Episode 317: Align Your GTM Teams for Measurable Results with Kimberly Kaminski

GUEST: Kimberly Kaminski, CMO at Lakeside Software

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Customer success and product marketing can be the driving force behind any go-to-market strategy.

However, the entire organization must work together to achieve success and deliver measurable results.

With that in mind, we wanted to know:

How can you successfully align product, marketing, sales, and customer success for a winning go-to-market strategy?

To help us with this today, we have Kimberly Kaminski, CMO at Lakeside Software. Kimberly is a visionary and pragmatic tech marketing and operations leader known for driving successful, measurable programs that grow customers and revenue. Additionally, she is an Executive Member of Pavilion.

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How Does Team Alignment Drive GTM Success?

Alignment across marketing, sales, product, and customer success is crucial for a successful go-to-market strategy. These teams must collaborate closely to understand and meet customer needs, driving growth and retention. Marketing and product teams need customer insights to refine their messages and improve offerings, while sales teams rely on this bond to effectively sell.

Customer success, often mistaken for support, plays a key role in maintaining ongoing relationships and identifying new use cases for products. At Lakeside, this alignment is achieved through constant communication and shared goals, ensuring each team contributes to creating long-term value for customers.

“I think the go-to-market used to be thought of, and still, some big organizations think of go-to-market as just the sales team. I think in the last five years, in particular, I've seen this go-to-market diamond, where marketing, sales, product, and customer success come together, build the go-to-market strategy, and work really closely together to make that strategy manifest”.

Kimberly Kaminski, CMO at Lakeside Software

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How Lakeside's Unified Team Drives Unmatched Customer Success

Lakeside prioritizes customers by ensuring its entire team, from marketing to sales and customer success, stays deeply engaged with them. Kimberly shares they believe in the mantra "all in," highlighting humility, trust, patience, and persistence. This means they don't just talk about working together but actively support each other, share insights, and continuously communicate to provide top-notch service.

“For us, the real value is continuing to stay close to the customers who have our solutions and understanding how they're using them in their different day-to-day business cases and then sharing that learning with other customer customers to try to help them uncover the same value”.

Kimberly Kaminski, CMO at Lakeside Software

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Driving Success Through Alignment and Accountability

Similar to Lakeside, prioritize clear, actionable goals and cross-functional alignment to drive success. The company's go-to-market strategy, crafted collaboratively by the leadership team, sets the foundation for Lakeside's goals. Each department aligns its objectives with six core company priorities, ensuring support for each other's success. The main focus areas are growth in EBITDA, revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, and retention.

“We want to make sure people are trained and productive. So, it's not to exclude the other goals related to people and products. But the big metrics are around customer retention, existing customers, and then acquiring new customers, growth, and profitability”.

Kimberly Kaminski, CMO at Lakeside Software

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Extending the Olive Branch in Teams

If you find yourself in an organization with misalignment and silos, remember that it's nobody's fault and take the initiative to extend the olive branch. Embrace a mindset of humility, realizing you don't know everything and need your team. Be patient, empathetic, and persistent, and make efforts to connect face-to-face to resolve tough alignment issues. Miscommunication is common, especially through email, so strive for clear and compassionate communication.

“I am of the mindset that I'm always going to be the olive branch extender, or I'm going to try to be. Somebody has to start it. So I would say that the first thing is just to be the olive branch extender. Don't worry about whether it's your job or not. Just extend the olive branch because then somebody is going to reach back. Someone has to do it first, and then people will reach back”.

Kimberly Kaminski, CMO at Lakeside Software

‍Now that you know the importance of aligning product, marketing, sales, and customer success for a successful go-to-market strategy, discover the full list of episodes at The B2B Revenue Executive Experience. If you enjoy the show, instructions to rate and review it are found here.