How RJ Young's CMO Turned Marketing Into a Sales Partner

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Kamron Kunce, the first-ever CMO in the 70-year history of RJ Young, a Southeast-based leader in print and technology solutions. Kamron was brought in to do something no one had done before: transform a sales-driven organization's marketing function from a silo into a genuine revenue growth partner. He shares how he's built a lean, high-ownership marketing team, how he approaches pipeline attribution in a company that runs on field sales, why he owns NPS as a marketing metric, and how RJ Young's COVID-era pivot to tech solutions became the foundation for an entirely new national brand — VelocityOne.Topics Discussed:How RJ Young doubled from $100M to $200M in revenue by launching new tech solutions post-COVIDThe genesis and strategy behind the soft launch of VelocityOne, RJ Young's new national managed services brandWhat it looks like to be the first CMO in a 70-year-old sales-first companyHow Kamron builds and structures a small marketing team with broad ownershipWhy he favors generalists and "hardcore passionate problem solvers" over specialistsHow marketing earns trust from sales by speaking their language and bringing data to every conversationUsing campaign IDs in Salesforce to build genuine pipeline attributionWhy Kamron owns NPS as a marketing metric — and how RJ Young scores above 90Using AI-powered call transcripts to close the customer feedback loopThe three-pronged framework: data, customer conversations, and the human elementWhy the best campaigns start with a real conversation, not a spreadsheetLessons for B2B Marketers:Earn the sales team's trust before you earn their cooperation. Kamron inherited 70 years of marketing being treated as a cost center. His approach wasn't to rebrand the marketing function — it was to show up with data, clear asks, and direct answers to the question every sales leader is already thinking: "What's in it for us?" That shift, done consistently, is what converts marketing from a creative group with big ideas to an actual growth partner.Pipeline influence is only measurable if you build the infrastructure for it. Kamron's team creates campaign IDs directly in Salesforce at the start of every initiative, then does regular check-ins with sales reps to keep attribution intact across the deal journey. This requires building real relationships with salespeople — because salespeople don't update CRMs unless someone they trust asks them to. The data doesn't track itself.Own NPS even when you didn't build it. Kamron treats NPS as a marketing metric, not just a customer success metric. His reasoning: the score tells you whether marketing is making promises the company can actually deliver on. At RJ Young, NPS sits above 90 — a number he attributes to the DNA of the company, not any single campaign or team.Use AI to close the customer listening loop, not to replace it. RJ Young runs AI agents on inbound customer calls to generate transcripts and analyze sentiment. That data doesn't stay in a dashboard — it flows back into marketing decisions, from FAQ content on the website to identifying product-level friction points. The technology is useful specifically because someone is responsible for acting on what it surfaces.//Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.coDon't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire — Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM