Revenue Alignment at UserGems

About the guest

Christian Kletzl

Christian Kletzl is CEO and co-founder of UserGems, a pipeline generation software that helps teams boost pipeline and reduce churn by monitoring job changes of your most valuable buyers and then automating the next steps. He is a software engineer turned seller, so even though most of his days are spent with customers and prospects, he still applies an engineering mindset to sales processes to optimize and achieve more with less.

Connect with Christian Kletzl

Trinity Nguyen

Trinity is VP of Marketing at UserGems. She has 10+ years of experience in go-to-market strategy, product marketing, demand generation, and account-based marketing. She is passionate about helping technology companies accelerate their growth and building great teams while doing it.

Connect with Trinity Nguyen

Key takeaways

• Revenue alignment is important for sales and marketing to work together toward the same customers and goals
• Shared success metrics and KPIs help align sales and marketing teams  
• Transparency in setting goals across the organization builds alignment
• Removing ego and prioritizing company goals over personal objectives is important
• Champion tracking can help align account-based marketing and sales outreach
• Setting OKRs and reviewing them regularly can help teams stay aligned

Quotes

“For me, it means that sales and marketing work towards the same customers, but even more, so it actually means, like, I think it’s necessary in this environment to do it that way.” -Christian Kletzl

“So this account showing intent. And by the way, besides just a regular intent data will also include champion, how many champions have just joined this account, how many of my previous customers had just joined this account, and that boosts up the intent signal.” -Trinity Nguyen

Highlights from this episode

What does revenue alignment mean to each of them at UserGems?

For Christian, revenue alignment at UserGems means that sales and marketing work towards the same customers, but even more so, it means that everything they do is done through multiple touchpoints across sales and marketing. He emphasized that this level of alignment is necessary, especially as a small startup, to stand out in a crowded space.

For Trinity, revenue alignment is about pulling resources to work towards the same goal in the most efficient way to acquire, maintain, and renew customers. It’s about aligning teams and stakeholders to eliminate inefficiencies that come from working in silos or having conflicting objectives.

How do they think about shared success metrics and KPIs that sales and marketing work towards?

Christian emphasized the importance of having metrics that sales can be directly measured on, like pipeline and closed deals, but also looking at conversion rates to understand what’s working. For marketing, he noted it’s important their metrics motivate working towards bottom-line goals like revenue, not just top-of-funnel activities.

Trinity discussed cascading company-level revenue and retention goals down to more tactical metrics her team can influence, like the pipeline. She highlighted the value of regularly reviewing pipeline conversion to determine which marketing initiatives are effective. Both sales and marketing need goals they can directly impact as well as shared company KPIs.

How do they set priorities and align goals as a company?

Christian provided valuable insights into thoughtfully cascading company-wide goals to motivate both sales and marketing teams. As the CEO with a sales background, he understands the importance of metrics that sales can directly impact like pipeline and closed deals. However, he also emphasized marketing needs goals tied to bottom-line outcomes rather than just top-of-funnel activities for true alignment. Christian acknowledged the challenge in setting objectives for marketing that influence revenue, as that impact is less direct.

Trinity offered practical examples of how UserGems operationalizes goal setting through their implementation of OKRs. She described rolling out OKRs across the organization and refreshing them quarterly to maintain consistency as priorities evolve. Trinity explained how short weekly standups and quarterly reviews foster transparency around objectives. This transparency is crucial, as it allows individuals to understand how their work maps to company goals. It also cultivates empathy when teams cannot support certain work due to goal prioritization set at the top. Their approach to goal setting through OKRs aims to ensure coordinated efforts across functions.

What are some of the most common challenges in staying aligned and how have they addressed them?

Christian provided insightful perspectives on some of the common challenges of staying aligned. He acknowledged that differing objectives between teams can lead to finger-pointing during discussions, which hinders productive collaboration. To address this, UserGems focuses revenue alignment meetings on data-driven discussions around shared metrics. Removing subjective elements prevents the ego from interfering with the goal of continuous improvement.

Trinity echoed that conflicting priorities present ongoing challenges to alignment. She likened managing alignment to herding cats due to the diverse motivations of individuals. UserGems addresses this by being willing to compromise short-term goals that don’t serve long-term interests. For example, declining deals that hurt retention. Trinity emphasized this requires empathy between teams to understand the tradeoffs others face. Their willingness to prioritize collective success over any single function promotes cohesion.

How does champion tracking help support some of the principles of revenue alignment?

Christian explained that champion tracking helps refine marketing and sales efforts by focusing on specific individuals, rather than just accounts. This personalization allows both teams to gain a prospect’s attention through multiple touchpoints over time. By targeting known contacts within high-intent accounts, champion tracking supports the principle of coordinated engagement across teams.

Trinity provided practical examples of how UserGems leverages champion tracking. It enhances account-based marketing programs by surfacing intent signals like new hires from existing customers. More importantly, it equips sales reps with named contacts and personalized outreach tailored to each situation. This level of coordination between teams when pursuing opportunities breaks down silos and fosters true alignment.

Resource recommendations

Books

– “SPIN Selling” by Neil Rackham.
– “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore.
– “Busting Silos” by Hillary Carpio.
– “Amp It Up” by Frank Slootman.

Shout-outs

–Hilary Headlee, Advisory Leader, Insight Partners.