Accelerating Pipeline Growth
On this episode, Mary discusses leveraging new industry trends, accelerating pipeline growth, and diagnosing revenue operations pain points.
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- Rise, rise, rise.
- Welcome to Rise of RevOps.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios.
And today I am joined by a special guest, Barry, how are you?
- I'm very good, Ian, how are you?
- Great to have you on the show,
excited to chat about revenue operations.
You've been doing this a while
and we're super excited to have you on the show.
So let's get into our rev opening here.
Tell me a little bit about Infobit.
- Absolutely, so Infobit is a global leader
in cloud communications.
What we offer is a combination of C-PAS and SaaS solutions
that are fully customizable to the specific needs
of pretty much any company in the world.
So our solutions are API-based.
They're for very easy to use
to enable the most connected, virtualized,
and on-demand customer experiences
a company could offer.
Well, at the same time,
having the choice to either scale all the way down
to just adding our communication channels
to their own platform or scale all the way up
to leveraging our complete solutions
to address the needs of both their contact centers
and their customer engagement strategy.
Also having the option to supercharge those solutions
with our own customer data platform
and chatbot capabilities.
- What does your end buyer,
what does that buying committee look like?
Who are you selling to?
- So we sell to pretty much any type of company,
either directly or through our partners.
So any company that has the need to communicate
to their customer base would be interested
in using our either again C-PAS or SaaS solutions.
And who is the person who usually signs the dotted line
on those agreements?
- So that could be either the CTO
or also the person in charge of customer care.
It really depends on the type of solutions
that they're interested in.
If it's the solutions that could improve
their customer engagement strategies,
then it could be the person in charge of marketing.
So we have different buyer persona,
again, because our solutions give companies options,
depending on the needs that they are trying to resolve.
- So how big is the sales team?
How big is your go-to-market team?
And where does your role sit?
- Our revenue operation team is a very linked team
of two people.
We have one person focus on executing all our processes
and one person focus on enablement.
And the small size is intentional
to keep the team's efficiency very high,
while dedicating most of our resources
to customer facing teams.
And that is because for Infobip,
being a customer-centric company,
it is very important to create by doing everything we can
to always deliver the best experience possible
for our customers.
Then being in revenue operation,
we support all the other teams
following the entire customer journey.
So the goal of our department is to accelerate
and maximize revenue growth with the highest profitability.
And we do that through operational efficiency,
while keeping all team accountable to revenue.
So, I think for big, we execute on that
with revenue operation being a standalone function
using a holistic approach.
And that is with the objective of breaking down
the silos across not just sales marketing
and customer success,
as potentially other revenue operation teams may be doing,
but we do that across all pre and post sales operation.
So that we, we the objective of cover the entire customer
journey from lead generation and management
to how we retain our customers
and help them grow their business.
So to answer your question about the sales team,
so we have different departments,
starting from business development,
inside-self,
self-professional services,
partnership, self-engineering,
product self, customer success.
And each team,
you know, different sizes,
depending on the needs of hand,
but they could go from 20 people plus, let's say, on average.
- You mentioned kind of the lean nature of the team
and how that might be a little,
you know, you're unique in that way,
but also that's very purposeful.
How do you think that your revenue operations team
compares to other RevOps teams or other, you know, ops teams?
- Yeah, I would say it's our focus
on the entire customer journey.
Again, we don't try to align just self-marketing
and customer success,
but all the teams that are in charge of improving
that experience that a customer of ours
will go through from the time that the company's a prospect,
to the time that company becomes a customer
and start growing its business with Infobip
and the way we support them in doing that.
So the way we're different is this level of attention
that we pay throughout the customer journey
and not just focusing on self-marketing and customer success.
- And so what was it like coming into this role,
VP of revenue operations, you know, new company,
company's been around a little bit, you know,
size of organization, how did you approach those first 90 days?
- First, based on my own experience on selling to businesses
and managing them through the lifecycle,
I'll review the status of things
to clearly identify the existing challenges.
Then I define a set of guiding principle
to create a high level direction for the strategy.
Like, for example, as I was saying,
implementing processes that create alignment
across teams throughout the customer journey,
foster accountability, thrive on communication
and promote trust.
And finally, I define a set of measurable actions
to execute on the strategy with, again,
the goal of maximizing and accelerating the time to revenue
with the highest profitability,
while also paying very close attention
to removing any possible friction
to increase the velocity of our revenue teams
by also making sure their experience
is as effortless as possible.
And that is very important
because as you start adding processes and tasks
to accelerate growth, you also risk adding complexity
that can slow that growth down.
So at the same time, we also take action
to reduce that added complexity.
- All right, let's get to our first segment, Rev Obstacles.
Let me talk about solving hard problems.
What's the hardest RevOps problem that you faced
in the last six months?
How did you solve it?
- So I would say accelerating the growth of our pipeline
has always been one of our main priorities.
And we have done that by first implementing processes
to better segment our customer base,
then prioritizing the highest ROI opportunities,
and finally creating a focus-based theme
to go after those opportunities,
but also leveraging specific functions
like partnership and professional services
to add more value and better different shape our offering.
- Yeah, what's an example of one of the things
that you did there to differentiate?
- Absolutely.
So what we do is when we engage with prospect
or could be also existing customers,
again, it's not just the salesperson
having that consultative conversation,
but we add value to the table
by bringing other subject matter experts,
like a good example could be professional services
because as we talk to customer and prospect,
the best way for them to implement our solution
so that they can get the highest ROI on that.
We bring this sort of consultant
that is gonna explain to them how to do that
in the best and most efficient way possible.
So these are all, as I said,
additional values that we wanna provide
in order to offer the best experience
also to our direct customers
when they interact with info.
They know that they will have a not just the salesperson
trying to sell the best solution to them based underneath,
but a real consultative team
that first understand what they're trying to achieve
and based on that, advise them on the best way
to utilize our solution.
- What's your biggest revoops moment,
or maybe a mistake that you've made
in the past six months or so?
- I would say not fully leveraging
the power of partnership from day one.
And that because as I was being very laser focused
on growing the revenue coming from our direct channels
and partnership and treating them as two separate streams
that created a blind spot I discovered
when getting more involved in the strategy
towards one of our segment of customers,
which are the platforms.
You can see them as sort of resellers of our solutions.
And therefore, almost all of them
have partner progress.
That was not new information to me.
Instead, what became evident were the synergies.
I could create by setting up the right processes
in the way the people in charge of platforms and partnership
could work better together with the objective
of initiating all those several revenue streams
simultaneously rather than one after the other.
- How do you kind of like diagnose problems?
Is there like a way that you do that?
Or obviously you're supporting sales, marketing
and customer experience or customer success, I should say.
And so like, are they bringing problems to you
and saying like, "Hey, Mary, can you fix this?"
Are you kind of seeing these things yourself?
How do you find those problems?
- I would say both.
They of course bring to me all the problems.
And I actually ask them to do so
because it's my job to fix those problems.
But at the same time, again,
because I've been in their position in my past
and that really gives me the advantage
of understanding their pain points
and having a understanding how to resolve them.
So I proactively advise them on,
I wouldn't call them problems,
but how they could approach a certain situation
in a better way because I've done that myself
and through my experience,
I have been able to understand how to do that
in a good way.
And that again, is with the objective
of making sure that also it's not only about
giving the best experience to our customers,
but also to our internal customers, let's say.
So all these teams that we are supporting,
we have to make sure that, as I was saying earlier,
as we add processes,
we make sure that those are very as effortless as possible.
And so that's where I'm being proactive
in trying to anticipate, let's say,
possible problems that I know they could face
if we're not making certain changes.
So to answer your question, I do it both ways.
- Let's get to our next segment, the tool shed.
This is where we're talking tools, spreadsheets, metrics,
just like everyone's favorite tool, qualified.
There'll be to be tool shed is complete without qualified.
Go to qualified.com right now
and learn more.
You can talk to a salesperson like as soon
as you get to the site.
Go to qualified.com to learn more.
Mary, what's in your tool shed?
- So I will group them into three areas.
The first one is Salesforce
to monitor the health of our future business.
So by looking at leads, pipeline and revenue forecast.
Within Salesforce, I also use two other tools.
One is called Altify for account planning
and the other one is called exactly for the revenue forecast.
Then the second area will be our own proprietary tools
to monitor the health of our current business.
And so there I look at revenue, gross profit,
gross margin and that retention rate.
And the third one, I would like to say LinkedIn,
which I believe is becoming more and more
and important tool for businesses.
I personally use it to monitor how our business
could evolve in the very near future
by keeping the polls on what is happening in the marketplace,
not only to our customer prospect, partners and competitors,
but also looking at all the new technologies
that are coming up and thinking how we could leverage
those technologies to give our customers the ability
to offer even more connected, personalized
and on-demand experiences.
And also to me it's very important to keep up to date
with current trends, not only to be able to better
advise our customers on their existing needs
and challenging them on new ones that they may not be aware of,
but also to make sure that we keep up with those trends
and trying to anticipate some of them to be able to put our self
ahead of the innovation curve as much as possible.
- How do you feel about spreadsheets?
Do you love them?
Do you hate them? Is it necessary evil?
- I actually love spreadsheets,
but I think it's important obviously to know how to use them
because spreadsheets go with data.
And so for me it's very important that when we use them
we also always audit how the data has been sourced
to make sure that the information our system delivers
to us through spreadsheets is accurate.
And then another thing that I love doing
when working with spreadsheets is to make sure
that we always normalize the data by removing anomalies
and exceptions because those could skew the numbers.
And another thing is that what I always tell my team
or anyone who works with spreadsheets
and therefore is doing data analysis, et cetera,
is always answered the, what I say the so what question.
To communicate the story, the numbers are telling us
and what actions we're gonna take based on that story.
What are the metrics that you care about the most?
- So again, I would group them into,
I would say four categories
because the first one would be a financial metrics.
So there would be revenue, gross profit,
gross margin in that retention rate.
Then there would be new business metrics
like leads and pipeline value,
the growth of our pipeline, time to contract,
time to launch, ramp up time.
The third one will be the productivity metrics
like the return on investment
on absolutely everything we do.
And that would include marketing campaigns and events.
And the last one, very important,
will be the customer satisfaction metrics.
So those are LUTA customer satisfaction score,
customer effort score,
and ultimately the net promoter score.
- Is there something that you wish you could measure better
or maybe it was like a blind spot or something like that
that you can't see?
- I would say people productivity down to every single task
each person has to perform to achieve his or her goals.
Because understanding the ROI on each task,
which again, may be different depending on the person doing it,
would be very interesting to fully optimize our operation
through either automation or other methods.
- Is there something that maybe like a newer tool
or something that you've been using
that you can't live without?
- I don't want to sound repetitive
because also those tools may not be considered new,
but I could definitely not live without Salesforce or LinkedIn.
And again, to summarize Salesforce,
because it gives me access to almost everything I need to know
about the business happening inside the organization.
While LinkedIn gives me access to almost everything
I need to know about the businesses happening
outside the organization in the marketplace.
So I think the combination of the two is absolutely essential
for me to be able to provide the best performance possible
for the company.
- Yeah, can we dive in like a little bit more
on the LinkedIn?
I know you talked about this already,
but to dive in a little further,
how are you using LinkedIn?
Are you pulling data there?
What are you doing?
- Absolutely.
So what I do mainly is I look at trends
and I'm not pulling data from LinkedIn.
I really use it in a way that it provides me
on the daily basis, a very good overview
of what is happening in the marketplace.
And by marketplace, I'm talking about the technology industry
in general, not necessarily only CPAS and SaaS solution,
which is what Infobip offers,
but also other technologies like we are all aware
of some of them like the metaverse, NFTs, cryptocurrencies.
Because again, I believe it's also the job
of revenue operations or go-to market
to try to anticipate those trends and trying to leverage
everything that is in the marketplace that we could use
with the objective of providing a better customer experience.
So by looking at these new trends,
it could give us an opportunity as a company
to offer our customers the ability
to implement experiences that are even more connected.
That are even more personalized and on demand.
So it's really a tool, it's kind of a window,
again, from inside the company to the outside.
Depending of course how you're using it,
that can really accelerate the time to market
for some new solutions that maybe the company
was not thinking about previously.
Anything cool that you're doing with data
or any sort of data projects?
- When talking data, what we do,
we always pay attention to what the data is telling us.
And to make sure if that is accurate based on what we know.
So what I'm trying to say is that what we're doing,
we do not just download data and then take it for granted,
but what we do with data is to make sure that
we get a good set of information by the manufacturer
was saying earlier removing those anomalies
and exception that may skew the overall information
that the data is trying to provide us.
So that's how at the moment we're looking at data.
- Any other spreadsheet tips for us?
- I really think the ones I mentioned about,
especially out of the three I was talking about earlier,
I would say the level of attention that we have to pay
on how the data has been sourced.
Because I've seen that in most cases
that is given for granted is assume
that the way the data has been sourced is correct.
And depending on the complexity of the analysis
that we're trying to do, that may not be always the case.
So I would say if I have to give just one tip
is to pay a lot of attention to that
before starting mining data.
Okay, let's get to our final segment, quick hits.
Quick questions and quick answers.
Number one, if you could make any animal any size,
what animal would it be and how big would it be?
- I would say a mini elephant.
So he or she could live with me always
because I know they're known to be extremely loyal
to those around them.
- What is your biggest rev-ops misconception?
- I believe that sometimes revenue peration
may be seen as the equivalent of a tech department for self.
Because the focus is more on the word operation
rather than revenue.
Well, we know that the purpose of the function
is to grow revenue rather than taking care of the operation.
Of course, I'm fully aware that enabling the tech start
is a core part of the function.
But we know the revenue operation is far more than that
and coordinating activities.
It's really a commitment to change the way
the company does business.
And how we decide to do that,
it is going to determine the level of success
for that company and how quickly we will achieve that.
- What's your favorite movie character of all time?
- I have to say Indiana Jones
because I remember loving watching those movies
when I was little.
- If you were to make one rev-ops prediction
of something that's going to be coming true,
what would it be?
- I believe that most companies will realize
that getting revenue operation right
can be one of the most powerful things they can do
to accelerate revenue and profitability.
And actually, I was reading the other day
that Garner predicts that 75%
of their highest growth companies in the world
will deploy a revenue-peracial model by 2025.
- If you had one superpower, what would it be?
- Definitely time travel
so that I can go into the future
and then come back to make the best decisions.
- I love it.
Final question, what advice would you have
for someone who's a brand new VP of rev-ops?
- So a few things.
First and foremost, make sure that any decision you take
is done by always keeping top of mind
how that will deliver the best experience to your customers
and how to make that process as effortless as possible
for those team in charge of delivering
that flawless experience.
And that takes me to a second advice,
which is to make sure to clearly understand
the pain points of the teams you're supporting.
If you don't have first-hand experience
on what they do, hire someone in the team who does.
Having that first-hand knowledge
is going to be extremely important
and it's going to accelerate the success
of your revenue-perition team.
Another advice will be knowing that any company
has limited resources.
You can maximize the success
by how well you allocate those resources
towards the key objectives.
And then I would like to give these other two
as advice, which will be one, again,
when it's happening outside in the market,
it's as important as what is happening inside
in your organization.
Do not lose stats by focusing entirely internally,
but leverage the external inputs, information, data points
to make the most strategic decision for your business.
And that takes me to the last point,
which, as I was saying,
you have to be committed to change
the way your company does business.
How you decide to do that will make a big difference
in the degree of success your company will achieve
and how quickly you will help them together.
- Mary, this has been awesome.
Thanks so much for joining the show.
For our listeners, you can go check out infobip.com
to learn more.
Give it nudge to your CTO
and tell them to check it out.
Mary, any final thoughts, anything to plug?
- Well, of course, as you said,
if anyone would like to find out more about infobip,
you can also follow us on LinkedIn.
I wanted to thank you so much, Ian, for the opportunity.
I really enjoyed the conversation
and people can also find me on LinkedIn.
So feel free to reach out.
- Awesome.
Thanks so much for joining and take care.
- Thank you, Ian.
Take care.
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