Ian Faison 24 min

The Year in RevOps


Today, let’s take a quick look back at some of those conversations. How do our guests define RevOps? Why is RevOps important? And what do you need to know to make your RevOps team successful?



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Welcome to Rise of RevOps, I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Gasping Studios.

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Today we're taking a look back on our most recent season.

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I've had the chance to speak with some incredible minds in the revenue

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operation space.

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One of my favorite parts is every conversation that we get to hear how guests

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define revops.

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Each definition is a little different, and each definition brings something new

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to the

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rev-ops tape.

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So today let's take a quick look back at some of those conversations.

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How do our guests define rev-ops?

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Why is rev-ops important?

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And what do you need to know to make your rev-ops team successful?

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Let's get into it.

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First we hear from Michelle, the Chief Revenue Officer, at Sixclicks.

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Michelle leads the sales and marketing team and she is responsible for revenue

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generation

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strategy and execution.

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In her episode, Michelle describes the importance of cross-functional teams.

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She explained which structures and cadences work best for her and how she found

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success

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in rev-ops.

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Rev-ops is really a cross-functional discipline that is designed to optimize

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revenue, those

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existing revenue in terms of protecting it as well as growing your revenue

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stream.

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And when I say cross-functional, I mean it really touches every portion of the

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organization

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from, well, the obvious sales and marketing, but also customer success.

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Back office oftentimes has to be involved in rev-ops and as I said, I think

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information

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security should play a role in that as well.

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Instinct without context is futile.

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Instinct without data is futile.

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So while it's important to follow your gut, I think having data is critical.

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You can't operate without it.

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Next, let's get to Todd Thomas.

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He's the Chief Revenue Officer at Aiden Auto, which integrates third-party

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digital services

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directly into your vehicle.

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Todd and I talked about how to organize your startup for success and how to

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make rev-ops

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reflect your go-to-market strategy.

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Here's what he had to say about restructuring your rev-ops for success.

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So I define it as everything that touches the generation of revenue for the

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company.

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So I have a pretty broad umbrella.

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I definitely think it begins with PR and marketing.

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Certainly sales, sales management, the BED team and customer success, I think

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that's

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all probably pretty standard.

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But I also would include solutions engineering in there because it's really

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part of the sales

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process.

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If you're moving into a POC and your solutions engineer is integral to that,

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particularly

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if the actual process of integration is part of your value proposition, if you

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have a faster

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integration or an easier integration or no code integration, those are keys to

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your selling

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and the solution engineer is key to it.

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So I would include all of those different groups.

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And I would say you really need to maximize revenue.

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You need really good collaboration and cooperation across all of those

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different teams.

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But how you structure your revenue offs really can be one of the keys to

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whether or not the

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startup makes it or not.

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Make sure that you're amplified and getting the most out of the resources you

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have available.

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I mean the rev-ops should be a reflection of your strategy and your go-to-

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market plan.

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And for Aiden in particular, we have a, I would say highly focused outreach.

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We have a very small team but a very well connected team, a very strong network

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And so we leverage that network of the members of our team as well as our

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advisors and our

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investors to try to compress the sales cycle by getting in front of decision

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makers as soon

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as possible.

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And I know everybody says we want to compress the sales cycle.

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I get that.

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But the way that we do that is by using existing connections to reach out

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directly.

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So ideally our very first meeting is with a decision maker.

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So we can move really quickly.

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Well Todd described the rev-ops as a structured, strategic and plan part of his

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company.

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Scott Hoffman, our next guest, went in almost the opposite direction.

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Scott is the Chief Revenue Officer at GFT USA.

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And he doesn't want his revenue operations team to follow a pattern.

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It's more about emotion empathy than you may think.

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Here's Scott.

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My hope here is that rev-ops doesn't follow that pattern.

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That rev-ops is a cultural aspect.

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It's an accountability aspect.

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It's a driving empathy between these different unique areas of skill to

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understand how we

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each impact the other.

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And it doesn't devolve into tools, just lots of tools and we can automate all

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these things

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and we know everything about a client and that's the end of it and there's a

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dashboard

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and you're done.

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The human aspect and that accountability aspect I think is probably the most

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interesting and

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critical thing.

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So there you have it.

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The human aspect of rev-ops.

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Now let's talk teamwork.

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That's what Kiva Colstein, President and Chief Revenue Officer at AlphaSense

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brought up.

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AlphaSense is a market intelligence and search platform.

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Kiva oversees rev-ops, renewals and referrals.

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He says that rev-ops is all about bringing teams together, creating a common

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goal for

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everyone.

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I think rev-ops is about bringing teams together.

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It's about breaking down silos.

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It's about aligning everyone toward a common goal, revenue growth.

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And what rev-ops is responsible for to some extent is orchestrating this

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seamless collaboration

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between sales and marketing and customer success and all of that is fueled by

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data.

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And so providing all of those teams, all of those leaders, the data that we

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need to inform

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all the decisions that we make.

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The other thing that rev-ops does for me is helps me use the data that I might

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find in

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Salesforce or Tableau or GONG and tell a story with that data.

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I'm telling a story to an investor, to a candidate, to the board, to the

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broader sales organization.

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And so what they become a bit are storytellers, helping me tell stories with

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the data that

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they pull out.

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Really, really important.

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I think one thing I might add is it's important to understand how best to use,

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not just as

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a CRO, but the relationship that begins to exist between rev-ops and SDR and S

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DR management

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and AE and AM and marketing.

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Those are relationships that don't form overnight.

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And so each of them have to figure out how best to collaborate with each other

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and use

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the data that's being provided by rev-ops to inform the strategy in that

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specific function.

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And so we spend some time on that thinking about, "Okay, this is what rev-ops

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is sharing

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with the SDR leadership team.

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What do I do with that information?

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How do we get higher quality meetings?

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How do we decrease the time between meeting and opportunity?

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How do we identify the right targets?

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What tools are we using to do that?"

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You know, are things that the rev-ops team assists the SDR team with doing.

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And of course, we can say the same kinds of things for AE, AM, et cetera.

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Relationships between cross-functional teams don't just grow overnight.

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Good leaders encourage good connections.

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And our next guest has more to say on cross-team relationships.

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Brian Tolle is the Chief Revenue Officer at GoldCast, a digital events platform

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and measurement

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system.

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Brian says, "Good rev-ops strategy aligns with good business strategy and that

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a rev-ops

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team should always be on the same page as the board.

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Once those things are aligned, they can work together for client success."

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Rev-ops strategy aligns with the business strategy.

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So I always start with what is the business goals?

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What did the executive sign off with?

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Once you have that, you say, "Okay, what do we currently have in place?

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And then what do we need to add to get there?"

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And I actually like to start with an Excel spreadsheet of just what is the

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forecast of

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traffic to our webpage, to the amount of leads we're going to get inbound, to

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the conversion

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of those leads, outbound prospecting, how many BDRs do we have, where are we

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going, and

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then from the initial first touchpoint all the way through scheduled demos to

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closed demos,

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meaning it actually happened to proposals all the way through.

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And I like to start with the measurement because it first forces our team to

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think it through

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about what needs to happen.

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It allows us to then take it up to the tower, the board, and the execs to say,

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"Hey, this

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is what we think we can accomplish to make sure we're aligned."

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And then once it is, then you start enacting that whole process for your funnel

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, for your

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persona, or your different products.

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So you're able to be effective and you're able to measure what's working and

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not working

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and why, and then adjust along the way.

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Then you get information, make sure that that RevOps flow is documenting it and

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making sure

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that's in the right places for the right teams in the right systems.

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And if you just do that, clients will at least feel you're listening to them.

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Clients will feel like you care about them.

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And that goes a long way before you even really start your journey.

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Next, let's talk tools and trends.

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Jamie Anderson, Chief Revenue Officer at Inverse, described how RevOps gives

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his team visibility

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into pipeline and important trends.

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And that's critical for Inverse, which is a global leader in spend optimization

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with expense,

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travel management, and payment solutions.

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He described how investing in your RevOps team will result in great ROI and how

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to focus

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on what really matters when building your bottom line.

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If I go back to my days at Seabull Systems over 20 years ago now, and I look at

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moving

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from there to SAP, I saw two businesses which were very, very focused on

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running the numbers

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and had incredibly strong discipline installed and still rather than people to

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pay attention

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to those things.

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Now the tools that we use to get to the numbers were a lot less sophisticated

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today.

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Certainly did not have artificial intelligence built into them.

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But we did notice enough in trends that enabled us to accurately predict where

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we thought

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we would land as revenue teams.

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So there's definitely been around a long time.

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We probably just didn't call it RevOps.

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And there certainly wasn't RevOps teams.

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That's for sure.

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I think just giving us that visibility into our pipeline trends.

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So we have several different businesses.

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We basically serve 18,000 customers globally as a company.

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So being able to see the patterns where those customers, and particularly from

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a customer

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success perspective, where those customers are using the technology, where we

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can actually

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see how they're engaging with us.

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If we're creating opportunities to support that engagement, so for things like

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retention

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and cross-cere and upsell, we have that visibility in the business.

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Similarly, as we look at what constitutes our ideal customer profile, I think

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the key

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to it all is agreeing together what the priorities are.

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And that is what the go-to-market priorities are, what the key messages that we

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want you

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to deliver are, making sure that the marketing and sales programs and campaigns

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support the

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go-to-market with the right content and the right execution.

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And that way everybody's working towards a shared goal.

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Up next is Charles Lou, VP of Operations at LexCheck.

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LexCheck accelerates contract review and streamlines negotiations by delivering

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redlines

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and issues less in minutes while ensuring consistency across contracts.

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Charles explained how he uses RevOps as a strategic tool not only for tracking

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revenue,

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but assessing performance and identifying areas for improvement.

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Let's start with Charles' definition of RevOps, and then we'll hear how he

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stays competitive

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in the business.

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It's a structure that my sales team needs to fit themselves into so I can help

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them

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be better at what they do.

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That in a nutshell is the way that I look at it.

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It's a tool for me to one, get information about how the revenue acquisition

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aspect of

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the business is working, evaluate whether it's doing well, whether it needs to

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be improved

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in certain areas.

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But also it's a tool to help me experiment with different tactics, different

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ideas to

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be able to implement those things in an efficient way and get learnings out of

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them that I

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can implement and deploy and kind of get value out of.

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We had a very comprehensive infrastructure set up, but it actually became a bit

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of an

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obstacle because it prevented folks from getting creative.

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We've been around for a while and we've been fairly successful in a lot of ways

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, but I

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think that we are still, as far as I'm concerned, always experimenting to be

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able to do things

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better.

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In the space where we're at, especially as one of the first movers in the AI

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space, in

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order to stay ahead, right, stay ahead of the competition, not only do we need

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to be creative

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from a product perspective and a delivery perspective, but also from a sales

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perspective.

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The biggest obstacle that I've had to face in this role so far has been

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creating an infrastructure

13:57

of process points around our sellers that is flexible enough to let them be

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creative

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and let them do what they do well, which is help our customers identify pain

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points

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and get them on a tool that's going to provide them value, but at the same time

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, I still

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need to be able to get that insight around how they're doing their jobs and how

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well

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they're doing their jobs.

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Being able to take that really complicated infrastructure and turning it into

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something

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powerful but manageable was probably the biggest overall challenge.

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One of the movers that I live by, and this actually comes from our CEO, is the

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time kills

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all deals, right?

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Inactivity kills all deals.

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Open decision points will kill a deal.

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So what the challenge that we saw coming in was taking those exit criteria and

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boiling

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them down to, can you write a proposal for this client, right?

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Not a proposal that they need necessarily to sign, right?

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But can you write a proposal that will basically set out something that we can

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provide them

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that will provide them value?

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Next let's hear from SEMA Rashid, Senior Vice President of Revenue Analytics at

15:04

Sixth Sense.

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In this special episode, Robert Zimmerman, the CEO of Qualified, interviewed S

15:09

EMA at

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a live rise of RevOps event at Dreamforce earlier this year.

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And SEMA gave her definition of RevOps.

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Here it is.

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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 the

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alignment and integration

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of your marketing sales and customer success functions.

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It 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

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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 a

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higher level of

16:00

maturity than some of the other functions or the metrics are so different or

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maybe enablement

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isn't pulled in.

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

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as opposed

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to in a field strategy and planning organization.

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So I think there's different flavors of it and it really depends on the company

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, the

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structure, what's in place and the organizational readiness.

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But it all goes back to alignment and integration.

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Whether it's all one team or whether there's just an interlock and a cadence

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that those

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teams work towards.

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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

16:39

achieve perfection.

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

16:45

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 single

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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

17:10

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

17:30

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

17:39

campaigns on.

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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

17:56

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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Next, we heard from Jason Rushforth, the senior vice president and GM for the

18:06

Americas

18:07

at Sugar CRM.

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Sugar is a CRM solution that provides automation, data, and intelligence

18:12

services.

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When I talk to Jason, he said that you're doing your research and asking

18:16

questions, and

18:17

that's critical to setting yourself up for success.

18:19

That's your OJson drives revenue.

18:21

There's a lot of cogs in the wheel to drive revenue.

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And those cogs in the wheel are from everything from marketing to sales to

18:29

service to product,

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to delivery to customer experience.

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So to me, it's about the alignment of the objectives and goals and driving the

18:39

operational

18:40

function that is cross functional to achieve growth and successful outcomes for

18:48

from a revenue

18:49

perspective.

18:50

But I will say something, as a go-to-market leader, I don't need to build fief

18:55

doms to build success.

18:58

And I have to work with my sales operations team, my marketing ops team.

19:03

If you're BDR organization or your SDR organization lives in marketing or sales

19:07

, it shouldn't matter

19:09

if you're driving the revenue engine where they report to, but rather aligning

19:15

them to

19:16

the goals and objectives of what the business is trying to accomplish is

19:20

probably paramount

19:21

to the place that they report to.

19:25

Customer success is non-negotiable as an employee of our company.

19:30

So we have to make sure our customers love us, they're happy with us, and that

19:36

we build

19:36

a working relationship with those customers.

19:40

But inside of that, my attention does pivot from point to point within a given

19:46

week, month,

19:46

quarter year, based on the KPIs that I'm looking at to facilitate success

19:53

within the

19:54

business.

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So if I have a deficient pipeline, I'm going to be spending a lot of time with

19:59

the marketing

20:00

team and the BDR organization.

20:02

I'm going to be rallying the sales team around how do we build pipeline that

20:07

sustains itself

20:09

because pipeline is the fuel for the revenue engine in the business.

20:15

Customer success is non-negotiable.

20:17

Couldn't agree more.

20:18

Okay, folks, we have one more guest coming up, and that is John Fong, CRO of

20:23

Domain

20:24

Group.

20:25

Domain is one of the largest property marketplaces and portals in the Southern

20:28

Hemisphere, and

20:29

John told me how he uses RevOps to assist Domain and sales team.

20:33

Then he dove a little deeper and described revenue in three parts as he sees it

20:38

So I think RevOps to me is many different components.

20:42

Classically, RevOps has been about pricing and finding the right pricing value

20:48

and bundle

20:49

packages for our customers.

20:50

But what I think of the operations team in my organization is actually very

20:55

large.

20:56

It's about 300 people there in total.

20:59

Most of them are part of what we call customer experience, that is helping a

21:02

customer when

21:03

they have a problem, and ideally work with product to avoid the problem

21:06

happening in

21:07

the first place.

21:08

But we also have a neighborhood team.

21:10

We have a performance team, which sets quotas and incentives.

21:14

We have lots of other different teams that can really, all with the objective

21:19

of helping

21:19

our sales team be more effective, and our customers be well-served.

21:23

So the way I think of revenue is in three components.

21:26

There's what we can't control, which is how many houses are going to be sold by

21:31

the market

21:31

this year.

21:32

That number we can't control.

21:34

It's a function of interest rates, macroeconomic, whether a session is going

21:37

unemployment, etc.,

21:38

etc., that's one component.

21:40

We fundamentally control two things.

21:42

The average revenue per listing, which is a function of how much, how we price

21:47

and the

21:47

various pricing tiers and models we have, and then our market share.

21:51

Our market share is, what percentage of those 500,000 listings are going to pay

21:56

to be listed

21:57

on the main?

21:58

So at a high level, that's how I think about revenue.

22:01

I can't control that first one, which is how many houses that we have for sale

22:05

in any given

22:05

year of 500,000, but I can control what percentage would be on us and what

22:09

price we charged

22:10

it.

22:11

That's basically how I target my team.

22:13

I've divided my team into, I've got customer experience, which is a very large

22:17

and awesome

22:17

team.

22:18

But I have over 100 people who have a territory.

22:21

In their territory, they might have as few as 20, as many as a few 100 real

22:25

estate agents.

22:26

Their job is to show each of those real estate agents, "Hey, this is why you

22:29

should be

22:30

recommending to your sellers why they should be in our platform."

22:34

And so each of them have effectively a market share goal to get to as close to

22:37

100% as possible.

22:39

On top of that, they have a revenue goal, which is we just don't want them on

22:42

the cheapest

22:42

option.

22:43

We want to give them as much value as possible.

22:45

So we have classic basic silver, gold, platinum, platinum edge.

22:50

Each of those have more features, more exposure, bigger branding for the real

22:54

estate agency.

22:54

What we're constantly trying to do is train our salespeople to show the value

23:00

of the

23:01

higher tiers, but also work with our product team and the RevOps team to say, "

23:05

Hey, if we

23:06

develop these new products and these new features, can we charge more money at

23:10

all the tiers,

23:11

at some tiers?"

23:12

So we're constantly in that cycle of trying to bring more value.

23:15

We've got to charge more revenue as well as increase in the market share of how

23:18

many

23:18

people are actually using the paint product.

23:21

And there you have it.

23:22

One of the most brilliant RevOps minds all in one room, sort of a digital room.

23:26

It's been an awesome season.

23:28

We have heard a few different perspectives on how to define and approach RevOps

23:31

We've seen all different ways of thinking and looking at it.

23:35

And it's evolving.

23:36

It's changing every single day.

23:37

And that's what's so exciting about doing this series, is just hearing how

23:40

different

23:40

people are doing it at different companies and different types of companies.

23:44

Thanks so much for listening for the whole season.

23:46

If you need anything from me or anything from our team, you can email us at

23:51

Of course, thanks always to the amazing people who qualified, go to qualified.

23:55

com to learn

23:56

more.

23:57

They deserve to be in your tool shed for 2024.

24:00

Thanks again to Qualified.

24:01

We love them dearly.

24:02

I'm Ian Fazan, CEO of Cast Meensudios.

24:05

And I'll see you next time on Rise of RevOps.

24:07

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