Rocket.Chat's Bruno Bin believes that good leadership plays a vital role in making a sales and marketing strategy successful.

You need to have the right leaders in place and aligned around the right go-to-market strategy and working culture to succeed

MEDIA 7: With over a decade in marketing roles, what paradigm shift have you seen in the B2B marketplace?
BRUNO BIN: I got my start around the same time inbound marketing was becoming a thing. It was this whole new idea that instead of reaching out to customers to get them interested in your products and services, you could create content that draws the right people in. It felt like the B2B inbound marketing playbook of today was being written and everyone in that community got to be a part of that. It was a really exciting time to be in B2B marketing and, as a result, a big shift happened where companies were putting more and more focus on MarTech as a foundational piece of a successful marketing strategy. It also meant a shift in the profile of the ideal marketer, where technical folks were turned into marketers due to their ability to operate in this new tech-heavy reality.  I think today we’re starting to wake up to the fact that technology is just a means to an end and it cannot replace good old positioning, copywriting and creativity.

M7: Rocket.Chat recently announced a new service called Instagram Direct. Could you please tell us more about this service and its benefits for your customers?
BB: Rocket.Chat is the largest open source communications platform in the world. You can use it to communicate with colleagues, other companies or customers.  For companies looking to communicate with customers through Rocket.Chat, Instagram Direct is one of the many channels we support. Essentially, you can respond to all your Instagram business account inquiries right from your Rocket.Chat workspace. It improves team efficiency, boosts sales and strengthens customer loyalty.

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There are a multitude of factors that play into making a sales and marketing strategy successful but in many ways, it comes down to leadership

M7: What, according to you, would be an ideal framework for marketing and sales teams to derive business success? What are the benchmarks of a successful marketing and sales strategy?
BB: Unfortunately, the reality is that most sales teams have had terrible experiences working with marketing; where marketing is doing their own thing, focused on vanity metrics such as MQLs, fighting over who sourced what deal while sales is doing their best to communicate to marketing what it is they think they need. While sales is focused on revenue today, marketing must be focused on revenue tomorrow. Marketing needs to be targeted at qualified pipeline (meaning account executive vetted opportunities) and businesses need to allow their marketing teams to do marketing, not only short-term sales initiatives. Ultimately, marketing and sales win or lose together. In my experience, there are a multitude of factors that play into making a sales and marketing strategy successful but in many ways, it comes down to leadership. You need to have the right leaders in place and aligned around the right go-to-market strategy and working culture to succeed. Especially at a high growth start-up where pressure and expectations are high.

M7: Rocket.Chat has been advocating for remote work in many ways. Has being remote influenced your company’s organizational structure in any way?
BB: We’ve been a fully remote company from day one. Today, we have about 170 employees spread across over 30 different countries. I’m not sure remote work has influenced our organizational structure but it has opened us up for talent worldwide, forced us to improve our own ways of working and motivated us to develop a strong company culture and global mindset from day one. We’ve scaled from 25 to 170 employees in about a year and a half and without the above, I don’t think we could’ve done it as successfully as we have.

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Today we’re starting to wake up to the fact that technology is just a means to an end and it cannot replace good old positioning, copywriting and creativity.

M7: Rocket.Chat has been recognized by Gartner as a representative vendor for workstream collaboration. What has been the strategy behind achieving such prestigious recognition?
BB: We’re thrilled! Gartner does a great job of supporting their customers in making well-informed software buying decisions. Rocket.Chat is backed by the largest open source communications community in the world with over 1,500 contributors, 12M+ users and roughly 32,000 stars on GitHub.  We’re fortunate enough to have a strong and loyal customer base that helped us be recognized in the Workstream Collaboration Market Guide by Gartner alongside some of the biggest software companies in the world.

M7: Your work experience spans across highly complex matrix organizations to entrepreneurial and start-up businesses. What do you believe is your driving force behind your proven track record and achievements?
BB: I really love what I do and I’ve been lucky enough to work with very talented teams and supportive mentors.