Saima Rashid & Ian Faison 25 min

The Ultimate Guide to Data-Driven Marketing


Live from Dreamforce, Robert Zimmermann, CRO of Qualified, interviews Saima Rashid, Senior Vice President of Revenue Analytics at 6sense.



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[MUSIC]

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>> Welcome to Rise of RevOps.

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Today, we're bringing you straight to a live interview at Dreamforce,

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where Robert Zimmerman, CRO of Qualified,

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interviews Seema Rashid,

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senior vice president of revenue analytics at 6 cents.

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Seema says that data helps us make our best,

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most informed decisions.

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She also describes which AI tools she uses to drive

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digital transformation and efficiency.

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Now, let's head to Dreamforce.

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>> Well, it is wonderful to have you here, Seema.

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>> Thank you.

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>> Thank you very much for joining us today.

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>> So excited to be here.

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It's a conversation I'm very excited about.

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>> Well, one of the things as I was looking at your background,

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and really excited to hear about your journey.

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But one of the things I really wanted to understand was,

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tell us a little bit how you arrived into the role that you're in.

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>> One of the things you and I were talking about was data and

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the importance of analytics.

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How do you think about that today and what

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brought you to the role that you currently in at 6 cents?

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>> Yeah. It's a great question because,

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and I'm dating myself, but when I went to school,

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there was no rev-ops,

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there was no operations function really,

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even that you studied for a work towards.

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So I grew up in the world of data.

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I grew up in a world where we were,

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believe it or not, companies didn't have their own analytics teams.

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So my first job out of college was actually for

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a consulting company that served as the analytics team for

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great big companies, Fortune 1000 companies.

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They would give us the data nightly feeds,

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and then we would do analysis and help them make sense of it.

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So great experience first 10 years of working with all types of data,

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B2B, B2C, and really developing and understanding of identifying trends.

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But most importantly, taking insights out of the data and driving action with

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it.

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So I feel my career since then has really just built upon that.

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How do we take the data to optimize processes?

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How do we take data and use it to drive better decisions?

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So in the role that I am now at 6 cents,

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and thankfully technology and just the automation and the AI that we have now

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to

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synthesize the data is only made our jobs easier.

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>> Well, one of the things we were talking about before we got on stage was

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that

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RevOps has changed fundamentally over the last six to eight years.

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And I realized you've had the RevOps function before.

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You're much more focused on the marketing ops function at 6 cents today.

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And one of the things we talked about was maturity of an organization.

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Can you tell me a little bit more about sort of what is the definition of Rev

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Ops

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to you today and how should companies think about this as they mature?

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>> Yeah, so to me when I hear RevOps, I think of two things.

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I think of alignment and integration, right?

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So really what the goal of RevOps is to accelerate business growth through

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the alignment and integration of your marketing sales and customer success

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functions.

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That can look very different across different orgs, right?

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It depends on the maturity of those ops functions within organizations.

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It depends on the organizational readiness as well.

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I think early on in the RevOps world, it was all about let's bring those teams

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together under one chief revenue officer and that was the only way.

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But I've been in companies where the marketing operations team might have

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a higher level of maturity than some of the other functions or

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the metrics are so different or maybe enablement isn't pulled in.

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In some cases, the annual planning process sits outside an appropriate function

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as

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opposed to in a field strategy and planning organization.

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So I think there's different flavors of it and

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it really depends on the company, the structure, what's in place, and

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the organizational readiness.

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But it all goes back to alignment and integration, whether it's all one team,

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or whether there's just an interlock and

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a cadence that those teams work towards.

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>> I like the way you're thinking about that.

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Now, let's talk a little more about Sixth Sense and where you are today.

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I understand that they recruited you to come over.

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Tell me a little bit about Sixth Sense.

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What does Sixth Sense do and how have you organized the revenue function or

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how is it organized in the marketing operations function that you lead and

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the analytics function that you lead?

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>> Yeah, so Sixth Sense was born out of a very simple question.

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If we only knew which accounts were more likely to buy from us,

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wouldn't it make our job so much easier as sellers and marketers?

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>> And that's the question really that Sixth Sense is answering every day.

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It uses the power of big data, machine learning to look at the signals that

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are out there, right?

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Every seller, every marketer is trying to find that needle in the haystack.

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We make that haystack a lot smaller.

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It is really the lifeblood of our operations teams,

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our go-to-market motion.

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Nothing goes live unless it's gone through Sixth Sense,

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which when I was a customer of Sixth Sense for five years,

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I didn't believe it, I didn't know it.

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And now that I run Sixth Sense for Sixth Sense, I can absolutely say that.

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Every marketing campaign, every sales motion, even prep before a meeting,

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starts with this Sixth Sense platform.

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And so it's great to be in a company that's so

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operationally minded and data driven and really values the power of the data.

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And so our RevOps org today includes enablement sales ops,

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customer success operations, marketing ops sits outside and reports into the

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marketing function and it includes the BDRs and BDR operations.

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In this particular case, you've got the BDR and the BDR operations,

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but that isn't consistent with every company.

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It's, tell me a little bit about why that decision was made and

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why it's so important for Sixth Sense in terms of the leading that organization

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today.

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>> Yeah, I think there's been studies of should BDRs sit in the marketing

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org and the sales org.

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I think as long as there's clarity of career path for BDRs,

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meaning they have a path towards moving into an AE role,

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there's really close alignment between sales and marketing.

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It's really fine.

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I actually think our BDRs thrive because they are part of the marketing org.

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We control that quality of what we're providing them in terms of hot accounts.

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We don't live in an MQL world at Sixth Sense.

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We believe that we sell enterprise software to complex buying groups.

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And there's no one person making that decision.

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And so really making sure that our BDRs are leveraging the data, the insights.

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They have a voice in terms of the quality of what is passed to them.

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They have a voice in terms of how they're going to attack and

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account and leverage the Sixth Sense insights to inform it.

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It's been phenomenal.

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And we have great kind of career paths for our BDRs.

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They very quickly are moving into eight year olds within the organization.

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And so it doesn't really matter that they sit in the marketing org.

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I think they benefit from that closeness to the top of the funnel.

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But then they have great career paths beyond into sales.

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>> I do believe that the BDR team is really the lifeblood of an organization.

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As well, as I think about the sales organization that we have qualified,

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we definitely go into those ranks to pull people up into selling in our closing

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organization.

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One of the- >> Actually, can I pause right there?

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>> Absolutely. >> I look at the data.

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Some of our best performing AEs, in fact, hands down.

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Some of our best performing AEs are the ones that grew through the ranks on the

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BDR.

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So it's just been phenomenal for us.

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>> And there you go, you're back to data supporting some of these decisions,

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which is great to see.

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>> As I reflect back on the last six months, it has been a challenging time

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through Q1.

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I feel like Q2, we're starting to see a little bit of that sunshine and

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the light at the end of this tunnel.

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As you reflect back, what's the hardest sort of problem that you have had to

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deal

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with over the last six months within marketing operations?

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>> I would say it's a lot of what you just mentioned, right?

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There's the macroeconomic conditions.

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It's taking longer to close deals.

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It's harder to close deals.

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And so at the beginning of the year, I actually ran a webinar that was titled

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Ideas are Easy, but Execution is Everything.

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And so we really adopted that mindset of we can't control external forces,

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but what we can control is our execution internally.

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Let's execute to perfection.

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Let's plug all the leakages that are in our revenue funnel.

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Let's figure out what's working.

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Let's drive consistency in our approach.

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And that's very much what we've doubled down on.

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And I think we've really yielded some great results.

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We've optimized processes on the BDR side, on the clarity of that handoff

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between BDRs and AEs on the exit criteria of moving deals through the funnel.

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It's been pretty phenomenal.

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So we've kind of just looked inwards to really optimize execution and

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then control what we can control.

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>> With that in mind, what was a decision that you made that

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you really hit the mark, that it was a great decision to make.

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And then conversely, I'd love for you to share what mistake was made for

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others who are out there that might be thinking about the very similar things.

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What would you say, okay, be careful with this, avoid this?

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>> I actually don't think of the mistakes as mistakes and I'll tell you why,

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because we very quickly iterate.

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So if you're gonna fail, let's fail very fast and let's optimize accordingly.

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So we actually look at our data.

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We have our CMO and our CRO in the room every two weeks.

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And we run a biweekly pipeline meeting that was instrumented early last year.

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And that's probably the best thing that we've done because what it does is you

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have transparency of the data.

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Nobody's questioning where we stand, how we're performing against our goals.

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But you have enough seniority in the room and you have a cadence that everyone

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is

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expecting where we can look at the data and very quickly determine is there a

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problem at the top of the funnel, meaning are we not generating enough demand?

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Is it that things are getting stuck mid funnel and we need to either re-enable

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reps or is there an issue at the bottom of the funnel where we might need to

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run

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a SPIF or something.

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But having that cadence has allowed us to just make those quick decisions.

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And because we're meeting again in two weeks,

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we will run specific actions in place and regroup in two weeks and

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see what we were able to do.

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So I think just taking the data beyond just the information and really driving

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insights to action has been the biggest thing for us.

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And so operationally, there's tons of things we've done, right?

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We've tightened our inspection criteria.

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We've revamped our SLAs.

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We have set up scorecards so that no rep is in the dark about their performance

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right?

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I'm a firm believer that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

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So let's not hide behind locked down dashboards or reports.

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Let give every one of you of where things stand and then that will drive the

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right actions.

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And so.

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Transparency is one of those key things that I think whether you're a BDR,

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whether you're a rep, whether you're on their marketing team,

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if you know what you're accountable for and you're held to that,

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that is a lot of what people are being asked for and that's what they want to

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see

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in their careers and their career advancement.

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They want to know what is expected and what do I need to do.

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Now, turning a little bit to what we call affectionately the tool shed,

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what tooling do you have, what software tools, what dashboards are important.

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That's walked me through how you've set up your organization.

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Six cents was at the center of everything we do.

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I mentioned it.

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It starts very much at the top of the funnel in making sure that we are all

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as a revenue organization looking at that same pool of accounts.

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There's not a sales list.

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There's not a marketing list.

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There is one ICP that we are really trying to penetrate as one revenue team.

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And then using that to drive the handoff to sales,

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using that to drive all of kind of where we're going to focus in terms

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our campaigns on where we're going to focus outbound efforts,

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where we are penetrating well and where we're not so that we can,

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again, take a look every two weeks and see what specific actions we need to

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take.

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So six cents is the lifeblood.

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And then, of course, we execute in our marketing automation system,

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Marketo, Salesforce, truly is the source of truth for a lot of our dashboards.

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I say that because the best data and dashboards are the ones that get used.

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Nobody's data is perfect.

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There's always a maybe more advanced way you can do something in an external

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system,

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but I need my sellers and my marketers and my CS team to be looking at the data

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and consuming it.

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And Salesforce is the place that they all live.

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And so our single source of truth for pipeline dash and revenue lives in Sales

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force.

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It is open to anyone in the company.

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And every number, most importantly, is put into context versus a goal versus a

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historical trend

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versus what good looks like.

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So anyone who's looking at the dashboard can very quickly see, are we trending

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well?

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Yes or no?

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If not for that bottom line, are we trending well for the leading indicators

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before that?

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Is our conversion rate up or down?

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You could double your conversion rate, but if it takes twice as long to get

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there,

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you haven't changed a thing, right?

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So volume, velocity, conversions, all of those key metrics for our revenue

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pipeline

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and the leading indicators to that are open in one place for everyone to go

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take a look.

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And that is actually the dashboard that we used to drive that biweekly pipeline

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meeting

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that I spoke about.

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So everybody's using the same access to the same data you're talking about, the

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same

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information.

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It's that's how you've got a pretty good partnership between the sales and the

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marketing

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organizations in place.

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One team.

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And in fact, actually to that point, there's one pipeline goal.

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We don't report on marketing source versus sales sourced.

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If there's a, it doesn't matter, right?

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Who's sourcing the deal?

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We can, I can look at it by channel.

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I can see what inbound is generating, what outbound is generating, what field

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marketing

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and our eBx team is generating.

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But the goals are the one pipeline goal.

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What is going to get us to our company bookings number that we want to hit?

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And that's the number that we look at.

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Turning to your sales and marketing organizations, we spoke briefly about this

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hybrid world

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that we're living in.

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How have you thought about setting up the organization?

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Where do your salespeople live?

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Where do your marketing people live?

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Are you in office?

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Are you hybrid?

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What does that look like?

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We have our headquarters in San Francisco.

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We have an office in Austin, Texas and an office in New York.

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So there are teams that live in those areas and are in the office, but it's not

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mandated

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except that we have brought an initiative forward to bring our BDRs into office

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You mentioned they're the lifeblood of the org.

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I think there's so much learning to be had when you're all in one area.

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And so our BDRs are in one of those three hubs.

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And they are in the office at least three days a week.

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And just that motion of being in running call blitzes, having learning and deb

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riefs on

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how objections and all of those sorts of things have really driven improved

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performance in

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how our outbound team works.

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And has allowed us to further refine some of the SLAs and the response time and

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just the

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quality of what that team is producing and doing day in and day out.

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So we have a remote first culture, but we do have our BDRs in the office.

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I feel like you've got a really good handle on the analytics within the Sixth

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Sense business.

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Are there blind spots that you wish you had data on?

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Are there areas that you still today are saying, okay, we need to examine that

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a little

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more?

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Nobody's data is perfect.

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And I think as somebody who's built in the analytics teams for 17 years, nobody

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will

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achieve perfection.

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I think consistency of measurement, single source of truth is number one, the

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biggest

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thing.

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But there's always blind spots, right?

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I would love to know exactly what, you know, have attribution down to, you know

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, every

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single touch point, I will never get it.

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So it's about understanding that there is some ambiguity.

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There's no silver bullet.

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So when you are looking at the data that you have, you're putting it into that

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context,

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right?

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Attribution tools, you know, can get you to a certain place, but they're not

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going to

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get you to that full view.

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Similarly, you know, who is that full buying group?

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I mentioned that, you know, we sell to accounts and people within those

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accounts.

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Our reps might not put every single contact on that deal, right?

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But I know the data tells me that our win rates double when we have at least at

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least

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six people on a deal.

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I know generally what those six personas are.

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And so I do use that to inform where the sellers go, where the marketers focus

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their

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campaigns on, but I'm sure there's more than that, right?

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There's plenty of folks that might not see.

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So there are gaps.

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Everyone has gaps, but we really try and plug them where we can through

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automation, through

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using technology to fill those gaps, but always just understanding that the

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data is

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not perfect.

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And so we will use what we have to drive the best informed decisions that we

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can make.

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Is there anything that is new that you're doing or using that you can't live

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without

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now?

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How long did it take us to get to the AI conversation?

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I feel it's been such a hot topic at Dreamforce and at every conference I've

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been in in the

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last six months.

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Generative AI is very exciting.

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I think in particular for operations teams, and I think in particular for

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marketing operations,

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there's just a speed at which we can do things and a quality of which we can

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iterate on that

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wasn't there before.

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So we have our own generative AI product conversational email that's allowed us

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to automate a lot

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of the things that the BDRs were doing manually, things like webinar follow-ups

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, things like

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reaching out, making sure that there's no qualified account that gets lost left

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behind

18:59

because a rep didn't have capacity to go work it.

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So generative AI in terms of building cadences and building campaigns and

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making sure we've

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got the right messaging in place, but also using our AI assistance to augment

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what the

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sellers are doing.

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It's been game-changing.

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It's just allowed us to penetrate our ICP in a much more effective fashion,

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take some

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of the work off of our BDRs that maybe wasn't as interesting for them or maybe

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took away

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from their really core areas of focus.

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And so I think I'm very excited about what AI can bring to operations functions

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And I firmly believe that Ops' role is really to drive the digital

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transformation of the

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go-to-market teams.

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And so we're really well positioned to continue to capitalize on it.

19:47

I love that.

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In terms of forward-looking, any particular initiatives or anything that's sort

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of taking

19:54

a lot of your focus and time right now as you think about next fiscal year?

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Yeah, it's all about, I mentioned this, executing to perfection.

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And so one of the big things that has been an ongoing thing for us is just

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understanding

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what good looks like.

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It's not the easiest question to answer, right?

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What's working at each part of that funnel?

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There was a BCG report that came out earlier this year where they quantified

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that sales

20:22

and marketing teams are collectively leaving $2 trillion annually on the table

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through

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wastage throughout that go-to-market motion.

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Most opportunities, mistimed opportunities, focusing on the wrong accounts,

20:36

process leakage,

20:37

right?

20:38

And so that's like a big part of what we want to be solving for.

20:42

And so we run a lot of analyses on close one deals and how a close one deal

20:47

this quarter

20:48

looks different from last quarter or last year.

20:51

I mentioned this, right?

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It's taking more people on a deal to win.

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It's taking longer.

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So let's look at what did work and let's just do more of that.

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And so we're really doubling down on the campaigns, the channels, the messaging

21:05

, the

21:05

specific tactics that we see show up again and again on our close one deals.

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And then we're building upon those, expanding their reach, maybe verticalizing

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them.

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And then we're also providing that insight not just to sales, but also to CS

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because

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upsell, retaining the customers you have, providing them with a phenomenal

21:25

experience,

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helping them drive adoption within their organizations.

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We want all of that to be happening more and more.

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So let's have the data and format.

21:35

Well, I want to say that in listening to you, I am friendly of the belief that

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you run a

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world-class analytics and marketing ops operation.

21:46

Interested part of this segment, which is sort of quick hits.

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And so let's run through this pretty quickly.

21:53

All right.

21:54

You could make any animal any size.

21:58

What animal would it be?

22:00

I would make all the creepy crawlies microscopic.

22:03

So I don't have to see them and I don't have to be freaked out by them.

22:07

100%.

22:08

Where is your favorite vacation?

22:11

So I have two children.

22:13

They are at that age where they're in middle school and high school.

22:17

And so that's just a lot of fun to travel with them.

22:20

It's easier to travel with them.

22:21

And so I think this past summer we spent some time in Scotland and the UK.

22:29

My favorite vacation with them most recently was Granada, Spain.

22:32

It was just such a unique area, such a beautiful architecture and palaces.

22:39

And I just think we had a great time there.

22:41

So I would say Alhamra in Granada, Spain was my favorite recently.

22:46

All right.

22:47

Best concert attended.

22:48

Oh, I've been to so many.

22:50

I'm an eighties baby.

22:52

So Rolling Stones, ACDC, you two.

22:56

Love ACDC.

22:57

You know, and then I think recently I went to a killer's concert.

23:01

So anything I have to find out a way to take my 12 year old to Taylor Swift.

23:05

So I'll be a hero if I do that.

23:08

I think you will be.

23:11

If you had a superpower, what would it be?

23:15

Being able to revisit and go back to moments that were really special.

23:20

I say this to my kids all the time.

23:22

I'm like, take a picture with your heart.

23:23

Like this is a really special thing.

23:25

Like just be present in the moment.

23:27

And I feel like with the speed of the way things are going, we tend to lose

23:32

things in

23:32

that shuffle.

23:33

So being able to go back and relive whatever memories.

23:38

Yeah.

23:39

Okay.

23:40

And then what advice would you have for somebody who is newly leading a revenue

23:47

operations

23:47

role or function?

23:49

That's a great question.

23:51

And we have great folks on our team who are growing in the ranks, right?

23:55

And it's all about becoming a strategic partner for the business that you

24:02

support.

24:03

Operations teams can often fall in the trap of just executing on the orders of

24:08

someone

24:08

else and the best ops teams and the best ops leaders are the ones that forged

24:13

that partnership

24:14

with the business.

24:15

Come with strategic recommendations, take that data to insights.

24:20

I encourage everyone on my team, even when they're sharing a report to go

24:25

beyond the

24:25

report and what is the so what?

24:29

Why should I look at this?

24:30

Why should I care?

24:31

And so I think using the information and really becoming a strategic partner,

24:36

number one,

24:37

understanding the business and the goals of the business and making sure you're

24:40

driving

24:41

an integrated plan so that you have this goal and you're all working

24:45

collectively towards

24:46

it.

24:47

I think ops plays a big role in setting the right plan for the organizations

24:51

and then

24:52

ruthless prioritization.

24:53

We can't do 10 things.

24:55

Let's focus on the three most meaningful things.

24:58

Again, in conjunction, there's like a three-legged stool, I feel.

25:02

There's the business, there's ops and there's analytics.

25:05

And if those three teams are working in harmony, I think that it's really

25:09

effective for a business.

25:10

So prioritizing the right initiatives and making sure that there's a cadence

25:14

and operating

25:15

rhythm that, again, ops can own and keep things on track.

25:20

I think that's great advice.

25:21

I am a true believer in ruthless prioritization as well if everything's

25:24

important.

25:25

Nothing is.

25:26

But Simon, I want to thank you for your time today.

25:29

This was a great conversation.

25:31

I really enjoyed it and I hope you have a great rest of your dream force.

25:35

Thank you.

25:36

It's my pleasure. [MUSIC]

25:46

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