The Power of Synergy: Aligning Sales and Marketing for Business Growth

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

In this episode, “The Power of Synergy: Aligning Sales and Marketing for Business Growth,” host Kerry Curran is joined by Kim Tran, Director, Head of Marketing & Business Development at Gimmal. We'll dive into the secrets of aligning sales and marketing for exceptional business growth and discuss the importance of change management in transforming marketing approaches. Discover how Kim's innovative strategies have revitalized brands and fostered seamless alignment between sales and marketing teams.

If you're ready to align your marketing expertise with your business growth goals, this episode is a must-listen. Let's go!

Transcript

Podcast Guest: Kim Tran

Host: Kerry Curran

Title: The Power of Synergy: Aligning Sales and Marketing for Business Growth

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

I'm your host, Kerry Curran, and this episode is, “The Power of Synergy: Aligning Sales and Marketing for Business Growth” With special guest Kim Tran, Director, Head of Marketing & Business Development, Gimmal

In this episode we’ll discuss the secrets to aligning sales and marketing for exceptional business growth. We’ll discuss the importance of change management in transforming marketing approaches. Discover how Kim's innovative strategies have revitalized brands and fostered seamless alignment between sales and marketing teams. 

If you're ready to align your marketing expertise with your business growth goals, this episode is a must-listen. Let's go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:02.842)

And welcome Kim. So please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and experience.

Kim Tran (00:09.255)

Thank you, Kerry. Thank you for having me. So my background, I started off actually just about 10 years ago. I had been what I call a non -traditional marketer. I started off my career thinking I wanted to become a lawyer, started off in media litigation, First Amendment law. And while there, social media was just coming up, Facebook, LinkedIn. I started diving into customer events and then… did a full pivot into B2B SaaS just about 10 years ago, working for PR and marketing automation software company. And since then, I've worked in pretty much every industry you can think of, internet infrastructure, more recently, ed tech, and some time in financial services and global media as well.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:00.986)

That's great. Well, thank you. We're excited for you to share your expertise today. So I know you've worked with a lot of different marketing brands and teams and verticals. So what are some of the challenges that you've seen for brands when they're in a time of transition or need to update their marketing approach?

Kim Tran (01:24.103)

Yeah, this is such a great question because I always get it, you know, during interviews or even just, you know, panels and things like that. marketers, you know, yes, deep industry experience and expertise is very important, but there are very similar challenges across industries. I've been in the beta C space. I've been in the beta B space, tech, non -tech, and the challenges are really …

First and foremost, educating your internal leadership about what marketing is, and also externally, building a brand long-term, managing brand perception, you know, top funnel, quote unquote, fluffy things that don't always have immediate returns, and educating your leadership on that, but also as a marketer, keeping up with all these changes, privacy compliance, you know, changing buyer behaviors.

B2B space, especially long sales cycles, right? It's not a one overnight, one click buy like Amazon, but really thinking through psychologically, both from a change management perspective, but also in marketing and sales enablement perspective as well.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:41.53)

No, definitely. You know, I loved your point of change management in kind of how you work with your leadership to want to kind of pivot, especially if they're in a time of we need something's not working or we need this to work better. So talk a bit more about your approach to change management and what that's looked like for you.

Kim Tran (03:06.599)

Yeah, so I can talk about a past company, but also my current company, two very different spaces. So again, as I mentioned, you can work in various industries and people are dealing with very similar challenges. So when I was in financial services at a top credit card company, we were very well known for advertising. They were fun, they were cheeky.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:21.434)

Yeah.

Kim Tran (03:36.359)

You know, and there's something tangible to hold up as a credit card company, right? You can be very tactical about that. But while there, I was actually with a very niche division, the business bank division, and we were marketing to a more sophisticated customer, very upmarket. They were concerned about things like succession planning, business planning, you know, operations for growth and business revenue. And… you can't really hold up something visual and say, here's growth. Here's your workflow operationally. Here is your equity plan. And so from that perspective, there was a lot of change management and educating our leadership internally to get them on board in terms of deploying campaigns from a full funnel perspective. And so …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:10.394)

Right.

Kim Tran (04:32.615)

One of the things that we were struggling at the time was that we were going through a digital transformation across the industry, but also at the company itself. And so while legacy wise, we were a credit card company, we had acquired this banking division and very old school bankers. They think that they go out, they can go to an event, you shake hands, you wine and dine, and that's it. Right. But my. Yup.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:52.922)

Okay.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:59.29)

Yeah, it might be a golf course involved. Yeah.

Kim Tran (05:02.407)

Yep. And my leadership at the time was like, well, how do we measure that? How do we measure qualitative relationships? But the reality is that these longer sales cycles, B2B, it takes time. It's built through relationships. It's built through trust. It's built through customer referrals. And so it took a lot of time building up, getting consensus.

And what I call your internal influencers and your internal amplifiers. Me coming in, I was quote unquote just a brand manager at the time. And so really getting first of all, my bosses and my own leadership on board with my own plans, but also making sure that they were equipped with the right revenue, the right metrics.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:31.77)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kim Tran (05:51.815)

The right plans and more importantly what I was hoping to achieve and the outcomes so that there was something tangible for folks to measure.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:02.042)

Yeah, no, that's great. And you talked a bit about kind of getting the buy-in from leadership. And you also talked a bit about kind of how you need to restructure and revamp your internal team and resources and partners and vendors. Talk a bit about how you can make that pivot to kind of drive that change management.

Kim Tran (06:28.327)

Yeah, this is, I get so passionate about this because so much of marketing is change management. And we kind of have to wear multiple hats, non -marketing hats. And so the three non -marketing hats that I wear a lot are my engineering hats. You know, marketing's great, branding, storytelling, all of that. But if it does not scale or you can't operationalize it, you can't measure it. And when you don't measure something,

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:39.514)

Yeah.

Kim Tran (06:56.807)

You cannot ask for more budget responsibly or even smartly. I know it's not really a word. But the other hats that I wear are also my CEO hat, mini COO hat, and then the mini CFO hat. And figuring out where we are spending money that is wasteful that we can reallocate. That is the first line of, I want to say the first line of defense.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:17.814)

Yeah. Yeah.

Kim Tran (07:25.799)

When before you even go forward and ask for money, whether it's 20,000, 200,000, 2 million, it's the same concept. You have to be fiscally responsible and show and build trust and build that responsibility when you go to your finance team and your COO team. And so when I first joined my current company, we are in the B2B SaaS industry at the moment. It was myself, marketing team of one.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:32.41)

Right.

Kim Tran (07:55.143)

And a BDR. And at the time, you know, everything seemed to be working at the top funnel, the metrics, the conversions, there was a lot of engagement. But engagement doesn't always denote intent down the funnel, especially once you start to look at the full pipeline. And so that's another skill that I would encourage all marketers, whether you are just starting out or developing further on in your career, and especially,

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:02.362)

Mm-hmm.

Kim Tran (08:23.943)

As a marketing leader, you have to put on your business analyst hat as well. There's this red herring fallacy that I kept hearing was, well, we're not closing deals, which means that we need more leads. But when you look at the full picture, the issue wasn't that we needed more leads. It was that one, why were the existing leads we had not converted? And then two, how do we get more leads of the right leads that are converting down the funnel?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:25.626)

Yeah, yeah.

Kim Tran (08:53.991)

So all of these things were really important as we transitioned and rebuilt marketing here. And also from that perspective, that was just a starting point. From there, I was able to reallocate the budget. I was able to reallocate resources. And then last year, added on two new headcount to the company, first time roles, including events, as well as product marketing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:17.242)

Yep. That's great. No, it's great. And it's, I love how you talk about the connection between the lead quality and marketing, because what we're seeing so often are completely siloed organizations where they're not talking to each other. Or I hear a lot from marketers that they're like, we're just the order takers from sales. And to your point, like they're so … much alignment. And I think that's why like when you and I first spoke, I was like, that we have such a similar background or I guess passion, I should say for ensuring the integration between sales and marketing. 

So talk a bit about your experience and how the, you know, just the role of alignment really does drive to those, to achieving better business results and growth and revenue.

Kim Tran (10:07.047)

Yeah, I love this because at past companies, I will say that we were very siloed. I've worked at very large companies, Fortune 500 all the way to founder-owned, founder-led. And it's the same theme, right? Siloes, you cannot keep operating in silos. And especially when they're geopolitical.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:15.482)

Yeah.

Kim Tran (10:35.111)

Budget economic climates happening. And budgets are shrinking. You know, B2B inflation is a thing, right? Like $5 ,000 to sponsor something this year is going to take maybe 20 % to maybe double next year. And so all of these things are going back to being fiscally responsible. I think for me, the alignment between sales and marketing, this is my first time in my career where I am rep...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:37.786)

Mm-hmm.

Kim Tran (11:03.175)

… up to a chief revenue officer rather than a chief marketing officer or VP or head of marketing. And so for me, it's very important that marketing works in conjunction with sales, but also sales is open to giving feedback at the bottom of the funnel. The other key differentiator for me at this point in my career is that I've managed and hired a number of different, you know, non ...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:05.818)

Yeah, I know.

Kim Tran (11:30.919)

… marketing roles now from analysts to reps to true marketing titles and having business development reps report into marketing has been a game changer because they are the first touch point when they prospect. All of our BDRs here are superstars. We have actually hired our fourth BDR now in my second year here.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:43.45)

Yeah.

Kim Tran (11:58.375)

And we've really gotten that down to science. We listen to prospects, we summarize everything, and we pass that along to sales. And from a brand building perspective, we then look at the use cases. We're not making guesses. We're not like hypothesizing about what people really want. These are what prospects are coming in asking us about. And so that goes back.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:06.778)

Okay. Yeah.

Kim Tran (12:28.295)

To me saying the reverse engineering, I look at what people are coming in, seeking us out for what we're known for. And I reverse engineer that and retool that into our website, into our collateral, into events, messaging, talking points, all of that. My theme for my team has been to do less so that we can do more. It's my cheeky little reframe on doing more with less. I think.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:35.642)

Mm-hmm.

Kim Tran (12:57.511)

You know, doing less to do more really makes you prioritize what's most important and critical.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:00.954)

Yeah. So Kim, I love what you're saying and kind of how you've really worked to integrate the sales insights and the consumer insights into your marketing strategies. So it seems like that's really working to make sure that your content is extremely relevant and ties to what your audience is looking for.

Kim Tran (00:23.11)

Yeah, yeah. And as I mentioned, during our conversations, the BDR conversations with prospects, they come in, they have their use cases. We, as part of a brand refresh and top funnel activities two years ago when I first joined, our website was very clunky and not ranking. And I like to use the analogy of renovating or buying an older one.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:46.488)

Okay.

Kim Tran (00:52.134)

My first home was a 1940s home. So, you know, there are a lot of different head scratching moments when you start to renovate, you know, whether it's just a fresh new coat of paint, or you had to break down some walls and discover some surprises, right? And so having to, again, rebuild all of that, not just from an external perspective of rebranding and refreshing a brand.

But also thinking through workflow-wise, behind the scenes. We streamlined just about 30 plus use cases to only seven. We just added another one in the past six months because we were getting that organic inbound interest again.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:37.464)

Great. Yeah. That's so great. And again, back to like connecting, you just have more and more examples of the benefits of integrating your sales and marketing. And that's really where I see a lot of growth potential, especially for B2B and SaaS. So it's, again, you were mentioning you report, so all of the marketing reports up to the CRO, which, you know, we're starting to see more and more, or that the CMO is overseeing sales. And again, it just reiterates the importance of that at the leadership and the top and the having the BDR be part of marketing. You know, I've, I've heard someone mentioned that before. And again, going back just to echo what you were saying, like you have to, like, in some ways it depends on your so much how you're training your BDR and who, what their experience and their level of, of, within the organization.

Because I think what I'm seeing is so many brands are panicking about sales. They're like, let's add more BDRs. Let's add more cold calling and cold emailing. But to pay for this, we're going to reduce our marketing budget. And that's definitely what we don't want to see. But in your example where marketing is coaching the BDR and you're giving the BDR the … ensuring that they're proceeding with your brand's message, with the right narrative and the specific examples. It's not as cringy that your BDR might be the first impression or touch point of the brand. So I just think that you're kind of ahead of your time, Kim. It's really great to hear.

Kim Tran (03:23.31)

Yeah, I appreciate the compliments there. I think there's a lot of, I'm gonna say like imposter syndrome. When I, you know, I mentioned that I pretty much have been in every other industry except for my current industry, which is very niche. But I kind of compare it, people made fun of me a lot when I first started because I used a lot of dating analogies. So.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:49.496)

Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah.

Kim Tran (03:50.63)

You know, at the top funnel, I was like, why are we not converting? Why are we stuck in this cycle of just first dates or second dates, you know, when we want to get married? So hashtag put a ring on it and understand what is progressing things down the line. Our sales cycles were anywhere from a year to two years. We also have a lot of public sector government agency clients. And so these budgets and …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:57.336)

Mm -hmm. A long time yeah …

Kim Tran (04:18.982)

… technology buying a sales cycle is just becoming more and more convoluted with more people on board. And those first few conversations were less about sales and more about building rapport, understanding needs. And again, that's a marketing function and responsibility than relationship building rather than, you know, bottom funnel right away.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:36.472)

Yeah, the relationship building, yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:43.896)

Yeah, no, that's spot on and where I think more brands need to be investing in. And it just goes to the point of making sure there's that open communication and integration and the fact that you're all one team. I think definitely, it sounds like it makes it a lot more helpful. Yeah.

Kim Tran (05:02.598)

Yeah. And I have to give credit to, you know, I think for marketers, I have been in situations and my peers also are in situations where a lot of the challenges, well, my leadership or the sales team doesn't understand marketing. And yes, there will always be a little bit of that challenge a little bit, you know, but having a leadership that both professionally have gone through the ranks and gone, gone up the ranks through sales and marketing is probably.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:31.48)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Kim Tran (05:32.39)

The battle, but also from a personality and leadership perspective, making sure that, you know, whatever team you join, whether it's an existing team internally or a brand new company and role in industry is really finding out personality wise, are they open to hearing you out? Are they supportive of you? Are they willing to back you up if something doesn't work out? Right. Marketers inherently.

We push the envelope, we have to test, we have to experiment, we have to stay ahead of all these things and sometimes things fail. But re-thinking what failure is as lessons learned and what insights can we take to improve and optimize, again, really builds that relationship and positions you as a strategic leader rather than just a party planner or presentation deck builder, right? Or more than that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:08.728)

Yeah right. Or I was just going to say the PowerPoint editor. Yeah. No, it's so true. And yeah, and I love what you're saying. And I think one of the examples you'd given too, I think was that if salespeople are asking for like a one -sheeter, it's like, no, like what, let's get into, what are you trying to solve? Like, what are you trying to answer? And making sure that to your point that they're seeing you as a strategic asset in part.

Kim Tran (06:53.734)

Yep. Yep. Yep. And no pun intended, but we actually just went through and audited all of our assets and collateral just so we again, true ourselves back to numbers and making sure that, you know, do we really need to create a new collateral or is it more of an update? B2B, a lot of things change, but a lot of things also don't depending on who your audience is. And so I mentioned that we have a lot of public sector …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:56.248)

Yeah.

Kim Tran (07:23.654)

… customers and their needs may or may not have changed in the last two years at the core. And so some of these collateral rather than the brand new data sheet or a brand new presentation deck, we could probably get away with updating a slider too.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:40.472)

Yeah, a lot of efficiency and effectiveness. Great. And then, yeah, right. And I know like you're saying the, you know, to get buy -in, you're really tying in the, you know, the investment to what, mapping out real numbers to the initiatives and the proposed strategies. And, you know, I think that in itself to point is such a great approach.

Kim Tran (07:44.102)

Yeah, that engineering hat.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:08.376)

And it's hard, right? It's like, it's marketers having to market your marketing department and your value to your leadership. But it's so it's, it's definitely a challenge. And I know we were talking about that that's often a need of even greater challenge in a private equity owned company where so much focus is on cost cutting and saving. So share a bit about, you know, how, how you'd recommend for some of the smaller or private equity owned companies that need to be able to promote their own value.

Kim Tran (08:43.75)

Yeah, yeah, I love this question because again, it's the first time in my career that I am working for a company in my current level reporting so intimately to a board. Previously, I was in public companies, you know, big Fortune 500 and we also had that responsibility. But knowing what the board is interested in and most focused on …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:56.984)

Yeah.

Kim Tran (09:11.014)

… has been a game changer, but again, going back to that point of your first line of defense and offense is your leadership and making sure to pre-talk and communicate talking points. Is this the right focus that the board is interested in? Am I giving too many details? Am I not giving enough?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:20.632)

Mm-hmm.

Kim Tran (09:37.254)

You know, is this like reading the room, right? And making sure that you get all of your internal influencers and sponsors on board. has been something that I'm getting better at. The last two years I was in the weeds, you know, especially at a smaller company. but in the past six months to a year, as I rebuilt the team, I am now, you know, surfacing up, as you say, marketing marketing, right?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:37.304)

Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:04.088)

Yeah. Yep.

Kim Tran (10:05.126)

And that's been really important because, again, going back to the idea of you have to build that trust and PE firms, investors, board, they want to know that you are being fiscally responsible with the budget you have before you even ask for more. And so for me, you know, cleaning up pipelines, reallocating dollars, and that could change from month to month or even quarter to quarter, depending on, you know, AI, right? Like …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:11.512)

All right.

Kim Tran (10:34.854)

… Google is deprecating their cookies. It's been something that people have been talking about forever. And now it's actually happening. Yep. And just, I mean, very recently, someone actually found us through a conversation they had with AI. And so rethinking all of these strategies and tactics, paid ads may not be worth it to invest in or invest in at the level that we currently are.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:41.176)

right? It might eventually happen fully. Yeah. 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:53.496)

That's so cool. And so staying nimble and being transparent with your leadership and board, I think two ways straight, building that authority and trust first and foremost is really important.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

So Kim, what role does change management play when implementing a new marketing strategy?

Kim Tran 

Yeah, I love this because again, well, you may not know this, but I majored in psychology in undergrad. And so I always think about the psychology behind rolling out a new campaign or a new communications plan internally. And humans, we tend to not love change, even though what is that expression? The only constant is change, right? And so thinking through what are people with, you know, change doesn't happen overnight. And so there's this concept of kaizen in Japanese where it's incremental changes, little by little. And I don't know if you've ever read the book Atomic Habits either, but one thing that the author talks about is this 1% progress. And whether it's, you know, 365 days, you may not always progress.

Each day but over time that one percent is incremental and so change management you know making people feel comfortable and and comfortable and also brave and courageous there's a lot in marketing that you kind of have to shepherd people through people you know I I work currently for a 21 or 22 year old company and you know … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Yeah, I know.

Kim Tran 

… people were very attached to things, even though they knew, they knew the numbers, the numbers showed it, you know, aside from, you know, cultural meetings, they knew that things didn't work and they were just scared. And so validating that, hey, change is scary, I think again, lets people, you know, feel good. And then also communicating proactively.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Yeah.

Kim Tran

About the changes that you're making, but also why you're making them and what you expect outcome wise from implementing those changes and really involving people in that change. Because one shared goal means that you are all invested. You're not implementing this change alone. And something that I talk about a lot is one team, one revenue. It takes a whole village. It's not just marketing or sales anymore. It's sales …

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Mm -hmm.

Kim Tran 

… marketing, customer success, support, IT, and really getting everybody on board with change and then the shared outcomes that you all will achieve together.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Thank you. That's great. Excellent. Okay. So Kim, talk about the three hats you believe marketers need to wear.

Kim Tran 

Yeah, so the three hats that I found to be really key to my success has been one, you're kind of an engineering hat and business analyst hat. And, you know, I know that a lot of marketers, you know, we love splashy campaigns, we love the sexy ads, you know, and all of that is great. But you also have to know about processes, you have to know about metrics.

What is working? What is not working? You have to be data driven. We are in a data rich but insights poor time in history right now. There's a lot of data out there. And as a marketer, putting on your analyst and engineering hat really goes back to helping your leadership and market marketing. What does all of this mean? And also taking what's most important so that you can validate your decisions.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Yeah.

Kim Tran

The different strategies, the different budget that you're asking for. And from that perspective, the other two hats rounding out the big three is your COO hat. Operationally, other than marketing, who else do you need help with? How are you going to build out this operationally so that you can scale? And then the CFO and your finance team. Being an investor,

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Mm -hmm.

Kim Tran 

Thinking about, hey, if I spend $5,000 on a sponsorship, what do I expect to get out of this? And could it be better spent somewhere else? A tangible example was we sponsored an event last year for $20,000 to various degrees of success. And this year, looking through the numbers from last year, I could not justify sponsoring.

that one event again. So we took that same $20,000 and sponsored three events instead, including a first time conference that we were testing into and experimenting with. And I had to lay all of that out. But again, building that trust and showcasing to your finance team that you are being fiscally responsible and building that foundation then helped me ask for a more incremental budget, you know.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Yeah. I don't know.

Kim Tran 

Eventually as we move forward.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Kim.

Kim Tran 

Thank you.