, you know, cold calling, young, 20 something. Is that who you want to be your target audience, your prospects first impression of your brand? Should it really be this person or the salesperson that is doing all of the education and will make their job easier if you, when they pick up the call or send the email.

Collin Colburn (19:02.997)

Right.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:12.23)

That someone's like, yes, like I've heard of Forester, I'll take the call, I'll set up the meeting. And so that's what I'm kind of hearing that is happening more. And it goes back to the CMO or this marketing having, losing that seat at the table.

Collin Colburn (19:33.141)

Yeah, there's like two different ends of the spectrum and I see both of them today across industries. We have an SDR, RDR function and all they do is take inbound because we can't even fulfill the amount of leads that we have coming in and that's really their job is to just take the leads that marketing has given them and qualify them and then send them on to the account person.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:54.374)

Mm-hmm. Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (20:03.797)

A great problem to have, there are issues on that side as well. And then on the other end is where I think a lot of organizations are going today, which is marketing is so resource strapped, they're not generating the number of leads that the business needs. So now the RDR and SDR function is the only significant outbound function that we have. And that's where I think you can also get in trouble to your point of...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:23.814)

Right.

Collin Colburn (20:32.757)

Like, is that really the first impression that we want new prospects to have of the brand? Maybe sometimes. Like if it's marketing enabled where we're using really good data from, you know, competitive intelligence to be able to go out and prospect around really key accounts. Yes. But if it's the, but if it's the just total batch and blast, like that's a, it's a precarious position to be in. And, you know, the other thing is I think about,

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:36.134)

Mm -hmm. Right. Right.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:48.486)

Right. More personalized. Like, yeah.

Collin Colburn (21:01.653)

I think about so many of the buyers and executives I meet with today and so many of them say like, I get like 100, 200, 300 sales emails or calls a day. And it's like, wow, like no wonder response rates are so low to those sorts of emails because these people are just like, they're overwhelmed. They're like, I can't parse any of it out. And that's where I think marketing plays such a unique role that it can cut through that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:24.774)

Right. Right.

Collin Colburn (21:30.165)

Really good marketing, really good thought leadership, really good content can cut through a lot of that noise. And it doesn't always have to be in the form of an email or a cold call, right? It can happen in other more contextually relevant places or ways.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:37.222)

Right. Right.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:42.278)

Yeah, no, I definitely agree with you. And again, it's like marketing can start building awareness, building the relationship with the prospect, even if it's, you know, an online relationship through emails or being present at conferences or webinars or newsletters, like building that relationship so that you are building that trust with your prospect. So to your point, when they do call or connect with you they receive an email from your salesperson.

It's a warm, warmer relationship. So definitely hope to see, you know, the pendulum switch back or a more balanced approach to the marketing strategy in alignment with sales. Cause I worry about what's going to happen in a year from now and all of the organizations who have been so desperate for sales, cutting marketing, doubling down on sales. They're not building the pipeline for next year or the year. So, it's going to be interesting to see and I think the more we can promote marketing as a strategic growth function, the more successful these companies will be.

Collin Colburn (22:54.997)

Totally. I couldn't agree more. And you need to have both in order to be really successful, in order to grow. And even to, like one of the things we haven't really talked about, we've talked a lot about growth and we've talked a lot about, you know, new business and all that sort of stuff with sales. But like marketing also has a really big role to play as it relates to retention too. For so many companies, like the majority of their revenue, especially in the B2B space, is retained business.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:22.51)

You're right. Yeah.

Collin Colburn (23:24.949)

And that's another sort of, that's another like qualifier of maturity or criteria for maturity that I'm always curious about within marketing orgs is how much of marketing is spent or resourced around retention. Because if it's none, it's all based on new business, but 80 % of your business revenue is from retention, retention from existing customers. That shows immediately that

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:31.366)

Mm -hmm. Yes.

Collin Colburn (23:54.677)

Marketing is just, again, kind of seen as like this demand engine tool, which I don't want to belittle that because it's important. It's so important, but it does have a lot more value beyond just getting leads into the pipeline. Like it does have ways to be able to support customer success, support, you know, renewals and getting them to understand like how our customers experience us, experiencing us today, like our existing customers and be able to know like,

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:22.15)

Right.

Collin Colburn (24:23.477)

Where we have strengths, where we have weaknesses, and be able to fold that back into the strategy.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:25.766)

In additional values or different. Yeah, yeah, no, it's definitely great. Like it's, yeah, making them aware of the other benefits of being your customer, not just using your software or the Yeah, so I definitely agree with you. And thank you for bringing that up. Because I think that's another aspect that needs to be part of it. And I think that goes back to two is making sure every customer service person, or account executive is also living the brand values and is up to date on information from marketing so they can continually share news, updates, etc. So definitely agree with you there and hopefully we'll see that as well. But great. And so Colin, I just love if you had one quick piece of advice for one of your companies that you've spoken with or what would it be?

Collin Colburn (25:26.997)

Yeah, I would say to any CMO out there to think about it like when we talk about marketing strategy, it's really is your strategy as a marketing organization, is it directly aligned to the business goals and priorities that the business has? And is it over the course of a three to five year period? And then do you have plans in place for each of those years within that time frame?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:46.63)

Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (25:54.901)

That's to me, like that is the nucleus of marketing today, is if you can do, if you can make sure that those, like what is it, three criteria, like strategy aligned to the business, strategic plan and annual plans, like if you can have all of those built out, I think it puts you in such a better position as a CMO to have these strategic conversations internally to be sort of.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:06.406)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn (26:21.749)

Seen as one of the leaders in the organization responsible for planning, strategic planning. That would be my piece of advice. It's not easy to do. There's a lot of hills and hurdles to be able to get there, but it's got to be one of the top priorities from a strategic perspective for any new CMO or even a CMO who's been… in the same organization for a while to make sure that you're constantly evolving those strategic plans.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Why is the mission vision values important to a marketing strategy?

Collin Colburn

Yeah, it's the most important way to be able to communicate internally and externally what the value is of the marketing organization to the business and the value that the business brings to the client. So an example that I always loved was Wpromote. And they still have this today that they're sort of their promise, if you will, and this is kind of like their vision to their…

Customers are able to scale challenger brands. Like this idea that companies who are not the largest company in their market or their industry, they're battling the 600 pound gorilla. W Promote is uniquely able to help those kinds of organizations because they themselves embody a challenger brand within the digital agency/space. So it's an interesting mission vision because they're using their vision to go out into the marketplace to really try and attract challenger brands in a strong way, while also kind of challenging their own employees, their own selves that, yeah, we too are a challenger.

And we have to know our clients' business just as well as we know the business that we are operating in too. And then they have a bunch of different values internally that they hold that I'm sure have evolved and changed over time to be able to kind of ladder up to that promise to really help organizations grow, market share grow, based on scale within the industry, like get a greater...

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn

… of clients within a particular customer vertical or whatever the business model is. So I think they embody that. It's almost like they took that and are drinking their own Kool-Aid when it comes to their vision, which I particularly love. Any company that can do that really well, it certainly works because they've grown tremendously since employing that vision.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Yeah, they definitely have. Great. And so why is it important for a business to have a unique value proposition?

Collin Colburn

I mean, this is another kind of like facet to the overall vision, which is, you know, this is kind of like the, this is like your elevator pitch, right? It's the thing that you tell people who you are. So when you're in short conversation with people and they ask whether it's business related or not, what do you do? Who do you work for? what does that company do? That's what that answer is, is that, you know, we help smaller brands in a...

A particular market is able to grow and beat back the 600 pound gorilla. Or in my case at Forester, it's, you know, we help companies really be bold so that they're able, so that their leadership is able to make really good changes to be able to grow as an organization. That's what that, I think that's what that unique value prop like so, so often you'll hear it as like, sales needs to do a better job of going out and telling our story of being, you know, of our unique value prop. And it's like, yes, that.

Kerry Curran

Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn

That is certainly where it's used, like in a very practical sense. But it's so important. I was just talking to a CEO recently of a smaller service provider. And one of his biggest priorities was making sure that every single employee understood who are we so that they could repeat back the same answer, so that they kind of have a uniform way of talking about themselves.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn

It's kind of a small little, it's almost like an obsession that someone could have, but it's important. It's really important to have everyone on the same page about who we are as an organization. Because if you don't have that, then everything else that you're doing, everything else that you're saying is a priority, doesn't always fall into, or is not perceived the same way by everyone. So then you'll get employees saying like, what are we doing?

Kerry Curran

Yeah. Right.

Collin Colburn 

Wait, who are we? And you never want to have that, because then you have people rowing in different directions.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Yeah, no, that's great, thank you. And then what makes a good go-to-market strategy?

Collin Colburn 

Go to market strategy number one starts with really understanding your customer. I know we hear this all the time and I'm even sick of hearing about this, but it needs to be said because it's not always done well. And it's, I think, first understanding who your buyers are, not only the title, but also what their needs are in a really deep way. Not like, like they need help with… the way they spend media. It's, well, what are they using media for? What are the common challenges that they are trying to overcome with media dollars? So having a really, this is all ICP that we're talking about, but right. So having a really crystallized ideal client profile or profiles, if you will, because if you're an organization who sells in multiple buying centers, you're gonna have multiple of these.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Right. Right. Thank you.

Collin Colburn 

And then you get into kind of like the industry and the size and the geographic parts of the of who of who you're who you're trying to reach or who you're trying to bring on as customers. So that's where go-to-market strategy, I think, really starts with all of that. And then it's figuring out, all right, what are the right routes to market for us to be able to engage those types of buyers?

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Mm -hmm.

Right, yep.

Collin Colburn 

at those types of organizations. And then once we start engaging them, what are the plays that we run to be able to help them achieve those different objectives and overcome those challenges? It all sounds very easy, because I'm talking about this in a simplified way. We all know it's not easy. But as long as we start with that kind of framework around really deeply understanding who the customer is, I think that's …

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn

That's the starting point that will never go wrong and that I've seen a lot of organizations have really great, great success with. And again, this requires marketing and sales alignment pretty deeply because sales is your ear to the ground. It is your sort of like frontline employees that are talking to these sorts of people every day. So if we're able to get their feedback and get...

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Right. Mm -hmm.

Collin Colburn 

Their understanding in addition to what we also are looking at for more of a macro lens as a marketing organization. I think of product marketing owning a lot of this competitive intelligence work, especially at SaaS, recurring revenue organizations. If we can have really strong alignment between those two functions, that's going to really help build out who that ideal client profile is. And then that just sets up the rest of the work that we already talked about.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:52.946)

Yeah, definitely. This is great, Colin. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Hopefully we'll have you on again soon. Thank you. Great.

Collin Colburn (08:03.38)

Absolutely, would love to come back.