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!

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