GTM 135: How Marketing Creates Million-Dollar Exits: 6 SaaS Success Stories | Katrina Wong

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Katrina Wong is the CMO of New Relic and a top marketing leader. She specializes in launching products, entering new markets, and scaling companies to the enterprise. With 15 years of experience at Twilio, Zuora, Salesforce, and SAP, she has led award-winning campaigns and helped six companies exit successfully.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Why you should be using “marketing sprints”

• Importance of operational excellence and agility in marketing

• The role of marketing in preparing for a successful exit

• Is ‘fire fast’ the right approach for managing your teams

If you missed GTM 134, check it out here: When to Hire Your First Sales Reps (And How to Get It Right) with Joe DiMento

Highlights: 

07:08 Secrets to picking winners

09:30 Attaining operational excellence in startups

15:43 Marketing’s role in successful exits

29:12 Transforming PIP programs for successful employees

31:26 Challenging the ‘fire fast’ mentality

35:20 The importance of team dynamics

40:24 Navigating getting acquired successfully

48:58 Tactics for modern marketing

Guest Speaker Links (Katrina Wong):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrinawong11/

• New Relic Website: https://newrelic.com/

Host Speaker Links (Scott Barker):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/

• Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

• Website: https://gtmnow.com/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/GTMnow

• YouTube:  /@gtm_now

Sponsor: Pursuit

The best talent isn’t actively job hunting. Pursuit helps companies hire elite go-to-market talent on a non-retainer basis. As a key GTMfund partner, they equip sales and marketing teams with top performers.

If you’re hiring for sales or marketing roles, reach out to Pursuit at pursuitsalessolutions.com/gtm or message a GTMfund team member.

The GTM Podcast

The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Scott Barker, GTMfund Partner, featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

GTM 135 Episode Transcript

Scott Barker: All right, we have a ton of new listeners to the podcast, so this week We wanted to highlight one of my favorite early episodes with the legend that is Katrina Wong. At the time that we recorded this together, Cat was the CMO at Twilio, but has since taken the CMO position at New Relic, obviously two iconic SaaS companies.

In my personal opinion, Cat is one of the most impressive marketing leaders on the planet. And in this episode, we dive into how to narrow down your ICP without spending a ton of money. What operational excellence actually means how marketing can play a pivotal role in preparing for a successful exit.

And we both challenged the old fire fast mentality that a lot of tech companies hold onto. It’s one of my faves. Enjoy the episode.

Hello and welcome back everyone to the GTM podcast. Scott Barker here, your host, and I wanted to quickly just thank all of our listeners. Uh, it’s been really cool to watch some of our analytics these days. And there are a lot of you. So we appreciate the support, uh, every week and appreciate you taking the time to level up, uh, and really care about your career and the companies you’re a part of or the companies you’re founding.

Uh, we, we certainly do our best to try and bring on. The best guests that we can find best operators, founders, VCs, who have really seen the journey, done the thing, uh, gone from zero to IPO. Sometimes many times. And this next guest may have one of the more decorated marketing careers I’ve certainly ever seen and super lucky to have her on the podcast.

I’m joined by Katrina Wong. Uh, Katrina, welcome.

Katrina Wong: Thank you, Scott. Thanks for having me. What a beautiful intro. I appreciate the compliments. It’s great to be here and looking forward to our conversation.

Scott Barker: Absolutely. Lots to cover. So we’ll, we’ll dive right in. And this has been a long time coming. We actually, we’re going to do this one in 2023.

As everyone knows, 2023 was madness for a lot of folks. So I’m super excited. We’re getting this time together but quickly for the listeners, I always like to tee up just a little bit of a background. So Katrina Wong is the divisional CMO and VP of marketing at Twilio segment. Obviously an incredible company.

And she has a proven track record for launching products in new markets specifically. And helping companies move up to the enterprise. I know for a lot of people listening, that is probably one of your goals for this year, at least in a lot of the startups we talked to. Everyone’s trying to go upmarket.

Obviously, SMB, smaller companies, there’s risk when the market’s the way it is. But Katrina has also created award winning integrated campaigns through data storytelling. It’s kind of a common theme. And prior to Twilio, Katrina worked at Zora, Salesforce, and SAP. And before that, she started her career as a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers, and that takes her to 15 years of marketing experience and is just incredibly passionate about helping companies through stages of really hyper growth or substantial growth, uh, including, and this is crazy, helping six companies exit successfully, uh, which is wild.

I want to spend a lot of time, uh, talking about that, but. That is rare. Do you ever look back and, and, and see the career you’ve had? And do you ever take time to, what is it? Look, look at the clouds from the mountaintop kind of, kind of thing?

Katrina Wong: I feel like I barely have time to do so, but when I do have a minute, uh, sometimes it’s in between, uh, startups exiting, that type of thing.

Uh, it’s exactly what Steve Jobs, you know, shared quite a few years ago where he was like, look, your career. And what you do may not make sense at the moment, but when you look back, the dots actually do connect. And I feel like that resonates with me. It’s been a great experience for me. Having started my career in consulting, it was about going into different industries, solving different problems.

So I’ve always liked the variety of work that’s possible when you choose technology as a career. So I’ve done, you know, very different startups. You know, have sold and marketed to different industries and different personas. I like that a lot, but what you learn from each experience does build and you can reuse that a ton as you progress to your next venture.

Secrets to picking winners

Scott Barker: I’ve witnessed the same thing throughout my career of like jumping into roles that don’t seem to be related, but then when you look back, like, oh, no, that, that all helped me get to, you know, this point I’m, I’m at today. So the first question I wanted to ask you, and this is somewhat of a self serving question.

Being on the VC side of the house now, you know, we’re trying to pick winners, uh, every day. Great companies, great founders, six successful exits is an insane track record. What’s the secret? How did you pick these winners?

Katrina Wong: You know, I’m not sure that there’s actually any magic to it, but what I typically do is I gravitate towards technology solutions, right?

A problem statement that’s large enough. And then I look at, is that relevant for, you know, what we need? And if you’re a B2B, you know, as a business leader myself. Is this relevant enough to the business that I’m running? The next thing I kind of look at is, uh, the management team. And I don’t mean just their resumes and, you know, their experience, but how is that decision making?

Are they intentional with creating a culture and it’s being operational front and center? Umand then. UsuallyI also look at, is that being pulled through to the rest of the company? Another thing that I pay attention to, and especially in a down market, is the mindset of learning and how agile the leaders are.

Are they close to their customers? Are they learning from the market? Are they adjusting? And the last thing I’ll say is, you know, some of it is just luck and I feel very grateful and let’s just say you don’t quite pick a winner. I bet you’re still going to be learning a lot and that is still tremendous for, uh, your career.

Attaining operational excellence in startups

Scott Barker: I love that. I’m sad to know there’s no secret sauce that I can just duplicate, uh, from here on out. Uh, but I love all that. Mindset of learning, you know, an operational mindset, bias towards action, you know. Understanding the decision making process, uh, is, is huge for any successful company. When you look back now, you’re part of these teams, so you picked well, what were some of the commonalities you’ve observed once you were actually in the building that contributed to their successes?

And then maybe I’ll, I’ll add to that. Second part is how do you think startups could maybe apply those learnings from day one?

Katrina Wong: Yes. I thinkWhen you are, and I’ve worked with so many founders, either, reporting into them or these days you know, I do a fair amount of advisory work and I think it’s really easy when you are starting a new business and something, and sometimes it’s bleeding edge technology, you tend to think about the why at time, why am I doing this?

What’s my strategy? So on and so forth. And there’s almost this false trade off that happens. You know, getting operational and executing feels like less fun, and it may at times feel less important. Right. And I think what, uh, if I were to, you know, reflect back at the commonalities. Of all of these startups that, you know, have exited, you know, some are IPOs and some are, you know, very meaningful exits.

It’s boiled down to the ability to execute, right? And what that means is how do you actually operate day to day, right? So things like what are your cadences, right? How do you actually measure results? Because at the end of the day, you really can’t improve anything unless you measure it. UmI love working with sales orgs because you kind of know when you’re coming in each week, you know, where you think you’re going to land with your, uh, sales, right?

That’s the metric of success. What adjustments do you need to make? And what I’ve done in my career is bring that operational mindset to marketing and we do the same. We do weekly demand gen sprints and guess what? The best late plans, you know, don’t always work out. So we’re behind, then what do you do to catch up?

And all of this may sound so obvious, but oftentimes if you’ve not started, you know, operating, uh, with a lot of rigor, uh, you probably don’t realize that you have to, uh, build your cadences to be more frequent. And to look at your business in a greater detail than you may imagine.

Scott Barker: First off, I love this idea of marketing sprints.

I think sometimes in some organizations, you know, marketing can get bogged down from over analysis or over overly strategic thinking, maybe, you know, the, the typical, uh, You know, just too many meetings, meetings, meetings about meetings, and you’re trying to figure out position messaging and all these things are so important that sometimes just like going out there, being comfortable with trial and errors, is kind of left to, to the wayside.

So I love that you’ve infused that in the teams that you’re, you’re a part of, how do you balance that? Like naturally, as you’ve climbed in your career, C-suite VP level positions. You’re pulled into these more strategic discussions and of course that, that matters, but you need to find ways to still get your hands dirty and make sure that your team is comfortable getting their hands dirty and executing at a fast pace.

How do you find that balance?

Katrina Wong: Yes, that balance and what you just hit on is what makes good great. Right. And I’ve seen this happen at a lot ofI would say, you know, later stage, growth stage, you know, series D about to exit and, uh, even when COVID first hit, you know, all of us were locked in a room where like, Oh, we need a new message for the market.

We need something new and you can see potentially, right. The trade offs of, Oh, we’re going to spend a few days, a few weeks, you know, figuring out the messages. And then, uh, putting it out in the market would be a beautiful campaign. When I say agility, I actually mean it. I mean, you don’t want to over test and over analyze.

But you know, at the time, there were no answers, right? It’s all a hypothesis. And soI like to do 20 percent of the work, test it. Get some feedback and then build it out. It’s not too different from how product teams do it, right? Figure out your MVP. ButI’m certainly more in the camp of let’s move fast, you know?

So for us, it was really doing some really quick research, talking to a few customers. It’s the obvious stuff. Uh, but these days we are all so lucky because you can get some top level messages, you know, tested out just with even paid ads, you know, or with an email or two that way you don’t go down a path where you spend eight weeks building a beautiful campaign all to know that, Hey, maybe that didn’t resonate.

Scott Barker: That was a great, a great nugget. I like that one. Do 20 percent of the work, test it with the market and then go and do the 80%. I think a lot of teams I’ve been a part of, you go and you, you make your best decision, you use all the data, then you go all in and then it might flop and you’ve just wasted, you know, a lot of time, a lot of resources in the model that you described, you could essentially run five tests with the same amount of effort.

And then double down on the one that, uh, that works and it’s going to be, you know, that much more effective. Yeah, I like it, so going back to kind of the, the role of marketing and what did you see the role of marketing play in, you know, preparing a company for a successful exit and, you know, maybe even sharing an example of how one of the strategic marketing initiatives that you stood up, uh, directly impacted kind of the exit process.

Marketing’s role in successful exits

Katrina Wong: Yeah. I actually have two examples here. Marketing is huge in that, uh, it is usually through marketing that your potential buyers understand who you are, their perceptions of you, so on and so forth. So a few years ago I was at a company and I was basically hired, you know, upfront when I knew because, you know, they were ready to exit.

And, uh, so, you know, my immediate task as a VP of marketing was, and our strategy was how do we build some immediate awareness? There was some awareness. How do we uplevel that? How do we actually, uh, force some initial pipeline? Because, you know, when you get acquired, they’re actually assessing, you know, your value based on the health of the business.

So it does actually start with marketing. Is there even a pipeline to be closed? Right? And then then there’s a very, uh, human piece of it, you know, who are the founders? What is that origin story? And so I was also tasked to kind of build buzz around that. But we thought it would take about eight months to exit and we ended up exiting.

in about five months. So, you know, I basically went through all these motions, you know, took the company through that. And when we were speaking to buyers, you can see them recognizing these elements. It was, it was quite rewarding and a ton of fun. Our first segment, uh, which was also an amazing experience.

One of the things that we needed to get very clear on and this is like a little bit before the acquisition was you know, with a lot of API first, you know, platform first, developer first products they’re so flexible and it’s pretty amazing to see what your community can do with your product.

But for us, it was about getting very clear on our ICP and the segmentation. So when I walked in as Series D company we pretty much sold to every single industry possible. You know, in, in Salesforce, you know, also a very flexible system. We have something like 256 industries. And we had deals, you know, everywhere and as you scale as a larger, uh, startup, it’s important to figure out for your product strategy where you want to double down on.

And so here was, you know, a problem where we were like, well, looking at the data, we could pretty much do everything. What should we do? So what, one of my first initiatives was to actually work with PricewaterhouseCoopers to do a pretty extensive data driven segmentation project. And with that and this is where, you know, if you have the funds to do so, and perhaps, you know, Somewhere in, uh, uh, you know, the management team’s thinking was, uh, potentially, uh, you know, an exityou know, you invest and we did, uh, probably around thousands and thousands of surveys with companies that were ready to buy a data management solution to kind of understand.

You know, a compelling need, the compelling event, the problem they were looking to solve. And then we were able to take those inputs and make decisions about ICP. Therefore refine the product strategy, the roadmap, eventually pricing and packaging, and all of this, by the time we got to the point of, you know, due diligence, it was solid, we weren’t operating just off of.

You know, the management team’s hypothesis and what, and what our customers are saying, all of that is very important. It starts there, but we knew what the market needed, right? These are the types of larger orchestrations that drive up your valuation. Like we understood the market and we could back it up by data.

Yeah, that was an amazing experience as well.

Scott Barker: Yeah, that, that’s, that’s big. And I, I feel like those are the initiatives that make marketing have an impact across, you know, the entire organization. You’re not just, you know, contributing to revenue. You are directly contributing to how a product is being built, pricing impacts, all of these things influence the entire, you know, org and that’s, what’s going to, you know, drive up the acquisition price or, or make it more.

And then, you know, another thing you said that I think will resonate with a lot of the marketers that are listening is this idea that, you know, every, I think every marketer wants, you know, a big total addressable market. That sounds great. Look at all these people I can market to. We can do so many cool things, but in reality, that can also be sort of the kiss of death because if you’re.

Everything to everyone. It’s hard to find that identity. People don’t know, you know, when to think of a segment in this case. And so you need to be really intentional with, you know, this is who we’re built for, and this is who we are today. And that may evolve in the future. But like that, that focus must’ve been really huge for you, you and your team.

Katrina Wong: That’s right. That’s right. And you know, once you have. A decision, then, you know, I talked earlier about operational, uh, skills, you know, the, you know, kind of execution excellence, but then you’re aligned and it’s so much easier to execute because part of why it’s hard to execute and get results quickly is that misalignment of who you want to sell to, who you want to market to, what is your product built for.

So that helped us execute really nicely too. And it was very evident year one after the acquisition we were still growing at a clip, uh, you know, a lot, very quickly one of the fastest growing, uh, businesses, uh, post acquisition, it was nice to see.

Scott Barker: The last question I had for you on that was. You know, and, and this might be a hard question, but you did this big, uh, analysis you brought in, you know, outside help, PricewaterhouseCoopersyou know, startups, smaller companies maybe don’t have the luxury to, to do so.

I know you advise, invest, you know, in a lot of, you know, startups. Is there a way to get halfway there yourself and, and how would you. Advise companies and founders to do a similar, get the similar result that you did, which was narrowing down your ICP, finding the right personas, finding the right markets to be in, uh, without, you know, maybe spending what, what I imagine was a pretty hefty bill at

Katrina Wong: PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Absolutely. Wonderful question. I do get asked this a lot. So here is how I would do it without the outside consultants and if I were a smaller business. Thank you. Look at your top, you know, X number of deals, uh, if you have 20, 20, 25, you know, if you’re a little larger, you know, your top hundred deals, right.

And start looking at patterns, right. And figure out what your highest deals are, right. And then look at you know, who you’re selling to, what use cases are and start looking for patterns. And here’s what’s nuanced. Ease of, if your product requires an implementation, ease of implementation because just because somebody gives you a lot of money doesn’t mean that you should be selling to them, right?

It has to be that fit. So how easy is it to get to your top accounts of the highest value, right? And so I’ve also seen startups kind of sell to one or two enterprise customers. And they’re like, okay, that’s our ICP because they’re willing to buy our product. But then look, it was so hard for them to get it there.

And then also the product then needs to move in a direction that goes really deep. So you know, I love working with startups. I love working with technology because it’s a little puzzle that you kind of have to figure out. But yes, my recommendations are looking at top 20 deals, right? Your highest grossing deals, look at which ones are the easiest to both close.

And implement, and retain, and that should be the basis for your ICP kind of in the early years.

Scott Barker: Fantastic advice. And an exercise anyone can do, uh, on this callI’m hearing like highest value, lowest friction is kind of what it’s, what it’s all about. That’s what you’re gunning for. Yeah. Beautiful.

I do want to reserve some time to talk through some, some stories. This is kind of a story based podcast. People, people love hearing kind of the nitty gritty of how things actually happened and I know, you know, sometimes the work that we do, as we talked about when we’re doing it, uh, we don’t know the impact it’s going to have.

Uh, but you know, now with some hindsight and kind of delayed. Uh, feedbackI know that you implemented a really interesting program back in your Salesforce days, and I would love to bring you back. We’ll jump in a time machine. We’ll bring you back to the Salesforce days and for the listeners, I would love for you to just walk through, uh, where, where you are atand what program, uh, you implemented and kind of the results of that.

Katrina Wong: Yes, we are taking the time machine back. This is quite some time ago. So imagine Salesforce you know, me joining and, uh, we were about a month out from the IPO. So they were, you know, that growth stage started up, uh, many, many years ago. Anduh, you know, at that time. Uh, business was exploding and we literally could not service all the customers coming in.

And we couldn’t hire enough. We couldn’t hire quickly. These were early years of just the cloud and SaaS. And so we couldn’t train folks fast enough. Ad at the time you know, the best and the brightest. Uh, college studentsI, I guess no different from now, uh, you know, kind of flock to the valley and you’re looking for, you know, work.

At the time there were less, uh, vehicles to be a founder and create new technology. A lot of companies ended up hiring entry level college students from the best universities. And they’re either SCRs or customer support. And so as Salesforce, just really getting familiar with the product and knowing, and you know, how it works.

I mean, they still do employee certifications. It’s a requirement. You know, starting at customer support was kind of the route if you, uh, uh, didn’t have any work experience. So what we saw, what my manager and I saw were, you know, the best performing customer support reps you know, across all measurements were doing so well, we’re like, okay, they could probably, and they knew the product well, they could probably make great professional services, uh, team members that would implement the solution.

And then we saw in the data, a really interesting correlation, even though they were doing so well, they were not doing well at all. And in fact, to the point where they weren’t really successful on any implementations and we, and we couldn’t tell why. And like, you know, most companies and well run businesses, right?

Transforming PIP programs for successful employees

You end up having to put employees on PIP programs. And my manager at the time was like, Katrina, you know, you’re really good at training folks. And, and really getting, uh, these unlocks, you know, what if we did this? What if we took everyone in a PIP program, we put them through a training program that we created and see if we can actually get them successful.

And we had no idea, was it really the soft skills? It can’t be the technical skills. Was it Onboarding and you can imagine, you know, like when most companies, when you go public, right? Like it’s just, you know, it was just so hard to focus on, you know, even that, right. And again, the operational, right. Chops.

Uh, so, you know, I ended up taking a program that, you know, I, uh, was a part of from my consulting days and we put the folks through, and it was about a hundred. In my program, it was about a hundred folks that were on PIPSC, and everyone graduated, had raving reviews from our customersAnd it was an intense time, I will say, you know, back then, and I stillI mean, for years, for like 10, 12 years, we get thank you notes from folks that went through the program and were like, Oh my gosh, that early career unlocked for me, meant the world.

And I’m now making 2300K, and that’s like 10 years ago, so that’s a lot of money2300K, and I never thought I could get there. And I was about to be managed out by one of the greatest software companies in the world. And that really cemented my thinking as a leader. And because I started in consulting, I’ve always taken this very like servant leadership approach.

I probably am extreme when it comes to an executive. You know, online organizations I lead and now they’re a much larger size. We rarely do pips at all because I believe that if you as a leader, it is our responsibility. I believe that you can pretty much set up everyone for success if the willingness is there on the other end.

Challenging the ‘fire fast’ mentality

And what I want to challenge here in the Valley is this notion of firing fast. ’cause every time you do a rehire, you are restarting again. So I see a lot of very flippant, oh, fire fast. Fire fast. And I’m like, wait a second. As leaders, have we done our job to actually set folks up for success? How is our training?

And it’s not just onboarding, right? And the counter argument is, well, Katrina, that might take a lot of time. And I was like sure, but I bet you putting a rec up again and rehiring will take more time. So I’ve actually like my experience has been get it going with the good team that you’ve hired, ensuring that you have great hiring practices.

So if you start with something good, you will get faster. And better execution if you’re not constantly restarting, you know, that’s been a huge one for me, you know, in terms of learnings and observations in my career.

Scott Barker: And what a, what a fantastic story. And thanks for, for breaking that down.

There’s a lot of things in there, uh, that I kind of want to unpack. And, and one is, It’s like kudos to Salesforce. There’s a reason Salesforce is Salesforce. You know, I think it’s a Mark Benioff quote where he says speed is the currency of business. And, you know, you, at that time we’re moving so fast and a, a lot of companies in that position would have said, okay, let’s, let’s fire them, bring in new talent that allow us to go faster and having this mentality of kind of like slowing down to speed up, which you had.

And it was probably a, you know, massive task to go create this whole training program, put people through it. And it required some patience. I think another thing that that does is not only are you fixing the problem, which it sounds like almost everyone, you know, you, you turned around. But the amount of loyalty you’re breeding from those employees, you know, everyone remembers the people that are there when times get tough, like it’s easy to be there when everything’s rocking.

Uh, but I imagine if you also looked at the tenure of those a hundred people, you, you put through that. I bet it’s much higher than average as well.

Katrina Wong: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Almost everyone stayed for years and years and years. Yeah.

Scott Barker: So big. And, and your idea of challenging, you know, FireFast, I’ve thought about that one for, for a long time.

It’s, it’s a balance. There, of course, are people that need to be moved out of an organization, but what’s interesting is personally, we just hired a VP of talent and so, you know, we’re working. Yeah. Working even more closely. Thank you. Thank you. With our portfolio companies, as we always had and helping them with hires and helping them with executive hires.

And so I’m starting to learn more about just recruiting and executive recruiting and things as well. Uh, cause we’re hearing these, these stories and you know, not only are you wasting time and money on their salary and training them and opportunity costs, but a lot of these hires too are very expensive.

People are spending a lot of money to get these people on board, whether you’re using a recruiting agency or just marketing a lot, it’s. I don’t know if there’s been a comprehensive study of what it actually costs to turn over a tech employee, but it’s, it’s so much more than we think.

The importance of team dynamics

Katrina Wong: That’s right.

That’s right. That’s right. Beautifully said, you know, so it’s almost like once you hire somebody, it’s kind of your job as a hiring manager to set them up for success. I mean, maybe we’ll go there just for one sex since you raised it with. You know, executives, uh, this is close and, and dear to my heart, as an executive myself working at startups, I think what’s key for an executive, you know, to be successful.

And actually prove out their own ROI, meaning, you know, to your point, you pay a lot to hire executives through recruiters. Maybe one day that dynamic will change and then you know, for them to really make it worthwhile that you’ve spent that much, right? It’s a part, a big part of whether an executive is successful or not.

Is how the entire executive team works together. And I think just that being the core team is an important concept. One of my favorite books about team dynamics, you know, kind of executive leadership: the five dysfunctions of a team. And it actually talks about when executives are managing.

It’s not just about wearing your department hat, right? Like your number one team is, you know, as a marketer, my number one team is usually the CEO that I’ve supported into the head of product, the head of sales. Like we are one team. And then our teams, uh, that we manage you know, uh, help drive strategy, but really execute on the alignment that happens up at the top.

Scott Barker: I haven’t read that one, but I’ve made a note of it. Five, five dysfunctions of a, of a team. We’ll put that in the show notes. And yeah, super, super important of, of how did you find it, and this is a bit off side, uh, a sidebar, but my brain goes to strange places. So we’re, we’re going to rock with it. How did you find these big organizations you’ve been a part of?

So you mentioned this idea of there’s like one team, you know, that you’re all one cohesive team, of course, but then. You almost have to build your own identity on your own marketing team. And then even in the marketing team, there’s maybe like sub teams. Do you try and get everyone identifying as the same team or have you kind of.

Give an identity to sub teams within that team. And do you think that’s important?

Katrina Wong: I think always having an identity sense of belonging is important because, you know, especially within marketing, you have so many different sub functions and, and your jobs, you know, are a little different product marketing from integrated campaigns, you know, so on and so forth.

Uh, but I think it is important to feel. cohesive as a larger marketing team and you know, almost like too much competition within the teams, right? Becauseanother coreI guessprinciple, nothing new, uh, for me in marketing is. This concept of integrated marketing or integrated campaigns, which means, right, like the sum of all your efforts are going to be so much greater than a single effort, right?

You know, that done right, you’re going to get the, you know, two plus three equals, you know, 20 effect. And you see this in marketing a lot where, you know, you have email marketing, just, you know, blasting your database and then randomly you’ll see a webinar and then maybe there’s a product launch, you know, and integrating all of those tactics so that your campaign makes sense and you’re taking your audience through a journey and you’re telling a story through your campaigns is what I can totally.

You know, ad nauseum about, but that’s what it’s about. And as humans, we will respond better to that. Right. So when you look at how you operate, right, it’s okay for the many small little teams to have their identity, but they also understand how working together will achieve better results and better business results.

And it’s oftentimes way more fulfilling.

Scott Barker: And I imagine that is no easy task at some of the larger organizations you’ve been a part of. Right. There’s, uh, there’s no excuse for any of the startups or smarter or smaller companies listening to this too, to not be fully integrated throughout your marketing organization, uh, cause it’ll only get harder.

So start nailing it now. I want to quickly go to, uh, a listener question. Uh, so we love when listeners send in questions, uh, you can send your questions to GTMfund.com and we will answer that in, uh, future episodes. This one’s great. And I think I teased it out for a reason. Cause I think you’ll have a great point of view on it.

Navigating getting acquired successfully

Uh, the question was, uh, the company I work for is getting acquired. What are some things I can do to set myself up for success in the new organization?

Katrina Wong: Maybe I’ll touch on a couple of things, right? If you’re going through due diligence and you’re part of those conversations, it’s the obvious, get your ducks in a row, right?

Just be prepared, almost like mentally be prepared that your business will be picked apart. Right. And they’re going to ask questions like, okay, I see you’re performing well now, but really, is it really predictable? Nothing’s personal. They’re just trying to, you know, understand and basically value your business correctly.

And so predictability, like you can show yourselves, but show, you know, why you think it’s predictable, right? Just being able to show that. It’s huge, right? That’s what drives up valuations. Some examples, right, of questions that, you know, I felt, you know, the first couple times going through, I was like, Oh my God, it’s so pointed.

And, you know, I almost took it personally because you work so hard at a startup and you’re like, I’m working hard. I’ve got these results. Trust me, it’s, they’re great and it’s always gonna be this way, but they will get, I got specifically the storage for this .

Scott Barker: Yeah.

Katrina Wong: You deliver this only, only in one quarter or only in two quarters, sometimes only a year.

Prove to me or tell me what’s indicative of this being the next few quarters. Right. Is it just luck or is it just the market? Right. So just prepare for that type of grueling and it’s more a mental sink that you have to get in so that you’re not, because I’ve also seen, um. Acquisitions fall apart because founders or, you know, some of the executive decision makers are like, Oh, I didn’t like how that went.

And, you know, they don’t understand our value. So it’s, it’s balancing, right? Like all of that. Specifically as an employeeI think regardless of functionsit’s really having an open mindset. And because when I was at SAP, for example, we had to acquire business objects you know, I saw firsthand the folks that chose to see it as an opportunity and usually an opportunity for their career, you have a lot more resources.

Right. You do have to figure out communication, meaning you’re not just communicating to your immediate team. It’s also the parent company. So double down on communications like over communicate, you’re going to feel like you’re over communicating because the parent company usually is so much larger, right?

So it’s harder to get your messages across, but it really can be a career opportunity. If you choose to. you know, seize the day and make it that. You have a lot more resources, you have a lot more support and you can probably get some amazing results because of that. Oh, and usually your advantage is you’re the newly acquired company and that’s where all the attention goes.

It’s like, oh my gosh, we just acquired x company. And it’s exciting.

Scott Barker: Great advice. I’m hearing that seize the attention while you have it, you might not have it forever. So then, look at it as a true opportunity, uh, double communications, maybe even triple communications for the first little bit.

Make sure, you know, you’re showcasing everything and then, you know, really underscore predictability and why. Past results are going to indicate future results, back that up with data. And then always good advice for just about anything in business, which is don’t take it personally. These hard questions, the fact that picking apart your business, don’t take it personally.

I think we could all, I need that on like my forehead, I think for, uh, to remind me every day. I like it. All right. Well, Katrina, this has been awesome. I have two more questions as we sort of wrap up the conversation and, uh, just thoroughly enjoyed chatting with you today. First question: what is one widely held belief that revenue leaders or founders, uh, have today that you think is bullshit or no longer serving us?

Katrina Wong: I have talked a lot already about this, but. You know, this notion of firing fast, it almost feels like there’s no accountability for the hiring manager as well, right now across some GTM functions that is very warranted for sure, because it’s so clear the performance and it’s very transactional when it comes to your performance, but I still think it’s about instilling a learning culture.

If you’re an exec, right, so that you don’t have to restart, right? Get everyone learning and just give it a little bit more of a runway than let’s fire fast. But I do see that a lot and I don’t personally subscribe to it. You know, like an example right now when I speak to companies of all sizes you know, I hear we.

Figured out PLG, uh, and that’s great. That’s probably for the lower end of the market. And we are now a multi product company. It’s more of a platform play. We now need to do sales assistance, selling to the enterprise. Does that mean you wipe out half of your company and rehire? That would be way slower, right?

So may, may, maybe the nugget here is. Early on at a startup, hire really smart people that can solve problems, and then you’re going to be able to kind of point them in different directions and to give them new problems to solve. And frankly, you know, if you look at my career and my resume, it doesn’t quite always make sense.

But if you ask me, then I’ll start making sense because I’m like, Oh, here are all the things and how all the connections work. But the net of it was. I was given so many opportunities to solve new problems. I’ve changed functions a number of times. And I think that’s what fulfillment in your career means, right?

You can solve different problems. As managers, as leaders, let’s not box really smart talent, which, you know, the Valley is just so full of and now beyond into, they just do this one role. And when it’s not a fit, that’s it. I think that’s what’s slowing down businesses, honestly. Yeah,

Scott Barker: I would, I would agree.

I would agree. And I think, you know, the, the accountability piece is missing and, and it’s almost so far in the other direction that I’ve seen leaders almost get rewarded for that, for being somewhat ruthless in their, in their actions of like, no, we just hire, we demand excellence, we fire, demand excellence, and if you don’t cut it, you don’t get it.

I think you hired that person, you signed off on that hire. So, you know, that should be a leadership KPI that is front and center. Like, okay, well, you know, you had to let go X amount of people and they were only there for six, nine months. So you didn’t set them up for success. You didn’t hire the right person.

So I think that’s, that’s big and I loved your note on fulfillment. I have a. A simple life motto, that is, I wanna spend my life solving interesting problems with interesting people. And I think I’m lucky. I love sports enough to do that. .

Katrina Wong: Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that.

Scott Barker: Thank you. Yeah, it’s a simple one.

Uh, but, uh, I think if you’re lucky enough to be in a position to do that and I think we all are. If we let ourselves get there that’s how you can find a lot of joy in your work. Last question. It’s tough out there, everyone is trying a lot of different experiments. A lot of the old playbook is kind of breaking down.

What is one tactic or strategy that is working for you right now or working at some of the companies that you’re advising?

Tactics for modern marketing

Katrina Wong: Uh,I think marketing sometimes falls into a trap of. Not being very specific, more jargon, you know, you only have so, uh, much room on your website or your ad copy, or even emails to communicate.

Something. So, so as a result, right. The temptation to just kind of be big picture and, you know, all, all of which is important, but there’s a time and place for it. So what’s been working for us and what I’ve also seen forA lot of the companies I’m talking to is just going a little deeper, right. With uh, our messagesI think and I’ve started seeing this like the last couple of years.

So it’s not that new, but. Getting the use, you know, to the use case level and being very specific to the persona and sometimes even down to the job title is working. So for example taste up, take selling to marketers, right? Like a use case, like a very specific use case for a CMO. Is going to look very different from, you know, the end user practitioner who’s a growth marketer, for example.

So just really getting that specific when you doy our marketing and your campaigns, uh, has been working for us. What it really boils down to is just having a lot of clarity on the altitude of your message. You know, for, it’s like, Oh, I’m just going to send, you know, everyone with a marketing title, this one thing and not really have it land.

The other thing that is working, I think it took a couple of years for it to kind of truly be working, but I feel like. You know, it’s been around for a bit, but it seems to be working as of late and maybe because you’re in a downturn it is actually a lot more competitive and there’s a lot more noise.

Right.It’s ABM, uh, that can mean a lot of different things. It’s a digital ABM, it’s a very tailored, you know, you know, white glove service programs, you know, but whatever it is, and we do a variety, we subscribe to the one to one, one to many and one to few, and we do a combination of digital as well as, you know, uh, very human based programs we’re not making it hard for the audience to understand what’s in it for them.

Right. And we do it down, you know, by industry, by account by account, because when budgets are slim and it’s competitive and there’s a lot more marketing noise, cause everyone’s just trying to, you know, bring in more business. You have to make it easy for your audience by making it super relevant for them.

Snd they, and you kind of have just a little bit right to, to get them there. I call it the. Value exchange, right, for the time that they’re spending to understand what you’re trying to communicate. What are they getting in return? So some of the ABM tactics like, Hey, you know, we will do a free, you know, audit of your data strategy, making them, that’s the value that they’re going to get out of that based on time that they’re going to spend with you.

Feels good. And it feels right. Right. Versus a generic email that kind of comes through about a generic topic and the webinar is also generic. You know, that’s what the market is seeing a lot of. Right. And so you have to break through the noise.

Scott Barker: I think the first tactic and the strategy, ABM strategy and the hyper specific messaging, they kind of go hand in hand too.

We’re also in this beautiful time period in marketing where, you know, we have more and more intense signals and, and data than we ever had before. So even that hyper specific messaging, you don’t have to be married to only that one. You can have dynamic specific messaging that might change per persona in, in real time, uh, companies like Mutiny and others focused on this.

Katrina Wong: Think about AI and the possibilities of that, right? Like with generative AI. So the ease of, you know, doing that education, creating contentI’m very excited for, you know, our collective AI future, but it’ll make it even easier to add value, frankly, to, to be very specific and add value.

Scott Barker: Absolutely. And of course we got to the generative AI topic. Uh, thank goodness it was at the end and not at the beginning or we really got completely sidetracked because it is fascinating to, to talk about and maybe a conversation for, for another day. But, uh, Katrina, thank you so much for the time. Uh, that was, that was fantastic.

And for folks that, you know, want to follow along on your journey, what’s the best place to connect with you?

Katrina Wong: I think on LinkedIn, I’m probably the most active on LinkedIn. It’s just Katrina Wong. I think the URL is like Katrina Wong 11, which is, uh, my birthday, June 11th. So I almost feel like Taylor Swift.

I should, you know, her numbers, you know, her favorite number is 13. I’m like, my favorite number is 11 because it’s my birthday. So yeah. So the URL, you know, Katrina Wong 11. But yes, I look forward to it. Connecting, uh, with everyone. And if you have questions, uh, just DM me and I will try to get to as many as I can.

Uh, thanks for having me. It’s not, this was truly a pleasure.

Scott Barker: Of course. We’ll have to have you back sometime in the future and also a big fan of the number 11, that was actually my, my soccer jersey, uh, number back in the day. Amazing. And for all the listeners who joined us, thank you so much for hanging out with us.

Uh, I always say it, but. Listening is one thing. Executing is totally different. Hopefully you can apply some of these learnings and tactics that we talked about today and help grow your business. And we will see you all next week.