Prioritizing Early to Unlock Opportunities Later
On this episode, Karan discusses RevOps’ unique perspective on data, why he thinks spreadsheets can be dangerous, and why he thinks RevOps is the connective tissue of a company.
Welcome to Rise of RevOps.
I'm the Faze on CEO of castman studios.
And today I am joined by a special guest, Curran.
How are you?
- Tim Whelpau, excited to be here.
- Excited to have you on the show.
RevOps operator turned VC.
What a perfect person to have on the show.
It's really exciting.
- RevOps is still near and dear to my heart.
I know I've moved over to VC land,
but I get to do more of the same.
It's still revenue operations.
I just get to do it with a swath of companies
rather than just one.
And there's a joy in that too, my friend.
- Yeah, so tell me a little bit about
kind of what you were doing in RevOps,
what your role was previous to that
and why you decided to join Sapphire.
- So my background is actually in what I call
go-to-market strategy and revenue operations.
And the two are really interconnected with each other.
One's kind of more again, the strategy side,
the other more of the execution behind it.
But that's what I've been doing pretty much my whole career.
Prior to Sapphire, I've been in a bunch
of in-seat operations roles.
And most recently it was at a company called Procore.
So think vertical SaaS, construction tech,
I joined Procore.
Maybe when they were pretty mature,
probably 150, $200 million a run rate
and spent three plus years with them.
Took them through a public event,
probably tripled revenue during that period of time.
And it was in all the things that I like to do
within revenue operations, ultimately supported them.
So helping them think through intentional
and efficient scale and growth,
which really matters, especially when you're a public company.
And how do you set up an organization
to do that early days?
So that when you are finally in that phase and stage
that you're set up for becoming a forever company,
not just a flash in the pan.
So did that at Procore, which was a fun ride.
And then prior to that,
Ian, I was at a company called Cloudera.
So think machine learning, data warehousing,
that world.
And boy, I joined them early days,
maybe 40, 50 million dollars a run rate.
I was the first operations leader there
and kind of went through that hyper growth journey
with them too.
So all the way to $300 plus million a revenue,
public event, once again,
trying to become a sustainable forever company.
And again, the commonality with both is
I ran Go to Market Strategy and Ops.
And the reason I say that is because you ask like,
hey, what am I doing at Sapphire and Sapphire's BC land?
And the reality is that what I've done for those companies
and a few others in past slides before that,
very much germane and relevant to what the Sapphire
portfolio of companies we're looking forward to.
And so when I joined Sapphire,
I joined them really to run their revenue excellence function.
So a new function that we're rolling out
and essentially what it's supposed to do,
what it's meant to do is surround sound our portfolio
of companies with great best practices,
advisory, guidance, support, benchmarks
to ultimately help them accelerate their growth journey.
And to do it again,
and not just a growth is all cost sort of model,
but rather a more intentional, efficient manner.
And again, having seen this a few times,
it doesn't hurt to share in a spouse sort of what I've learned
and hopefully give them a little bit of value along the way too.
But that's the transition
and really enjoying my time at Sapphire.
And like I said, I get to do more of what I've always been doing,
which is Go to Market Strategy and Ops,
just with just a babbie of companies now.
- Yeah, and what types of companies are these,
are you working with mostly B2B tech companies?
What stage is all that?
- Great question.
Sapphire, we predominantly like to focus on growth stage companies
and enterprise B2B.
Now, there's obviously a swath of others as well,
I'm sure we'll invest in.
We like to invest in what we call companies of consequence,
so it's maybe a broader thesis in that regard,
but ultimately it's companies that have found their product market fit,
they know the problem they're solving with their product is real,
but now they're trying to figure out how to scale this thing
and do so in a manner where again,
they become that long-term part of the tech stack
of the companies that they're involved in,
or selling to rather.
So in any case, it's more growth stage companies
and later stage companies and more enterprise B2P centric.
And certainly my background fits really well
with what it is that Sapphire is investing in,
because that's what I've done in my past lives as well.
- And so how many of these folks,
when you come in and look at the company,
how many of them have RevOps as a function,
how many of them need to be turned to the dark side,
how many of them are just know that they have problems
and didn't really know RevOps as a function.
RevOps is still pretty nascent,
I'd imagine a lot of these founders,
especially first-time founders,
are probably not, that's not the first thing
that they would invest in necessarily if they don't know about it.
- Yeah, good question.
Faze and stage wise with the companies we invest in,
most of them have a revenue operations function
and a go-to-market strategy function to some extent.
Here's what I would say.
I think it's kind of like what you said in where
revenue operations means so many different things
to so many people.
Early stages, most companies look at RevOps
and I used to say this affectionately
as your salesforce.com administrator, right?
It's that very tactical resource that
I like to say keep the lights on and keep the trains running
on the tracks.
And so I do see a fair bit of that
where I think you really get that force multiplier
that value add from revenue operations
is when you give it a seat at the table as a strategist.
And I used to tell my teams this all the time.
It's like, yes, our job partially is to keep the lights on,
but everyone in a revenue operations team
is a go-to-market strategist as well.
We have a unique perspective on the data
'cause we built it, the infrastructure because we built it.
So we understand how the data is flowing.
We understand the trends of the business.
We are typically pretty predictive and proactive
when it comes to understanding our business.
So why wouldn't we be the ones that are standing up
with our CRO instead with us to say,
here's what we see, feel, and think
and how we may wanna consider what we do next.
I don't know if I see enough of that,
not just in Sapphire portfolio, actually Sapphire,
I think's done a good job with sort of imbuing
some of that in, but more broadly
within the RevOps principle and discipline,
being more strategic versus tactical or balancing the two,
I think is really the name of the game
and where I think RevOps is going.
And so more of that, I think,
is the opportunity really for all of us
and something I have really tried to enforce
in my career as a RevOps leader as well.
- Yeah, it's a great point.
I mean, you also see this sort of like,
career pathways are weird into RevOps, right?
You have analysts, you have others that like this,
so there's kind of like building in a strategic
and a tactical kind of muscle on both those sides
is probably not really realistic.
For a lot of people, they're either gonna come from one
or the other side, or they're coming from sales,
or from marketing or customer success,
and like, you know, or they're gonna have
a data background or whatever.
So because there's kind of the pathways are kind of funky
and the role was in defamance,
literally one of the reasons why we made this show
is for the exact reason of like,
what the heck is this and what is this,
you know, head of RevOps function, what should it be?
And I think that, you know, speaking to the strategy piece,
like when you're that close to the data,
like you said, when you're building it,
it's like you can't just have a five foot view
of the company, like it makes no sense.
- Well, the framework that I've always used with my teams
for what it's worth, and I think we'll probably reflect
how I actually build these teams within RevOps.
Look, RevOps has a multitude of different disciplines
underneath it, like you said, right?
So how do you connect them all together?
How do you think of them as a one cohesive unit?
It's always been to me the same.
It's we cover strategy, plan, people,
process, technology and measurement.
Those are the big, big pillars for us
within revenue operations.
I think every team has asked themselves,
like if you consider those are all part of the game, right?
What do you actually have in place today?
What are you a specialist in?
And what do you lack today, right?
And like I said, I think a lot of organizations
neglect the strategy and plan early days.
They think more about process or technology.
I think more companies need to focus on measurement,
right, being data driven with respect to.
So really, I think everyone has a value
because every RevOps team is a little bit different,
but look at all those different pillars
and ask yourself, like, where is the opportunity?
Where can you sort of build out the missing pieces?
Because I think this thing really hums
when you have all of it together
and working in harmony with each other.
And then again, you can build your sort of functional disciplines
based on that framework as well.
And I think that that's how you get that force multiplied
that we're all looking for from revenue operations.
- Do you have a definition of revenue operations
like the current's guide to RevOps?
- I do, and I get asked this all the time
and I always have people step back a little bit
and I try to articulate it this way.
There's the how and the what.
I think everybody has a different how, right?
So when I've done this for a long time
and the teams that people build within revenue operations,
how they group them together,
what their tactical role responsibilities are,
sometimes different depending on the need of the company.
The what, as in like, what is it that RevOps
is trying to accomplish?
It's always the same.
There are commonalities there.
And from a what perspective, I have a really strong point of view,
but ultimately what to me means something very straightforward.
RevOps, what it does is it does really two things.
Number one, it is a connective tissue
of your revenue organization.
So put it to another way.
If you think about any revenue team,
it's a myriad of interdependent
but relatively siloed disciplines.
You have sales, marketing, CS, pre-sales, post-sales,
and they all have their focus, right?
RevOps is a one team if built correctly
that spans across all of revenue along with your CRO.
Our job is to build the handoffs and the connection
between these respective teams,
have them all think about the overall customer journey,
i.e. how our customers want to buy,
not necessarily how we want to sell,
and reflect that in process and technology
and all these different pieces that we talked about before.
So one component which I've shared frequently
with my teams as well is that what we ultimately do
is we serve as a connective tissue for a revenue organization.
And then the second thing that I think is
what we are beholden to, that we are responsible for,
is being the prioritization engine for a revenue team.
So put it to another way,
and I use this term frequently too,
is that most companies, especially at scale,
die from indigestion, not starvation.
There's just too much to do.
I've had 80% RevOps teams that looked at me and said,
"Hey, I have way too much work and way too few resources."
As crazy as that sounds.
So our job is to help the entire revenue organization.
One, intake, what are the key priorities?
Both from a strategic bed standpoint,
as well as from a,
hey, just keeping the engine going standpoint.
And then evaluate it, prioritize it,
and basically say no to good ideas
or not now to good ideas for great ideas,
and then relentlessly execute against it.
So if we can prioritize the revenue org
and the work we do to actually scale it,
and we can serve as that connective tissue
that brings all of revenue together,
I think we want as revenue operators.
And now how we do it, everybody does it a little bit differently.
I have a point of view on how I've built teams
to support that vision and that mission,
but ultimately that is what I think we're solving for.
- What's the way that you build it?
- Here's my perspective when it comes to revenue operations
and the disciplines within.
And everybody does it a little bit differently,
but here's how I look at it.
So I am a big believer in a center of excellence
and field operations model.
This is probably more relevant for later stage,
mid stage companies when you have really large organizations
that need a lot of help support.
But the way to think about it is your centers of excellence
are the teams that need to go deep, not wide.
So I'll give you a couple of examples.
I have had tech teams, right, revenue systems teams.
They just need to be responsible for understanding the tech stack
at its very core depth and level of granularity, right?
You have your analytics teams.
They're responsible for really understanding the data
and measuring the data and maintaining and managing.
You have your strategy and planning teams.
All they're doing all day, every day is thinking about quotas
and comp plans and targets and territories,
things to that effect.
These are all disciplines within revenue operations
where there is a need to have specialists that go deep.
I typically create teams against each and every one of these,
individualized specialized teams.
Now they cover the entire revenue stack.
So if I have a planning team,
I don't have a sales planning team alone, right?
I have a revenue planning team that thinks across marketing,
sales, CS and all the sub functions underneath.
Same thing with my analytics team, my enablement team,
my tech team, et cetera,
because they should look across the entire gambit.
But on one hand, you have these specialist teams,
these centers of excellence.
But on the other hand, you have your field organization
that also has a need to share,
hey, here are my wants and needs, hopes and dreams
with respect to what I need from operations.
That's where my field operations teams typically come in.
These teams are more generalist resources, if that makes sense.
So think like early stage companies typically have
a jack of all trades, revenue operator,
somebody who can do a little bit of everything,
maybe not at the same depth and specialty,
but they have a good pulse on all facets of revenue ops.
I build a team of those individuals as well,
and their whole job is to be what I'd refer as
first mile and last mile.
Meaning they're the folks that are working
with your field leaders, your VP of sales in Amia
and APAC and the US or your CS leader
or your marketing leader and saying,
hey, tell me what you are trying to solve for.
Not the purple shiny button that you want me to build,
but rather the problem statement you have.
And they use that to intake and understand
what it is that we need.
And then they are the ones interfacing
with those centers of excellence.
So let's say somebody's having a lot of trouble
with their compensation plans
within a particular region segment.
They're not gonna go to the systems team
field operations to say, solve this,
they're likely gonna go to the planning team.
And then that ideation starts, right?
The experts can support the field operators
and vice versa to say, okay,
how do we actually review, assess and solve this problem?
And then that team field operations is the same team
that is interfacing continuously with the field to say,
here's what we're thinking, how we're approaching it,
the change management, the rollout plan, et cetera, et cetera.
The reason that this is important here is because
if you have your specialist COEs constantly interfacing
with the field, not to say that they have no interaction,
but are constantly being requested by the field
for a bunch of tactical work,
they will never get anything meaningful done.
Field operations is that conduit in between
that acts as a filter that allows for some
of that pressure testing on what is the real root problem
to solve for and then engages with the right resources
on the specialist side to support the execution.
So if you have both sides of this in place,
I think together, that to me makes the most robust
revenue operations function.
And transparently, that's what I've rolled out in past slides,
whether it's at Procore or Cloud Era,
ArcSight, any of the companies I've been at,
this model has been the most meaningful for me
and the one that can actually sustain through scale.
So when you're 200, 300 million plus
and you've got hundreds of people, if not a thousand plus,
like we did at Procore within revenue,
that you have great engagement and interaction
with all the right counterparts within revenue
because you have this model in place.
- Yeah, and I think it speaks to the notion
that RevOps has kind of two customers,
like the company's customers and then like the sales team
and marketing and CS folks, where it's like,
if you don't have people that are directly
kind of putting out fires, because there are,
like you said, a million fires and it's impossible
to vacillate between putting out fires
and thinking strategically is the Henry Ford
people wanted a faster horse, sort of a thing, right?
- Yeah, exactly. - It's like this seller
who's like, my complaint makes no sense.
Like this territory makes no sense.
That person wants that fire put out,
and their manager's like, hey, this makes no sense.
If that person, the person dealing with that
is also the one who's like you said,
the expert at designing comp plans
and they have to deal with the day to day
of answering a thousand emails,
it seems like there's just probably no work
that's gonna get done.
And actually, you bring up a really valid point too,
is that when you think about what a field operator also does,
is there are some things they can even do without
that center of excellence as engagement,
because they are those generalists
and they might actually be able to do a lot of that tier
one support to some extent as well, right?
Hey, my comp plan sucks.
Well, do you actually understand it?
Can we talk through it?
Can we talk about what your challenges are?
So it's a little bit of triage there too.
And frankly, you'll be surprised how often
that's where the conversation starts and stops.
Is that, ah, got it.
It was actually a learning challenge.
Hey, I wanted to know a little bit more
about what's in place I didn't quite understand or,
hey, once we actually unpack the problem statement,
there's ways to solve for it without building out
something new, robust, et cetera,
versus what already exists.
Or there's already a dashboard for that,
things to that effect.
So that triage to me is super meaningful as well,
because then it allows your teams to be as efficient as possible.
To your point, if they're going to the planning team
every single time they need to make a change,
what's ultimately going to happen is that team's
going to become ticket takers, right?
And that's what they'll spend all their time with.
And then you never get proactivity
from your revenue operations teams.
And that's when you become more tactical versus strategic.
And I am a big believer in having your RevOps team
become a strategic counterpart.
So this is a means to unlock that as well.
- So then I'm curious for those of the folks
who are listening who have a smaller team,
team of one, team of two, team of three,
team of four sort of a thing.
Would you recommend that you start with,
instead of building all those functions in depth first,
that like maybe you say one person being a planner
and one person being a field operator
and kind of like building two by two in that sort of way?
Or would you say build out like one side
and then build out the other side?
- I like two by two approach.
So the way I like to articulate this is that,
you know, that specialization obviously
is more relevant later stage, right?
Or mid stage, late stage, early stage,
it's just consolidating those specialties.
So, you know, you have to take a step back
and ask yourself, where are their commonalities?
So I'll give you an example.
I've historically had my strategy planning
and insight schemes, early days, all be one, one entity.
And it could be one or two people
because typically the folks that are crafting
all the good and great data are the ones
that can make the decisions on how the plans work
and therefore how the territories are
and what the strategy, et cetera.
There's a world where those can all
interconnect with each other.
So perfectly fine to have that as one entity, for instance.
On the other side, field operators,
and when you think about technology and process,
as well as that field engagement,
they all kind of interconnect with each other.
I've never seen an organization be successful
with rolling out a tech stack
without understanding the process that it supports
and without having great enablement
and engagement with the field, for instance.
So if you're early days, I do think it's two by two.
I think the remit, the responsibility for those teams
is a little bit broader versus surgical and deep.
So you should probably have a strategy
planning insights function on one end.
That's a little bit more of, again, the proactive,
the look ahead, the look forward.
And then on the other end, you have almost more
of like that execution arm.
And those are the folks that are, again,
thinking about process and technology
and basically operationalizing your sellers
so that they can be as efficient as possible
in the day-to-day activities as well.
And then again, over time, you can continue to add
and further diversify and further specify
what those respective functions are.
But very much, you can start with something
a little bit more comprehensive
and kind of a more high level with respect
to those functions that I represented.
- All right, let's get to our next segment, Rev Obstacles,
where we talk about the tough part of RevOps.
What is the hardest RevOps problem that you faced
when you were either a pro-core or previous iteration?
- You know, it's funny.
It's almost like it depends on the day you ask
because it's operators.
You know, we have so many different things
that we're challenged with and faced with every day.
And they all feel existential in some way, shape, or form,
as in they all have massive ramifications.
And so prioritization, once again,
I'll just advocate for is so important.
But, you know, if I audit back and think maybe even
in the last six, eight months, the piece
that was probably the most challenging is data
and using data as a strategy, not tactic.
So I'll give you the sort of the broader statement.
When I was at Cloudera, we used to say that data,
and we said this to our customers and prospects too,
data is the new oil.
What does that really mean?
That means that data is the most valuable commodity out there.
For all of us, being a data driven organization,
understanding your business in a more sort of measurable way
is how you can have incredible decision support
and ability to pivot quickly and proactively.
That's not a controversial statement.
That's pretty fair.
What I find though is, and I saw this in a bunch of companies,
right, most people early days don't give your data
and your data strategy the level of love, care,
and attention it needs.
I haven't seen many early stage organizations
that understand what data stewardship is
or what data governance is, or good and great data practices
when you're building out the tech stack
and things to that effect.
What that ultimately does is you wake up
and you're six, eight years into your journey as a company
and you're in a bring your own data business.
Everybody's got a different point of view
on the same data set and different definitions and, and, and,
and it ultimately, to some extent,
paralyzes your teams if you don't get it right.
But more importantly, it doesn't allow you to scale
the way that I think some of these organizations
need to later stage.
Late stage, it's all about getting the most out of the,
most lemonade out of the lemon, so to speak.
You've done all the basics already.
You've already built out the, the, the, attack the low hanging fruit,
things to that effect.
So you lose out on that opportunity.
So far too often, and it's not even just a, you know,
a pro-corro-clad everything.
I did consulting in between those as well.
I'd see so many companies try to wrangle this problem
far too late.
And then it is a matter of taking a step back and asking,
well, okay, what is the foundational data strategy?
Do you have the investment on the teams
that are actually worried about the policies
and procedures you need to maintain good quality data?
Do you have the investment in the infrastructure
and the data sources that you need to get
the best quality information?
Do you have teams in place that are what I call stewards
that are actually maintaining and managing
the quality of the data?
Because if you're got a leaky bucket or a leaky boat
and you're trying to take water out with a bucket,
but it's still leaking, you're just, you're in the same place, right?
So spending a lot of time, if we're energy on that,
the late stage is something I see very frequently.
Now, it's surmountable.
It's something you can get in front of,
but it's just a matter of making it a priority,
making data a priority, because the moment you do,
the amount of meaningful revenue use cases you can unlock
are massive.
We hear all the time these days about product-led growth.
What is product-led growth?
Product-led growth can mean a lot of different things.
Product-led growth isn't just your ability
to go into the product itself as a customer
and buy more widgets of.
It's also understanding what your customers are doing
with your product and ultimately using it
to make more cross-sell, up-sell decisions.
You can't do that without great data, right?
So that's a great example of what you can unlock
if you can really prioritize your data strategy.
But it's at the foundation of everything.
So it's something that I would say that more organizations
should prioritize early and often,
because it unlocks a lot of opportunity later,
even if it may not seem as meaningful early days
when you're investing in it.
Yeah, any takeaway that someone who's listening
could implement if they're kind of like,
"Oh crap, I really need to do that."
How do you get started on a seemingly,
potentially endless project?
Yeah, yeah, and it can be.
It's a forever project in some ways, right?
From a maintain and manage standpoint,
but really a lot of things are within revenue ops.
My top line statement would be
that if you want to go attack this,
there's just some simple things you want to do first
and foremost.
Number one, get the right constituents in a room together.
And it's usually someone within IT,
it's usually someone within rev ops,
it's usually someone within your finance organization
coming together to define the KPIs
that matter the most to you.
Because that's ultimately what we're doing with data, right?
We're trying to understand very specific metrics,
key performance indicators, metrics that
actually inform us about our business
and can help us scale the business, right?
So define what those are,
and then actually give them definitions as well
as crazy as that sounds.
A lot of companies don't have that.
You'd be shocked how many companies I went into
and said, "Hey, what is the definition of a new logo?
Or what is the definition of gross retention
or net retention?"
And you'll get multiple different answers, right?
'Cause the devil is in the details.
So have that committee in place
that can have those early stage conversations
around what those definitions are.
Just start there.
Don't try to boil the ocean.
Just make sure you have that piece canonized.
The moment you have that at minimum,
especially early days, everyone can reference it.
You don't need to build a bunch of process, technology,
and all that in place when you're a 30 person company, right?
You just need everybody singing from the same hymn sheet.
And so having that definition in place
is probably the lowest hanging fruit
and one that I think will get everybody
to think in more of a day to driven fashion.
It builds that right culture from moment one
and then what you'll find is naturally and organically,
all the teams will band around it
and they'll all say, "Here's what we need to do next
in order to really continue to scale
and maintain and manage this stuff."
So really get the right folks in the room
and have the conversation about those definitions
and then everything else kind of trickles out from there.
All right, let's get to our next segment, the tool shed.
So we're talking tools, spreadsheets, metrics,
just like everyone's favorite tool, qualified.
No B2B tool shed is complete without qualified.
Go to qualified.com right now and check them out,
qualified.com.
They're the best.
We love them dearly.
Karen, what's in your tool shed?
- The thing is that there's a ton of tool proliferation
these days, meaning, I mean, the tech stack that I had
back when I was at ArcSight, perpetual software days,
which is a while back, I mean,
I could probably put it on a single page
and showcase it and I did and my road shows and whatnot
during the HP acquisition.
Nowadays, I see some of these tech stacks
and the best and brightest of the respective tools you need
and it's massive.
So the way I like to think about it is
it really depends from persona to persona within a company.
So myself as a go-to-market executive,
my tool stack, transparently,
is different than what a seller will care about.
My tool stack is all about visibility
and proactive visibility.
So what I tell my teams is,
look, I'll spend most of my time in our Tableau dashboards
that connect everything from top of the funnel down to,
you know, all the various data points we have
from the disparate tools that we have available.
What I want is a single pane of glass
to be able to look at all of this
and understand how the business is trending and flowing.
So for me personally, visualization tools,
that's where I spend most of my time, right?
It's a Tableau, a snowflake.
Now, great tools like qualified and others, right?
What they're also trying to do is
I have that single pane of glass.
So some of those eventually will probably replace
because there's very specific use cases
I'm trying to solve for as well.
And funnel and funnel progression,
understanding the funnel all the way from intent down,
really meaningful as well.
But for me, it really is about decision support tools.
My teams, right, if I think about sales, marketing, CS,
I see a lot of them living in their workflow tools
or their process tools.
So I have seen sales engagement tools
and things of that effect be really high on the list, right?
So the outreach is of the world.
Where they do their day-to-day jobs, right?
That is super meaningful for them, you know,
GONG and Chorus, there's all these other tools out there
that help you understand if you're,
you're sort of the most effective version of yourself.
So those folks are spending more time in like their,
their work tools, their workflow tools,
the things that help them run their day-to-day,
although we also try to get them to be very data-driven as well
and have a good insight into the reports
and dashboards that they mean.
So it really just depends from persona to persona,
but that's how I try to look at it.
And ultimately, when you add it all up,
you do get that big smattering of, you know,
tools that every company has at late stage.
It's just a matter of using them effectively.
- Where do you stand on spreadsheets?
- So I have some gripes with them, personally.
(laughing)
All right, and I'll share more.
So I'm not saying that it's a binary thing
where there's no place for them.
I just think that spreadsheets can be dangerous
when that is what you live and die on.
All right, so the example I would give you is early days
and a lot of companies that have gone into,
you're surrounded by spreadsheets.
Before Google Docs and Google Sheets
where you had more collaborative spreadsheets,
it was living in some finance person's, you know,
computer in a corner or some operators,
a computer in a corner.
It's actually part of why you have challenges
with data quality and accuracy.
You have challenges with democratization of insight
because there's usually one person in a corner that owns it
and understands it because they're the ones who built it
and didn't share it and and and and, right?
So that one person becomes really powerful.
Heck, I've been that person in the past too.
So I'd have a little bit of a bias there,
but ultimately it is not what's best for the organization.
So my statement on spreadsheets in general
is that you can have them.
My preference is you do them in more collaborative spreadsheets
and ultimately if you have a spreadsheet,
you should have a plan and a path
to be able to translate what it is you're building there
into a system of record that everyone can have access to,
right?
And that everyone has standardized access to.
So if you have a forecasting tool,
well, you don't have one today,
you're probably doing it on spreadsheets.
Eventually, you should be taking the process
you are using on spreadsheets
and putting it in a SaaS solution, right? Like a Clary.
And so that everybody has access.
If you have your core KPIs living somewhere in a spreadsheet,
that's fine in the short term,
but eventually that needs to go in your salesforce.com instance
or snowflake or or or.
I only say that to say that,
I don't know how you scale with spreadsheets long term.
If that is where you start and end.
So it's not a four letter word for me spreadsheets,
but it is something that I think you should have
as a part of the journey, not the full journey,
if that makes sense.
- Any blind spots that you think people have
that you wish or that you had,
that you wish you could measure better?
- It is not a shameless plug.
I just genuinely feel this way.
There are so many new technologies out there
that are looking to expand what we mean
when we say the funnel, right?
The pipeline, the funnel that we have in place.
I remember early days, it was all about MQL, the SQL,
the SAO to close one.
That's the serious decisions model.
But ultimately that was all around
like the visible funnel we had available to us today.
Now we're in this world of intent information
and dark funnel up top.
Then you have product telemetry on another side,
which I think more and more companies care about
and is sort of again, the precursor
to broader product led growth strategies
and things to that effect.
My point is that there's all these other facets
around the funnel that are starting to come in.
They've always been there to some,
well not always, but they've been there
in some way, shape or form.
They're just becoming more and more relevant
and more and more visible.
And we have technology and infrastructure
that lets us map and track it.
I think that while that may be there,
there's not enough of a mindset shift
to understand that that is probably
the expansion in the next phase
and stage of how we think about our overall funnel, right?
The more we can see companies and organizations
thinking about sort of the behavior that buyers do
much before we ever touch them
or the behavior they do with our product
before sales can get involved and and and.
The things they do as sort of a surround sound
in the periphery before an active sales cycle,
human led sales cycle, that to me is incredibly important.
Some of the best and brightest companies in my mind
are activating in this regard.
I just wanna see that sort of be prevalent everywhere
because transparently that's how our buyers wanna buy, right?
And we wanna meet them where they wanna go.
I think that's paramount.
- Yeah, I think we have a fundamental shift in marketing
that has eclipsed any other shift that's kind of happened
with regards to the complexity of channels
and the complexity of things like peer review sites
and the complexity of like how far down the funnel
you can really get and especially with ABM
and especially with these massive buying committees
and all this stuff.
Like so you have some really, really savvy marketing teams
that can look at that stuff.
And then you have other marketing teams
that like might not be as savvy.
And so I think that there's just a bigger chasm there
than there ever has been before
'cause of the stuff that you said.
So like you are as a rev ops leader,
you're relying on that assessment of like
how sharp is the marketing org
and what can you do to figure out spots in the leaky bucket
or push them or either push information out
or get the information from them in a way
that gives you more insight to that.
And like this is where we talk about productly growth.
Like that means marketing owns a number, right?
That's a completely different world than ever before.
- Absolutely. - Yeah.
So you're like, and there's some CMOs
and we've talked about this on our show
"Dementia and Visionaries" a ton is like
if you're running like hardcore, you know,
PLG type stuff like it is a completely different muscle
that you might not have ever had in your career before.
Like it is a different thing.
It's a different animal. - I agree.
- And sales feels weird about it.
- Yeah, there is a component of that for sure.
- So I think that all that to speak to that point,
I think it is such a huge blind spot for RevOps people.
If you've never had that before,
it's gonna be a huge blind spot to figure that out.
- I fully agree.
- Let's get to our final segment, quick hits.
There's a quick question, quick answers.
Quick hits, current area.
- Let's do it.
- Number one, if you could make any animal any size,
what animal would it be and what size would it be?
- I'd probably take an elephant,
make it the size of my dog and we'd have some fun.
- It's funny, we get that answer a lot.
That's my answer too.
And I think that the scientists behind Jurassic Park
need to get working on small to medium elephants
'cause they'd be a big seller.
Do you have a book or a podcast or TV show
or something even checking out
that you enjoy and recommend?
- I love, and it's a little bit of an older book,
but I love Jeffrey Moore's Zone to Win.
I think it's such an intelligent way to think about
how do you invest your resources?
Horizon one, Horizon two, Horizon three,
incubation zone, transformation, et cetera.
Because I don't believe in one size fits all.
And it's a good reflection of how to think
in a little bit more of a complex manner.
And right now that matters, right?
Everybody's thinking about how do I resource my organization?
Where do I train?
Where do I not?
I think this book, everybody should take a gander
at at some point or another.
The message is still relevant now in my opinion.
Great one, I forgot about that.
That's a great book.
What is something that you like a tool
that as a rev-ops leader, you couldn't live without?
- To be honest, these visualization tools
are really important to me right now.
And it's a little bit of a cop out
because it's essentially taking the data
from all of our different systems of record
and putting it in a single view.
I don't know how I do without it.
So I guess if I had to pick like a snowflake,
tableau sort of connection,
that's probably right at the top of the list for me.
I will say though, I'd love to see more and more solutions
out there start to take over some of that
and give us that same visibility in tool, in system as well
because I've had to build all those things
that were scratched with my teams.
And that's a lot of overhead as well
to maintain, manage, and create.
- Is there a rev-ops misconception that you have
to clear up?
- That our superpower is to be great tacticians,
meaning folks that just get stuff done.
I set it at the start, I'll say it 'til I'm blue in the face
is that we are all inherently strategists
or at least we have the potential
to be great strategists as well.
So yes, allow us to do our day job,
which is get the trains on the track and on time
and where they need to go.
But our superpowers are bigger, better, and greater than that.
I think we have a pulse on the business that is rare
within an organization.
So leverage it is what I would say.
- Okay, final question here.
What piece of advice would you have for someone
who's newly leading a rev-ops or go-to-market team?
Start early in having a seat at the table
with your revenue leader.
Just your job as a leader, not necessarily even
from a team perspective, your job as a leader
is to be the counterpoint the strategist to your CRO.
You know, it's funny, I have a lot of my aspiring CRO friends
and peers and colleagues, they come to me
and they frequently talk to me about like,
"Hey, I've always been a great sales leader.
I know how to manage people.
I know how to close deals.
I understand that side of the world.
Now as a CRO or an aspiring CRO,
what I never got in my back pocket was the rev strategy,
go-to-market strategy, upside of the world.
It was just not part of my remit.
Now, some good and great operators or revenue leaders
find it along the way.
They make sure that they invest in that skill set
for them as well, but it's not a natural one.
So imagine if you're a CRO and you're in that seat,
especially for the first time, let's say,
you probably want to rely on that operator
to be that counterpoint, that complimentary resource for you.
So if you're a rev-ops or go-to-market leader,
know that that's the case
and know that that's your level of value
that you are bringing to the organization
and make sure that you lean into that
as a part of your core remit.
That would be my biggest piece of advice.
- Curran, this has been awesome.
Thanks so much for joining the show.
Any final thoughts?
Anything to plug?
- I just had a blast and decided for what's ahead
for you folks and qualified
and there's something really meaningful there.
- Indeed, awesome.
Thanks again and take care.
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