On this episode, we talk to Adam about optimizing your go-to-market strategy, aligning on the meaning of opportunity, and harnessing your technical drive.
0:00
[MUSIC]
0:05
Welcome to Rise of RevOps.
0:07
I'm your host, CEO of Caspin Studios.
0:09
Today, I'm joined by a special guest, Adam.
0:11
How are you?
0:12
>> I'm very well Ian.
0:13
Thank you for having me.
0:14
>> Yeah, excited to have you on the show.
0:17
You're a multi-time CRO.
0:19
You've led revenue at a bunch of different organizations,
0:22
worked with a bunch of different RevOps leaders,
0:25
and who better to talk about RevOps than you?
0:27
>> Thank you.
0:28
>> All right, so let's get into it.
0:30
What was your first foray into revenue operations?
0:35
When did you first get introduced to it?
0:37
>> Yeah, great question.
0:38
I remember it clearly.
0:39
The company was Blackduck and the year was 2014,
0:43
and I was hired as part of a team that
0:47
ultimately turned around the company that was flatlining.
0:49
We had a very nice exit, sold company,
0:52
pleased everybody, all shareholders.
0:54
The CEO who hired me said that he had
0:57
also hired a vice president of revenue operations.
1:01
I thought for sure that person's going to report to me.
1:03
He's now going to report to me directly.
1:07
When I first heard that, I was conflicted,
1:09
but then I came to understand that revenue operations first
1:12
and foremost is the guardian of the single version of the truth
1:16
about the organization's go-to-market performance.
1:18
I thought by the end, it was a brilliant decision on the CEO's
1:23
part to set that up as a separate function that ultimately
1:26
grew to a very sizable one that would partner with sales
1:29
and marketing and post sales to do all the things
1:34
that revenue ops is supposed to do.
1:35
But that was my first true introduction and a very good one.
1:39
>> We always talk about in startup plans that you want to hire
1:43
for the company that you're going to be.
1:45
And I think that the folks who make investments in rev ops,
1:49
we've seen, we have brought them on the show,
1:51
we've talked to a lot of people,
1:53
it's such a different thing when you get
1:55
to different gates of the company as you grow
1:58
because there's so much less of that just non-transparency.
2:03
There's, hey, we have this.
2:05
Even if you don't have all the answers,
2:07
which of course we never have all the answers,
2:09
but even if you're just saying,
2:11
hey, we've been tracking this,
2:13
'cause the funny thing is about startup world,
2:15
who you're selling to, what you're selling,
2:16
the number of products you have, all this stuff,
2:18
at Series A and Series D,
2:20
are two completely different companies anyways, right?
2:22
>> That's right.
2:23
>> If you're not tracking the historical trends
2:26
and those historical trends might not be super relevant,
2:29
but you got to know where you've been.
2:31
And without rev ops, like you said,
2:33
what is your single source of truth?
2:35
Is it the CRO that's changed twice?
2:38
Is it the CMO who's changed twice?
2:40
Or is it this function that has kept a record of that?
2:43
And I think that your first intro to it is,
2:45
is I think probably not very common.
2:47
>> Yeah, it certainly was uncommon at the time
2:49
and again, the decision wasn't mine.
2:51
It was the CEOs of Black Duck and he's a brilliant guy.
2:55
But that VP of rev ops was a full time member
2:59
of the senior executive team
3:01
and was in every meeting,
3:04
senior executives participated in from start
3:06
to finish from entry to exit.
3:08
>> Flash forward to now,
3:09
what's your definition of rev ops?
3:11
>> So I think so much of what I carry with me
3:14
is a definition was formed from my experience at Black Duck.
3:17
I was very fortunate to work with great rev ops teams
3:21
at the subsequent companies as well.
3:24
But I think first and foremost,
3:26
I've always adhered to a definition
3:28
that starts with maintaining a single version
3:31
of the truth regarding performance,
3:34
whether it's historical performance,
3:36
current performance or forecasted performance
3:38
across the go-to-market team,
3:40
which is typically defined as marketing sales
3:43
and post sales, either services, customer success,
3:46
or account management.
3:47
So maintaining a single version of the truth
3:51
and implementing the correct measure of people,
3:56
processes, systems and tools to get there,
3:59
which in this day and age,
4:01
you know as well as anybody in it,
4:02
it's a very complex thing to do.
4:05
So I think first and foremost that
4:08
and ultimately rev ops is there to optimize all facets
4:13
of the go-to-market and my definition would be
4:17
that optimization comes through truly objective,
4:20
detailed analysis that drives really high quality
4:25
decision making about where the problems
4:29
and the opportunities are in the market and internally.
4:32
And that decision making for a great rev ops leader,
4:35
like the one I worked with at Black Duck,
4:37
is not only for the rev ops team,
4:39
but it's in partnership with sales and marketing
4:42
and post sales.
4:43
So I think as a benchmark definition,
4:45
that's what I would want as a CRO and a rev ops org.
4:49
- That's perfect.
4:50
And so as CRO of tomorrow.io,
4:53
tell me how you think about rev ops for your company.
4:55
- Yeah, I think similarly to that definition,
4:58
a very ambitious venture back to growth stage company
5:01
growing very quickly.
5:03
So our rev ops practice is rapidly evolving.
5:07
We have a small rev ops team here,
5:09
so we take one thing at a time,
5:11
but I think we've done a very good job here
5:13
of maintaining a single version of the truth
5:16
because it's very hard to move forward
5:18
with any of the things that I talked about,
5:20
optimizing processes to make the GTM go faster
5:24
or enabling really crisp,
5:26
incisive decision making across the GTM org
5:28
if you don't have that.
5:29
And so from that perspective, I'm quite blessed here
5:32
that tomorrow I would have a team of people
5:34
who are driving that.
5:35
- And then in terms of your overall revenue strategies,
5:39
obviously this year, charge revenue.
5:41
How does technology play into your decision making?
5:44
How do you think about your strategy and the tactics
5:46
that you all are using and how you use technology and data
5:49
and all of those things to support?
5:50
- Great questions.
5:51
I'll hold tomorrow.io in mind,
5:53
but I'll also think a little bit about my other experiences
5:56
in order to answer that question.
5:58
So the fundamental question when it comes to marketing
6:01
and sales and post sales is always,
6:05
how do we create more opportunity?
6:06
How do we convert that opportunity?
6:09
At the highest possible rate and the lowest possible cost
6:12
to keep our cack down?
6:13
And how do we absolutely delight our customers
6:17
so that we not only retain them but grow them?
6:19
And I would think that every self-respecting,
6:22
go to market executive or CRO wakes up in the morning
6:25
thinking about how they're going to improve those things.
6:28
In this day and age,
6:29
because most SaaS companies are fairly complex
6:32
in the information that you would need to pull together
6:34
in order to make intelligent decisions
6:36
to improve those things and reliance on technology,
6:39
at least for me, is integral.
6:41
It's implicit in every decision making,
6:44
every decision that we make.
6:45
So we look routinely at the health of the top of the funnel.
6:48
That is a tech-enabled decision that comes through HubSpot,
6:50
it comes through Salesforce,
6:51
it comes through Google Analytics,
6:53
we look routinely at conversion data
6:55
and that comes through Salesforce, it comes through Gong,
6:59
we look routinely at the strength and health of our forecast.
7:02
Are we doing what we projected we would do?
7:05
And that comes through Salesforce,
7:06
we recently started using Gong to assist us in that regard.
7:11
And I would say the majority,
7:12
if not all, of the decision making is resting upon data
7:17
that we're pulling from one of those systems
7:20
and a few more that we need.
7:21
I think to not be technically driven in the decisions
7:24
that you're going to make and therefore the strategy
7:26
you're going to execute,
7:27
particularly for a SaaS company,
7:28
just as a disservice to shareholders.
7:30
All the data is there, you just have to have the discipline
7:33
to look at it,
7:34
the discipline to gather it,
7:35
and the discipline to pull the right people together
7:38
to make a thoughtful decision.
7:40
>> Yeah, and I think there's so much of that
7:42
is about asking the right questions.
7:43
And I think for a long time,
7:45
we were asking maybe there are the right questions,
7:48
but fundamentally we weren't aligned on
7:51
why we were asking them or what we were asking them for.
7:53
And having that base level,
7:55
like RevOps, one of the things that it allows you to do
7:57
is to ask questions of the data
8:00
to understand why the things are happening.
8:02
Okay, we know things are happening now.
8:04
Like back in the day, we didn't know things were happening.
8:07
Like we knew that things were happening,
8:08
but we didn't really know.
8:10
You didn't really know what was happening in RevOps calls.
8:13
You didn't really know what SDRs were saying
8:15
and in their emails.
8:16
You didn't really know how many people
8:18
are converting on the website and like heat mapping
8:21
and all these other things.
8:22
You didn't really know that stuff.
8:23
And now you can ask the question, why?
8:26
Like, why is this happening?
8:27
What's the secondary effect of this?
8:28
What's the third order effect of this?
8:30
If this, then that,
8:31
and that's the part where I would imagine being a CRO
8:34
has changed so much is that you have all the stuff
8:36
at your fingertips.
8:37
Like you get to ask all these things
8:39
and point to different things.
8:41
Whereas back in the day,
8:42
it was a little bit more straightforward, right?
8:44
- That's a very good point.
8:45
When I first started my career,
8:47
just the possibility of understanding what an SDR,
8:51
to take one function with an entire go-to market,
8:54
to understand what, who an SDR was calling,
8:57
what they were saying when they got them on a phone,
8:59
what the outcome was of that call,
9:02
what follow-up looked like.
9:04
Let alone what was sent after the conversation,
9:06
or what might have been sent in advance
9:09
to create the conversation.
9:11
We're on a system that relied exclusively on trust.
9:13
There was no data.
9:14
- Yeah, right.
9:16
- Only what you told me you did.
9:18
And I imagine that some managers might pull up the sent items
9:22
or go into some obscure system and pull the call logs.
9:26
That was about as close as we could get.
9:29
But now, from having a conversation with our SDR team,
9:33
I think this really started to change five or six years ago.
9:36
Of course, we still trust.
9:38
Of course, we still trust.
9:39
But I can also say, hey, show me.
9:42
Let's look at the prospecting emails.
9:43
Let's look at the performance of those emails.
9:46
How many did you send?
9:47
How many were open?
9:48
How many were read?
9:49
How many were click-through?
9:50
Okay, how many calls did you make at what time of day
9:53
to which people?
9:55
And let's listen to what you said in that call.
9:58
It's all available at the click of a button.
10:00
And so the coaching opportunities that arise
10:04
as a consequence of having all of that data
10:06
at the fingertips to complement trust
10:09
between a manager and an SDR in this example.
10:12
It drives progress forward dramatically.
10:15
And the earlier point, it enables strategy
10:17
'cause we can very quickly see over the course
10:19
of a thousand emails or a thousand phone calls,
10:22
what worked and what didn't work.
10:24
We don't need to guess.
10:25
We just need to be disciplined enough
10:26
and set our gut and set our instinct aside
10:29
to look at the data and make it informed decision.
10:32
That's very exciting.
10:34
Let's get to our first segment, Rev Obstacles,
10:36
where we talk about the tough parts of Rev Obstacle.
10:38
What's one of the hardest Rev Obst problems
10:40
that you've faced in the world?
10:42
I think the single most challenging,
10:44
the single biggest challenge rather,
10:45
the biggest obstacle that I've faced in my career.
10:48
I haven't faced it here,
10:50
but I faced it at other companies that I've worked on
10:52
because as I've worked at, 'cause often as a CRO,
10:55
you're brought in, not, and I'm sure you and you know this,
10:59
not because people are like thrilled
11:01
with the way things are going.
11:02
Sure thing, yeah.
11:03
Right, rule number one, you're expected to make change
11:07
and manage that change and keep everybody motivated
11:10
through that period of change,
11:12
assuming that the changes you're gonna make independently
11:14
or with the rest of the executive team
11:15
advance the business's interests.
11:17
Everything we do is in the interest of the business.
11:19
Not everybody, when you come into a company,
11:21
has the same ideas.
11:22
Not everybody in marketing, for example,
11:24
or post sales has the same ideas about,
11:27
and this gets the answer to the question
11:28
that you asked about challenges
11:30
about what an opportunity is.
11:33
But think about it, the opportunity is at the crux
11:36
of the way that we evaluate the effectiveness of pipeline,
11:40
the effectiveness at the early stages of a sale,
11:43
how much opportunity are we gonna create
11:46
and how good are we at converting leads
11:49
and the opportunities.
11:50
Agreement on what an opportunity actually is,
11:53
it can be depending on the organization, hard fought,
11:56
and so I've joined organizations in the past
11:59
where opportunity equaled meeting.
12:01
- Yep.
12:02
- I don't, maybe there are some businesses
12:04
where you're lucky that you convert a very high rate
12:07
of meeting to close one pipeline,
12:09
but in most organizations I've worked for B2B companies
12:12
that are selling the enterprises or selling,
12:15
even to the SNB, opportunity doesn't equaled meeting,
12:18
but you'd be surprised at how many companies have built
12:21
their entire pipeline based upon that notion.
12:24
So now we've gotta introduce, for example,
12:27
rigorous systems of sales qualification
12:30
to define what an opportunity is, but guess what?
12:32
The number of opportunities the marketing team creates
12:34
or the SDR team creates is going to come down
12:38
as a function of the introduction of that rigor
12:40
and helping everybody understand why that's good
12:43
for the business and then aligning everybody's incentives
12:46
that can be challenging.
12:48
And I think that same drama plays itself out
12:52
in software companies around the world.
12:53
You often see the same challenge arise.
12:57
When you talk about leads, a new CRO, new CMO,
13:00
get together aligning on a single version of the truth,
13:03
hey, what's the lead here?
13:05
Is it somebody fill out a form on our website?
13:07
Is it a name that we pumped into our database?
13:10
Is it somebody that actually raised their hand
13:12
and said, "Contact me?"
13:13
We have to talk about it.
13:15
And so suddenly, if you align to a more stringent definition
13:18
of what a lead is, you might be creating quite a bit
13:22
of conflict for marketing teams that up until that point
13:25
have been measured, have been bonus,
13:28
have been padded on the back for driving a standard unit
13:32
that has a lower definition or a lesser rather definition.
13:35
Most of the challenges that I've had as a CRO
13:38
have come in and around those sort of definitions
13:41
and it's the steady unwinding of those definitions
13:44
to something that really means something
13:46
that the business, which is typically a qualified lead
13:49
and a qualified opportunity.
13:51
I can take a little bit of work.
13:52
- Yeah.
13:53
- Now that was a really long answer.
13:55
I hope I answered your question.
13:56
- We could probably keep talking for the next three weeks
13:59
just on this topic and we still probably wouldn't do it
14:01
just this, so I totally agree.
14:03
I used to have a boss who would take a photo of someone
14:07
with an ad somewhere in the wild and then send it
14:10
to the team and then it would be like a lead.
14:12
Hey, here's a lead.
14:14
Like, just because someone is buying an ad somewhere on earth
14:18
and does not mean that they're spending money with somebody
14:21
and I would be like, the only rat.
14:23
I'd be like, yeah, I guess, but why are they buying that?
14:27
Who is the target for that?
14:28
Is that in and around our solution, et cetera, et cetera,
14:31
et cetera, that's another thing.
14:33
If is it someone who is driving, showing intent to do X, Y, or Z?
14:38
Is it someone who's using a competitor?
14:40
Is that a lead?
14:41
Hey, is that good enough to say we better be knocking
14:44
down the door of this, of what that means?
14:46
And I wanna ask you, so in those organizations,
14:48
what was as an example, just for one of those organizations
14:51
that they used to be a part of?
14:53
What would be an example of, okay, this is what we figured out.
14:55
We decided that this is the way to do it
14:58
and you thought that that was a pretty good way to do it.
15:00
Yeah, it ties back to the beginnings of this conversation.
15:04
Many, if not most of the organizations,
15:07
not including the one I work for today.
15:08
The one I work for today, we have this remarkable collaboration
15:12
between sales, marketing, and post sales.
15:15
And we have a ton of transparency
15:17
and we're all just in it to win it.
15:19
So the decisions are pretty easy and they're collaborative.
15:22
And we've got a great little RevOps team,
15:24
but historically, what did it, and again,
15:26
this is the root of the conversation that we're having,
15:29
was giving the reporting to an independent,
15:32
objective RevOps team.
15:34
And I've also been fortunate to work for companies
15:38
where RevOps did not report to sales
15:40
and it did not report to marketing,
15:42
which I think is interesting.
15:44
So it's reported directly to the CEO or it's reported to the CFO.
15:48
And some people might recoil when I say that's a good thing
15:51
and say, well, hold on a second, I want to control that.
15:53
But it's better to have it as an independent function.
15:55
So where that has been a problem for me,
15:57
like we couldn't agree on opportunities, couldn't agree on leads,
15:59
couldn't agree on what measures we were going to look at
16:01
every moment of the day to drive the business forward.
16:05
Let's give it to the RevOps team.
16:06
They have all the data.
16:07
They can make a recommendation about what units
16:10
actually convert into meaningful business value.
16:12
And that's what we did.
16:13
Just gave it to an objective party
16:15
and they helped us figure it out.
16:16
- And I'm curious in your role as a CRO
16:19
and not speaking from this company particularly,
16:21
but as the Royal CRO, CRO in the sky that looks at all of us,
16:25
breaking those three functions into having a functional leader
16:28
for sales for marketing.
16:30
And sometimes marketing rolls up to CROs
16:31
sometimes they don't get that,
16:32
but having sales lead, marketing lead and post sales lead
16:35
and being responsible for all of revenue,
16:39
therefore puts those things a little different.
16:41
I think apparently the problem was if the CRO
16:44
is actually the head of sales
16:46
and they're the one who owns the RevOps team
16:49
and they're gonna serve that purpose
16:50
then you have marketing and customer success
16:52
or whatever it is, a little frozen out there.
16:54
And I think that there's some issues there.
16:56
If this person is responsible for my career,
16:58
then like at the end of the day,
17:00
they're the tie goes to them right every time.
17:03
- So just speaking from my own experience,
17:06
I've personally never owned all three.
17:08
Although I've met CROs and I read about CROs
17:11
who have owned all three sales marketing and post sales.
17:14
So I've had sales and I've had post sales,
17:18
but in recent history,
17:19
I'd have to go way back to my career very early,
17:22
before the era of RevOps where I had marketing too.
17:25
There's still a case to be made.
17:27
There's still a case to be made to have RevOps
17:29
being an independent function that rolls up to the CEO
17:32
or even to the CFO.
17:34
I'll give you an example of that.
17:36
I think one of the highest orders of revenue operations
17:40
and it's really hard to get there
17:42
is when the RevOps leader or the designated party
17:46
inside of RevOps,
17:47
and I've had this at a few companies that I've worked for,
17:49
when they carry the forecast for the business,
17:53
that's not just running a report in Salesforce
17:56
because generally there are other factors
17:58
that go into what comes out of your CRM
18:01
that allow you to form a forecast.
18:04
There's some judgment, for example,
18:05
that has to be imposed on it.
18:07
Or there might be a tool that you're using like Clary
18:10
or Insight Square that will help you put together
18:12
an accurate forecast on the first day of the quarter,
18:15
but you're gonna hit 90 days later when the quarter ends.
18:17
And certainly it's easier to forecast the quarter ages.
18:20
But I think having an independent party provide a forecast
18:23
does some remarkable things for a go-to-market organization.
18:27
Like for instance, it gets me out of the business
18:31
of having to forecast.
18:32
>> I was just gonna say that sounds great.
18:35
>> But we, so we can just rely on the data
18:39
that comes out of the systems we put in place
18:41
to produce an actual, inaccurate forecast.
18:44
And then it's incumbent upon me, right?
18:46
These are the things that I would wanna be doing.
18:48
This is where I could add the most value as a CRO.
18:51
It's incumbent upon me to make sure
18:54
that our sales reps are working within
18:57
a really clear sales process,
18:59
the really defined stages, entry and exit criteria.
19:03
>> Yeah.
19:04
>> It's incumbent upon me to make sure
19:05
that the sales managers are just proficient
19:09
in our sales process and they're coaching to those stages
19:12
and they're helping reps get over obstacles
19:15
so they can predictably push opportunity
19:18
or move rather opportunity through the process.
19:20
That is, that's time we'll spend as far as I'm concerned.
19:24
And then doing the other things
19:25
like personally or through my management team
19:27
listening to sales calls, looking at data
19:31
and providing the coaching to make sure
19:33
that the buyer seller conversation is happening.
19:35
Now, I promise you, you do all that well
19:38
and you instrument your systems to produce a forecast,
19:41
somebody else who is totally objective
19:43
and emotionally detached from the outcome,
19:45
which is a CRO is like virtually impossible.
19:47
Can do that.
19:49
It also requires that person.
19:50
I learned this all the way back at Blackduck.
19:53
We had the wonderful head of RevOps.
19:55
His name was Ed Loftus.
19:57
He was incredible.
19:57
He was a former finance guy.
19:59
He also knew how to relate to salespeople.
20:01
So he would sit in the deal reviews.
20:04
He would talk to sales reps.
20:07
He would get to know what they were working on.
20:10
So he was ultra high context.
20:12
So he could pull a report.
20:15
And that's a great RevOps leaders
20:16
who could do the same thing
20:17
because they work at generating context.
20:20
They could pull a forecast out of the system,
20:22
run the analytics and they can look at it
20:24
and they can say, well, hey,
20:25
I'm gonna put some judgment on this
20:27
because I know where we are and the opportunity.
20:31
And then when it comes time to present the forecast
20:33
to the executive team or present the forecast
20:36
to the board early on in a quarter,
20:38
I and the head of RevOps do that together.
20:40
He provides the numbers.
20:41
I provide the context.
20:42
Everybody's good.
20:43
That is the highest order, I think,
20:46
of operations for RevOps leader.
20:48
- Yeah, I think it's really interesting too
20:49
that someone with a little bit of a finance background.
20:52
And I think that to add to that,
20:53
someone who's just a deep, either lover
20:56
or understanding of technology
20:58
and how technology levers the business,
21:00
technology is a massive lever for sales and marketing.
21:03
At this point in time, every single marketing sales leader
21:06
and customer success leader, they have to be technologists.
21:09
Like you have to because you're using technology
21:12
all day every day.
21:13
And so if you are a little weak
21:15
and you're in one of those functions,
21:16
having a RevOps person who is really good at technology
21:19
and maybe your CTO is or your CIO is as well,
21:22
which is great, but they also have other fish to fry as well.
21:25
- Yeah, completely.
21:26
And just to, I think that's very well said,
21:29
I think to add to the conversation, if I can,
21:31
there's a lot of talk in recent years about deal desk.
21:34
I'm sure you've heard that here,
21:36
having a central point,
21:37
typically within RevOps,
21:39
where pricing is owned, the quoting process is owned,
21:44
approvals are owned, determinations around booking
21:48
and revenue recognition are made.
21:50
And even in some of the more sophisticated deal desks
21:53
that you know, I've helped build or had been a part of,
21:56
they can negotiate legal terms.
21:58
So having that provided to a sales or organizations
22:01
as a service through RevOps,
22:03
I'd say that's pretty close also,
22:05
one of the highest order states of a RevOps team,
22:09
but it does require the members of the RevOps team
22:11
who are going to lead that function too.
22:13
And I'll just, I'll probably overuse a word
22:16
I just used like three minutes ago
22:18
to be super high context.
22:20
'Cause you can't really make decisions
22:22
or partner with a sales rep
22:24
from the perspective of RevOps or deal desk.
22:27
If you don't understand the business,
22:29
you don't understand the territory, the rep,
22:31
where you are in the quarter,
22:33
what you're trying to accomplish, what levers you can pull.
22:36
And so some of the best RevOps leaders
22:39
that I've worked with have gotten out from behind the desk
22:43
and they've put themselves in a position
22:45
where they can learn about what it means
22:47
to be a quarter carrying sales rep.
22:50
And they're better for it.
22:51
- And it's so difficult to understand
22:53
the internal intricacies and the external market forces.
22:57
That is really hard to do.
22:58
That's why marketing is really hard
23:00
is because marketers need to understand the market.
23:04
Sales need to understand those individual accounts
23:07
to the teeth, right?
23:08
Like you need to know everything about how they buy,
23:11
why they buy, the levers that they buy
23:13
with all that sort of stuff.
23:15
But then you also need to look at your organization
23:18
and figure out how to optimize, like you said,
23:20
all those other things that are, those are organizational.
23:22
That's not the market is telling you,
23:24
market doesn't care how you organize your sales team.
23:26
And I think a lot of the RevOps people
23:28
that we talk to, we talk about the three heads
23:30
of the Hydro of the Sales Marketing Customer Success
23:32
that they have to give their time to all three of those
23:35
and triage that stuff.
23:36
That's the hard part for them is to say,
23:38
okay, well, this running or a port on whatever,
23:41
your TAM plus accounts that are of a certain size
23:44
that we wanna, that have a higher propensity to buy.
23:46
And we have this theory that these type of accounts,
23:48
that accounts that raise Series C
23:50
are the fastest buyers in our entire thing.
23:52
We wanna test a marketing theory on this,
23:54
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
23:55
is a very different mental function
23:58
than saying, hey, carve this territory up.
23:59
That's totally different.
24:01
- That's right.
24:02
Yeah, yeah.
24:04
And I think great RevOps teams participate
24:07
in those decisions for non-territory and quota.
24:10
Of course, have a compensation plans
24:12
are going to work.
24:13
And you're right, that's,
24:14
I'll take that one with me, the market doesn't care.
24:17
But how you organize your sales team,
24:19
I like that I'm gonna steal that.
24:20
- Yeah.
24:21
All right, let's get to our next segment, the tool shed.
24:23
We're talking tool spreadsheets, metrics,
24:25
just like everyone's favorite tool, qualified.
24:28
No B2B tool shed is complete without qualified.
24:30
Go to qualified.com right now and check them out.
24:33
Qualified, they're our best friends in the whole world.
24:35
And we love them dearly.
24:36
Go to qualified.com.
24:37
You can talk to a sales rep right now, right?
24:40
You could pause the podcast or keep listening
24:42
and you could talk to a sales person right now
24:44
on qualified and fix your pipeline.
24:46
Go to qualified.com.
24:47
All right, tool shed.
24:49
You actually touched on a number of the tools
24:50
in your tool shed, like Salesforce
24:52
and that spot and you mentioned Gongabunch.
24:54
Beyond that, what are the metrics that matter to you
24:57
and how do your tools and some additional things that,
25:00
tools that you spend your time in, how do they help you?
25:02
- Yeah, sure.
25:03
I'll start with the metrics.
25:05
We hear and I roll over the course of my career,
25:08
pretty, pretty passionate about routinely looking
25:11
at just a handful of metrics.
25:13
So number one is how much pipeline are we creating
25:18
on a daily and weekly basis?
25:21
And to be fair, a lot of people probably do that
25:25
and they're like, Adam, like that's not really
25:27
particularly insightful.
25:29
I would say not everybody puts that into the form
25:31
of a trend.
25:32
Are we getting better or are we getting worse?
25:34
And then takes the time to look at the breakdown
25:37
of the contribution to pipeline growth.
25:39
By vertical, by territory, by sales rep.
25:43
These things tend to be looked at in an aggregate.
25:46
And so that's a wonderful place to partner
25:49
with marketing colleagues, for example.
25:52
Just day over day, week over week.
25:54
Are we creating more pipeline?
25:55
Are we creating less pipeline?
25:57
And for whom are we creating it?
25:59
And what are the sources by which we're creating it?
26:02
Inbound, are we up or down that week?
26:05
For down, why?
26:06
Outbound, are we up or down that week?
26:09
For down, why?
26:10
Sales reps, because I typically work for organizations
26:12
where sales reps are expected.
26:14
I expect them to prospect as a source
26:16
of pipeline generation of the up or down.
26:19
And there's all sorts of precursors
26:20
to pipeline generation that we look at in our regular reports,
26:24
like the number of discovery calls,
26:25
the number of leads, and so forth.
26:27
But that's a big one.
26:28
It all starts with pipeline.
26:29
And the second is, what's our conversion
26:32
of that pipeline at stage?
26:35
So if we create a qualified lead,
26:38
and we've done that through the discovery call,
26:40
and maybe a demo, then how frequently
26:44
do we convert that to the next stage and the stage
26:47
after that and the stage after that?
26:49
And I don't think I'm unlike any other CRO for sales leader,
26:55
like the things that you're looking for
26:56
when you're converting opportunities,
26:57
at least if you're selling a B2B sale,
27:00
where you have sales reps who are out talking to customers,
27:03
a PLG aside, velocity aside, SMB sales aside.
27:07
Are we creating sponsors who want to champion
27:11
a solution to the problem?
27:13
Are we aligning with, we call it power,
27:15
but economic buyers, decision makers,
27:18
which is hard, very few sales organizations are good
27:21
at doing that.
27:22
If we're being asked to do a proof of concept, for example,
27:25
are we properly aligned around the solution,
27:27
around the investment, around the decision process,
27:30
and the multiple personas in the account?
27:32
And so I bring that up, not to lengthen the answer,
27:36
but because if those are delineated in the sales process,
27:39
and I'm pretty passionate about that,
27:41
just consistently looking at how well the company,
27:45
verticals, territories, individual sellers,
27:49
are converting those opportunities.
27:51
And not necessarily week over week or month over month,
27:54
but quarter over quarter, you want to be improving.
27:57
You want the skill required to go from discovery call
28:01
to qualified opportunity to go from a conversation
28:05
with a sponsor to a conversation with an economic buyer.
28:07
You want those skills to be developing,
28:09
and you want the conversion rates to be improving.
28:11
So I would say, in addition to pipeline generation,
28:16
it's conversion of opportunity at stage.
28:18
That would be the second one.
28:19
And the third one, it's not unique, is our forecast, of course,
28:23
and the opportunities that are going to get us
28:25
to where we need to be over the course of the quarter,
28:28
for a year.
28:29
- Any other thoughts on tools or metrics,
28:31
or blind spots or anything like that,
28:32
do you want to share with the audience?
28:34
- We're making terrific use of conversational intelligence
28:38
tools here and elsewhere over the last four or five years.
28:42
I think they're very powerful.
28:43
I think they're somewhat underutilized.
28:45
Gong, for example, or chorus.
28:47
Not just for pulling out call analytics.
28:49
I think those are useful, but actually listening
28:52
and coaching to tape, and then increasingly tying
28:56
what is said or what is not said in a call to a forecast.
29:00
Not as the mechanism for forecasting,
29:02
but these platforms are doing remarkable things now
29:05
with conversational analytics to tell you whether or not,
29:09
for example, the opportunity that you forecasted for close
29:13
by the end of the quarter, which is just in a few short weeks,
29:16
has supported a conversation around price
29:18
or decision-making process.
29:19
Like, guess what?
29:20
I could know that.
29:21
I could pull an opportunity right now
29:23
that we're forecasting for the quarter, and we've been gone.
29:26
I can quickly determine whether or not
29:29
price has been agreed to.
29:30
The decision-making process is well understood
29:33
if we've sent a contract to them.
29:37
So I find those tools to be remarkably powerful.
29:40
On the extreme front end, we've started to use tools
29:44
like Zoom and info.
29:45
We're in a pilot right now with another tool
29:47
that's helping us with intent data.
29:49
So starting to shift our SDR, prospecting efforts
29:53
away from cold lists and toward high intent sources.
29:57
So we get inbound leads.
30:00
We've started to use tools to route those to closers directly,
30:04
which I think most companies are doing.
30:06
And that leaves our SDRs opportunities to prospect outbound.
30:10
Using signal from the marketplace around intent
30:13
that some of these tools are able to gather
30:15
and then focusing on prospecting efforts there,
30:18
where there's a signal that they might be interested
30:20
in solving a problem that we can.
30:22
I think over the last couple of companies,
30:24
those tools have been hugely impactful for me.
30:27
Adam, it's been awesome having you on the show.
30:29
We're going to be following along and checking out tomorrow.io.
30:32
So many cool things going on there.
30:34
I know you can't share everything.
30:35
It's crazy times in this world.
30:37
I'm super excited to follow along.
30:39
Any final thoughts or any pieces of advice for RevOps,
30:42
the leaders that are out there listening?
30:43
Just one thought and at the risk of sounding
30:45
a little bit redundant and thank you for asking, by the way.
30:49
I think that go to market leaders, CROCMOs
30:51
are best served to bring RevOps as close into the fold
30:57
of how the software is marketed and how the software is sold.
31:01
Because with that context, RevOps teams can become great
31:04
in the quality of the decision making, only improves.
31:07
They've got all the data and if they're armed properly
31:09
with the context around how the business actually works
31:12
and how it operates, you're creating very powerful partners
31:16
in the business to do all those things that we talked about,
31:18
which is generally driving more business
31:20
and improving the quality of decision making.
31:21
So I will leave on that one point around context.
31:25
Awesome.
31:26
Thanks again, man.
31:27
I'm gonna talk soon.
31:28
(upbeat music)
31:35
(upbeat music)