On this episode, we talk to Noah about the importance of aligning leadership, harnessing your pipeline to track the predictive health of your business, and his advice for new rev ops leaders.
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0:00
Welcome to Riser RevOps. I'm Ian Fazan, CEO of Cast me in studios. And today I
0:10
'm joined
0:10
by a special guest, Noah. How are you? Doing great. Great to be here. Yeah,
0:15
great to have
0:15
you on the show. Excited to chat about Udemy and all the cool stuff that Udemy
0:19
does for
0:20
businesses and all the different rev obstacles that you all go through. So let
0:25
's get into
0:25
it. First off, tell me about how did you get into this crazy world of rev ops?
0:32
Yeah, it's
0:34
not a straight path. Probably date myself here, but it's like an old family
0:37
circus cartoon,
0:38
which just dots all over the place and just all mismatched. So I grew up in
0:43
Seattle. I
0:43
started my career in sales and enterprise software sold on-prem software, which
0:49
came
0:50
on a CD, much like our internet did back then as well. And it was a lot of fun.
0:55
It was lucrative.
0:56
It was a great intro into the technology space and enterprise stuff. It was a
0:59
lot of fun.
1:00
It was fast moving. It was merit-based. And I kept finding myself wanting to be
1:04
in the
1:04
conference room that where everyone was discussing what's going on with the
1:08
business and what
1:09
should we do? We're having some competitors that were eating our lunch and they
1:12
weren't
1:13
as good. And I felt myself drawn to solving that problem versus going out and
1:16
finding
1:17
customers and eventually got into some marketing stuff and did a side track
1:22
into investment
1:23
banking very randomly. Won't even go into that, but it was a dark period of my
1:28
life
1:28
for four or five years and then came back out and ended up connecting with
1:32
somebody
1:33
at Salesforce who was in sales strategy and had a background somewhat similar
1:37
to mine
1:37
and banking and so on. And I was looking to leave and look into something
1:41
different. And
1:41
with that background of technology joined in. And what I kind of found was that
1:47
overlap
1:48
between sales, experience marketing experience and finance skills was really
1:54
applicable to
1:55
the world of kind of sales-op, sales strategy. And it was really interesting.
1:59
We were trying
2:00
to solve the bigger questions, which I always was fascinated by. And it was
2:03
something that
2:04
was just emerging. This was maybe, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago and it was
2:07
just kind
2:08
of coming on the scene, this idea of what is revenue operations on think was a
2:12
term then.
2:14
And then subsequently I've just gone from the enterprise B2B, SaaS, pre-IPO
2:18
startup and
2:19
looked to scale those organizations and just iterated on the role along the way
2:24
. And then
2:25
it's kind of developed into this thing now, which is really kind of funny and
2:29
unique,
2:30
but nothing I don't think existed 10 years ago. But I think it has a really big
2:36
impact
2:36
on organizations. And I'm starting to see it as either the go-to-market
2:41
strategy and
2:41
ops or the rev-ops title appear all over the place, even in the structures of
2:46
removing
2:47
themselves just from within a business line, but reporting to the CEO or
2:51
president. And
2:52
so it's exciting. It's focusing on the biggest projects that the company's
2:56
facing and how
2:57
to make sure it happens. So it's a little bit creativity, a little bit business
3:01
experience
3:02
and a little bit of mouth. Let's talk Udemy. I'll tell you, we're huge fans of
3:08
Udemy here
3:08
at Caspian. I had one of our leaders send me a link the other day to Udemy
3:13
course and was,
3:14
"Hey, I would love to take this." And I was like, "Yeah, this is great. Swipe
3:17
the credit card and
3:18
go take it." We're a huge fan of learning here at Caspian, trying to figure
3:21
that stuff out from
3:22
the best people in the world to do it. Udemy for Business obviously is really
3:27
exciting for
3:28
companies that are trying to figure out how to do that stuff. Can you tell me
3:32
about Udemy for
3:32
Business and what size and scale that you see there in addition to Udemy the
3:36
entire company?
3:37
Yeah, it's been crazy. So I've been there just about three years. Udemy is so
3:42
unique as an
3:42
organization. It blends for-profit company with the concept and the culture of
3:47
a nonprofit,
3:48
because there's so much that's actually impacting people's lives. As you
3:52
mentioned,
3:52
I have people on my team that got to where they are by doing online training
3:56
and cohort training
3:58
to pursue parts of their career and their passions where they didn't have a
4:00
background.
4:01
And so the interesting points are Udemy started as really just marketplace by
4:05
Erin
4:06
Bali and a place for people to come to connect to instructors and instructors
4:09
to be anywhere in
4:10
the world that have expertise. And it just blew incredibly fast. It was huge.
4:15
And then the idea
4:16
was it came about maybe six, seven years ago, started- there was an interest to
4:20
package this
4:20
up and provide the best of the best courses to companies. And then very quickly
4:26
, the company
4:27
has grown nearly. It's almost closing out on $400 million a revenue. We went
4:32
public a company,
4:33
I guess a year and a half ago now, and the growth just found outstanding. For
4:37
the price point,
4:38
it's one of the best returns that organizations are finding for maintaining and
4:43
attracting key
4:44
talent, which is ultimately what our biggest cost line is at any company for
4:47
the most part
4:48
is really your talent. And the big companies are always scared about the
4:51
smaller, more nimbular
4:53
organizations, seeing their lunch and trying to steal their employees and beat
4:56
them. And the
4:57
small guys are just trying to compete with the big folks and trying to attract
5:00
the right talent
5:00
and get the skill sets. And so focusing in on actually for professionals, which
5:05
is both what
5:05
the marketplace does as Udemy business size does, certainly there's courses on
5:10
beekeeping and bread
5:11
making and all the rest of it that's out there. But really the heart and soul
5:14
is for any professional
5:15
that's learning to advance their career. And sometimes it's sponsored by an
5:19
individual. You just go
5:20
by course, sometimes it's by a manager, just for a small team. And sometimes
5:24
the CEOs and L&D leaders
5:27
and CHROs that are out there saying this is critical for the success of our
5:31
business and the
5:31
growth of our internal talent. So it's really exciting. It's the first real
5:35
company I feel like
5:36
there's a lot of meaning to, and it's attracted just a great group of people.
5:40
And it's just been a
5:41
lot of fun. And it's a fail like we're just scratching the surface of what's
5:44
out there,
5:45
based on what our customers are coming and asking us for.
5:48
Yeah, it's great. We're a cast means a 25 person company. And as we're growing,
5:51
one of the first
5:52
things that I spent my formative years in the army, you do lots of training in
5:56
the army. And we
5:57
really wanted to figure out how to train our internal employees. But like, you
6:01
just don't have
6:01
time for that. Like you don't have time to like create an agenda and set all
6:04
that sort of stuff.
6:05
And the idea that, hey, we can send a certain course to a bunch of different
6:09
people and then
6:10
they can take it and then we can get together and talk about it. Oh my goodness
6:13
, like what a
6:14
revelation. I wish I had this one. I was an officer in the army, you know, such
6:18
a cool go to market
6:19
because you have so many people that find it, done it in the past. Employees
6:23
can you can have
6:24
that sort of bottom up thing that happens. And you can also have the top down
6:27
motion. So I'm really
6:28
interested in your rev ops or how do you approach rev ops for a sort of go to
6:33
market like this?
6:34
And how do you organize your team? I think what I love about enterprise,
6:40
SaaS businesses in general is there is no one right answer. There's no one way
6:45
to do it. Nobody's
6:46
figured it out. There's so many talented people, for example, that went through
6:51
sales force back
6:52
in the day. But even a sales force, we made tons of mistakes. But there was a
6:55
lot of wind behind
6:57
our back and we made a lot of right decisions back then and the folks that
7:00
certainly most of
7:01
the folks that predated me and were more senior being had more influence. But
7:05
the idea being is
7:06
there's no one right answer. And so at any company I've been at, there's the
7:10
same goal as how do you
7:11
scale efficiently and effectively. And there's only so many levers you have,
7:15
but ultimately it's
7:16
which order do you pull those levers and when and what's the right time. And
7:21
that to me is this
7:22
algebraic problem solving that's really fun and allows every day to think about
7:27
, okay,
7:27
what should we be doing differently? How can we think about this? And for all
7:31
the other folks that
7:31
are in this world, there's a lot of great kind of support groups and so on. But
7:36
we're all thinking
7:36
and sharing ideas and trying to come up with what that next best thing. But
7:40
again, similar,
7:40
I think we're scratching the surface. The way that my realization is set up is
7:44
really there's a
7:45
couple different areas of because a functional operations role, which is
7:48
aligned to a business
7:49
lead. And so that person's responsible for working with the head of marketing
7:53
or the head of sales
7:54
or head of customer success. And the goal there is to be the person that knows
7:59
as much about their
8:00
business as those business leaders and to be somewhat of an advisor and provide
8:05
recommendations based
8:06
on the health of their business of what what they should be doing next. If they
8:10
had one more dollar,
8:11
where would they spend it? If they had one more hour, what would they do with
8:14
it? And it's about
8:16
figuring out what's the right element. And so we have those pieces, we have
8:19
more operational
8:20
sides of technology and processes. There's deal desk, enablement, deal desk
8:26
enablements,
8:27
functional ops, and the technology and processes. And so there's fundamentally
8:32
eight teams
8:32
within our GTMSO. And I said, there's probably room for a couple more. One area
8:37
that we don't
8:38
have yet is a product ops team. And I always say ops, but it's really, there's
8:43
a kind of sometimes
8:44
a connotation that ops is just more technology and administrative. And I feel
8:47
like there's
8:48
the value we try to focus on is really the strategy aspect of it, which is we
8:52
have access to a lot
8:53
of the data and what's going on. And the idea behind that is it's not just
8:57
about delivering a
8:58
dashboard. It's about just saying here, what does this mean? Which we'd be
9:02
doing and why and be grounded
9:03
in the data behind that answer. And so what's fascinating, what I like about
9:08
this in the role is
9:09
that when these organizations, these ops teams used to report into their
9:13
business lead, you had
9:14
this conflict of interest, you had this idea that if I'm reporting the sales
9:18
lead, it's hard to
9:19
challenge that person. And so the great thing about my role is that all I'm
9:23
thinking about is,
9:25
how do we increase the value of Udemy, not just one individual unit? Because
9:29
every decision you
9:30
makes then cascades through the other organizations. And so if you're going to
9:34
do something in marketing,
9:34
how does that apply to sales and the partners and customer success and product.
9:39
And so thinking
9:40
through all those lines and connecting it as far as listen, what our president
9:43
wants to do,
9:45
I'm trying to figure out how do we make that a reality. And or is there another
9:50
option. And so
9:51
it's exhausting on a daily basis because there's so many things out there. And
9:57
it's an exercise in
9:59
prioritization of what are the most important things we should be focusing on
10:02
an exercise in
10:03
alignment. I have this picture I use on a lot of slide decks when I talk about
10:06
my team, which is
10:07
just a bunch of geese flying in alignment. And then a bunch of geese running
10:11
into each other. And
10:11
it's that's fundamentally that because there's no one right answer, the idea is
10:15
, are we directionally
10:16
all going the same direction? And is everyone on board? And there's a statistic
10:21
out there that
10:22
1% or less than 1% of VC funded enterprise B2B companies make it to $100
10:27
million revenue,
10:29
because it's really hard to scale. One of the ways I believe, and I'm not the
10:33
first person to say
10:34
that, is that I think it's around the alignment of leadership and the
10:39
communication across those
10:40
teams and making sure they're all working to the one communal goal. And where I
10:44
see a lot of challenges,
10:45
particularly in companies I work with that are on the smaller side, is they
10:48
haven't really got that
10:50
alignment. And so each individual department heads down and folks on building
10:54
and they pick their
10:55
heads up and they're very disparate. And so part of this is listen, we know it
10:58
might not be the right
10:59
answer, but it's definitely over this way. It's definitely not over that way.
11:02
And so my team is
11:03
aligned to different parts of the business, but ultimately the communal goal is
11:06
what should we be
11:07
doing next to make the company scale? Because you blink an eye and all of a
11:11
sudden you double
11:12
triple your size, and it's tough to go back and retroactively build something
11:17
to scale. And then
11:18
once you get too big, that's when companies start to falter. And so there's
11:22
this constant view from
11:24
my team about what's out there, what we're thinking about next quarter, next
11:28
year, and what you'll
11:29
be doing today to make sure that we're successful then. Love the geese
11:33
alignment thing, because that's
11:35
what it feels like a lot of silly geese that align. Anything unique about your
11:40
RevOps
11:41
organization? I know like you to me, obviously very unique company you have. I
11:45
can't imagine the
11:46
website traffic that you all get just that alone makes it complex. I don't know
11:50
if there's anything
11:51
I think every one of us that I've talked to every other leader and that kind of
11:54
approaches a little
11:55
bit differently about how they group things together. There is a definitely
11:58
unique aspect where we have
12:00
individuals, individual professionals coming into the marketplace and looking
12:04
just for a course or
12:05
something just for themselves and then thinking about also like how would we
12:08
address that for
12:09
a Fortune 50 company that's interested in doing that. So there is an element of
12:13
balancing and trying
12:15
to underline the prioritization. So I think it's a little bit more complex than
12:19
just a typical
12:20
straight B2B enterprise company that's focusing on that. There's also another
12:24
element to you to
12:25
me which I think is very unique, which is our product are instructors. It is
12:29
the fundamental value
12:30
behind the organization. These incredible instructors that are everywhere in
12:34
the world creating these
12:36
incredible courses and iterating on those on an hourly basis to make sure that
12:40
they're always the
12:40
best and up-to-date. And so there's this other element too. It's not just a
12:44
product. Our product
12:45
is people. So how do we make sure that those folks can be as successful as they
12:49
can be? But as far as
12:50
how is orchestrated not too different, I would say. I think if I was at a
12:55
different company,
12:57
I might think about it very similarly in terms of the overall structure. But
13:02
there is a piece that
13:03
there's a whole other side to the business. One side is really more of an
13:08
individual professional
13:09
ones and enterprise professionals. You'd have to wear kind of two lenses as we
13:13
think about that.
13:14
And historically the company was kind of focused on two different things and
13:16
that's very quickly
13:18
becoming one. And we're finding a lot of customers are like, why did you decide
13:22
to come into the
13:23
business side? And as a company, actually, you know what? Our CHRO took a
13:27
course three years ago and
13:28
loved it. And so we started talking about this. You know what? You got to go
13:31
talk to you to me.
13:32
And more often than not, then that's the thing. So there's this whole element
13:35
of this marketplace,
13:35
is this awareness engine. And allowing people to do things on their own. But
13:39
then when it comes back
13:40
to their broader careers, there's a lot of transference back and forth. And so
13:45
trying to support that
13:46
both from thinking as a consumer model and as more of a B2B model. There's a
13:51
few companies out
13:52
there that do that. But I think ours are really tightly aligned. And so I think
13:57
there's this
13:57
transference of once you're at one, you're in a career in a company, but your
14:01
career continues
14:01
outside of that company. So we have professionals coming and going as you know,
14:05
with one company
14:06
and then moving on their own and then arriving at another company. And so how
14:10
do we make them
14:10
successful? And what's that future for them of like, here's their skills that
14:13
they have.
14:14
How do we recognize that? Or how would a future employer want to think about,
14:19
oh, am I looking for somebody's resume or am I really looking for somebody's
14:22
skill set? And so
14:23
there's so many interesting ideas out there. And ultimately, there's a finite
14:27
number of resources.
14:28
And so a lot of this is just the prioritization. And it's a different topic
14:32
than it might
14:33
other be at another company. But I think fundamentally, a lot of our works tend
14:37
to be very similar.
14:38
I would say that there's a couple of things out there, which is some in terms
14:42
of where
14:43
Oregon lines to, which is under the strategy, which under the president of the
14:46
company,
14:47
versus sometimes I've seen it under a CFO, or sometimes it's under a CRO. And
14:53
what I worry about
14:55
in those instances is you're not still focusing on the broader picture. The
14:58
president just cares
14:59
about the success of the overall company, not just a department. Finance is a
15:03
great gatekeeper for us.
15:05
It's good to have them not as part of my boss or my team, because I can always
15:09
use them,
15:10
whether they like it or not, as my guardrail to say, no, this is all the
15:13
finance and policy.
15:15
And oftentimes finance isn't thinking about the strategy of the business either
15:18
. So alignment to
15:19
whomever is ultimately making those strategic decisions. So I have seen roles
15:24
pop up and other
15:25
folks were the reporting in different lines. I would fundamentally disagree
15:28
with that. I think
15:29
the more value is whoever is making the business case, that's where we're best
15:34
aligned, because we
15:35
can help provide the insight and the recommendations to make those decisions
15:38
for whoever that business
15:40
leader is. All right, let's get into our next segment. Rev obstacles, where we
15:44
talk about the
15:45
tough parts of rev ops was the hardest rev ops problem you've had in the past
15:49
year or so.
15:50
Man, it just it changes. I think the biggest one, and I think this applies to
15:55
fast-paced companies,
15:57
which is also why I love it. I can't complain because I think these are it's
16:02
the problems you
16:02
encounter because you're growing really fast. So you really can't complain
16:07
because they're good
16:08
problems. So it's constant prioritization and reprioritization as we grow. A
16:14
year goes by and
16:14
a blink of an eye. We think about when COVID hit. Okay, great. So how are we
16:19
going to think about
16:20
when that time period is and when that's going to end and how that's going to
16:23
impact the business.
16:24
And it was actually it was interesting. A lot of folks were taking time to
16:28
rethink about their
16:29
careers and retraining. And so we actually saw a huge spike in interest and
16:32
demand. And then we
16:33
had maybe about 30 minutes of calm, and then all of a sudden economic
16:37
considerations and wars
16:39
and everything started happening and supply blockages and everything is a
16:42
little bit different.
16:43
The challenge being is when you're building for scale and building over the
16:46
next year or two,
16:48
there's also so many of these unknowns, which for ultimately a period of maybe
16:52
like eight or
16:53
nine years prior, we didn't have a lot of major disruption, at least in the
16:57
technology space.
16:58
And now we're having it one after the other. And so I think the idea is, is
17:03
that still the
17:04
right direction? Is the geese still aligned and going? Is that still north?
17:07
That's I think probably
17:09
one of the biggest challenges that we've come through this. What's it look like
17:12
? I've been
17:13
able to have conversations with whom I would say are the smartest people in the
17:16
room. And they're
17:16
looking back and being said, I don't know, that's out of my control. There's
17:19
probably two people in
17:20
the world that know really the answer. And so just focus on what you know, what
17:24
you can control.
17:25
And so that's the idea is like there's so many shiny objects out there that we
17:30
can chase and
17:30
we can fix. My dogs and squirrels is another great example, right? You
17:34
constantly be chasing
17:35
off on those bringing it back down to like, what are real main priorities? If
17:38
we can do nothing
17:39
else, what does that come out down to? And I would say that's one of the more
17:42
persistent things that
17:43
I've continued to have to make. But certainly the macro conditions of what that
17:47
impact is going to
17:47
be. And with sales companies, you slow it down and it takes a while to grow
17:51
back up. And there's so
17:52
much potential for this business that I'm always more on the optimistic side of
17:56
saying, okay, so if
17:57
this whenever this starts creeping back up again, what levers do we pull to
18:01
help accelerate that?
18:03
And so that's the stuff that keeps me up a night or rather wakes me up early in
18:06
the morning. I can't
18:07
remember the last time I had to set an alarm. I wake up and it's like a million
18:10
ideas running
18:11
through my head, which is exciting. And as long as that continues, like this is
18:15
the right sort of
18:16
role for me. All right, let's get to our next segment, the tool shed where we
18:19
're talking tools,
18:20
spreadsheets and metrics, just like everyone's favorite tool qualified. No BB
18:25
tool shed is
18:26
complete without qualified. Go to qualified.com right now and check them out.
18:30
We love qualified
18:32
dearly. Go check out qualified.com. Okay, what is in your tool shed Noah?
18:37
We got everything. Let me tell you this, if you were a vendor and you didn't
18:42
sell to you to me in
18:42
the past six years, you missed out on a paycheck. We have a sales force
18:47
instance everywhere from
18:49
like gong, Marchetto, braise to sales loft, six cents linked to navigator. We
18:56
have gains
18:57
out on the sale that we have so many tools. It's more and less of a tech stack
19:00
and more of just a
19:01
name, a product and problem. We have it. This is a challenge. In fact, a few of
19:05
us got together a
19:06
few years back and we started meeting up regularly and we would have CEOs or
19:10
founders come and give
19:12
us their VC pitch not that give us the funding pitch, not the sales pitch. But
19:16
why should leaders
19:17
in the go to market and rev up space? Why should they be thinking about this
19:21
sort of tool what's
19:21
happening? Because what I found is, is it's really hard to keep up and I feel
19:26
like I'm not close to
19:27
as much anymore. And the challenge, if I want to go learn, I have to go talk to
19:30
somebody who's
19:31
going to refer me to their age, who's going to talk to this. And so how do I
19:34
quickly digest that?
19:35
And that's a challenge that we all face. I try to pick and choose and talk to
19:39
friends we're looking
19:40
at and who's the next greatest thing. I think there's a scratch in the surface
19:44
of those things.
19:45
And I really want to, I don't think we're using any of our tools optimally. I
19:48
think I hold all of
19:49
our tools to a greater standard than maybe they do themselves. I have
19:53
expectations. I think if I
19:54
leave this job, I may have to still build something. Because I think everyone's
19:57
kind of like gnawing
19:58
around the edge of it, but like kind of getting at the core of ultimately what
20:02
we want to know
20:03
as an organization is what's our number going to be next year? What's it going
20:07
to be our next
20:07
quarter? What's it going to be the quarter after that? And then you start
20:10
clicking into it and
20:11
like what are the things that contribute to that that we can actually affect
20:14
today to help us get
20:15
there? Whether it's on the customer side with customer retention or customer
20:18
health or is it on the
20:20
pipeline side? Is it on the handoff side between the inside sales and AEs? All
20:25
these areas to look
20:26
and I feel like everyone's sending me a bunch of data. But I want to know like
20:30
tell me who my
20:31
best like going tell me who my best reps are. Yeah, I get all the data like
20:34
tell me what a
20:35
best good great call looks like. I get all the data but then I have to go do it
20:38
myself. And so
20:40
there's a lot of circling in the market and I feel like there's going to be a
20:43
lot of a lot of
20:43
M&A this year in this space because there's limited real estate and there's too
20:49
many folks
20:49
trying to vie for that front system. We use a company called BoostUp for
20:53
forecasting. Prior to
20:55
that he's becoming Larry for a couple of guys. And I think that's kind of the
20:58
real estate because
20:59
that's what people are looking at every day. That's what your E-step is
21:04
reviewing to take a look at
21:04
is how are we doing on the quarter? How are we looking on pipeline? How are we
21:07
looking on coverage?
21:08
And then everything kind of backs into that and okay if this is down then tell
21:12
me why? Then how do
21:13
I break into that? Or if we need this then why? And so I find that very
21:16
interesting or the companies
21:17
are using Slack and just there's no interface. It's almost ask Alexa and you
21:23
get a response about
21:24
your account status or something like that. I love that idea because just
21:28
interacting with
21:28
a chatbot versus having to go to a tool would be a nirvana in my stage. So
21:33
there's a lot of stuff,
21:34
a lot of data, not as much prescription or somebody telling me what's what
21:39
really good is or where
21:42
I should review. But that's why I have an analytics team on my staff to go and
21:46
dig in and try to find
21:47
those trends. It's exciting. If you're in that space that's selling to the go-
21:50
to-market tech stack
21:52
it's going to be a wild ride. I think there's going to be a lot of cool things.
21:54
People are
21:55
starting to really get it. And so I'm excited about what there is. I just hope
21:58
that I'm aware
21:59
of what that is so that I can have those conversations with folks. And it's
22:04
tough. I get a lot of emails
22:06
as we all do in our inbox. And sometimes I do send an email back saying I wish
22:09
you all the best
22:10
of your own your career. I don't know what this means. I don't know what you're
22:13
saying. I don't
22:14
know what this terminology is. Don't use a script. Just speak in English. And
22:19
what core value are
22:19
you trying to do? You think I care about that you're trying to touch on. If
22:23
people did, I would
22:24
probably buy more stuff. Honestly, it's a travesty, but everyone's got to cut
22:28
their teeth. I guess.
22:29
Any metric that really matters to you that maybe it matters to other people,
22:33
maybe it doesn't
22:34
matter as much, but something that you are a couple of things that you single
22:37
out.
22:38
There's a metric that we kind of came up with using one of the vendors a few
22:41
companies ago.
22:42
And there was this element when I was starting sales strategy, which was I
22:46
realized that I was
22:48
spending more than half my time talking to the marketing team and focusing on
22:51
pipeline.
22:52
So what I realized very quickly is that what's happening today, what's actually
22:56
transacting right now, we have very little control. We have a little bit of
22:59
control for
22:59
but mostly in the negotiation aspect. But you really have control with things
23:03
in the future.
23:04
And so one of my favorite metrics is pipeline coverage. Coverage and conversion
23:08
have a lot of
23:09
interesting terminology depending on what you talk to. But in my world, it's
23:12
how much
23:12
pipelines you have today that's scheduled to close a certain time in the future
23:17
And how are you tracking to that? Because that's one of the best early
23:21
predictive signals
23:22
as to the health of your business. You can look at how your bookings, what your
23:26
revenue
23:26
look like right now. You can look at how people are generating pipeline in
23:30
general,
23:30
but then how are you looking out for future quarters? And in our rule, I think
23:34
that's one of the things
23:35
that we really have to focus on is trying to anticipate what that's going to
23:38
look like. And so
23:39
being able to extend your prediction model out there is something that I think
23:44
is very powerful.
23:44
So pipeline coverage is it predicting churn and predicting where we're going to
23:49
end a quarter
23:50
at with from a booking's perspective? Obviously my favorite number, if you're
23:54
going to go with a
23:54
favorite metric, because you have a great team that's doing that and they're
23:58
getting pretty
23:58
precise in figuring this out. And I would say the second, that probably is that
24:02
number two,
24:03
the number three would be it's this football field that I stole from back in
24:07
the finance days,
24:08
we're looking at an M&A and you're doing valuation, which is effectively just a
24:12
bunch of different
24:13
methodologies to identify a metric. And you kind of line them all up in
24:17
American football field,
24:18
and you kind of see where there's overlap. So if I'm trying to do a prediction
24:22
on where we think
24:23
we're going to end the quarter, I have about seven different methodologies that
24:27
help me determine
24:28
where I think we're going to end up. And using all of those to kind of triang
24:33
ulate,
24:33
what's that kind of band of where that confidence level is? That one is the one
24:38
that it's one of
24:38
the first things I put together to accompany when I go there, because it gives
24:42
me the all the different
24:43
inputs, whether the sales team may think it's higher, whether the analytics
24:47
says it's going to be
24:48
lower, you can all those together and see where the overlap is. And so I love
24:51
doing that. I call it
24:52
a football field. There's probably a better term for it, but it's a great way
24:56
to understand how
24:57
the business is shaping up. All right, let's get to our final segment here.
25:01
Quick hits, quick
25:02
questions and quick answers, quick hits. Now, are you ready? I'm ready. Number
25:08
one, if you could make
25:10
any animal any size, what animal would it be and what size? So being in the Bay
25:15
Area, I'm fascinated
25:17
with sharks and my wife from Florida, and I've become fascinated with all
25:21
igators. I would love
25:24
to take one of those and have just like a miniature, having a aquarium with a
25:28
bunch of tiny little
25:29
sharks swimming around. That would be awesome. That would show there's some
25:33
random stuff, but like
25:35
far like just personal entertainment to have something that's great white, but
25:38
it's six inches
25:39
long. So do you have a rev ops prediction for the future? So it's interesting,
25:45
the rev ops name,
25:46
I feel it was stolen because rev ops already existed. The new ops was this
25:51
organization
25:52
that sits in finance at rev ops team is the team that's usually doing like the
25:56
Rev Rec stuff.
25:57
So I shifted to the go to market strategy in ops, which I think is a better
26:01
representation. I know
26:02
why rev ops got there is because the revenue leader and the sales leader naming
26:06
convention.
26:07
I would say maybe it shifts more towards that. I would say the trend within the
26:10
teams is that
26:10
probably more of them aligned to the business strategy leader. And I think it
26:17
continues to grow
26:18
as an organization. I mean, I'm biased, right? Obviously I'm talking about my
26:21
job, but I think
26:22
in terms of what we're able to see across the business and the advice we have,
26:26
because of that,
26:27
I think is very impactful. And I think the folks that are coming into this
26:30
business come from all
26:31
walks of life, all variations and whatever. And I think that also adds to a bit
26:35
of the creativity.
26:36
I think just continues to grow. I think it becomes a mainstay. The tools that I
26:40
'm seeing that sell
26:40
to this are also, I've seen them growing too, because they're getting traction
26:44
in non-tech
26:45
companies that are starting to grow these roles. I think just continue growth.
26:48
Last question here. What advice would you have for someone who is newly leading
26:54
rev ops or a
26:56
go to market ops team? That's a great question. If you're newly leading, I
27:00
would say fundamentally,
27:02
I would start as a leader, I would go into every of the areas that is
27:07
generating
27:08
data for you. So if you have a pipeline model and operating model, I would go
27:12
back and reconstruct
27:13
those yourself. Because at the end of the day, you are accountable for what
27:18
they say. And back
27:19
when, again, another reference back to the finance days, but anytime you took
27:22
over a project,
27:23
you always started from scratch, because you don't know what was in there
27:26
before and you don't know
27:27
that's going to impact. And so as a leader, you need to be sure and you need to
27:30
be able to go into
27:31
the details into the weeds when you need to and challenge your team, because
27:35
you've been there,
27:36
you've done that, and they're still learning and for you to be a best guide for
27:41
them and helping
27:42
them along the ways to be able to challenge them. But if you haven't gone
27:45
through that path and done
27:46
it, you got to jump into the details. So in this spectrum, there's so many
27:49
different parts that
27:50
could be rolling into you. Chances are you didn't come from all of them. You
27:54
probably came from
27:55
one avenue. So really understand your weak points of where you have the least
28:00
amount of experience
28:02
so that you can get into the weeds. You can have the competent conversations,
28:05
because you're only as good as your team if you're not helping leaving the team
28:09
and they're going
28:09
sideways. So that would be my best advice for everyone. Noah, thanks again.
28:15
Great chatting with
28:16
you for our listeners. Go check out Udemy for Business. Go just get it for your
28:20
team. Get some
28:20
courses going. If you haven't already, you're going to thank yourself. No, any
28:24
final thoughts?
28:24
Anything to plug? Nothing to plug. It's great to be here. I love that there's
28:28
all these organizations
28:29
that are focused on this world and how to get people in there and how to be
28:33
successful. And
28:34
I would say the plug is to all those folks out there is make sure you're
28:37
focusing on the strategy
28:38
and not the operations I don't make sure you're thinking about what this means
28:42
and how to convey
28:42
it. Other than that, had a great time. Thanks for much for having me. Awesome.
28:46
Thanks Noah. Take care.
28:54
(upbeat music)