Operationalizing Marketing for Revenue Growth: Cut the Drag, Scale the Impact

“If people show up to a meeting and spend the whole time on their laptop, they probably don’t need to be there. Let’s call it out—and give them permission to opt out.” That’s a quote from Matt Heinz in today’s sneak peek at today’s episode. 

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast—the show where growth-minded business leaders learn how to turn marketing into a measurable revenue engine.

I’m your host, Kerry Curran—revenue-obsessed go-to-market expert and industry analyst. Each week, I sit down with the brightest minds in marketing, sales, and customer experience to unpack real-world strategies that drive sustainable growth.

If you like what you hear, please follow and review the podcast on your favorite platform—it helps us reach more leaders like you.

Today’s episode tackles one of the silent killers of go-to-market success: collaboration drag.

Matt Heinz, longtime CMO and industry expert, joins me to break down how aligning your processes, tech stack, and roles can radically improve pipeline creation and team productivity—especially as AI becomes part of your execution layer.

Stick around until the end, where Matt shares his top diagnostic questions to uncover hidden inefficiencies—and how to fix them fast.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran (00:02.144)
Welcome, Matt. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Matt Heinz (00:07.362)
Yeah, thank you, Kerry. My name is Matt Heinz, founder and president of Heinz Marketing. For over 16 years, we’ve helped companies with long, complex sales processes create more predictable pipelines. Too often, companies in that environment rely on random acts of marketing and experience pipeline lumpiness. So we focus on strategy, process, and playbooks—helping sales, marketing, and customer success teams work more closely together to build predictable, repeatable, and scalable pipelines.

Kerry Curran (00:37.066)
Excellent. Thank you, Matt. I know you spend a lot of time talking with CMOs and other executives. What common challenges are you seeing brands struggle with most right now?

Matt Heinz (00:53.806)
Yeah, there’s a lot—the list is long. But the one that comes to mind first is something called collaboration drag. Gartner listed fighting collaboration drag as a top-three CMO priority in 2024, and by 2025, they named it the number one thing CMOs should address. A simple way to understand what I mean is to ask this question:

Matt Heinz (01:23.022)
On average, how many meetings does it take your company to produce a webinar? When I ask that in a room full of marketers, the audible groans are loud. It’s too many meetings, too much back and forth. Even if you run webinars all the time, it feels like you’re reinventing the process every single time. That’s collaboration drag.

Matt Heinz (01:52.812)
Now think about today’s go-to-market motions—multiple channels, steps, buying committee members. We’re asking sales and marketing to work more closely together. We’re asking humans and AI agents to collaborate. It’s a mess. As a result, projects get delayed, agility disappears, and people burn out from inefficient systems.

Matt Heinz (02:22.298)
And as complexity grows—which it will—this issue only becomes more urgent. That’s why Gartner’s focused on it. Solving collaboration drag helps CMOs truly do more with less, which is the new anthem from boards and investors.

Kerry Curran (02:38.688)
Yeah, especially now. Marketers are feeling that pinch—tighter budgets, fewer resources, layoffs—but the pressure to hit business goals hasn’t eased. How do you help your clients identify and close those gaps?

Matt Heinz (02:59.566)
If you have a sales process or buying journey that spans 6, 9, or 12+ months, you're likely running complex plays already. That’s one signal. Another is team size—once you have 15+ marketers, collaboration drag is already setting in. At 20 to 25, the pain is visceral.

We created a Collaboration Drag Diagnostic with four key areas of internal go-to-market orchestration. It’s a maturity model. You look at “good, better, best” descriptions and choose where your team lands. And be honest—CMOs often think they’re better than the team thinks they are. It’s not uncommon for CMOs to say, “We’re good,” and their team replies, “We’re drowning.”

Matt Heinz (03:56.566)
It’s just a one-page tool, but it surfaces the pain quickly. That clarity is step one before you unlock agility, faster execution, and happier employees.

Kerry Curran (04:21.248)