Gražvydas Kaminskas never planned to be a marketer. He started his career in sales, where winning was measured in deals closed and targets hit. But around 12 years ago, he was pushed toward marketing—and quickly realised it was where he belonged. Unlike sales, where victories are fleeting, marketing lets you build something lasting: a strategy, a brand, a market presence.
Today, as the Global CMO and a board member at NFQ, Gražvydas leads marketing for an 800-strong technology company operating across nine countries. He’s also been recognised as a Top 10 CMO in Lithuania in both 2023 and 2024. Before NFQ, Gražvydas has held leadership roles at valantic LT, Frontu, Teamgate CRM, Tesonet, and Enterprise Lithuania.
Tell us about your journey into marketing.
I worked with sales, and about 12 years ago, I was pushed to the marketing side. I quickly realised that marketing is more interesting for me than sales. With marketing, you can sustain that winning feeling much longer. In sales, it's just like 15 minutes, and then you move on to the next battle. Every day is a new challenge. But in marketing, you can continue that sense of achievement for days, months, or even years. And when you're launching a new market, you have the freedom to experiment. Companies aren’t as frustrated with experimentation in marketing as they are in sales, where you don’t really have the opportunity to try new things.
I’ve been working at NFQ for almost five years now. We are an 800-employee company operating in nine countries—Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and Denmark. I’m responsible for the overall marketing strategy. It’s a challenge to communicate the value of optimisation and effectiveness in a crowded market.
What do you think is the most difficult market to break into?
Hmm, maybe the UK or the US. The UK, in particular, is challenging because companies there don’t want to change the way they develop solutions or products. They’re focused on their own approach and can be resistant to new methods, even when they are more efficient.
That’s a bit surprising. I would have thought Germany would be more conservative than the UK.
Actually, NFQ was built from scratch about 23 years ago, and its foundation is in Germany. The company was started by three German founders and one Lithuanian, so we’ve worked with Germans for over 20 years. That means we understand their way of doing business quite well.
Sometimes, we even hear that the Lithuanians are “more German than the Germans” in terms of quality, deadlines, and a straightforward attitude. In contrast, the UK business culture tends to be more polite and indirect, which makes it a different kind of challenge.
Let’s talk about your ideal customer profile (ICP). How do you define it?
About two years ago, we tried to map them out, and we ended up identifying 16 different ICPs. But when we looked deeper, we realised they actually fall into two broad categories.
The first category consists of companies and startups that are willing to innovate. They aren’t afraid to take risks and invest—sometimes two, three, or even four hundred thousand euros—just to explore and experiment with new solutions. They think long-term and are driven by a vision to create something new.
Then you have the second category: the corporates that calculate every euro. They push their providers to the limit, expecting cost efficiency and predictability. They might want innovation, but they expect it to fit within their existing structures, and they’ve already invested heavily in their current solutions. So, in a way, it comes down to two mindsets—those who calculate and those who innovate, constantly searching for new ways to do things.
That’s an interesting way to look at it. How do you identify which category a company belongs to?
That’s why B2B is all about conversations. You don’t just figure this out from a website or a pitch deck—you learn it through interactions. It happens at events, conferences, meetings, even over a beer. If you’re in the right communities, you start to get a sense of who’s actively working on new products and who’s just looking for incremental improvements. It’s not just about the numbers; there’s a human element to it.
Do you track this in a structured way, like through a CRM?
Yes, we track what they say publicly—where they’re investing, what projects they’re talking about. If a company is making early-stage moves, that’s a signal. Those are the ones we keep an eye on because they’re constantly doing something—developing new solutions, entering new markets, or discussing things that might not even make sense to the market yet. That kind of activity tells us they’re pushing boundaries, and that’s where the real opportunities lie.
Let’s say you attend a conference, and a company from the UK is discussing some innovative ideas—do you immediately open your CRM and add a note about their potential? How do you structure this process?
For example, we work a lot with the mobility industry, and after a few years, we realised that in all of Europe, there are just about 30 companies that could be potential customers. It’s a highly specific market. If a company in this space isn’t securing at least 10 million in investment, they simply won’t be able to build anything on the same level as their competitors.
So, tracking becomes relatively straightforward—if they’re getting that level of investment, it’s a strong signal that they have the capacity to execute. It makes the conversation much easier because you know they’re serious players.
We are also quite well known in Germany, and within that market, we see different industry layers. Take e-commerce, for example—there are agencies, service providers, and solution vendors. When you analyse the space, you find that within each of these layers, there are about 10 to 20 relevant companies. You start to recognise which ones have the capability to move forward with innovation and which do not.
Your list of potential customers is relatively short? How big is it, typically?
It depends on the country. If you're not focusing on a specific industry, then the number can be in the thousands. But if you're working in a highly specialised field—let’s say battery management solutions—there might only be 50 companies in Europe even discussing that topic. If it's EV charging, the number might be around 100 to 200. So, the size of the potential market varies, but in niche industries, it’s always a relatively small, well-defined group.
On a large scale, we can invite people to events or webinars, and from there, we can segment them based on their capabilities—whether they have the right budget and the right innovation mindset. We usually categorise them into three groups: those who are actively investing, those who are just looking for solutions, and those who aren’t ready yet and mainly need support services like business intelligence, data science, UX, email marketing, or similar.
How long is the sales cycle on average?
The average is around three months.
Oh, that’s quite short.
Yes, quite short, but if the deal value is high—let’s say up to half a million—it can take a year or even a year and a half.
You mentioned webinars. What channels do you use for lead generation?
We use LinkedIn and Facebook, and then our team shares these events on their own profiles.
There are so many webinars happening these days. You could spend your whole life just watching them. How do you stand out?
That’s a great point. For example, in Lithuania, we have a reputation as a leader in our industry, so we don’t overdo it. Right now, we host only two webinars per quarter, sometimes just one. We’re very deliberate about the topics—we choose subjects with high interest and intensity, things people want to learn about.
The biggest lessons we’ve learned with webinars revolve around structure—teaching speakers how to organise their topics effectively, stay concise, and keep the focus sharp.
When we announce a webinar, we make sure it’s compelling. For example, in February, we had a webinar where we invited the CTO of Vinted to talk about data—how they track it, what they do with it, and how they handle their massive customer base. Having top-tier experts makes a huge difference in attracting the right audience.
The biggest lessons we’ve learned with webinars revolve around structure—teaching speakers how to organise their topics effectively, stay concise, and keep the focus sharp.
You mentioned organising an NFQ Summit in Asia. Could you tell us more about that?
Yes, this year marks the sixth time we’re organising the NFQ Summit in Ho Chi Minh or Bangkok. We bring customers from Europe as well, so it’s both a professional and social event—half focused on business and technology, and half on having fun.
The event is open to both existing customers and potential ones. For example, if we want to attract a customer from Germany, we can invite them to Ho Chi Minh to attend the event and explore business opportunities.
How do you measure the success of such an event? What KPIs do you track?
Since organising such events is costly, we measure ROI through customer continuity—whether customers continue working with us. Another key metric is how our customers engage with our teams. When they gather and discuss functionalities or solutions, they gain a deeper understanding of how our tech teams operate, develop a strong human connection.
How many people usually attend the NFQ Summit?
Typically, we have around 100 to 150 customers, and our own team ranges from 50 to 200 attendees.
Why did you choose to host the event in Asia?
To be pragmatic—who wouldn’t want to be in Asia in January or February? But beyond that, we have a strong presence there, with 200-250 employees in Ho Chi Minh and 50 in Bangkok. Asia is a fast-growing market with high demand, unlike Europe, where many industries are more comfortable and slow-moving.
In Europe, regulations and restrictions slow down innovation.
And we see the biggest growth potential in Asia right now. In Europe, regulations and restrictions slow down innovation. For example, if we want to develop something new in the Baltic states, it’s possible but limited by market size. Germany, on the other hand, seems to be going through an identity crisis, unsure of its long-term direction.
How does the business environment differ between Europe and Asia?
In Asia, companies adopt AI from day one. They don’t hesitate or ask if they should use it—they just do. In contrast, European businesses often get stuck in compliance concerns and security gaps, which slows them down.
From a marketing perspective, do you tailor your messaging differently for Europe and Asia?
Yes, there are differences. Webinars, for example, are oversaturated in Europe, while in Asia, people are eager to learn and compete. The competitive culture in Asia is intense—whether as employees or businesses, they constantly push to outperform each other. In terms of marketing, Europe values high-quality content but struggles with cost and time constraints. In Asia, and there’s less concern over visual perfection as long as the community is engaged and the content resonates.
In Asia, it’s easier because the boss decides.
In Europe, we have constructed such a huge bureaucratic machine for decision-making. Like, it was okay when the CEO was deciding, but right now, the whole supply chain is involved in the decision-making process, each adding their own piece. It could be better, but, you know, I send a list of why not, and then the whole 20 people in the chain send their own requirements, and suddenly everything stops. It's so hard to manage all the shareholders. You don’t even understand who the main decision-maker is. In Asia, it’s easier because the boss decides.
I have also experienced in Asia that people are so busy, especially in places like India, people get hundreds of emails every day and hundreds of WhatsApp messages, and they just don’t react to your communication. So, it's very hard to engage with them. Even if they say, "Oh yeah, we are very interested," they disappear for a month. They just ghost you. I don’t know if you experience the same. How do you handle that?
We use CRM, and from the history line, you can see the small details—how fast they are moving or how slow, what kind of topics they are talking about, making workshops, and so on. You can realise if they are moving in the right direction or just bullshitting the whole process. Sometimes, both sides are just pretending, just trying to understand who is who without closing the deal. That’s why our team helps to identify this early.
Because if you do close the deal under these conditions, it becomes so complicated to get good results from NPS, KPIs, or even an honest opinion about the services. You might ask a person who was in the room but was never the actual decision-maker. Identifying who is who in B2B is very important.
But how do you find out? If you're sitting in a meeting room with ten people on the other side, how do you understand their roles? Who is who?
The formal leader is easy to spot. But job titles are confusing.
Sometimes, people are just trying to secure their position. It’s not that easy. My approach is: when my team is frustrated and wondering what to do, I tell them to focus. What’s important is that we generate leads, ensure the quality of those leads, and help sales close them. That’s our job. There will always be ghost leads—90% of them, maybe—but we need to focus on the 10% that matter.
How closely do sales and marketing operate in your company? In many companies, they don’t talk to each other but blame each other. Sales say the leads are bad, and marketing says sales aren't closing them. How do you align sales and marketing?
I don’t get my bonus if sales don’t close deals. That means I need to help them close deals. If they’re not ready to close, or they’re not listening, it’s a problem. Our CSO ensures that we don’t just generate leads but qualify them properly. We sit together, discuss our needs, understand our strengths, and determine how to generate leads that sales can actually close. After four and a half years, we have that connection. We don’t just blame each other—we blame each other face to face.
It’s important that if we have issues, we address them directly, not behind each other’s backs.
Can you recommend a podcast, book, or website where you get information about B2B marketing?
There’s a community called CMO Alliance. They have a Slack channel where you can ask anything—about events, hiring, KPIs, budgets, etc. There are over 5,000 CMOs globally. Last year, I asked myself, "What do I want to learn?" And I realised I wanted to be part of a community. It’s much easier to stay on track and understand that you’re not alone.
Most CMOs don’t fully understand how other departments operate. So, I wanted to understand what salespeople discuss after meetings, how tech leads communicate with engineers, and what’s really important to them. I needed to go deeper, talk to my own company’s people, and understand what they do daily. That helps improve marketing because they know the real pain points.
So, the best information comes from within your company?
Yes. If you don’t listen to your own people, you’ll end up following competitors. But at some point, you’ll realise that your competitors are watching you, too. It’s a cycle.
Interviewed by Hando, edit by Ann-Kristin