Driving Growth with RevOps
On this episode, Pete discusses avoiding surprises by being data driven, maintaining client security in a growing digital industry, and why RevOps is a necessity to develop and execute a successful go-to-market strategy.
Welcome to Rise of RevOps.
I'm Ian Phason, CEO of Cast Mein Studios, and today I am joined by a special
guest, Pete.
How are you?
Very good.
Thanks for having me.
Excited to have you on the show, excited to chat about RevOps, about what it
means as
a CRO, how you think about it, and everything in between.
So tell us a little bit about your background.
I know you're not specifically in RevOps because you're the CRO, but really you
are a little
bit in RevOps.
So how did you come to be a CRO of Fort Dark?
Ian, thanks.
By the way, we're all in RevOps.
So just to be clear, we absolutely are.
So I've been really running sales teams of all shapes and sizes for the past 20
years.
Really passionate about working with teams, and that really includes finding
and developing
top talent, but then really delivering and driving high growth businesses.
And that really starts with customer success and the mindset of how we work
with our customers
all the way through their buying journey.
And ultimately the success of that team and customers is really a formula, I
think, for
success.
So I'm working for bigger companies, worked for Oracle for a decade, came to
Fordrock about
four years ago, and been a great run at Fordrock, and really all shapes and
sizes of companies.
But I think I've learned quite a bit along the way.
And one central theme is that you've got to have a plan and a strategy to go
execute
it around RevOps.
Yeah.
And a little bit about what is your definition of RevOps?
Sure.
I think RevOps is everything it takes to develop and execute a successful go-to
-market strategy.
And it really is the whole customer journey engagement requires a great revenue
operations
plan.
And there's a lot to that journey.
And really you need to be strategic about how you're going to engage customers,
but then
you've got to go operate like crazy as far as tactically making sure that you
're touching
your customers along the whole way and optimizing those revenue opportunities.
And so tell us a little bit about Fordrock and what do you all do?
What customers do you all serve?
Sure.
So Fordrock is the leading digital identity provider in the marketplace.
We're really focused on large and enterprise customers.
And I'll tell you a personal story maybe to explain what Fordrock does.
I've got a wife here at home and two daughters, two teenage daughters.
And once COVID hit, we really changed our behavior.
We went from going to the store like everybody used to to all of a sudden I
think a package
shows up every day to my door.
And you know, why is that?
It's because we've really become digital consumers for just about everything
that we
buy.
Same thing on the workforce side of things.
You know, right now I'm working from the home office.
A lot of us are still doing that certainly for COVID.
We did it for a multi year period, but that's become more of a norm.
And I've really seen that behavior change over the course of time where
everything's digital,
whether it's consumer side of things or workforce.
And that's really what Fordrock does.
We provide digital identities for both consumer as well as workforce.
And ultimately our vision is to have a world where you never log in again.
You know, and I think certainly that world would be a better place for all of
us.
But ultimately we need to have a secure, scalable platform that helps managers,
identities,
no matter how, when or where you want to come into different applications.
Yeah.
And boy, do we need it.
I'm definitely a huge fan of never logging in ever again.
And all the work that y'all are doing at Fordrock, that's for sure.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
And you know, it's interesting.
I think the pandemic really did accelerate some of the trends that we're seeing
in identity
and the growth around digital identity specifically.
Digital transformations of something that every company has to go through.
You have to be digital in order to be competitive these days.
But what does that mean?
It really means you've got to create a frictionless experience for users.
That's a great experience, but it's also simple and secure.
And every company is facing these real challenges around the cyber threat
landscape that they
have to deal with consumer fraud on the buyer side.
And there's a lot that you have to deal with digital identity.
And fordrock, again, we really focus on the biggest, most complex global
companies in
the world.
That's what we do better than anybody else.
Those large enterprise customers that have huge scale, huge complexity.
Fordrock delivers for those on a global scale and not really proud of what we
do for those
companies.
Nothing more topical than right now in the news is just announced that there's
potentially
$45 billion of government funding that was taken because of people's basically
scamming
all of the stuff that happened for the course of COVID, which is it's not great
And it boils down to digital identity.
And so it is one of the most important issues that we're dealing with not only
in business,
but as a society.
Absolutely.
And it's just continuing to grow.
I mean, the average breach now is up to $9.5 million when a company has a
breach.
It's just not sustainable.
Companies have to protect themselves, but they also have to protect their
customers and
the experience the customers have.
And the fastest way probably to turn away from a brand that you like is if your
data's
breached and all of a sudden you've got an identity issue.
So that's security and managing that complexity and the continuous challenge
that companies
have is something that most people need help with.
And that's really our market.
So tell me about your RevOps team.
How do you organize it?
What approach do you take?
Sure.
So RevOps at Fordrock is really ingrained in every aspect of our business.
From planning to execution, geographic coverage.
We need engagement and accountability with our RevOps in literally everything
we do.
And I think it's extremely important to us.
We're a high growth company.
We've grown 30% plus for 10 straight quarters.
And that's a great barometer to go drive yourself with.
But we need to understand how we're going to grow.
And to do that, we've got to place investments in a variety of different places
But we need to understand what's the ROI that we expect to get from those.
So it's really central to becoming a consistent, predictable revenue engine
that Fordrock has
to be as a public company.
But it's critical that we have RevOps every step of the way as we do planning
and make
those decisions on how and why we're going to get maximum value for those
investments.
And about how many people are working in and out of RevOps across your go-to
market?
Sure.
So specifically in RevOps, we've got about a team of eight to 10 that are
working in RevOps.
And really, again, they're ingrained in the geo.
So how we're set up globally is we've got three main geo's, the Americas, Amia
and APJ.
And we've got a RevOps lead for each one of those regions.
And it's really everything from how we're going to market.
We're replacing some of those investments planning.
We're going through FY23 planning right now.
And we were looking at what geographies we possibly want to go make a bet on
and make
an investment in and possibly grow into.
What does that mean?
It means we need a real RevOps function to go understand the market opportunity
there.
But what's the TAM?
What can we possibly go after from a target perspective?
Does it make sense for us to invest there?
How would we go to market there?
What's the cost structure?
What's the return level over the course of time?
So that's a very strategic discussion that we're having.
And then it goes all the way through to when you acquire customers, how do we
maintain
a management?
How can we get the maximum net retention rate with those customers?
How can we avoid churn?
All these things ultimately go towards ARR, the annual revenue of renewals that
we're
looking for.
And if we can't drive that AR as a company, then again, being a predictable
business as
a public entity is a really hard thing to do.
It seems like you'll sit across sales marketing, customer success.
It really does sit across every sort of the go-to-market and success and
renewal sides
of the business.
Yeah, absolutely.
Again, the whole customer journey from when we're trying to attract them to
when we bring
them on board.
And the customer success pieces are really an interesting thing that we've
invested in
significantly the last few years.
And we've seen some dramatic improvements with our churn as well as our net
retention
rates.
You know, bringing customers on board, once you have them, you have to maximize
that
share of wallet with them.
And having a plan around that from RevOps for how many people do we have in
customer
success?
What's the expectation of the ratios that we have, customer success per account
What type of ultimately we call them?
CSQL's customer success qualified leads that we generate from that team.
It's not a natural thing for a lot of our customer success people.
But if you take good care of your customers and you're fully engaged, you're
naturally
going to drive some opportunities for your sales force to go expand that share
of wallet
with the customer.
I love it.
It's really exciting.
And I think that it really shows the transformation of this role to be such a
revenue driver,
to say that RevOps can help identify these things and take something like
customer success,
which again, there are sales ops, there's marketing ops, there was not customer
success
ops, right?
Like this is kind of uncharted territory.
I'm curious like how as you've organized this team and resourced this team as
the CRO,
you know, that's something that you obviously are passionate about.
It's what you're on this podcast today.
How is your team different from other teams?
Why are some folks, other CROs perhaps like lacking in building out this
capacity?
You know, it's a hard thing to do because when you're managing a growing
business,
there's always, always cost constraints, concerns about how do you grow and how
quickly can
you.
So I came to Fordrock again, almost four years ago.
And I was at a point where I was ready to go be more impactful probably for
this size
organization work coming from a bigger company like Oracle.
And Fordrock was in a very interesting spot.
They were about 60 million in ARR and had been relatively flat for a couple of
years, needed
to do a handful of things, needed to really transform the business, go from
selling perpetual
deals to more consistent subscription deals where you're driving ARR and
consistently
engaging with your customers.
And things like customer success, how do you make that investment?
And are you ready to do that?
And what's the cost related to that?
What's the opportunities that's going to open up?
So at that point, we really made a decision that, look, we needed data to be
what's driving
us from a decision making process.
And in order to do that, you have to invest in the RevOps function.
When I was interviewing, it's one of the things that Fran Rosh, our CEO, I was
talking
to him and said, look, Fran, we need to change the business in a variety of
ways.
I think we need to be data driven.
We need to get to subscription.
We were in the point of trying to pivot to the cloud and really develop a SaaS
application
rather than the legacy on-prem piece that we had.
So we had a lot of things that we had to do as a company.
But one of the fundamental pieces was really being a data driven company for
making decisions.
In order to do that, you need a real RevOps function that's part of every piece
of your
business.
And I can tell you, we went from being that $60 million dollar company, or $60
million
ARR company to making the investments in the right places.
COVID hit, nobody knew what was going to happen with COVID.
We were actually doing planning for what the business is down 25%, 50%.
RevOps is doing all that.
It's a little scary when you're doing some of those projections.
But again, I think we really felt the opposite experience when people turned
towards digital
and ultimately companies had to accelerate their move to digital
transformations with
digital identity being a foundation for that.
And look, we've had a great run.
When I was interviewing, I was interviewing with Fran and I said, Fran, if we
do a great
job at Fordrock, how long would it take us to go public?
And he said two and a half years.
I asked our CFO, John Fernandez, if we do a great job, how long would it take
us to go
public?
He said three years.
And last September, we went public.
It was actually exactly two years and nine months to the day that I started.
So right in between our CEO and our CFOs projections, but it shows that we
really had a strong plan.
We executed the heck out of that plan.
And RevOps was a big part of that plan as far as what's our growth projections,
how are
we going to get there when investments are we making ROIs?
Are we deriving out of those investments and how are we going to continue that
accelerated
growth to get to a public company beyond?
I love that.
That's such a cool story.
And obviously, that's the sort of stuff we love to hear.
I'm curious, as the CRO, how are you partnering with marketing throughout that
process?
Because I think one of the things that we talk to sales leaders, especially
ones that perhaps
are not the most data-driven, and they're like, "Hey, I want to be more data-
driven.
I need to bring in all this stuff because this is a weak spot of mine.
We've been closing deals the old way for a long time, and we wanted this
organization
to be data-driven, bringing a sales ops team, all that sort of stuff.
But including marketing into that can be somewhat challenging for a sales
leader.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it is, right?
And I think the alignment with marketing has got to be there.
Honestly, we had a lot of work to do when we started.
Again, when Fran came in, he really redid his executive staff, including his
chief marketing
officer.
When I came in, that was one of the first connections that we have to make, is
we have
to be aligned on what the strategy is to go to market.
And really, again, the investments that we ultimately made, we went from being
about
a 50-person type of sales organization, grown to 100.
Next year, we're going to be closer to 125.
When we have that size and scale, you have to make sure that you're placing
those bets
in areas that the marketing organization is going to be able to support.
So those, that operational component of it, that alignment has to be there.
And it's everything from what's our messaging, what type of geographic coverage
are we willing
to have, local language sets.
There is a lot of complexity.
And it, again, comes back to analyzing the data, what's the TAM, what's the
market opportunity
in some of these areas, and should we be trying to expand?
Growth can come a lot of different ways.
It can come from being great at what you do.
It can be increasing your scale.
It can be moving into adjacent markets.
And it certainly can be from global expansion.
And we're looking at all those things, and we have to have the alignment
between marketing
and sales to make sure when we're making one decision on the sales side of the
house,
marketing is right behind us and helping drive that all-important pipeline that
I'm
sure we're going to talk a bit about.
Yeah, let's get into our first segment here, Rev Obstacles, where we talk about
the tough
parts of RevOps.
What were some of your Rev Obstacles, the hard RevOps problems that you've had
to face
in the past six months or so, and how did you solve them?
Yeah, great question.
So the macroeconomic conditions have changed in the past six to 12 months,
right?
They just have.
And that means we really need to question our assumptions on every aspect of
the business.
One example I'd use is our conversion ratios, right?
We've got a data-driven approach to everything we do, and we leverage our
historical conversion
rates with really we focus on a trailing 12-month ratio.
So when we project our revenue forecasts for Q+1 and Q+ and the next quarter, Q
+2, looking
out for the first half of the year, what are those conversion ratios versus the
total pipeline?
And we've had two, because of the macroeconomic conditions, we've got to lower
that threshold
for that procurement spend.
A lot of companies are saying, "Hey, I'm spending less money."
Maybe they're additional approval steps during a cycle.
And again, we're selling enterprise deals.
So if projects are going slower, there's less spend, it makes it more
challenging for us
to get those deals in the timeline that we thought we could.
Look, we can't control the macroeconomic realities, but we absolutely need to
be proactive and
thoughtful about how they're going to impact our business.
So push that over to the rev-op side of things.
How do we adjust our revenue projection models with the changing economic
condition?
Look, we need to look at the data.
We need to be very analytical and flexible about our assumptions.
What happens if our close rates are average?
Typically, it's about a six-month sales cycle.
What if those turn into eight months?
What if the ASP instead of being $300,000 becomes $250,000?
We have to tweak all those little models to make sure that as we're looking at
our revenue
forecasts, we're looking at the different scenarios for that macroeconomic
impact that
we can't control it, but we certainly can understand it and plan accordingly
for our
projected revenue moving forward.
What's interesting that you talk so much about projections here, because I
think that this
is another one of those things that sales ops, obviously, being a part of this
forever,
whereas marketing ops or customer success, obviously you're projecting a
pipeline number,
you're trying to commit to a pipeline number if you're marketing.
For success, you're trying to commit to that renewal number, and you're trying
to get those
type of commitments, but inherently trying to figure out whatever A/B testing
for a marketing
campaign, which is going to drive a bunch of leads or drive a bunch of account
engagement
or whatever sort of system you're doing, are different muscles, right?
That's a different thing to do projections versus doing those type of campaigns
I'm curious, how do you think about organizing your team relating to those
different skill
sets that you need for RevOps team, which is pretty complex?
No, I think it's a great question.
And ultimately, for Dr. Ocak, we're a big fan.
It's one of our core values, actually, of making sure that we're inclusive and
we're
driving diversity in general in our workforce.
But I look at the RevOps team, and I think we need to do the same thing,
because you need
to have people with different skill sets, different experience levels, and
different
muscles.
You mentioned that those muscles, these different muscles that you need to do
use throughout
the cycles, and especially in a fast-moving, high-growth company, you can't
just, you know,
some companies have a plan, I kind of call it a set it and forget it plan,
where you set
at the beginning of the year and say, "We're going to run it for the year and
go do it."
High-growth company, we don't have that luxury.
And then you throw in sprinkling some macroeconomic conditions on top of that.
Look, we need to have very experienced people that are willing to leverage the
tools that
they have.
They're willing to really look at the data, what's the data telling us.
And so, you know, one prime example, I mentioned that the macroeconomic
conditions, right?
At one point as a company, certainly beginning of this year, we're coming off a
great year,
just had gone public, came off a great Q4 and had great earnings, right?
And then the great resignation period really hit in the first half of the year,
hit just
about for all companies.
And you need to stop and think about that and say, "Okay, so pipeline's the
oxygen of
a company.
If we have some attrition here, what does that mean for us?"
And I think we need to continually be inspecting the sales capacity.
Do we have the right levels in order to deliver the pipeline that we need in
order to deliver
the growth that's expected?
All while this macroeconomic winds started changing as well.
Luckily, we have very detailed models that we really run.
When we're selling enterprise and large enterprise deals, it depends a lot for
us on the tenure
of reps.
So not only do we have to acquire a great talent, hire that great talent, we've
got to onboard
them, we've got to enable them, and we've got to coach and develop them.
We really want them to get to 12 plus months because we see in our models, then
they really
take off from a productivity perspective.
But how do you hire the right number of people in a growing space, have to hire
more people,
make sure you get them through that onboarding, enabling, coaching, and
developing to get them
where they're really flying on their own in a challenging economy and when
people were
leaving and still going through the COVID challenges that we had.
I'd say that, again, we really had to rely on some of the data pieces and what
are some
of the, we put much more of a structured program in place around tracking the
reps as they
move through the kind of progression of lifestyle or lifecycle of their time at
Fordrock.
And are we hitting the pipeline development and the pipeline progression and
the time
to first deal and the ASPs that we want to.
And then if we need to help certain people in some areas, reallocating some
resources
to make sure we're helping build that pipe at a territory level, at a regional
level,
at a geo level, and all that stems from data and coming up with a productivity
model that
we have that sells us, hey, we have to get to this point with this group of
people that
we have, with this tenure group as they really progress through a zero to six
months, six
to 12, 12 plus months.
We know what we need to have a yield from each one of those groups in each
point of
time.
And it's something that, again, we're constantly analyzing and evaluating on
the regional geo
and certainly on a global level from a field team.
I love it.
That's such a cool story.
I think there's just so many folks out there that back in the day without, I
mean, not
that we're trying to sit here and justify how important RevOps is.
It's just the reality of the situation, right?
It's like the reality of the situation is such that when a rep hits 12 months,
you know,
you're going to get better productivity.
It's like, if you have a RevOps team, it's going to, you're going to be able to
spot better
areas of productivity and be more profitable and just have better results.
It's common sense thing last time, right?
Of course, that makes sense.
Sure, you have reps longer.
They're going to be better.
They know what they're doing.
Then you have to look at the mix of people that you actually have and what do
you have
from a hiring perspective, what you're hiring pipeline.
This is all before people even get here.
What you're hiring pipeline, how many heads do you need to open during the
course of the
year in order to have the growth rates you expect to as a growing company?
And again, all this only gets a big microscope on it when you're a public
company all of
a sudden because you got to hit your number on a quarterly basis.
And all this is data-driven and you have to really be constantly paying
attention to
each one of those as they graduate.
We call it graduating from different tenure groups.
But you have enough people in each tenure group and what's the attrition
estimates that you
have versus the actuals.
And then you need to make an adjustment in certain areas.
And it's the constant thing that we have.
We have biweekly meetings when we're looking at those models and making sure
that by the
way, it's a people business and you have great people.
It's a beauty for a drop.
We've got great people that are passionate and love being here and love driving
success
for customers.
It's a really cool company to be part of.
At the same time, you have to be data-driven and you have to go through that
analysis and
be really disciplined.
The disciplined piece of it's the hard part because you get going along, you're
feeling
good, everything looks good.
You got to make sure you're going back to the RevOps team and saying, "Hey,
keep us honest
with ourselves.
Make sure that we're really looking in the mirror, be honest with where we are,
assessing
the situation and proactively making those decisions so it's not too late and
you find
yourself in a challenging situation."
I'm curious from a marketing or a customer success standpoint.
Anything that you saw that surprised you or any data because I think that with
so much
emphasis and growing up in sales and having a really good thumb on all that
stuff, those
two functions being probably a little bit more new to you, although not new,
but newer
under purview.
Yeah, and it was probably the first year or so in my tenure here at Forge Rock
as we're
really pivoting to a subscription-based model and had made a nice transition
there and
projecting that ARR.
What your churn rate is, we had some risk there because we didn't have the
predictability
that we really needed to have as a growing company.
And again, we were about a $60 million ARR company that we got to 100 and all
of a sudden,
you get to 100 or 200 million and you look at your churn rate.
And if your churn rate is unpredictable, you think it's going to be seven and a
half and
it's 10?
Well, that's a materially amount of new ARR.
You got to go find somewhere else.
So again, I think we saw some of that coming.
We had a quarter or two of some unpredicted churn, which kind of popped up out
of nowhere.
And I think we realized, look, we need to get closer to our customers.
We need to make sure that we're engaged throughout the customer lifecycle and
we need to be
able to predict that churn.
The good news about Forge Rock is the stuff really works.
I've worked for some software companies where it's a struggle.
It really works.
It really works at scale.
We've got great customers that are very, very loyal Forge Rock customers, but
you always
have some level of churn risk, whether it's companies getting acquired, whether
it's
making a different decision, whether a new CIO or a new Chief Digital Officer
comes in
and says, "I've used these tools in the past.
I want to go use them."
You always have some risk there.
And the best way to mitigate that risk is to be really close to the customers
and make
sure you're not just talking to the project team, but you're talking to
multiple levels
and certainly the executives to understand what some of those key initiatives
are at
the company.
Yeah, that's pretty darn rad.
It's so interesting to just think of how just interconnected all of this stuff
is.
Any other obstacles or revoops moments or anything like that or any stuff that
you wish
you could redo over the last couple of years?
There's probably a list of things we'd like to redo if we had that chance,
right?
I think the biggest takeaway is always what's the data telling us?
And literally going back to some of those meetings that we had before the first
six months
of this year and there was that great resignation period, I think our hiring
had slowed a little
bit mainly because honestly we went publicly last fall.
We're doing really well as a company.
We're beating our numbers every quarter.
We get so busy doing some of that that, hey, do we have the discipline that we
need in order
to make sure the hiring pipeline is where it is when you're hiring.
We're going through everything that I mentioned before from the onboarding to
the enablement.
Are you going through all those steps with the discipline and rigor that you
really need
to?
So you never want to be in a position where you're surprised by something like,
wait a
minute, we're sales down.
Sales aren't down today because of what you did in this 24-hour period.
It's because what you didn't do three months ago and what you didn't plan for
six months
ago and really the main thing to take away that I have is you got to be data-
driven.
We all have a gut from a business perspective, a gut feel and, hey, I think I
need to make
this decision.
They'll call and poll comment where you have to get to 80 percent.
If you know 80 percent of what you should know about the data, then make a
decision.
If you get the 100, it's probably too late, but you got to get to that 80
percent.
If you're just making decisions based on kind of women, my gut feel, I at least
want
to get to that 80 percent where I'm making that decision that's a fully
informed data-driven
decision.
It needs to be timely.
It needs to be with a sense of urgency.
But again, it's got to be data-driven in order to really have a directionally I
'm going
in the area that I think I need to and making the right investment.
Okay, let's get to our next segment.
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Tool shed, Pete, what's in your tool shed?
What are the things you're using?
We got a lot of things in our tool shed at Ford Rock actually.
And again, growing company, their needs, there's plenty of opportunities.
I think it probably starts with a not even necessarily tool, but a methodology.
So we use MedPIC from a sales methodology perspective.
And when I got here, there really wasn't a ton of rigor around sales
methodology.
And I thought it's something that we've had to put in place.
But once you put a methodology in place, how do you then drive that?
And how do you programatize that?
And that's with tools.
A couple of the tools Salesforce is our salesforce.com is our system of record.
And really we're evolving our deployment of Salesforce constantly to trying to
make it
more of a data driven tool.
It takes the transactions, but then how do we get that data out in a way that
we can
make decisions?
One actual Salesforce plug-in that we have is an application called close plan
that sits
right on top of Salesforce.
And that helps with the discipline around MedPIC and some of the pieces that we
were
able then to incorporate and make sure that, hey, we just don't have the record
there,
but now we have some of the strategic pieces on top of that.
And that's been really instrumental in making sure that we were tracking and
have a data
driven approach to managing and maintaining all of the data that you need
around a sales
methodology.
I can tell you the last couple of years on the opposite of things, we've really
gotten
much more focused on leveraging some tools.
We put Tableau in place for real time visibility, something that we absolutely
needed.
I think we weren't doing what we were putting our managers in the best position
to make
those decisions, those data driven decisions, spreadsheets have their place in
every company,
but we had to have a more proactive tool that we could really manage the
business consistently.
So Tableau's gone in.
We use Anna plan really to do everything from forecasting to territory planning
, multi-year
modeling.
And again, that's really helped us, especially territories.
Your growing company went from 50 to 100, 150 reps that we're going to have.
How do you come up with territories that make sense?
Do you have the right number of people in a certain region?
Should you go into another region?
Can all that data driven and Anna plan has been a great way for us to central
ize that
and have a consistent approach to it?
So obviously you said you want to get a little bit away from spreadsheets.
Spreadsheets, it's always hot or cold with anyone in and around rev-ops.
Do you have a favorite spreadsheet or something or dashboard?
Yeah, I don't like to admit it, but yeah, we still do.
So we've still got some of our sales productivity modeling is really still in
the spreadsheet
driven today.
And I mentioned before, one of my favorite metrics is a sales productivity
component.
And when I was talking about selling the large enterprise and how we have those
six month
sales cycles, I need those tenured reps, that whole progression that we were
talking
about about reps and how they graduated from different time categories.
We need reps that can find progress and close enterprise business.
And that's sales capacity and those productivity metrics.
They're absolutely critical for us to understand with the high growth rates we
have every step
of the way.
And really the end result is the net retention rates.
If we're not driving that new business and optimizing our existing customers.
So I really, it's two things they ask me about.
It's sales productivity metrics.
And then you can see the end result in the net retention rates.
I love it.
So fun.
I've got fun, but as close as it gets in this world.
Any blind spots, do you feel like you wish you kind of had a better sense of?
I think I mentioned pipelines really the oxygen of a business for one of our
managers is
pipeline is life.
So he even takes a little more extreme than just oxygen.
But I think those pipeline ratios are something that especially in changing
times you want
maximum visibility around that.
And I think we're still working and putting in place, you know, how do we have
more coverage
and how we grow the pipeline in order to potentially address those slower
spending,
longer sales cycles, all the things that can happen to any company in a
challenging macroeconomic
time.
But really that's impacting the top of the funnel.
And an example of that is as we look at pipeline in different regions, we're
trying to get
better visibility into that, not just the total pipe, but in region and look
down to
a rep level.
And at a rep level then, okay, if they're behind in pipeline, is it the person,
is it the talent,
you know, is it the fit?
I think we do a pretty good job of acquiring and attracting really strong
talent.
So then we look at how do we help them?
And we've got our SDRs, our sales development reps that help generate business
for the field.
So we're actually trying to more proactively take that SDR group and help bump
the pipeline
of some of the people that maybe are falling behind on the pipeline progression
estimates,
point those SDRs towards get a different level of support for a handful of reps
that maybe
need that pipeline bump.
And look, SDRs are great resources for us.
When you look at cost per value, they're great bang for the buck.
So we've actually in the second half of the year here, just looking at the
macroeconomic
conditions and how do we continue to build that pipe, we've decided to invest
in more
SDRs.
And then we're looking at where we really deploy those SDRs in certain regions
and areas in
order to look, we always want to maintain a ratio of SDRs to account reps kind
of by region.
But we're trying to be really smart by looking at where are some of the
opportunities for
us to do that.
And I think that's a process in the last six plus months that we've gone
through that we
probably didn't have the visibility that we needed to in order to make some of
those strategic
decisions on we're deploying some of those new resources.
I think we're now just really starting to optimize that and help make sure that
we're
putting everybody in a position to be successful.
You mentioned pipeline, obviously a bunch.
Obviously, it's like you said, it's the lifeblood.
I'm curious, like, how do you carve a pipeline with marketing?
What's your methodology there?
Yeah, sure.
So pipeline analysis is again something that I think we need to continue to
mature.
And it's a great example of a spreadsheet.
Everything is in spreadsheets going back even 12 months.
And we're really starting to optimize that where we've got a, and what does
that give
you again?
Nothing wrong with spreadsheets, right?
We still use them for a lot of different things, but it doesn't give you the
real time
visibility in order to make decisions in an urgent matter at times.
So we're trying to move more towards as much automation as we can get.
So how do we drive that pipeline between marketing and sales?
Look, I think there's multiple ways that you're going to get pipeline
ultimately.
Certainly from the marketing department, I think marketing touches everything.
Just saying, hey, marketing needs to do X amount of your pipeline.
We have the marketing handoff to SDRs for leads inbound.
That should be about a third of our pipeline.
Our MAEs, our account reps are working directly with existing customers and
that new customers.
That should be about a third of our pipeline.
And then we've got a phenomenal partner network out there.
We've got global systems integrators as well as regional systems integrators
that do a great
job deploying ForgeRock, but they also bring opportunities for us.
It's a two-way street as far as bringing us opportunities and then us helping
them close
those deals and they get the implementation work on top of that.
So really, it's about a third there between partners, between marketing to SDR
inbound
leads and then our sales reps doing some work on their own as well as driving
opportunities
with existing customers.
You mentioned a ton of cool stuff here doing data, but any other kind of final
thoughts
on cool initiatives or cool things that you've seen with data or something that
surprised
you.
The surprise part is probably what I'll touch on.
I think we're trying to move as quickly as we can and automate as much as we
can.
That's why the tools you had segments always of interest to me because I want
to learn
about what other possible tools we can snag in order to optimize this.
I know.
Me too.
It's just like, I mean, obviously, this is a segment of the show, but I'm just
constantly
fascinated by it.
There's no right answer and it evolves every fricking quarter.
Quarter might even be too slow these days, right?
It's just crazy.
Talk quickly things move and look, the buyer's journey these days, we know
changes where buyers
want to go do more of their own homework before they actually talk to a vendor.
There's all kinds of studies out there that say essentially 70% of the buyer's
journey
is done before they talk to the software vendor as an example.
We can have the best reps in the world, but if we haven't done the job of
helping them
find us and helping them with their journey before they actually talk to us, we
may never
reach that spot.
That's one of the things about four-draw growing, right?
We've got to continue to grow our brand.
We need to get more fights.
I absolutely love fighting, getting out there and getting into a really
competitive battle
with some of the other people in digital in the digital identity space.
Our win rates are very strong against some of the competition, but we've got to
make
sure we're in enough fights.
That alignment with marketing really is important.
That's why the tools, how are we driving some of that top of funnel
opportunities, going
digital?
We're just not digital identity.
We're doing digital marketing and everybody expects that.
How do we leverage tools out there that we're constantly evaluating and getting
the most
bang for our marketing and ultimately the investment the company makes?
Yeah, it's always such an interesting challenge when you're a company that's
trying to say,
"Hey, if we just get in that group of three or four, if we're getting into
evaluation
phase, we're going to win a ton of those."
If we could just get the data on how many deals we're getting evaluated, we're
going
to win a bunch of those.
How do we get there?
Yeah, it's like the dark funnel.
It's that whatever 67% of the buyer's journey that's happening before they even
get to you,
it's that plus responsiveness.
How quickly can you respond when they do actually want to talk to you?
It's all those things that, like you said, the data already is out there on
that stuff.
You know you have to be super responsive.
You know that you have to have information on your website that's really good
and high
quality that can help them make those decisions before they're ready to buy.
If you don't have the right tools that are tracking that stuff and the outbound
campaigns
that are going to bring them to that stuff, there's no way you're going to have
visibility
into the whole customer journey.
You got it, absolutely.
Any other final tool shed thoughts?
No, I think, look, my job as a chief revenue officer is pretty simple.
It's to put people in a position to be successful.
In order to do that, I need to find the right tools.
We need to have the right RevOps people, the right RevOps talent, and the right
projections
and make the right investments so we can let the field go do what we have them
here to
do.
And again, if I put people in the position to be successful, it means tool shed
we're
leveraging the right tools.
We're putting the leads in place at the right time for them and we've got some
extremely
talented people just to go execute.
So that's kind of been our path to success here the last couple of years.
Now the challenge is great.
We've got from 60 million to 200 million in high growth and went public.
How do you go from 200 to 500?
How do you go from 500 to a billion?
Those are all the things that we're really thinking about and RevOps has got to
be a core
part of that planning and that strategy for the next couple of years.
All right, let's get to our final segment.
Quick hits.
Quick questions and quick answers.
Peter, you ready?
I'm ready.
If you could make any animal any size, what animal would it be and what size
would it
be?
I think a lion's a tough thing to not want to go have out there leading for you
Just kind of a big, strong, prideful person that wants to lead their pack and
is very
loyal to everybody in their pack.
A lion's a kind of animal.
I think really any leader should emulate and there's a level with a lion, I
think, certainly
of strength and vision and leadership.
But there's also humility in making sure that you're a servant leader and you
're taking
care of everybody in your pack.
I love it.
Any RevOps misconceptions?
I think the biggest misconception is don't worry, guys.
We've got time to figure it out.
I think in life we tend to do that, but in business it's absolutely a
misconception.
If you think, well, let's just wait and see and we'll see how the next month or
60 days
or quarter goes.
Look, that's not a proactive approach to doing things.
Let's look at what the data is telling us today.
Let's look at there's any outside considerations that we should be really
bringing into our
model, but we've got to be highly informed.
We can't be paralyzed by data.
We can't be, I need every piece of data.
Like I said, you can't wait until you have 100% of your data.
You've probably waited too long, but in today's fast-paced business climate and
everything
from COVID to the economy to just the growth rates that are expected out there,
we don't
have time to figure it out.
I think we need to be very a sense of urgency, high sense of urgency, be very
proactive and
make sure that we're willing to make the courageous decisions that the data is
telling
us to go make in real time.
We're out ahead of some of those changes and we're not waiting for things to
happen.
We're making them happen as a company.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast or video series or something that you've
been
checking out recently?
I'm definitely a bit of a podcast geek.
My daughters make fun of me because we get into the car and there's always
either it's
a little bit of sports talk on, but it's usually a podcast that comes popping
up.
But leadership podcasts, and I'll tell you, I learn a lot from those and just
taking little
nuggets of information.
Greg Cregrichel has one that I listened to that I really like and it's a fast-
paced,
different subject all the time.
I think there's always nuggets that we can take and go run and learn from.
Yes, sign me up for podcasts and I'm always telling people I tell them what
podcasts I
just listen to or I send my leaders lots of times that poor guys get up and
usually
do it when I get up and work out first thing in the morning and they get a text
from me
at 5.30 in the morning saying, "Hey, give this a listen."
It's a suggestion.
It's not an order, but I think it's a great way for us to learn and continue to
expand.
That desire for continuous learning I think is something that any leader needs
to have.
Ultimately, it drives to an attitude and a desire for openness and willingness
to learn
and evolve.
I think it's something that we have to do as a company and we have to do as
individuals
and certainly as leaders.
You're preaching the choir.
Our cast me and makes podcasts and video series.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said.
Before we get out of here, just two final things.
First up, do you have a question that you would ask a fellow RevOps leader or
someone
that is in RevOps that you're like, "I would love to know this."
Sure.
Actually, I like one of the questions you asked me.
What's your RevOps?
I like hearing about what have you learned from the data and RevOps process
that surprised
you from a business-making decision.
I think that's a simple question to ask people, but I get some amazing
different answers as
far as the company was doing this.
We were doing it because we thought it made sense and it was a gut feel, but
boy, the
data is staring us in the face.
Then we ultimately either change course or we didn't.
What's the opportunity cost that you may have lost or that you've gained based
on really
leveraging your RevOps team?
It's such a core part of what I think a growing organization has to leverage.
Again, that discipline and that structure around, that's a really important
thing.
Yeah, we had a guest on marketing leader on our Dementia and Visionaries show
who was
telling us that they did a bunch of paid demos.
They were like, "The stats were significantly worse for the conversions for
paid demos."
We're like, "I guess that didn't work."
It was like eight months later, all these leads were just rolling in.
It was all the people who did the paid demos that it just basically, it was buy
-in-time
as end of year and they were budgeting for next year.
They all came like roaring back and he was like, "It had two X conversion rates
then
anything else that we'd been doing."
It was like the data showed us we just didn't have the right time horizons.
We had to wait a year for the whole budget cycle to go through and I'm like, "
Man, that
is one of those things where you're like, "Gut feel, I'm going to do this thing
It didn't work."
Then you're like, "Well, forever, it's just bad, but if you didn't have the
data engine
behind that, you would have never known that that's where all those leads came
from."
You got it.
Absolutely.
Final question, best advice for someone who is a CRO overseeing a RevOps team?
This is a straightforward one.
Be data-driven in everything you do.
Develop a plan, make it smart, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic,
timely, set that plan
and then have the data to assess the plan continuously.
Make sure you're accountable to that plan and you have the discipline to really
go back
and listen to the data, understand the data and then make sure you're making
decisions
based on those data.
That's absolutely critical thing.
I think you've got to have a maniacal focus on data-driven decisions, execute
on the big
things out there and make sure that you're accountable to those decisions that
you're
making and what the data is telling you.
Pete, thanks so much for joining.
This has been absolutely awesome.
For listeners, I highly recommend you go check out everything at Fordrock,
especially
if you need to tell your CIO, tell your CISO to go check them out, go to Ford
rock.com.
Any final thoughts?
Anything to plug, Pete?
Thanks a lot.
This is great.
The office is really revolutionizing some of the decision-making with different
companies.
If you're going to be a great organization out there, you have to be leveraging
RevOps
and again, go decide what those big things are, execute on those.
The company's going to be successful and everyone's going to have some fun
while you're
doing it.
I love it.
Thanks so much.
Take care.
Thanks. [MUSIC]
(chiming)