Jen Igartua: The Role of Revenue Operations in Sustainable Tech Growth

I think we run the risk of, you know, automating it to a point where the reps don't have the fundamentals to do what we want them to do, which is to have really meaningful discussions. At the end of the day, help the customer buy. That's all you're doing is you're helping them buy. Hey, everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now, today's conversation is with Jen Igartua. She is the CEO of GoNimbly, which is a rev ops consultancy that works with high growth SaaS companies like Zendesk, Twilio, Braze, Superhuman, and many others.

And you can also find her on LinkedIn as the host of This Week in SaaS in her free time. And she makes board games with a really cool company called Pillbox, which we got into a little bit. But this conversation was an interesting one, especially coming off the recent one that I did as far as my concern with what's happening in sales right now and how the value of a sales rep is really getting squeezed. I mean, with her rev ops approach here, she is so busy now because all these SaaS companies realize that, hey, services matter. And, you know, when you do services right, you can really make a big difference. And so we started actually before we even get on the podcast talking about just both of us growing up in service-based companies, not SaaS-based companies, but working with SaaS-based companies and the kind of pros and cons of each of those.

So we dove into that a little bit. But then I really was curious from her perspective of the direction sales is headed and specifically with PLG, you know, product-led growth and the difference between that and freemium or what motion that you're going to play. And also this whole concept of intent data and how we are feeding sales reps such the wrong information to reach out to people about. I mean, you hear me talk a lot about triggers, right? And looking for triggers. Well, some are better than others. And I guess making the original doing research is one step to get the reps in the right direction, but then really understanding the meaning behind certain triggers and why or when you should be reaching out using them.

And then we talked about, you know, all the lessons we've both learned about growing and failing businesses quite a bit, the rise of rev ops and different types of service. And how you don't really have to, you know, in a service-based industry, you don't have to really innovate as much. You just have to stay on top of what's going on out there. So she's got a lot of great insights of where the industry's going, what sales reps need to do, how we can stay relevant right now, and just an overall great conversation. So I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Jen and Gartua, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. How are you doing today? Doing great. And you nailed my name.

Well done. It's not an easy one. Yeah, I try to practice. I was just in Barcelona, so I'd always have to, you know, practice different pronunciations of different names so I don't embarrass myself. Barcelona. Yeah, Barcelona. You gotta have the Barcelona. I also went to Ibiza. No, not this time, but one of these days I will get back. Trust me, I went. My wife sort of get this. I had met my wife, I was typical American, had never traveled, you know, around the world at all, outside of the country. And she was like, excuse me? She's like, we're going on an international trip. Love it. She's like, you better get your damn passport. And my first trip outside of this country. Was it Ibiza? It was, it was, no, it was even better.

It was, um, Iceland. Whoa. Amsterdam. Hell yeah. So, I went to Barcelona, Ibiza, back to Barcelona, and then back home. Amazing. You picked, like, party cities, Sam. I was hooked 100%. I was like, are you shitting me? This is what international travel is all about. I'm like, so now I'm on my fourth passport. Like, I've gone to almost every other country. So, anyways. Amazing. Yeah, I grew up in Madrid. So, I lived in Madrid till I was 10. My last name is from the Basque country. So, from Bilbao. So, like, anything with, like, an I, I-G, I-Y, I-B, that's all, like, screams Basque. And I moved to the U.S. when I was 10. So, I go back. My sister's still there, all my family. So, I spent a lot of time in that.

Oh, wow. Love it. Well, that kicks right off into the origin story. So, talk to me. So, you're born in Madrid. You moved to the U.S. around 10. Talk to me about, like, before we get into your, just, you know, I think what anybody can read on your LinkedIn profile. Love to obviously know, like, kind of what, what made you, you, right? From a, where'd you get the itch? Like, what your parents, did they, did you pick up on anything from them? Schooling? Now, where'd you find, especially as that entrepreneurial, that CEO itch? Like, I'm always curious where it comes from. So, if you don't mind indulging a little bit on, on your background, I'd love to hear a little bit more. I love talking about me.

This is great. We will indulge. So, like I said, I grew up in Spain. My mom's American. She did the very cliche thing of going abroad to Spain, met my dad, fell in love and stayed. My dad was a professional handball player for Atletico de Madrid, which is Real Madrid's kind of big rival. And, you know, she met him when he was playing. And then later on, after their marrying and stuff, my dad started a business. So, like, I kind of learned from him that you could be an entrepreneur, a business that went very, very badly. It was right around 97, 98. The whole economy crashed. He owed a bunch of money to banks. A bunch of companies owed him money. They went bankrupt. He still owed the money and shit out of luck.

Bunch of bad business decisions. And that's why we moved back to the US. My mom was like, we got to start over. No one will rent us a house. We got to get out of here. And she was working at McKinsey at the time. And she, like, got McKinsey to move her and help her out. And I think it's one of the reasons why she stayed with them for almost 40 years is because they were so good to her at, like, a time that was really bad. And so, we moved to the opposite of Madrid to Fairfield, Connecticut. No, I would say that's a totally, I mean, I'm from Boston here. So, I know Fairfield quite well. That is not Madrid. No. Picket white fences. You know, we lived in a big, giant apartment complex. You know, I, my sisters, my poor sisters were like 15 and 17.

They were already drinking and going to bars. They were wondering, why are we drinking in a basement? Like, what's going on here? And definitely a huge culture shock because it's just like such a different world. But somehow, I had inherited my dad's kind of entrepreneurial itch. And it's funny because that word was really hard for me for a long time to say. I think it's because entrepreneurs are depicted as men. Like, if I don't have this billion-dollar idea that I have to come up with in a garage, then, like, I'm not an entrepreneur. And I never called myself that until a couple of years ago. But realize that, like, right when I was young, I was, like, lemonade stands, pitching, picking up, like, leaves, like, bags of leaves for $5.

Like, anything I could do to, like, start little businesses. And the first one that kind of, like, you know, quote, unquote, took off, I'm, like, 14 years old. But I felt like it was amazing was I started making jewelry. And I sold it to all the local shops in downtown Fairfield, had a little Etsy shop. And I felt like I was making bank. Meanwhile, my parents were, like, buying all the supplies. And I didn't factor in the fact that it took me, like, six hours to make anything. But it's all profit when mom and dad are paying your expenses. So it's kind of like investors in SaaS. You know, you pay yourself, you're in the red. But, you know, equity is high. So I did that. And then in college, I started a bunch of clubs, still did the jewelry, like, through that.

Started, like, comedy troops. And then I started Go Nimbly. On top of that, I also own a game company. So I make, like, games. I saw that. Yeah. Killbox, right? Is that what it is? Yeah, Killbox Games. That's right. And if you want to use promo code PROMOCHODE, you get $4.69 off. Because you got to have fun, John, you know? You got to have fun. Absolutely. I was looking at the first page. You caught me on the first page with the person giving the finger right out of the gate. I was like, that is my kind of game. I know. I can't be as sassy with Go Nimbly's marketing, but with Pillbox, we're looking for it. And yeah, in all that, it's kind of crazy that it took me, I don't know, until maybe, like, two years ago to confidently say I'm an entrepreneur.

And I had to have, like, two very successful businesses and a bunch of other ones kind of in between. And, you know, just kind of coming to terms with the fact that, like, it sucks that not a lot of entrepreneurs look like me. It sucks that, like, most VC companies, like, I think it's 2% of VC-funded companies are female-owned. You can go statistics all day. I think that definitely influenced, like, my ability to confidently do that. And seeing male peers of similar companies just owning it. And so I'm on that journey. Yeah. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB Sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process.

It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like ChatGPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to JBarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code PODCAST at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. I think that's, you know, the imposter syndrome affects a lot of us. But when you don't see it, when you don't see it represented, I can't imagine the level of imposter syndrome, you know, and I talk about this a lot, you know, the world was made for me, quite frankly, you know, six foot bald white guy here born in a, you know, northeast of America.

For me, I just walk in, I can walk into a VC and be like, Hey, what's up? I got this idea, fart in a box, you know, give me a hundred million. And, and, you know, I'd, I'd actually probably get considered. Whereas, you know, you are probably going to have to go to a hundred of those conversations just to even get in the door, which is hopefully changing. Uh, you know, I think it's changing some, uh, and the statistics are showing very small improvements, but I think that culturally we're changing. Yeah. At least that, well, at least we're having the conversation out loud, you know what I mean? For whatever that's worth, good and bad, but at least it's being happened out loud. So, so with that, talk to me a little bit about, because I think, you know, this one, uh, that you're on right now with Nimbly, it's, um, you know, you hit obviously.

And talking, so talk to me about what Nimbly is, cause I think this is going to frame our conversation here. And, and how did you, why was this something that you wanted? I mean, we were talking before about service-based business versus SaaS, which we're both kind of huge fans of here, but what got you going with Nimbly and tell us a little bit about what it is. Yeah. I'll origin story a little more. Uh, my, uh, uh, my first job out of, out of college, I actually thought I wanted to be a jeweler. So I did that for a little bit, quickly realized that I was just like building out CRMs for them. Like I, I didn't want to be a jeweler. I wanted to operate businesses. And so I got my first job for those, uh, people that are listening that have been in, in this space for a while at a company called blue wolf.

I don't know if you remember, but they were like Salesforce's biggest partner. Uh, and what was interesting about starting out there is I was one of their first marketing automation hires in a, in a team full of like sales operations, you know, sales process heavy. And I think that's one of the reasons why I became a great operator is that I was trying to do top of funnel work surrounded by people that really cared about sales and sales process. And so it really gave me, yeah, I don't know, like a leg up. Uh, I understood Salesforce and CRM and sales processes. And so I could do better marketing and better marketing operations. Fast forward a few years. I really loved it there. It was like a time and a place.

It's like, uh, I owe so much of my career and knowledge to blue wolf. And you know, then I got the itch to do it myself. Uh, you do some light calculations and you're like, I could make a lot of money here. Uh, and so started go nimbly and we didn't have, um, the word of revenue operations like we do now, but the whole idea, we called it unify the business stack. The, you know, the theory and hypothesis is, Hey, you've got silos and not people. So I do think people silos are real, but I think the ones that we overlook are data silos, technology silos, process silos. And really the idea is how can I bring primarily sales and marketing for the time being CS didn't get much of a, uh, much attention still needs more, but especially when I started this, they didn't get much attention.

And you know, that's what, that was, we started. I was so lucky. My first customer was Twilio. Oh, wow. And when I tell you, I didn't know who they were. I was like, Oh, text messaging. Yeah. Okay. We'll do like a three month deal. I'll quit my job with this. And then I got in there and I was like, Oh shit. Like everything. Yeah. And we got them through IPO. They're still a customer today. So like been through that journey for the last 10 years. And you know, my second customer was Zendesk and they're still with us today. And so we hold on, pause for a second. How did you get Twilio as your first customer? Oh gosh. Like, um, my, um, of my business partner at the time knew someone at Twilio and they were like, Hey, we need someone with marketing automation depth.

And they were like, Oh, Jen's great. Uh, at the time they had a tool called Eloqua and there's not, there were not a ton of us that were like great Eloqua consultants. And so they had a big lead flow problem and I came in and fixed that. Uh, and so it was definitely like a right place, right time. Luck has a lot to do, uh, with getting a business started. And so it was like knowing the right person and, and shout out to Pan Morrow. And she, uh, you know, took a, she took a risk being like, great, bring these guys in. Uh, and that was kind of the origin story of GoNimbly. Um, and then Zendesk was someone that left Twilio and went to Zendesk. Like that's the biggest lead source for us. Happy customer.

You know, I'm lucky that in SAS and in San Francisco, no one stays at their jobs. Yeah. So I, I, I can follow them along, uh, and grow our business that way. Yeah. It's actually, you made the same thing like Salesforce. So I trained every rep at Salesforce from 2010 to through 2010 to 2018. And I have one filter in sales navigator and one filter only, and it's my ICP. And it says past customer equals past. Yeah. Past company equals Salesforce. And it's legitimately like shooting fish in a barrel. Like every time somebody moves up, I'm like, Hey, what's up? So you went through that training. You want it now? They're like, what's up? A hundred percent. Yeah. That's beautiful. And so, you know, we've been able to basically build a company, uh, from working with the most incredible SAS companies.

Like since then, like I've added really incredible logos. Intercom's a really amazing company. We're working with watershed. They do a climate platform. They give me the warm and fuzzies, uh, a giant AI company that we know and love, but I can't say their name because they don't give me logo rights. Like we just have an incredible, um, book of business and that's made us really smart. And what we really focus on because we're working mid market enterprise level SAS companies is really around architecture, uh, like process and go to market efficiency are like really the places we're honing in on. And then all of our customers, a lot of our customers have PLG motions. So really kind of deep in like product led sales, uh, uh, I'll get off my soapbox.

I know I'm chatting a lot. I'm like real excited. This is like what I love. Um, and, uh, PLG is like something that feels new, but I mean, I mentioned Twilio. Twilio has a PLG motion. It was just called developer first. I mentioned Zendesk. Zendesk has a PLG motion. It's just called free trial. Yeah. All of them. Intercom. Intercom has a whole upsell motion that's like completely in product. And so we've been talking about PLG as if it's new, but these companies have had it for a long time and we, we don't have to recreate the wheel here. No, we don't. Well, actually on that note, could you help me understand the difference or the evolution of freemium versus PLG? I actually think that the, the, uh, I'm sorry to, it's kind of rude.

I think it's a little unimportant. I think that, that their motions and I think it's the same thing that we do across the board. When we talk about a sales motion versus a PLG, it's like they're, they actually crisscross, you know, uh, quite a lot and their tactics and you should be testing them, you know, all the time. Freemium versus free trial versus PLG versus whatever it is. Like, I guess PLG, if I think about it in the most foundational is like, I can go on and buy it with my credit card without ever talking to a salesperson. That's like kind of the general idea, but it has different flavors. Am I just buying it with my credit card? Am I getting 30 days free? Am I getting free, you know, a variety of features and then I can upsell you.

Do I have to talk to a salesperson, but then I can upgrade myself. Like those are all flavors that should reflect the complexity of your, of your product and, and your customer. And you can do yourself a disservice sometimes by allowing too much to happen with an individual when, you know, the processes are complex enough and you'll be able to upsell them more when you have a human. And I think the real, um, the place where we work a lot and we play a lot is when do you need a human led moment? And like, what does that look like and what are you allowing to be sort of automated and driven by the product? So how do you determine that? So when you say, I love that question. When do you need, what do you say?

When do you need the human led moment? Yeah. Human led moment. So how do you, cause I, and quite frankly, we're dealing with that on a much smaller scale right now with my company, right? Because we have, you know, huge enterprise, you know, mid market enterprise that I go after directly. Then we have this individual membership thing. Then we have this kind of mid, you know, you buy on your own and I'm trying to, it's just me and my COO, right? So I don't have a ton of sales resources. So we're looking at AI to educate people as much as possible. But I guess, do you have, I know there's no rule of thumb here as far as, you know, every company is different, but is there a point where you're like, okay, is it a dollar figure?

Is it a complexity component where the human is absolutely necessary before somebody, like, have you found that out? Yeah. Um, I, the answer is no, there's no, like, Hey, it always is this, but there is something that I've learned in the process of, of rolling out PLS motions. Um, I'll use one example cause I've, uh, we've seen it and Dan and it's worked out really well as intercom, uh, intercom like revolutionized their business over the last year. Uh, they got the new product fin, very AI driven, their whole sales process changed, uh, big motion into PLG instead of sales led. And this is something I've learned through them. And a lot of our customers do this well, but the original way that you would do this is lead scoring.

And we can learn a lot from top of funnel. Obviously that's my depth. And the idea was, okay, one to 100, when someone hits 100, send them over to sales, they'll have a conversation. And that might show you somewhat of a propensity to buy. It's basically a, an algorithm to, to predict, Hey, yeah, how much can I close? And there's power in that. But I think that we were thinking about it all wrong. And what I'm seeing customers do really well is do this in cohorts. How much do you understand your buyer by industry, by persona, by the job they're trying to get done, whatever, you know, is unique about that person. And then how are you identifying? And I know I'm going to hit a nerve with the word signals, but how are you looking at like all the signals that they're showing you and which ones actually tell you they need a conversation?

And I'll give a really, really cool example that Intercom did. They looked at their customers who had low CSAT scores, which is the thing that their platform solves. And they looked specifically at their customers that were also growing. So it says like, it's not that their CSAT score is lowering because their product is bad or, you know, something's going on. It's because they're, they're outgrowing their CS team. They're likely just having a growth spurt. Uh, they can also look at, uh, like demographic, like products like zoom info and, you know, clay and all these other tools will tell you and we'll collect that data. And isn't it such an incredible outreach? If I go, Hey, your CSAT score was X and now it's Y it's decreased by this.

It's likely because your team has grown over, you know, X percentage. You're a perfect fit for fin. And, you know, other customers like you are solving this problem. Want to get on the phone? Like beautiful. You just, you found their issue. You found like why you should reach out. It's not, they hit over a hundred people, give them a call. And you can have these, a bazillion of these plays, multiple departments that have separate instances. How do you have a play for that? Or, uh, your champion just got, you know, deep provision. How do you have a play for that? Or, you know, the one that the SDRs have killed is like recent funding, but you can't just be like, Hey, you got recent funding. What's the pain point that you're solving at, you know, point and how do you layer maybe other, you know, uh, data points along that?

And so I think the thing that we have our fingertips that we're not doing as operators is how do I mix and match all those signals and actually create a playbook and a play for our salespeople to pick up the phone in a interesting way, in a meaningful way. And I think that's the, the thing I've always been frustrated with like the marketing automation tools is, you know, intent data. You know, you, you brought up the word signals that's going to trigger some people like intent is what signals is, is what triggers me because, you know, when I see people, you know, all they download a white paper, like that's intent. No, it's not like, I know why I download white papers. 99% of the time I download a white paper.

It's cause I was interested in that topic. Not, I had no interest in the company. I had no interest in their service. I was just really interested in that thing that they put out there. So for you to then reach out to me and say, Hey John, I see you downloaded the white paper. I'd like to talk to you about your 20, 24 and five initiatives. Now we can help you achieve your goals. Like, dude, fuck off. Like, I don't care, but you know, intent I'm Googling something. Sure. Or to your point, you know, we talk triggers, what to look for, but I was just funny. I just got off of training right before we were doing this podcast. And a lot of the reps were like, okay, mergers and acquisitions, right?

It's like, okay, great. But do you know why? And they're like, well, because you know, that's a deal with, you know, it's just, I go, okay, that yes. But do you know what the phases of a merger and acquisition are? And do you know what happens before, during, then six months after that a year after? And by the way, if you understand that in time, that message better compared to every other rep, that's just going to jump as, as soon as they hear the press release, they got a merger and acquisition, they're going to jump on that versus waiting three to six months and saying, hey, based on that type of merger and the two types of data systems, you're probably at this stage and here, and here's how I can help with that problem.

Like, that's a far more powerful message than I saw you just went through a merger and acquisition. Yeah. And wouldn't it be lovely if I just added you on LinkedIn without anything else, but that I spent the next three to six months talking about mergers and acquisitions and all the things that I know about it. So then, then when you call them, they're like, oh, Jen, yeah, I read your content. And so, yeah, but that takes, that takes a, at the end of the day, right message, right time, right? We've been, we've been playing this game for a long time, but we get really, we get really impatient. And you know, what we don't do is wait till there's actually the right moment. I think that's one of the biggest failures that we have.

So I think you and I just by talking and doing, you know, backstory here are probably violent, violent agreement as far as slowing down to speed up, right? Is the more quality you do, the more real intent in the, I call it the give a shit factor, the better your results are going to be, but it doesn't look sexy on a, you know, to your board as far as your growth metrics and those types of things. In a services-based company, I think we can kind of dictate how fast or slow we want to go. Do you think the tech industry, the SaaS industry has gotten a wake up call as far as the grow at all costs can't work? And do you think VCs are going to back off and focus, allow companies to do it, grow the right way?

Or are we still going to be in this? And I know, again, it's a very general question and there's some companies are going to do better than others, but do you think we've learned our lesson? I think there's a, there's some signals that tell me that, that we have in some ways. I used to pitch a lot of data integrity projects to our customers and they would always get nixed. My customers are saying yes. They're saying yes to normalizing values and cleaning up and thinking about go-to-market efficiency. And our projects are much more focused on that where five years ago, they didn't care that it took the SDR 25 minutes to do research. It was just like hire 10 more. And now we're really saying, okay, great.

How do I make these individuals more efficient? How do I get them selling more? And so that it, the types of projects we're doing show me that the emphasis is on kind of more efficient growth. There's obviously lots of, of influencers and people in the space talking about this too. Um, you've got, uh, Sam Jacobs from Pavilion is like very obsessed with this and talks about it a lot. And I think that like, you know, his message resonates with people. The other thing I would say is, uh, I talked to a good amount of VCs. I have a couple of, of folks that, um, advise for me. And, and one of the things that they're telling me is that they are recommending that they hire rev ops much earlier than they used to.

And so that tells me that they know that having really, really great operations, you know, internally, I don't know exactly what earlier means earlier than whatever they were doing. I don't know what that, what that point is, but I think people are realizing, and for me, if I'm hiring the first rev ops person, business minded, process minded, deep relationships with sales and marketing understands the buyer, they're going to do so much better than hiring a Salesforce admin. That's not, that's not what we're talking here. You can outsource that all day. It's very hard to outsource, you know, the, the actual business minded person. And I don't believe in rev ops as a service. I don't believe that you should hire a firm and have them be your rev ops team.

Like go hire a very smart business minded process oriented person and have them have a kind of fractional team that they can like collaborate with and get up leveled by. Um, I'm lucky I work with mid market plus, so they have those teams, but whenever I advise for a smaller company, don't do that. Like you need somebody deeply embedded. This is such a, it's such an imperative function. Yeah. And it's amazing. Like, and especially now too, with the AI and organize, I mean, I know AI can, you know, structure unstructured data, all that stuff, but you know, the more you have your arms around that data and the more you can tell AI where it is, the more value you're going to get out of it, period.

So if somebody doesn't own the data layer of where all this stuff's coming from and how it's all organized, it's not going to, it's, you know, same thing, garbage in, garbage out. For sure. And most people don't have a unified data layer as much as, as you hear about it. Just know everybody struggling with it. Um, that being said, I'm finding one of the lowest hanging fruit for anybody that's like very frustrated with their data is like normalizing the five to 10 key values that you use for routing and territory management and like core reporting and segmentation. And if you normal, like that's usually what industry annual revenue, a number of employees, like it's stuff you have, but unfortunately in your CRM, you have eight fields for it.

And you know, every team is using a different one and the product team is going to their board and doing a cohort analysis on industry with completely different values and marketing and sales. And it's like, great. How do we get one field for the entire business? That's table stakes for like those sort of, you know, uh, core, just super core demographic fields that will get you to a maturity point. That is like kind of unbelievable how quickly your team all reports on the same field. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy how the basics, you know, it, I go back, I'm talking sales reps here, same, same thing. It's like, let's go back to the fundamentals and the fundamentals aren't sexy. They aren't, you know, they aren't what, but if you do the fundamentals right consistently, you'll beat nine, nine out of 10 other sales reps out there.

So let's talk about that a little bit as far as sales rep fundamentals and, and where you're seeing. So I'm concerned. Let me put it this way. I, I'm, I came out of inbound. I came out of Dreamforce. I came out of LinkedIn sales, you know, solutions and their conference too. And I was like, holy shit. Like these agents are real. Agent, agent, agent. It's the new Marshall. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, and they, you know, and look, I think we're always, Salesforce is notorious for launching something at Dreamforce. And then five years later, it's still not actually a thing. But what I saw with the AI stuff was like, this is different. This stuff is a value is, is evolving faster than ever. And it's doing a lot of this stuff that, you know, the, the whole stat of only 27% of sales reps time is spent doing, you know, blah, blah, blah.

So, um, and everything else is admin tasks. And now this is taking care of all of that. But the question I have is twofold. One is if AI is taking over all the, the bullshit work, right? The, the administrative, the grunt work, if you will, where are the fundamentals going to come from? And, and two, what are the fundamentals? So, so picture this, I, you know, I, I graduated 1998. This was before the internet was really a thing before email was really a thing. So, I mean, I cold call after cold call, after cold call networking event, writing down notes on cards and then bringing them back and putting them into a spreadsheet. And then, and so all that shit, which I fucking hated, by the way, I hated all the grunt work stuff, but what it did was it gave me the fundamentals.

It gave me context. It gave me appreciation. It gave me business acumen. So now as a 48 year old sales professional, I can have a business oriented conversation. I know how to use the AI tools, but if AI is going to effectively take over all of that or the majority of that, where are the fundamentals? And I talk in every profession, not just sales, but in every profession. And are the fundamentals going to change because of it? Oh, that's so deep. Right. And I'm searching. So that's why. Well, we're going to figure this one out together. So, I mean, I just think about the example that you have around writing people's notes on a, you know, on their card and following up. That's obviously a fundamental.

It's not technology. Didn't take that away. Like you still should do that. And people don't, they just don't take notes. Maybe some people do it on an iPhone and they don't do the follow-up and we're just scanning badges all day. And then literally I was helping Gong in their booth at inbound and they had me like, just kind of chatting with people. And then afterwards they were like, Hey, who was Sarah that you talked to? And I was like, Oh, I don't know. I was just like schmoozing or I didn't know you wanted you to like know this. And it's like, yeah, I didn't take notes on that individual and it, it went away. And I have no idea what we talked about. Uh, I scanned her bad to those. So have fun.

And so, you know, I, I do think that when we get into these places of, of automation and technology, it can dilute that. So, uh, where, where do we take it? I mean, I'm excited about some features, but now you're making me doubt them. So I'm thinking about Gong, right? Gong is really pushing, automating, filling out your CRM for you from calls. So net pick, awesome. Fundamental. You have to fill that out. So now we're automatically having it fill out those fields. I think the way they're designing it is you get a view and then you have to like edit and press save. So there's some review of it that are we taking away, you know, making the rep be really thoughtful about, cause the idea of that is that it's for, it's a forcing mechanism to talk about who your champion is, et cetera, et cetera.

So, yeah, I think we run the risk of, you know, automating it to a point where the reps don't have the fundamentals to do what we want them to do, which is to have really meaningful discussions and to really like at the end of the day, help the customer buy. Like that's all you're doing is you're, you're helping them buy. So, you know, in, in the best case scenario here, we're automating the BS so that they can show up and do that work better. And I think the best reps are going to really focus on, Hey, what does it take to buy? How do I help them make a decision? How do I spend more time with the customer? Well, and I, I think you nailed it. This is so the, your best reps are going to do this.

Yeah. That's the thing, right? So, and I'm looking at it, I'm looking at this kind of freaking out on both ends, quite frankly, because, you know, 48 years old, Jet X are here. You know, the three things that I'm really leaning in on for people to pay attention to was go back to sales fundamentals, business acumen and agility, right? Those three things, right? Now for, and I'm just going to be very, you know, generational biased here in a lot of ways, but my generation and above, we have the fundamentals and the business acumen just because we've been around for a long time. Not exactly agile though. Like it's, it's hard to get a 48 year old man to change my process. You know what I mean? Like, okay.

So we're not going to adapt or adopt the AI nearly as fast as we probably should. Whereas the younger generation, they have agility. They were basically born into it and they were forced into it, especially with COVID and everything else, but they don't have the fundamentals. They don't have the business acumen. So there's a, there's a finite group of people in the short term here that can genuinely use the information that is being generated from AI, put it in context and then, and then use it to help the client buy. But on both ends, I'm nervous to see what's going to happen and how, like in what these roles are going to do. Cause it looks like sales and it looks like SDRs and BDRs are just going to roll up under operations and marketing.

And, and they're going to, they're going to basically be data analysis, running campaigns and feeding true ABM back to a full cycle sales rep who can just sit there and say, okay, not who should I send up email to today, but John, you should send an email to Jen because Jen just did this and her company just did that. And here's some talking points, but I work, but, but where does that future rep who has the business acumen and abilities to use that information to engage with the client? Yeah. How do we build that? Yeah. I mean, uh, I'm lucky I'm somewhere in the middle. Yeah, me too. Uh, but, um, you know, it's one of the things go nimbly. We no longer hire junior. Um, I, I can't do it. And I, I don't think it's just AI.

I think it's also COVID really screwed people that were getting in bed. I don't know anybody that graduated college 2018. I mean, they got a couple of years, but it wasn't enough 2018 till now. And even now it's, it's hard. Uh, we have a bit of a lost generation there because the way I learned was I sat in an office, I overheard everything. And I'm not even here saying that everybody has to go in office. I love remote, but at that age bracket, um, I, I remember just like sitting around and my boss being like, Hey, we're going on site, get your stuff. And I'd be like, all right. And I sat in a meeting, I added zero value. I took notes, but I learned, you know, what does it look like to run a meeting?

You know, what does it look like to meet somebody and say, hello? And like, it's things that you, it's silly, but you have to learn that, you know, at 20. Um, and so we've got this kind of lost generation that doesn't have that business acumen that how do you network? How do you, how do you show up? How do you have these kinds of meetings? And also when they were stuck, this is why I stopped hiring anybody early is imagine you go into Salesforce, you're stuck writing a formula field. You can't figure it out. And you ping on Slack and say, Hey, can someone help me? And it's noon. And someone goes, yeah, but three o'clock put a calendar in right on my calendar. And now I've got someone who just burned three hours, just sitting there staring at us sitting there.

Yeah. And so we do have this sort of like, you know, they're not getting that acumen and I don't know how they'll get it. Somebody's got to take a risk or they got to go find, you know, a company that's still, you know, in person. I'll tell you the one thing that I, that I think for sales, at least my hope is because I'm seeing two trends, right? I'm seeing that trend obvious. And, but I'm also seeing thankfully the trend of sales being an educated profession now. So in the universities, you could actually write every other profession. You, you tend, you tend to get the fundamentals in college, right? It's like, this is what the job is. This is what you need to do. This is what it looks like, whatever.

Whereas sales, it's always the default profession. Like it's, it's, you go to get your degree in whatever shitty thing you thought was relevant. And then you realize I can't make enough money doing that. So let me get into sales. And to your point, I don't think companies are going to have the, the patience to develop sales reps. So I think it's going to have to almost be a certificate course, either when you come out of college or a major in college where they teach you those fundamentals so that when you come into the working force, you're already committed to sales as a career, you know what it's all about. And now you just need to kind of learn what that company does. So my, that's my hope, but it's a, I don't know if it's moving fast enough here.

No, I mean, I hope that too. I went to what's considered a very good university. I went to UNC, uh, in Chapel Hill. Yeah, I went to U-Maryland. So we put you guys in basketball all the time and that we won all the time. Yeah. Well, actually I graduated back in 98. So we won a few of them back then. All right. You can have those. Um, and you know, I went, I went when we had a Tyler Hansborough. That was my year. All right. Yeah. I sat behind him in a class and he was playing checkers in front of me. Love that guy. He was just sitting there playing checkers during econ. Uh, and so. Yeah. In college, I'm supposed to be at this really incredible university. I'm at their business school, Keenan Flagler.

Again, top university. Yeah. I'm so sorry to be shitting on UNC. It is really a wonderful school, but they taught us how to write a memo. I had a class where I was taught and we, and one, we had to print out a memo and this is 2008. Uh, and you know, and I remember the teachers being mad. Like I do remember the staff being like, I can't believe we're teaching you this, whatever it's the curriculum, but like, how do we, how do we allow universities to go at the speed that you're talking about? So they're teaching them. I didn't hear the word Salesforce. I didn't, I didn't hear CRM. I didn't understand marketing automation. Uh, and so, you know, there's, there's definitely the space to, you know, have courses and teach universities and stuff that's actually relevant.

Yeah. I think, I mean, again, it's almost going to be a forcing function in some ways, because first of all, the university structure right now is just so upside down. It's ridiculous. And so I think they need to get hired. Yeah. They, they need to get, that's it that they need to teach real world shit so that these kids coming out of school know what, you know, how to balance a checkbook for crying out loud versus write a memo. Um, but that's a whole nother different topic. So, um, so let's, um, let's finish on, on the rev ops side of the house. Well, actually, no, let's talk, let's finish on the rev ops from a services based standpoint, because, you know, we were talking before we got on this about, you know, both of us running service.

I mean, I grew up in services and, and I have a healthy respect for it and how a lot of these tech companies start with tech and then they, Oh shit, we have to do services, which is why their services sucks so much. Talk to me a little bit about kind of your perception of, of, um, services based companies and, and, you know, are they coming back in vogue and how should tech companies that you're working with look at services compared to how they have been looked at as in a lot of ways, a second class citizen? 100%. So I do think that we're getting a little bit more respect. I'll say, um, for a long time to go nimbly, we kept having the pressure from ourselves, honestly, to be like, should we build a product?

Should we build a product? And we tried to build an analytics product. We, we like hemorrhaged a bunch of money and then had to have like a, uh, come to Jesus moment of like, no, no, we're really good at services. And frankly, this is a good type of business. And also knowing that I do not need to innovate on services. That's the other thing that I had to learn. Uh, it was a really hard learn. I don't have to change the way people buy services. I don't have to come up with like buy points or buy whatever, like no services has been, it's one of the longest running type of businesses that exist. And you can learn a lot. There is a book that I recommend anybody that is running a services organization.

Uh, it is as dry as it sounds. It is called managing a professional services firm. And you know, it's, it's back to the basics. It explains everything from like what shape your organization should be the fact that like the, the projects that you pick are going to create the skills that you, you know, now have. And so you better pick appropriately. Cause it's like it's your projects are your professional development in a services organization. It, you know, talks about how to sell, uh, how your customers, when they buy, they're not excited. You don't have why, you know, they're not pumped to buy a Porsche right now. They are, they are either failing. They're underwater. You know, they, they might even be, uh, scared for their jobs, like just really understanding it.

And, uh, the other book, I, the boutique, another great, like kind of book about professional services. And so I've just nerded out on this now. Like I really enjoy, you know, uh, scaling a services organization. And I'm, I'm proud to, and that, that I get to a journey for SAS companies, you know, figuring it out. It's always a, you know, it's a, it's an afterthought. Um, it's an afterthought. And I think the problem that you also have is you typically have product minded, you know, uh, leaders and they don't understand how complex this is. Staffing is a nightmare. It's very easy to have rich money. Managing a bench is really hard, you know, upskilling it's all, and they're trying to do it in a really big way.

And with very complex projects and typically with a lot of boundaries. So like every tool will be like, yeah, but we won't touch Salesforce, but it's like, Oh, okay. So now you want your client to log into Salesforce and put in a ticket and whatever, while you're like, I only stay here and that's fine. They have to, it's a lot of risk and it's a lot of extra training, but they're also not set up to have, you know, incredible outcomes. So what's sort of the easiest thing is yes, build out some internal PS, but also partners, partners, partners, partners, partners, partners. And I'm not saying that just for me, but there are companies that do this for a living. They're going to be more efficient than you are.

They're going to ideally create better experiences for your customers. And you can have a really incredible co-selling motion with them as well, because we're trusted in a different way. And so all you, I mean, look, Salesforce is like a great example. Clay is a very interesting example. That's new on the clay agency, you know, model to the point where they have, if you're in a clay agency, you can go work out of their office. Like they have a whole section for you to just sort of like work within there. I go there all the time. Um, I'm going there tomorrow. So, you know, there are models for that and you know, uh, I'm going to shit talk a little bit and I feel bad, but like Zora is like what not to do.

Um, Zora is an incredible complex CPQ tool like everybody else, but go try to find a Zora specialist. Um, they don't have a huge market for it because they didn't go the partner route. And so if you are somebody with Zora, it's very difficult to like, we have clients of ours that ask us, I'm like, well, give me two months. It's going to take me forever to find this person because they haven't created that talent and they haven't like, you know, and for something like a complex tool, you need that. The fact that Salesforce is a huge amount of people that know it is one of the reasons people want to buy Salesforce over other tools. So, you know, long answer, but you know, partnerships is the biggest thing I would say is like, go find an agency that wants to grow with you because you know, they know how.

And I think for, for people listening to when it comes to, because a lot of, you know, my audience is sales reps who are pseudo entrepreneurs in their own right and thinking about like, Hey, you know, I got this idea or whatever. And I think right now with AI disrupting almost every product there is on the planet and whatever cool idea you think you have today is going to be probably irrelevant tomorrow. You know, don't ignore services. Don't ignore starting a services based company to felt because there's a lot of problems that all this tech actually produces that a lot of people don't know how to solve. So. And if you're good with time management, uh, 20 hours of consulting is going to pay for your time to go build for 20 hours.

Uh, and if you want to work harder, work harder, but you can do it. You can go get yourself a halftime engagement for three months and that will pay your bills while you go build something else so that you don't have to go take a bunch of money, dilute yourself and take a huge risk. You can go test something out for three months and see if it's got traction. Awesome. Gentle. I think we could probably peel apart the onion of where the world is going and where ops and sales reps are going to head and everything else and how AI is going to take over the world. But let's have me back. Have me back. We'll nerd out whore. Yes, absolutely. I think, uh, things are moving so fast right now that this conversation will probably be very different in another six months.

So who knows? Um, but Jen, tell people where they can find more about you, about go nimbly and everything else you're doing. Any, even your, uh, pillbox, uh, tell them where they can find out some more cool shit about that too. Pillboxgames.com. You can go buy games there. Um, for me, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm, I'm honestly too obsessed with LinkedIn. You can DM me. I will answer. It'll be me. I also make a little video series called this week in SAS, where I cover a recent thing that happened in SAS. Uh, I like to think I'm funny. Uh, it's a little like show esque, um, not to set expectations. Do I, I'm not as funny as the daily show. Um, but I have those, it's called this week in SAS. It goes out every two weeks.

Uh, you can watch for those. Love it. Awesome. And it, and just for everybody listening, Jen's last name is I it's IG, right? Yep. I G A R T U A T U A. Yeah. Yeah. You nailed it. Go look at, uh, go look up on LinkedIn, connect with her, go see what go nimbly's doing. Cause she's doing some really fun stuff over there. And I think, uh, growing a business in all the right ways, uh, and hopefully learning, you know, both of us learning from the lessons of everybody else who made the mistakes where they grew too fast and got ahead of them. So that's right. That's the scenario. Awesome. General. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate the time. Same here. And everybody, hopefully you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

And like I said, on the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day went or how bad you think it's going, you make somebody smile today and you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

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