On this episode, Michelle describes the importance of cross-functional teams for optimizing revenue. She explains which structures and cadences have worked best for her in her career, and how she’s found success in RevOps.
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[Music]
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Welcome to Rise of RevOps. I'm the new page on CEO of Caspin Studios.
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Rise of RevOps is always presented by the great people qualified.
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Go to qualified.com to learn more and I am joined by a special guest Michelle.
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How are you? I'm well. Thank you, Ann. Thanks for having me on the show.
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Yeah, excited to chat, excited to talk RevOps, excited to talk six clicks.
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So let's get into it. First role in RevOps? First role in a global revenue
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position, for sure.
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Pretty exciting time to come in, own revenue, and oh by the way, own RevOps,
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and we're going to get
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into all that stuff. Tell us a little bit about six clicks. Yeah, thanks. Six
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clicks as a company
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was founded in 2019, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. We are a GRC SaaS
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platform. GRC stands
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for Governance Risk and Compliance. So we help risk and compliance in
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information security
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practitioners, not only manage their cybersecurity programs, but also manage
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their regulatory obligations
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and manage risk for the organization, as well as be able to report up on their
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risk posture to
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their board and investors, clients, etc. And what types of customers do you
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have?
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The GRC space has been around for about 30 years, Ian. And so it's fairly
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mature, particularly in
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the US market. I think the UK is second in terms of reg tech maturity, and then
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Australia would be
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third, just in terms of embracing technology and getting off of spreadsheet to
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manage a GRC program.
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The types of clients that we have historically have always spent more regulated
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markets,
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but we're moving away from that. I think, you know, at this point, most
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organizations realize that
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they are potential to be under attack or be held by some sort of ransomware
1:51
threat. They also have
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obligations to their board and their clients to instill confidence and trust.
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And so organizations
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are now moving away from a nice to have to a need to have so that they can
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really get their arms
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around not only managing the complexities of regulatory compliance, but also
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being able to
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report out an instill confidence. And I was going to suggest that you probably
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haven't heard on your
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show. I'd be surprised if you had that risk practitioners or information
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security practitioners
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have ever been involved in rev ops. But if they aren't, they should be because
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six clicks and GRC
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as a concept, as a methodology, has the ability to enable driving revenue. So
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it's a business
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enabler. So for an organization, it invests heavily in information security
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best practices,
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as well as a certification like ISO 27001, for example, they actually then have
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the ability to,
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like I said, instill confidence in their business associates, their investors,
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their board,
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and their clients who want to know when they want the assurance that their data
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is secure if they
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give it to those companies. So without having the ability to manage that, I
3:04
think it puts an
3:05
organization at risk for growing or getting to their next objective.
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And what is your definition of revenue operations? RevOps is really a cross-
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functional discipline
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that is designed to optimize revenue, both existing revenue in terms of
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protecting it,
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as well as growing your revenue stream. And when I say cross-functional, I mean
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it really touches
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every portion of the organization from the obvious sales and marketing, but
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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. Yeah, how do you think about rev
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ops in your company?
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Obviously, y'all are in a massive enterprise. So a lot of this stuff, you have
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to have your
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hands a little bit more in as a CRO. Yeah, I think being able to make metrics-
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based decisions or
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database decisions is critical in any size organizations, particularly those
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that are smaller,
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because you're running leaner with fewer people and not so deep pockets. So you
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have to be a lot
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more thoughtful and a lot more better informed about the decisions that you're
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making. And I think
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rev ops is critical to being able to bring that empirical data to the
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conversation.
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Yeah, I think about this all the time, where especially when you just don't
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have as large a
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data set, that there's just so much noise rather than signals, you're like, "Oh
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, is that
4:25
whatever 100 accounts versus 1000 versus whatever?" Or whatever the thing is,
4:30
just to have to take
4:31
sweeping generalizations from the data is perhaps a fool's errand.
4:36
Not just generalizations, but also vanity metrics. So I think a lot of people
4:40
get caught up in only
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portraying the metrics that reflect well on them, because they're protecting
4:45
their jobs or they're
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trying to promote the organization to outsiders or investors, where I think the
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metrics become
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really critical and invaluable is if you're able to derive real findings from
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them,
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right, findings that can inform those decisions and help you pivot if you're
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not doing something
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properly, or if there's a market segment that isn't responding as well as you'd
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like it to,
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then those metrics give you the ability to make those decisions.
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So obviously you don't have like a huge rev ops team or anything like that. How
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do you think
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about staffing rev ops and making sure that you have a function that can exist?
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I think about it in terms of our tech stack that we use to a large degree,
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bringing in individuals
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that have the ability to run the applications that we rely on pretty heavily
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and manipulate
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those applications to meet our needs for reporting and information the way that
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we need that information
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depicted. So that experience, that skill set will drive the staffing of the rev
5:44
ops team.
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Yeah, do you feel like if you're a smaller company like y'all or like a startup
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or, you know,
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whether it's series A startup or series B startup or someone like that, how do
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you think about
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like investments in rev ops and like when should you do stuff like that?
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It's going to vary. I think organization by organization Ian, I was fortunate
6:03
when I joined
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Just shy of two years ago that we already had a CRM in place when I came in. We
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didn't have a lot
6:10
of historical data because the company is so young, but we had at least one
6:13
year's worth of data.
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So we've since obviously built on that. We now have three years worth of data
6:18
that we can leverage,
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but I think having a sales operations person is critical. We do have a customer
6:24
success team
6:24
and we track data like clients that are at risk of churn, clients that have
6:30
churned,
6:30
and we profile those accounts and those deals and those clients by quite a few
6:36
different data
6:37
metrics that we slice those. What type of account are they? Are they an advisor
6:40
? Are they a reseller?
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Are they an end user? What point did they churn? What are we hearing from the
6:45
account? There's just
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a lot of metrics that we keep and we've got several dashboards that we publish
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and project a variety
6:51
of different people in the organization. All right, let's get into our first
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segment, RevOps
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equals. We talk about the tough parts of RevOps. Yeah, what's the hardest Rev
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Ops role you face in the
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US six months to a year? I think personally it was coming into an organization
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that is headquartered
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outside of the US and trying to operate within the US. It's the first time I've
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operated in a global
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role where the organization was outside of the US. Having to come in and use
7:20
Australian contracts
7:22
for other jurisdictions, whether it be the UK or the US, has presented some
7:27
challenges. I've had to
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regionalize our contracts. I've had to really also come together with our legal
7:36
group and bring those
7:37
contracts into a more fair and balanced language model so that contract
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negotiations don't drag on
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and on and on for months and also meet the needs of the jurisdiction of the
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client that you're
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talking to or working with. Yeah, that's challenging. Is that something that,
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something where you just
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try to do a sprint, try to say like how do we fix this or is that sort of like
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an ongoing thing
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that constantly needs tweaking or adjusting? I think over time you learn the
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call outs that
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you're going to run into that become regular call outs, right? It almost as
8:09
though there are the FAQs
8:10
you can expect from every contract cycle. And so if you have enough of a
8:15
pattern that you've defined,
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you can then take that to your legal group and say, "Okay, this situation comes
8:21
up in every single
8:22
negotiation that we're dealing with. Let's head that off at the pass and change
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the language."
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And I think ultimately it's about reducing the friction, right? Minimizing the
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time to get a deal
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closed by reducing friction and creating a more fair and balanced approach to
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negotiating with
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the legal team. Yeah, that was one of my questions is, is it just back office
8:43
paperwork type stuff
8:44
that holds things up or is it like real friction to getting deals done? Because
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those two things
8:49
are coincide with each other. They can be like, "Yeah, you know, it's just kind
8:52
of a back off
8:53
from getting slow and out velocity." No, I think legitimate legal issues. The
8:57
things that we had
8:58
tended to run into before I started addressing this was limitation of liability
9:03
indemnification,
9:04
intellectual property, infringement, data privacy. Those were the key areas
9:09
that we would run into.
9:10
And then jurisdictionality or geographically related things such as the
9:15
limitation of liability,
9:17
cap, and insurance coverage translated to the currency that you're operating in
9:22
. Oh my god.
9:24
Yeah, so it was running into quite a bit of complexity. And I just sort of put
9:27
the kabosh on
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that. I said, "There are ways that we can address this. This isn't rocket
9:31
science."
9:31
I love that. Talk about a rev-ops problem. That is definitely a rev-ops problem
9:36
. Really,
9:36
how come deals are slowing down? It's like, "Oh, the way that we're doing our
9:40
contracts with our
9:41
going through seven rounds of legal review because of the cost of the insurance
9:45
." So I've been through
9:46
all that stuff before signed up exactly how that goes. And that's absolutely
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brutal.
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And that's the last thing you want when you've got a happy customer who you've
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been through a
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full sales cycle with, which in and of itself may have taken some time. Last
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thing you want to do
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is drag it through the legal mud. You could just say that for your entire life.
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The last thing you
10:05
want to do in any situation is drag anything through the legal mud. The lawyers
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always disagree
10:10
with me on that, where they're like, "No, they want to add more mud." But yeah,
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that's a good rev
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obstacle. How do you balance supporting sales marketing and customer success
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with a smaller team?
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Very long days. You can't do it. I'm also dealing with multiple time zones. I'm
10:25
not lying when I
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say the days are long. I start quite early in the morning working with clients
10:29
in the UK and in some
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cases India and then late into the evening working with Australia. But
10:35
generally speaking,
10:37
again, just like the contracts issue, it's not rocket science. It's structure,
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bringing structure
10:42
to an organization and defining a cadence. So creating some regular meetings
10:48
and touch points
10:49
and setting expectations of all of the team members and making sure to give
10:54
accolades where
10:54
they're due. A lot of people thrive on getting credit as they should and it's
10:59
free and it doesn't
11:00
take much effort. I'm a firm believer in making sure to give credit where it's
11:04
due.
11:04
Yeah, I'm curious as a CRO who's thinking about go-to-market, getting in front
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of folks,
11:09
closing deals and then figuring out that the customer success side. When you're
11:13
balancing
11:14
the rev ops goals, you mentioned like sales ops as a key part of that. Are you
11:18
thinking about
11:19
things like, hey, let's prioritize our go-to-market closing deals with whatever
11:27
70% of our rev ops
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bandwidth and then 20% CS and then 10% with additional things or how do you
11:35
think about
11:36
prioritizing when you are a resource constrained younger startup?
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I hate saying this as an answer, but it is heavily dependent on what your long-
11:44
term objective is.
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If your goal is to have some sort of an exit as an organization, then driving
11:51
revenue is the number
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one priority. But I think organizations should consider at what costs they
11:56
drive that revenue
11:57
and that helps dictate the priorities. So if your entire goal is you've got to
12:03
get every deal in
12:04
the door you possibly can and damn the churn, it doesn't matter, then you drive
12:08
hard at revenue.
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But most organizations who have investors and have a responsibility to those
12:15
investors really
12:16
try to balance that and so that dictates the priority for how you spend your
12:20
time.
12:21
Any other thoughts on rev obstacles or maybe a rev ops moment or any rev ops
12:25
moments that you've
12:26
made? Yeah, I would say if I could turn the clock back and do something
12:30
differently, when I joined
12:32
six clicks, I got pretty hard for having a BDR telemarketing team, outbound,
12:39
dialing for dollars
12:40
sort of team. Because we didn't have a dedicated marketing team here in the
12:44
States, I thought
12:44
this would be a good way to get some leads. And I learned pretty quickly and we
12:49
pivoted quickly
12:50
as well. We failed quickly on this one. Just don't buy that way anymore. And so
12:54
that whole
12:54
telemarketing concept I think is dead. It's a thing of the past. Buyers now buy
13:00
pretty much self-servicing
13:01
through digital resource and education online. Most CISOs do not take cold
13:07
calls. They don't
13:08
want to be reached out to via email. Although I will say we do have some pretty
13:12
strong response
13:13
and click through rates on our email campaigns. But nevertheless, the whole BDR
13:17
model didn't work
13:18
well. Understanding how buyers buy today and the need to develop digital assets
13:23
that they'll
13:24
consume prior to even having a conversation with you, I think is important. I
13:28
love that. That's a
13:29
great shout because I feel the same way. It's things that we hear a lot of. And
13:34
a similar sort of
13:35
thing that you just said is you're seeing those click through rates or you're
13:38
seeing people clicking
13:39
on emails and looking at that stuff that speaks to the pain. I mean, clearly
13:42
there's a massive pain
13:44
in the GRC space. Clearly, this is something as you mentioned is going from
13:47
nice to have the
13:48
need to have. So if it's a need to have people need to have it, right? They
13:53
just don't want to
13:53
be called on their personal phone. They just don't want to be called while they
13:56
're at the gym.
13:57
They don't want to be called while they're in 5,000 meetings. And the thing is
14:00
like most executives
14:01
look at their calendar and it's literally their Google calendar is stacked from
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a sun up to sundown
14:06
with meetings. So when would you even reach them? And what are they going to do
14:11
? Call you back? I
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mean, it's a crazy notion. If you're selling to someone else who has a phone,
14:17
like a pizza place,
14:18
and I would be seeing the data there, but if you're selling to senior
14:21
executives, like no chance.
14:24
Yeah, I totally agree. Yes. So I'm curious then, with that sort of knowledge of
14:29
mine,
14:29
what did you shift toward? More digital asset and trying to support the buyer's
14:34
journey,
14:34
the various stages of the journey with a variety of resources. So we've got a G
14:40
RC buying guide that
14:41
we've put together that has active links in it, which gets them to even more
14:45
data like an ROI
14:46
calculator. We have started soliciting reviews from our clients so that buyers
14:51
can go online and
14:52
look at reviews of other users that have leveraged the platform. So we're
14:56
really investing heavily
14:57
in some of those areas. Interesting that a lot of those things would be
15:01
potentially like a
15:03
CMO function or a marketing function. Seems like you see revenue as a little
15:07
bit more fluid with sales
15:08
and marketing. Is there like a more joint go-to-market motion? Is that fair to
15:12
say? I mean, it seems that
15:13
way from the way you talk about it. It is today. It is. I think at some point
15:17
we're going to hit a
15:18
maturity milestone and that'll be decoupled. Our CEO is also actually quite
15:23
active in our
15:24
marketing, both from a campaign development standpoint, ad development, as well
15:30
as he himself
15:31
does quite a few interviews, podcasts, and contribution articles and things
15:36
like that.
15:36
Very cool. All right, let's get to our next segment, the tool shed. We're
15:41
talking tools, spreadsheets,
15:42
and metrics. Just like everyone's favorite tool, qualified. It'll be to be tool
15:46
shed. It's completely
15:47
qualified. Go to qualified.com right now and check them out, especially if you
15:54
're in rev-ups. You
15:55
got to have qualified. If you're using Salesforce, go to qualified.com. Okay,
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Michelle, what's in
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your tool shed right now? The CRM that I inherited when I joined was HubSpot
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and hadn't used it prior
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to six clicks, but I've actually grown to really enjoy the platform. We used it
16:13
extensively for
16:14
not just tracking deals and managing forecast pipeline, but all of our ad
16:20
campaigns, event
16:21
campaigns, and so forth, run through HubSpot, as well as lots of reporting and
16:26
dashboarding
16:27
capability and collaboration. I think it's a great collaboration tool. That's
16:32
our CRM.
16:32
Sales Intel, we use Zoom info for Sales Intelligence, of course, Linked. And
16:38
then I've been
16:39
researching recently RFP response solutions. There are several of them there,
16:45
but we try to avoid
16:46
RFPs, but they're not entirely avoidable. And when you do have to respond to
16:50
one, they tend to be
16:52
really time consuming. So these tools will allow you to replicate previous
16:57
responses and give you
16:58
the ability to, I would say, shape 80% of the work off by repurposing some of
17:03
the responses you've
17:04
already delivered in previous RFP responses. That's cool. Yeah, so I'm really
17:08
looking forward to
17:09
moving forward with that. And then the last thing I use is actually, this is
17:13
for the interview process
17:15
of finding good salespeople, which is always a challenge for sales managers
17:19
looking to hire.
17:20
I use an online assessment tool, sales assessment tool, that takes into
17:25
consideration. It's not a
17:27
psychological analysis of any sort, but it does take into consideration how an
17:31
individual themselves
17:33
buy. So let's say you, Ian, you're making a decision on a large purchase,
17:38
whether it be a home or a car
17:40
or a piece of land or a vacation. How do you consider buying that large item?
17:45
Do you give it a long
17:46
time to think about it? Do you do a ton of research? Or do you just first thing
17:50
that comes along that
17:51
you really like, you jump in and make the decision? Based on how you buy, you
17:56
will also sell that
17:57
same way. So you'll either allow people very long time to consider, think it
18:02
over, look at
18:03
competitors, look at alternatives, wait for the sale to happen, the discount
18:10
versus you're going to
18:11
try to drive to closure because you use yourself operating that way. So those
18:16
are the types of things
18:17
that this sales assessment tool looks for. And then among other capabilities, I
18:22
look for several
18:22
attributes that are must-haves in sales candidate for me. That's a really
18:28
helpful tool.
18:29
What metrics matter to you? Well, as I mentioned, I do try to avoid the vanity
18:34
metrics. I think
18:35
using leading indicators is really critical. So things like number of meetings
18:39
per week,
18:40
number of deals created in a month, number of quotes going out the door,
18:43
probabilities,
18:45
excuse me, close ratios, deal velocity, those are the types of things that you
18:50
can use to get a fairly predictable picture of revenue, at least in the six
18:56
month term, I'd say.
18:58
We're about something that you wish you could measure, maybe a blind spot.
19:03
I wish that there's a way to get more data about losses. That's usually the
19:08
biggest area that any
19:09
organization struggles in. I don't think that we're unique in this, in that
19:13
respect. Knowing
19:14
competitors, you're up against what the competitive landscape looks like. You
19:17
can generally find out
19:18
some information about that, but if you lose, it's nearly impossible to get
19:23
that client back to the
19:25
table to explain what could have tipped the scale in your favor or why it didn
19:30
't go your way.
19:31
And that's really important information from a learning standpoint. So I'd say
19:36
that's the biggest
19:37
blind spot. That's more from traditional sales standpoint. I guess from a rev-
19:41
op standpoint,
19:42
if you don't have the proper leading indicators that I mentioned, that's it
19:47
makes it
19:48
near to impossible to make empirical decisions. And then you're just really
19:52
kind of relying on
19:53
gut instinct with some data. We just did a really cool episode that hasn't come
19:58
out yet about when
20:00
loss analysis is going to be very fun. We talked with the team, they closed and
20:06
they shared a bunch
20:07
of data about when loss and essentially whatever the rep puts in as the reason
20:11
why a loss is usually
20:12
not right. Yeah, I can believe that. Yeah, pretty funny. Anything cool that you
20:20
're doing with data?
20:21
I know obviously it's again a early stage company, so you don't exactly have an
20:25
entire data science
20:26
team. I'm guessing that you're back in call, but I went through an exercise
20:30
just literally a couple
20:31
weeks ago where I expanded our pipeline to include a couple more stages. I
20:36
think I added three new
20:37
stages because what I had this sort of effect, what I would call just the easy
20:42
bucket effect going on
20:44
with the sales reps where they were dropping pretty much every deal into a
20:48
specific category,
20:50
but it was very difficult for me to understand truly how closeable that deal
20:53
was or how winnable
20:54
it was in the month. I added more granularity and I'm also forcing them to
20:59
using HubSpot workflows
21:01
to answer specific questions before they can even move a deal into the next
21:05
stage.
21:06
So they have to stop and think about what they're doing and actually
21:10
acknowledge that they've gotten
21:12
that deal through the next gate as it were. And then the other thing I included
21:17
in that workflow was
21:19
this concept of tagging within HubSpot, which is really cool, and we're using
21:23
it to identify
21:24
three different indicators on deals. One of them is closing within 30 days, so
21:29
this is a way to
21:30
just look at the pipeline and easily visually see which deals are coming within
21:35
30 days.
21:36
We've got a tag defined as a strategic deal. These are ones that are over 100
21:41
grand.
21:41
And then the third tag is whether or not a deal is in trials, so they actually
21:46
have their hands
21:47
in the tool. Presales. Very cool. Can you share a little bit more about how
21:52
many stages you have
21:53
now? Total that I love. I could talk stages all day. I love stages. I think it
22:00
's like one of those
22:01
things that the RevOps leader and CRO and the sales office person, everybody
22:07
disagrees on what the
22:08
stages should be. So I love talking stages. That's fun. I've got nine stages
22:12
before closed one.
22:13
Cool. Okay. Can you share generally what they are? I'll share 100% what they
22:18
are. So prospect
22:20
suspect is the first one. Lead or registered deal. So our deals don't start
22:25
necessarily when a lead
22:26
comes in. Qualified discovery demo is the next stage. Decision maker bought in.
22:32
Proposal sent,
22:34
approved for purchase. Vendor onboarding, contracting procurement, and then
22:42
closed one.
22:42
Yeah, that's interesting. So you have so many post commitment there. Yeah.
22:48
Because of procurement
22:50
and all the stuff that goes into that. That's fascinating. So which ones did
22:53
you add?
22:54
So I added under onboarding and approved for purchase because generally
22:59
speaking, most of the deals
23:00
we're doing these days are all net new logos. So we're not in these accounts
23:05
already. And so
23:06
there is very much a vendor onboarding component. And that's one of the things
23:10
that wasn't being
23:10
accounted for previously that was creating delays. What I've seen with this is
23:15
that
23:15
get massive delays potentially. And the deal still usually almost always closes
23:21
, but it really
23:21
messes up your forecast. You obviously miss a month, miss a quarter, whatever.
23:26
Because of those
23:27
vendor onboarding pieces and the procurement. And I don't know if you feel this
23:32
way, but procurement
23:33
right now in the current market is under way different scrutiny than it was
23:38
obviously a year
23:39
or two years ago. So it's just an extra layer of procurement. There's times
23:44
where like that
23:44
can actually kill a deal now where I feel like years ago, like procurement's
23:48
probably not killing
23:49
most deals. They're going to ask for a discount, but they're not going to kill
23:51
it.
23:52
So true, Ian, I had a situation last month where we literally on a Friday were
23:58
told,
23:58
budgets there, it's been approved for going in for signature tonight and I'll
24:02
send you the signed
24:03
contract on Monday. Monday rolled around. They said, yeah, we went in for
24:07
signature and we
24:08
literally were told that it was reneged. So they lost budget.
24:12
We've seen the same thing. Everybody's in agreement, decision maker, senior
24:16
leader,
24:17
everybody all the way to the top. And then procurement pulls the plug. So I'm
24:22
going to finance it.
24:23
Nope. Yeah, there's so much contraction going on right now in the market. And I
24:26
think it's going to
24:28
be that way for some time. And we're heading into an election year that's
24:32
typically
24:33
cause for concern with organizations or it's paralyzing, I should say, in terms
24:39
of decision making.
24:40
Yeah, that's interesting. It's a really interesting piece because I think that
24:44
those final few stages,
24:46
I don't know if you have like percentage numbers associated with those final
24:49
few stages, but
24:50
it's got at least shave off a couple of percentage points for each of those
24:54
later stages.
24:55
We do. Yeah, we definitely advance a deal into a higher probability when they
25:00
're in those stages,
25:01
but they're still not done. It's not a foregone conclusion.
25:05
Yeah. And you had their thoughts on that stage stuff. Oh, you mentioned that
25:07
there was like
25:08
certain things that they have to answer when they go into those. Is that just
25:11
like something in the
25:12
CRM that they have to answer like a question or how does that work? Yeah. So if
25:16
a rep wants to advance
25:17
a deal into the vendor onboarding stage, the have to answer is a security
25:24
questionnaire necessary
25:26
because we ourselves are being assessed by customers for our security posture.
25:31
And then they have to
25:31
answer and turn to remember the other one, vendor onboarding forms, I believe
25:36
is the other question.
25:37
And it's really we're not soliciting specific data from them. It's just a
25:41
reminder that, hey,
25:42
you need to go make sure these things are happening before the steel gets
25:45
dropped into this category.
25:47
Is this like one of those things that I always wonder who should do what for
25:52
these things?
25:53
Because gosh, I think there's just more room for even more specialization with
25:59
this like
25:59
when does onboarding happen? Who's in charge of onboarding? When does the like
26:04
account manager
26:05
come in? Or if you keep it with an A or however they're structured to just like
26:09
knock out some
26:10
of these admin tasks? But it's like at the end of the day, like they ain't
26:13
closed until it's signed.
26:14
Every AE on earth knows that. So if you want this thing to get signed, seal,
26:18
deliver, you got to
26:18
make sure that stuff is done. Yeah, no question. One thing we talked about this
26:23
idea of cybersecurity.
26:25
Now that fits into RevOps. What do you think? Should RevOps people be thinking
26:29
about cybersecurity?
26:30
How should they be thinking about cybersecurity? I think RevOps people are
26:33
usually on the receiving
26:34
end of cybersecurity measures because they're employees in an organization
26:39
where they have to
26:40
read and attest to certain policies like an acceptable use policy or mobile
26:46
device policy
26:47
or those types of things. So generally speaking, RevOps people aren't exposed
26:52
beyond their security
26:54
training that they get at their new employee onboarding or once a year
26:59
thereafter, which is a
27:01
requirement of most regulations and most best practices. They say you have to
27:05
have security
27:06
awareness training for your employees. You also have to publish your policies
27:10
and the employees
27:11
have to attest that they've read them. But conversely, I think information
27:15
security practitioners should
27:17
be thinking about revenue and how to speak to the business about driving
27:21
revenue based on
27:23
their own information security program. One of the things that I've heard from
27:28
a couple different
27:29
CISOs is that they tend to wear a target on their back because when there's a
27:33
breach, not if,
27:34
when there's a breach, they're the first guy out the door. So one of the ways
27:39
to protect your
27:40
position and shore up the fact that you're valuable to the organization beyond
27:46
just protecting the
27:47
organization is to create this story of foundational trust. As an organization,
27:54
these are the things
27:54
that we have done to ensure that the data of our partners and the data of our
27:58
customers and the
27:59
data of our investors is safe and secure. And if you can affirmatively state
28:05
that, then companies can
28:07
take on new projects. They can release new products in the market. They can go
28:12
into a new
28:13
market segment that they've been considering for quite a while. They can make
28:16
investment
28:17
decisions, so on and so forth. So I think it's actually liberating to have that
28:23
awareness and
28:24
understanding of a strong risk posture, assuming that the CISO is managing you
28:29
to a strong
28:30
risk posture. One thing also too that RevOps people need to like out from a
28:34
security standpoint,
28:35
it's just obviously first-party data is so important now. And it'll be
28:41
interesting to see
28:42
how RevOps people are going to be able to leverage their data, leveraging third
28:48
-party data,
28:48
cookies and all that stuff. It'll be fascinating to see what we can and can do
28:53
going forward,
28:53
because I think it's going to be pretty different. Any other tool stuff you'd
28:57
mentioned, I like that,
28:59
the RFP stuff, after being in a couple of those this year, and you're right,
29:02
man, I wish I could
29:03
take 80% of my time back on those. We can go back retroactively and do it. Any
29:08
other things that
29:08
you want to invest in or things that you want to look at investing in, I know
29:11
it's when you're a
29:12
small company too, it's like, or when you're a growing startup, you're like,
29:15
there's so many
29:16
more things that you want and you need to figure out how to weave in there. So
29:20
there are areas that
29:21
you're looking at. There are a few other small applications that I've heard
29:24
about. We use an
29:26
application called Kiflo for our partner portal. It allows our partners to do
29:29
deal registrations.
29:31
And then we have another application that we use called Thinkific, which is for
29:36
our six-clicks
29:37
academy. So we do online self-based training courses for our customers and
29:41
partners. And then
29:42
there's some other things that I have my eye on, clay.com. It's essentially
29:46
gives you the ability to
29:47
create consistency around meetings, note-taking and what questions were asked
29:52
and so forth.
29:52
It's almost essentially like a note taker. It makes the reps better informed.
29:57
So that one's
29:58
actually quite interesting to me. I've got that on my radar. I haven't done
30:00
anything with it yet,
30:01
but keep it an eye on it. Cool. Very cool. All right, let's get into our final
30:06
segment. Quick hits.
30:07
Here's a quick question with quick hits. Quick hits. I shall learn you right
30:11
now. I'll try to me.
30:14
If you could make any animal any size, what animal would it be and what size?
30:18
You have absolutely stumped me on this one, Ian. I even asked my husband
30:24
earlier today,
30:25
how do I answer this question? And it was, we just had a good laugh about it. I
30:30
have a 16-pound dog,
30:32
so he might be offended if I supersized any other animal and brought them home
30:38
because he thinks
30:39
he's a big dog. How about your favorite book podcast TV show, something you're
30:46
checking out?
30:46
Ooh, that one, let's see. I read a sales book recently by the HubSpot Zero and
30:53
I can't remember
30:54
the title. Hold on, I can look at that for you. I got you. Was it the sales
30:59
acceleration formula?
31:01
Yes. That was a really fantastic book. What's the gist? Really collaborating
31:06
closely with your
31:07
marketing team, marketing department, and this particular CRO used to be an
31:13
engineer in a prior
31:14
life. And so he brought a lot of his measure twice cut once philosophy to sales
31:20
and nothing he did,
31:21
no decision he made, no hire he made, was done without a lot of analysis and a
31:27
lot of thought
31:28
and a lot of discussion about it with database decisions, data-driven decisions
31:33
, operating
31:35
in a vacuum without the collaboration of marketing or without the collaboration
31:39
of the other
31:40
business organizations really just makes you ineffective. So I'd say that that
31:45
was probably the
31:45
biggest takeaway for me and just the way that they went to market with the
31:50
digital assets and the
31:51
blog posts and volumes of content that isn't necessarily related to their
31:56
product. It's just
31:58
content that's enticing and that draws people in that's been hugely effective
32:03
for them.
32:05
You have a best piece of advice for someone who is a CRO trying to figure this
32:11
whole thing out.
32:12
Yes. I think instinct without context is futile. Instinct without data is
32:20
futile. So
32:21
while it's important to follow your gut, I think having data is critical. You
32:26
can't operate about it.
32:29
Show, it's been awesome having you on the show. Thanks so much for joining. For
32:33
our listeners,
32:34
if you need that go give an elbow to your CSO and say check out six clicks for
32:39
our GRC software.
32:40
Really cool. Any final thoughts? Anything to plug? Prioritize finding ways to
32:45
make improvements
32:45
in your organization that'll eliminate the need to discount. Couldn't agree
32:51
more, but it's so hard
32:52
and then procurement wants to discount. Everybody wants to discount. It's crazy
32:56
times. I don't know
32:56
what you do. Sell value. Sell value. Thanks Ian. It's been a pleasure.
33:08
(upbeat music)