Elena Turkmen, Head of Revenue Strategy at Acronis, explores building scalable GTM engines by aligning Marketing, Sales, Finance, and RevOps around shared commercial goals. She discusses smarter investment decisions, customer value, GTM experimentation, profitability, and measurable outcomes, while explaining why Marketing must look beyond campaigns to shape broader commercial strategy and customer experience.
Welcome to the interview series, Elena. Could you tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?
I’m actually not a traditional marketer, and I don’t want to pretend to be one.
I spent most of my career on the commercial side, primarily in Sales, before moving much closer to Marketing, investment governance, and revenue strategy.
There is one thing that has consistently bothered me throughout my career: commercial waste. When a company is spending money on something because “we have always done it this way,” when a customer or partner is no longer economically attractive but nobody wants to challenge it, or when we could get a much better result from the same resources but the organization is simply not set up to do it.
That is probably the common thread in everything I have done. I like finding where revenue, margin, or commercial investment is leaking, understanding why it is happening, fixing it, and then building a system so that the same problem doesn’t keep coming back.
I have done that from different sides of the business: Sales, new products and markets, Marketing, transformation, and investment allocation. So I probably look at Marketing a little differently. I don’t see it as a standalone function. I see it as one part of the commercial system, and I’m always interested in the same question: are we getting enough value from the resources we are putting into it?
You’ve worked across revenue strategy and commercial operations. What does it take to build a scalable commercial engine?
If I knew the universal formula for building a huge, scalable commercial engine, I would probably have built my own company by now and be selling you the product. I don’t think there is one formula that works for every company. But I can tell you what I’ve seen across different businesses and what I would look at if I were building my own company tomorrow.
The first thing I’ve learned is that more doesn’t automatically mean scale. More activities, more customers, more markets, more campaigns, more emails, and even hiring more salespeople—very often doesn’t produce the growth you expect. So I would look at three things.
First, I would try to understand my customer extremely well. What do they actually want? What value are they getting from my product? What alternatives do they have, and why would they choose me?
Second, I would look at my ability to deliver that value. And this is not only a Sales or Marketing question, but Product matters enormously. Can the product serve the next customer or market? Largely as it is, or does every expansion require new features, customization, localization, or implementation capacity? Let’s say I want to enter Japan. It may be a very attractive market, but if I need a local team, significant localization, different content, product changes, and a different sales motion, I need to understand what that expansion actually requires from the organization.
When you work across dozens of markets, you learn very quickly that “this worked in Germany; let’s do it everywhere” is not a scaling strategy. A market opportunity and your ability to serve that opportunity are two different things.
And third, I would look at the economics. What does it cost me to acquire and serve that customer? Where do I actually make money? What happens to profitability and unit economics as I grow?
For me, those three things have to work together: the customer has to want it, you have to be able to deliver it, and the economics have to make sense.
That still doesn’t give you a magic formula for scale. But it tells you whether doing more of something is actually a good idea.
What are the biggest challenges in turning a GTM strategy into effective execution?
For me, one of the most important things in GTM execution is flexibility.
You may have a clear idea of the market you want to enter, the customer you want to target, and the product you want to sell. But at that point, it is still a hypothesis. So I would build a series of experiments around it. Maybe we run three experiments: two work and one doesn’t. Then we need to move quickly, invest more in what is working, change what isn’t, or stop it altogether. The strategy gives you direction, but execution has to give you evidence.
The second thing I see missing quite often is one person who is accountable for the economics of that GTM motion end-to-end. Because what normally happens? Marketing owns demand. Sales owns conversion and revenue. Product owns what we build. Customer Success owns adoption and retention. Finance looks at the economics. RevOps connects much of the data and process. Everyone can be doing their job well. But who can tell me whether the GTM motion worked end-to-end?
We decided to invest in this market, partner, or customer. What happened to that commercial dollar? What converted? Did the customer adopt the product? Did they get the value we promised? Did they renew or expand? What was the profitability? And based on that, what did we decide to scale, change, or stop?
Across different organizations, I’ve often seen strong connections between sales and finance but much less mature connections between marketing and finance. Marketing, Sales, and Finance need to be looking at the same commercial story together. So for me, effective execution is not simply delivering the GTM plan. It is having enough flexibility, ownership, and visibility to follow a commercial investment through to the economic result and then act on what you learn.
“Marketing is no longer just a function that helps the company grow. It can have a real voice in how the commercial model and, ultimately, the company strategy evolves.”
How can Marketing, Sales, Finance, and RevOps work together toward shared revenue goals?
I don’t think all functions need to have the same KPIs. But their KPIs need to be connected to the same company goals. I have seen different attempts to create this connection. Marketing may be measured on lead quality or accepted leads rather than simply lead volume. Sometimes part of the marketing bonus depends on whether Sales achieves its target. But I have rarely seen a system where marketing, sales, finance, and RevOps are all genuinely connected through their KPIs.
I would start with one or two priorities that matter most to the company at that point in time and work backwards. And in a recurring-revenue business, I would actually extend this beyond the four functions in your question. Product and Customer Success have to be part of the same system, because winning the customer is only the beginning.
Take NRR as an example. Marketing may influence customer engagement and expansion demand; Sales, the commercial expansion; Customer Success, adoption and retention; Product, the value customers continue to receive; RevOps, the data and process; and finance, the economics. They do not need the same KPIs, but their KPIs should explain how each function contributes to the same company outcome.
And someone has to make sure we can actually see that chain in the data. Otherwise, connected KPIs exist only on PowerPoint. The same logic should determine how resources are prioritized. A $5,000 renewal and a $200 renewal should not automatically receive the same attention. There needs to be some understanding of customer or partner value, risk, and potential.
I would also bring finance much closer into this process. Staying within budget is important, but it doesn’t tell us whether the budget was used well. I would want to know what the investment produced, what we stopped when it wasn’t working, and where we reallocated the money. So for me, alignment is not about giving everyone the same KPI. It is about making sure that functional KPIs ultimately support the same one or two company priorities.
How do you balance growth, profitability, and operational efficiency when setting commercial priorities?
I don’t think there is one universal balance between growth, profitability, and efficiency. It depends on the company’s strategy, investment thesis, and stage of development.
A company entering a new market, for example, may deliberately prioritize growth and accept lower profitability for a period of time. That can make sense, as long as the company understands what it is investing in, what it expects to achieve, and over what timeframe. A company at a different stage may prioritize profitability or efficiency much more strongly. Then the question becomes, “Are we using every commercial dollar in the best possible way?”
One question I find useful is, what is my best investment option, what is my second-best option, and why am I choosing the first one? Even having one alternative forces you to think differently about where you put your resources.
This is also why I think Commercial, Marketing, and Finance need to work very closely together. Finance should be able to challenge commercial assumptions, but to do that well, finance also needs to understand how Sales and Marketing actually work. And commercial teams need to go one level deeper than committing to a revenue number. The question is not only, “How much revenue will this investment generate?” but also, “What kind of revenue will it generate?” What will the profitability or unit economics look like?
You can achieve the revenue target and still damage the economics of the business. So the priority should reflect not only the amount of growth you want, but the economics you are prepared to accept to get it.
How can sales teams move from selling solutions to demonstrating measurable business value?
I think Sales needs to understand the economics on both sides of the deal. Sales has already evolved significantly from simply presenting a product. Today, a good salesperson is expected to understand the customer, identify the problem, and show how the product can solve it. I think the next step is to translate that problem into measurable business value.
If a customer has an inefficient process, it is not enough to say that our product can automate it. What does that inefficiency actually cost them? Does it consume capacity, delay revenue, reduce margin, or create additional risk? And if we solve it, what should change in measurable terms? Sales should not build a business case around value the product cannot realistically deliver, and Product should be learning from Sales and Customer Success whether the value proposition is actually materializing after the sale.
But I would also look at the economics from the seller’s side. Not all revenue has the same value. A deal with healthy pricing and scalable delivery is very different from the same amount of revenue achieved through heavy discounting, extensive customization, and high cost-to-serve.
I think this should also be reflected in how we measure Sales. Revenue attainment is important, but depending on the business model, sales performance can also include measures of revenue quality where Sales can materially influence them, for example, discount discipline, price realization, retention, or expansion economics.
This also affects pricing and GTM decisions. When entering a new market or launching a new product, the company should have some understanding of the economic range within which it is prepared to operate. So I would connect the two sides: what measurable value are we creating for the customer, and are we creating that value in a way that also makes economic sense for our own company?
What advice would you give revenue marketers looking to build impactful marketing strategies and drive stronger business results?
I would encourage marketers to think much more broadly about their role in the company. Marketing probably has one of the best views of the customer in the organization. And I don’t think that responsibility should stop with campaigns, messaging, or even the product.
If customers love the product but hate the support experience, that is a marketing problem too. If working with us is unnecessarily difficult, if our partners create a poor customer experience, or if something in the way we sell or serve customers consistently frustrates them, Marketing should bring that back into the organization. It doesn’t mean Marketing should run Support, Sales, or Operations. But I think strong marketers should be able to look at the company through the customer’s eyes and influence much more than the marketing function itself.
The second thing is capital. Marketing leaders manage significant budgets, and I would encourage them to think about that money as an investment portfolio. The capital is limited. There are always more markets, partners, campaigns, events, and ideas than you can fund. So where do you put the next dollar? What do you stop funding? What deserves more?
I think that combination makes Marketing much more powerful: understanding the company from the customer’s perspective and understanding the marketing budget from an investor’s perspective.
At that point, Marketing is no longer just a function that helps the company grow. It can have a real voice in how the commercial model and, ultimately, the company strategy evolves.
About Elena Turkmen
Elena Turkmen is a commercial and revenue strategy leader with experience across global enterprises, PE-backed B2B software, and information services. Her expertise spans pricing and revenue capture, GTM productivity, partner economics, and commercial capital allocation. With experience at Microsoft, Argus Media, and Acronis, she has driven measurable improvements in profitability, growth, forecasting, and investment efficiency. Elena holds an MBA from Chicago Booth and brings a practical, economics-led perspective to modern commercial strategy.
