GTM 145: What Happens When a CRO Owns the Entire Customer Journey, How to Build a Unified GTM Engine | Marcy Campbell

Marcy Campbell is the Chief Revenue Officer at AppFolio, where she leads sales and client services with a focus on delivering unified, end-to-end customer experiences. With over 30 years of experience scaling revenue teams across FinTech, SaaS, cloud computing, and communications, Marcy has held executive roles at Boomi and PayPal—where she led an 800+ person global team. Her deep expertise in aligning sales, customer success, and operations makes her a standout leader in the GTM space.

What happens when a CRO owns the entire customer journey

Discussed in this Episode:

• How AppFolio’s Unified Customer Experience (UCE) platform aligns marketing, sales, and customer service.
• The evolving role of the CRO and the importance of owning the entire customer journey.
• Why customer experience is a competitive differentiator in vertical SaaS.
• Tactical tips for early-stage startups on aligning go-to-market motion with product-market fit.
• The importance of cross-functional “stream teams” for accelerating GTM initiatives.
• How Marcy builds inclusive leadership cultures and mentors rising female leaders.
• Why how you make the number matters as much as making the number.

Highlights:

10:30 The Chief Revenue Officer's (CRO) responsibility to understand and optimize the entire customer journey.

12:30 How the Unified Customer Experience (UCE) platform was formed and how it works.

16:00 End-to-end GTM orchestration across sales, marketing, product, and CS.

22:00 Results from the UCE initiative: accelerated deal velocity and customer retention.

26:30 Advice for startups: identifying your ICP and fixing pipeline fundamentals.

29:00 How to scale with customer empathy and GTM precision.

31:00 Advocating for women in sales leadership and building inclusive teams.

36:00 Marcy’s communication strategy for managing a 600-person org.

39:00 Marcy's favorite business leadership tactic: “Take a beat” before reacting.

40:00 What’s outdated: The belief that only numbers matter in sales.

Guest Speaker Links (Marcy Campbell):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcyc/
• Appfolio: https://www.appfolio.com/

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

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

• Website: https://gtmnow.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
• Twitter/X:

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast 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 s