RevOps Unfiltered: What Sales Needs to Hear

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It was at a really cool place. It's a place called the House of Yes in Brooklyn, New York, and it was more like a club and they had all sorts of crazy stuff going on here. It was RevOps focused though. So it was sales ops, not necessarily sales, but RevOps is getting to be extremely important in the GTM function right now. So we interviewed a bunch of different people and asked three questions. What do you wish sales would do less of, stop doing? What would you sales do more of, again, from a RevOps standpoint? And then if you had a magic wand, what would you change about the sales RevOps relationship? And so we talked to Travis Henry, who is the Senior Director of Marketing and SDR Operations at Snowflake, who has absolutely mastered the SDR role, especially with my good friend Lars over there who built that.

Then we talked to Osman, who is the Head of Go-To Market Operations at Clay, who's one of the fastest, hottest growing companies out there, has really cool insights from him. Then we had Diana Hernandez, and she is the Director of RevOps for StrongDM, tons of insight from her perspective. And then that's Shafari, who is the VP of GTM Strategies and Operations at G2. A good friend of mine works over at G2, Sydney Sloan, she's the CMO, so we had some really interesting conversations because I know them really well. And then last but not least, Kyle Ketchum, and he is the GTM Operations and Tool Marketing at Figma. So some heavy hitters here, really interesting perspectives on them. And I think we need to be paying more attention and work better with ops from a sales standpoint.

So the more you have an appreciation for RevOps, the further you're going to go in your career. So I think this is an important one for even sales reps to listen to, obviously sales leadership, but sales reps to understand how RevOps thinks of things and the way they look at us so we can work better together. So I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. By the way, each one of these interviews is probably going to be about 10 minutes. So 10 to 15 minutes each, we asked those three questions. Then I had one interesting question for each one of them specifically based on some research I did. So hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Travis Henry, welcome to Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend.

Mr. Barrows, it is a pleasure and an honor to be here. Thanks. I liked your little presentation up there, man. That was, I've been following you guys for a while. I mean, obviously with what you did beforehand with Salesforce and now at Snowflake with Lars. But before we get into some more unique questions about you, I got three questions that I'm trying to figure out, coming from a sales perspective, right? And we're at RevOps here. Trying to understand how we can work better together, right? Because you talk a lot about silos and how to break those down. But I want to, three questions are, one, what is something you wish sales would stop doing? And you could take this from the reps themselves or the leadership.

And then what do you want them to do more of? And then what's your magic wand question? So let's start with the one that you wish sales reps or organizations would stop doing. Yeah, I think that starts with sales reps, you know, not making it up themselves and really seeing RevOps as a group of really smart, diverse skill sets that they can take advantage of. And I think reps oftentimes try to inevitably reinvent the wheel to make things easier in their process or how they like to work. And, you know, there's this trade-off between, you know, standardization. Hey, this is the company way, right? This is the process you need to follow. This is the pitch deck you need to use. And the way that, you know, individual humans, sellers, like to work.

And I think there's a natural tension there. But oftentimes, like, I'll go finally sit down with one of our, you know, best reps and see what they're working with on their screen and they're pulling up some, you know, great template that I can take back to my team and go make that much better, right? We can throw resourcing at it. We can automate it. We can improve it. And I think reps stop trying to just reinvent the wheel and do their own thing. That would be my ask of them. Do you think it's a trust factor or do you think it's just a, like, why do you think they are so guarded of their process, right? Because there's always the top 10, 20% that are just going to do what they do. And it's a VP of sales is worst nightmare to have one of your top performing reps be a jackass, right?

And they're not sharing anything, but they're crushing their number. Hardest thing to do is fire that person because they're usually a cancer to the organization. You can't replicate what they do. So, but how do you deal with it from a rev ops standpoint? How do you get that rep to give you those things and trust that you're going to leverage in the right way and help them? Yeah, I think it's tough. So, building credibility, getting to understand them, ultimately, you know, being curious about their process and offering something in exchange. So, it's always what's in it for me, right? So, what's in it for me is, wow, I have an amazing GTM engineer on my team. Let me show you a few things that he is doing to build out automated prompts, automated research that could flow into, you know, that account list that you maintain in a shadow spreadsheet.

So, it's a little bit of show and tell. It's a little bit of doing the work on behalf of the rep and trying to make their lives easier at the end of the day. But to answer your question, I think it's, I do think there's a little bit of a trust issue there because reps have been burned in the past. So, you got to show up and you got to sell your internal customer. And that's ultimately what I think rev ops is. We call it a support function inside of Snowflake. And our customers are go-to-market teams. AEs have a tough job. I say frontline sales managers have the toughest job. I agree with that. That's a very kindred relationship. But, yeah, if you approach it with that customer service mindset and you really try to diagnose what's going to help them and then offer value, that's the way to go.

Do you find that the sales leadership is more or less, like frontline, you talked about, because I always talk about that with training, right? When you ask John, what is your, you know, what's your reinforcement program? I'm like, I don't know where your trainers, where your manager is going to be, right? Because if they don't sit in the prep, if they don't sit in the training, if they don't do all the follow-up, then it is going to be what it's going to be. Do you find that because there is a lack of education, a lack of resources for frontline sales managers, because it's usually the best rep that gets promoted, and now they're saying, oh, yeah, now manage everybody and tell them all to do what you do.

Do you find they're more receptive to RevOps and saying, I need help? Or are they still that top rep that's guarding what they do? They're very receptive. I think the majority of frontline sales leaders are internal promotions. They were great ICs. They made it into the management ranks because they had an inkling that they could share these best practices back. They could coach reps. They understand reps. But it's one of those, I think, still pretty large gaps in the industry where there's not a huge curriculum and focus around frontline management as distinct from a VP of sales type role, CRO role, and as distinct from an IC seller role. And so if you approach your frontline managers with, here's data and dashboards built for you, here's the metrics you need to inspect, you can build a ton of trust with those frontline managers.

And I think we have very brilliant people in our RevOps organization at Snowflake. Especially when you want to do anything to impact the organization, change management is the number one blocker because you build cool shit. No one believes in it. No one drives it. What's happening the week after your training, right? What's that team conversation that the frontline manager is leading and are they bought in? And I think that's been one of my learnings in trying to grow with Snowflake in particular. It's been a five-year run. We started at 2,000 employees. We're now at over 8,000 employees. Huge go-to-market organization. Again, skilled people, great solutions to problems, but we've seen ourselves trip over that problem, right?

Where we didn't engage the frontline managers. We didn't use them as a leverage point for the organization. Yeah. You've got to avoid the book of the month club, right? Where it's just like every cool, you know, new methodology. And I think that's, in general, I'm curious, you know, VPs of sales tend to get, are the loudest ones of any organization. This is what I want. Get it for me. But, you know, enablement in general will run around like chickens with their heads cut off to try to solve that need. And the next quarter, it's like, I don't need prospecting anymore. I need negotiation. And it's usually this, hmm. Yes. So how do you push back on the VP of sales that is pushing for what they think their team needs versus the data that you know their team needs?

And how do you balance that without, while playing to the ego? Yeah. Playing to the ego, I think is a good way to put it for sure. I think if you're thinking about it as like a zero sum game. So I need to push my agenda of the enablement on behalf of the company or on behalf of ops. And that's inherently opposed to what a VP of sales might want. I think that's a troubled premise. And I think where it starts with is top down alignment with that VP of sales. So being an advisor to them, telling them what you think the priorities ought to be, and then, you know, ultimately driving that down in the organization. So I think the key point there is see them as an ally, not as an enemy, and approach them, you know, from that place of partnership.

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Now let's get back to the conversation. All right, what do you think, what should sales reps or teams do more of? If you could get them to do more of it, what would it be? For, this might be a Snowflake specific one, but we just had a breakout today and we were talking about partnerships. And I think partner ecosystems are incredibly complicated beasts. They're different for, you know, is it a partner who's creating a solution on top of your software? Is it a partner who's going to activate the channel or is it a partner who's going to deliver services for you? And I think what I am hoping and trying to figure out how to get reps to do more of is to engage partners and bring partners into deals and win better together.

Because I think there's a sense that, hey, it's extra work. It's a burden. I'm not sure I want to engage in the partner. But then it's back to that. What is the data telling us? The data is telling us when we work with partners, win rate goes up by 15 points. Average deal size goes up by 25% plus. It's like all that data is there. It's super compelling. But then you run into people's, you know, biases and opinions and past experiences and traumas around working with partners. How do we programatize that and get them to work better together and more? Yeah, especially since, like, the outbound function is, you know, struggling right now in general. Uh-huh. Like, you know, more of a marketing function and the partner ecosystem of, you know, least path of resistance to get into accounts.

It's almost like we've got to go. I think all sales reps should create their own little ecosystem, even if it isn't, like, the dedicated partners. It's like, I tell them reps, like, figure out the five companies that touch your persona. Call up the best rep at each one of those companies and be like, can I put you in my backpack here? Because sometimes it comes up and I want to refer somebody. So you give. And then, by the way, can we meet on a weekly basis or monthly basis? Just talk about what's going on out there. Yeah. All of a sudden, one thing leads to another and you can kind of future-proof yourself. Yeah, 100%. All right. Magic wand. If you could fix whatever it is, what would it be?

The easiest one has been a huge theme of the RevFest conference, and that is clean, deduplicated, reliable data. We keep going back to this, which is we are a very account-centric go-to-market. I think most great companies are thinking about things in an account-centric lens. We still struggle with duplicates, self-service accounts, signing up, swiping credit cards. It's, you know, J.P.Morgan versus J.P.Morgan, and we're trying to, you know, bring all of these things together. And the damage is just getting amplified by the month with AI telling you that it's giving you nonsense answers back because it's dealing with a really, really difficult and dirty foundation. And we're pretty good about managing our data, and it's still a big struggle.

So, magic wand, clean, reliable dedupe data. What I heard today in some of the presentations is, like, the gut was, oh, AI, just throw everything in there. And AI will, you know, unstructured data, it'll be able to pick out the jet. That's not true. It just doesn't, it's not there. I mean, that's a great way to quickly get a litmus test of how shitty your data, in fact, is. It'll tell you very quick. Yeah. But it is not going to deliver the results that you're looking for. All right. So, I'm curious. The one question I had for you is about your book. So, you were asked to write a book. Yeah. About RevOps. Right? It was a book. Bringing Sales and Marketing Together. Busting Silos. Yep. What did the process of writing the book teach you about something you didn't know about RevOps, about the process that you were putting together?

So, as you went through this journey, because I know a book is not an easy thing to put together. So, you have to kind of peel it back a few layers. Anything you learned in the process of writing the book that stuck out to you? For sure. So, we. Sorry. We co-authored this book. So, it was myself and then our head of account-based marketing, Hilary Carpio. Chanel runs DemandGen as well. Fantastic marketing leader. I think the process of writing a book, I don't know that there was a ton of net new information uncovered going through the process. But the really interesting thing, the valuable thing was it forced you to simplify concepts that you're familiar with to yourself, but actually put it on paper, explain that to an editor who is not steeped in GTM, SAS, B2B, yada, yada.

And then also to put frameworks around your thoughts. So, a really simple example was we had a well-functioning account-based funnel, right? We measure how we're moving accounts to different stages of their journey, right? And we look at the conversion rates behind that. But as we started to unpack that, we're like, okay, great. So, you have this many engaged accounts and you're dropping off more than you would like to and getting to meetings and opportunities. So, you got to drop off in the funnel. Okay. That's not very helpful to tell people about and write about in this book. Then we started to think, oh, well, we actually need to think of leading indicators or, you know, inspection drill-down metrics.

And we kind of came up with this whole new idea to articulate what I think we inherently already knew because we were so close to building that funnel. But, hey, you actually want to look at, you know, number of contacts we're engaged with. You want to look at the engagement score of that account. And it forced us to really articulate if you're seeing a drop off in the funnel, we actually need to prescribe the three, four, five other data points that help you diagnose why something is dropping off. So, really helpful process, a lot of extra work outside the day job, but it was great. I think that's what I'm a little worried about with AI in general is it's so easy to produce an outcome that the effort to get there, you skip.

And therefore, you skip the learnings, you skip the thought process of being able to disseminate that down to a logical way to articulate. Like, even with me writing my content, when I would, like, read it into the camera, like, I've done the same training thousands of times. I'm like, ah, whatever, just put me in front of a camera and let me go, right? And as soon as I started talking to the camera, I'm like, because, you know, the way I tell stories is, like, I'll, and then I'll go way sidebar, but then come back. And you can do that in a live presentation. When you're reading a book, when you're watching a video, you can't. It has to be linear. It has to be structured. So, it actually forces you to think better about it, which is cool.

Yeah, yeah. So, awesome, Travis. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate it. We're up, we're doing rapid fire for everybody else. Great seeing you, and good luck, and tell Lars I said hey. I will. Thanks, Jeff. All right. Shefali, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. Thank you. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. You having fun? I am, yeah. It's been a great session, and it's been a good day. A lot of great speakers. Yes. Why'd you, just out of curiosity, what drove you to come to this? What was the main reason? Was it the topics? Was it the people? Was it just getting together? I think it was all of that, right? Right, I think even having a RevOps-focused conference, even three years ago, we didn't have those, right?

I don't think it was even called RevOps, right? I don't even think it was called RevOps. So, I think it's having a RevOps conference. It's then it being in New York, which is my backyard, combined with just some really great people that I knew were coming, and obviously the wonderful Jen, who, this is her first conference. I wanted to be here, help support, and be a speaker, right? There you go. So, all the different things, all the different pieces came together. So, it's very exciting to be here. Yeah. Jen actually, you know, I was telling the story of, like, I didn't even know, like, I brought her to the event, and then she's like, hey, do you want to come to this, you know, event that I'm doing?

I'm like, absolutely, whatever you want. And then she didn't really tell me what she wanted me to do, and then she said, let's do a podcast. All right, I'm in. Because they're going back to good people, right? So, G2. Yeah. You're right in the thick of it. Yep. Intent data, all this wonderful stuff, and truly the intersection of what I think is moving towards the real personalization of information to people. Yep. And I have some questions, but before we get there, talk to me about the thing you wish sales reps or teams would stop doing. What's that one first? I think what I hope folks will stop doing and teams will stop doing is treating forecasting like a chore, right? A lot of times people come into their forecast, they think they're checking the box, they're like, oh, I got to call my forecast this week.

But ultimately, I think your forecast is very much your reputation, right? Your forecast is you declaring what you think is realistically going to happen. So that is you from a team and talent level. But from a business level, as we all know, it's a tough time in B2B SaaS right now, right? That's brutal. 40% of companies are not hitting their targets. So in this environment, it's even more important. A good business is a predictable business. And so when people treat it like a check the box, it's hard to make hiring decisions. It's hard to make go-to-market decisions. It's hard to make scale decisions. So if there was one thing I could fix, I don't want folks to treat it like a check the box.

How do you shift that? What does a good forecast review look like to you? So to me, a good forecast review doesn't actually happen one day, right? So I think there's probably three key pillars, probably the way I think about effective forecasting. The first one is you need an engine that scales, right? So meaning there needs to be a cadence. So as an example, every day should be a forecast day, but for different people in the organization. Meaning you maybe have your reps that are calling their number on Mondays. You then have your first-line leaders doing checks of that on Tuesdays. Wednesday, it rolls up. Maybe Thursday goes to like a company-level, ELT-level forecast. But you should always be forecasting because you should always be tracking your pipeline and you should always be tracking your ability to convert it.

So I think the first one is like just the cadence you put around it and the hygiene you force around it. I think the second piece is making sure that everyone is looking at the same data and thinking about, and you're going to hear a lot about data. I'm sure you've heard a lot about data, but everyone's looking at the same data. We should no longer be in the era where anyone's running their forecast off a spreadsheet by themselves in a room in a silo, but it still happens, right? I'm not even going to name, I don't want to name any names, but there are some extremely large organizations that supposedly do this in their systems that still every manager runs a spreadsheet. And I'm looking at it going, how in the world is it?

This is why Forecast is always, you know, sales reps put it in and then the manager takes 20% off the top, throws it up to the director, and the director takes 20% off the top, throws it up to the VP, and the VP then goes to the board. And so by the time he gets to the board, it's so watered down, but it's an arbitrary thing. And it's not objective. It's just, eh, eh, eh. Exactly. So it's the right systems and tools and data and making sure it scales. And I think the last one, right, so is making sure that you've actually maybe enabled a methodology around it. Meaning, like, how do you think about calling a number in commit? How do you think about calling a number in best case? How do you think about calling a number as worst case?

And that's where you need, you know, trained, you know, sales enablement to make sure that everyone's, we follow MedPick at G2, but whatever methodology you're following, it needs to be consistent. So your definition of commit and my definition of commit, if they're not the same, you think commit is, like, it's the deal of signing, and I think commit is stage three plus. They're not forecasting the same way. So I think it's about your cadence, your tools, and your methodology, right, and getting all those aligned. What's the balance for you of objectivity versus subjectivity as it relates to it, right? Because it'd be great if it, predictability, objectivity, everything's locked in, we measure everything, but there's always the gut, there's always the, you know, the relationship or whatever.

So how do you balance, how do you balance that? I think it's a great question. I think the answer is it depends, and I think it becomes much more subjective as you move up market. So if you are looking within an SMB segment, as an example, that should be fairly mathematical, right? So if you think of your SMB business, the deal cycles are short, you have a lot of create and close, you can actually get it down to a science because you have a lot of volume, so you can apply that conversion to it. I think once you start getting up market, this is where things start getting tricky and dicey, like you just said, and that's where it goes into, do you have a champion? Is your champion someone that you can call at night and would they respond?

Don't call them all the time. And that's how you kind of get into that subjectivity. And some of it is, I think, the job of sales leadership to coach that, right? Of like, hey, we feel comfortable with you calling this and commit as long as you've met these criteria. So I think enterprise forecasting is a little bit like art and science combined because the deals are big and there's usually no backfill for them. And you bring up the one, like the word, even the word champion, the subjectivity of it. Yeah, can be a trigger word also for a lot of people. Hey, I thought you were my champion. Well, and also, it's the third most overused phrase in sales. Oh, for sure. Touching base and checking in are one and two.

Yes. I have a champion is three because it feels good to say I have a champion. Oh, I got a champion, I got a champion. But then when I peel back and I'm like, so what's your definition of champion? I'll ask organizations and I will literally in the same room ask the manager what their definition is and then the rep with their definition, vastly different. For sure. And there's coaches, there's fans, there's champions. And I tell them, I'm like, I don't care what your definition is, just have one. Yes. To your point of the common language. So at least when I say that word, you know exactly what it means. Yes. So have you, what's your definition of champion? To me, a champion is someone that is going to be there with you to the end of the deal to help you see it through.

Worth noting that your champion and your economic buyer, especially today in B2B SaaS, might not be the same person. Yep. Might not even be there next week either. Might not even be there next week. So, you know, this is where as a rep, you got a multi-thread. You have a champion and that's your champion. But you got to keep multi-threading within that account, especially if your champion and economic buyer are not the same person. Yeah, definitely. Then you got to make sure you're getting ahead of that game. But to me, a champion is someone that you could call. Like if I can call my champion at 9 o'clock at night being like, hey, this thing is stuck. To me, that's a champion. Absolutely. If your champion is someone you're sending emails to and you maybe get a response once every two weeks, that's not a real champion.

And then does your champion have power? If your champion is a wonderful person but can make no decisions and cannot influence, it's also still not a champion. It's a fan or a coach. It's a fan or coach or somebody else. But do they either – are they the EB or do they have enough influence with the EB to move your deal forward? That's what I always say. Like they got to be behind the door. Yes. When the decision is made, when the door is shut and the decision is being made, they have to be there because they have to be able to fight for you. For sure. Right? If you don't have somebody on the inside who can fight for you, you don't have a champion. For sure. So, all right. What's the one thing that they should do more of?

What do you wish sales teams would do more of? So, you know, I think this is an interesting one because I think it's going to be the opposite of what a lot of people would say. But I think we're hearing a lot about how AI is going to disrupt everything around us, right? AI can write the email. It can summarize the outreach. It can do all kinds of things. They have conversational intelligence. Wonderful. But AI cannot replace human connection. Correct. And especially in this moment in our go-to-market, B2B, SaaS history, human connection is everything and it's invaluable. You got to pick up the phone and you got to call your customers. You got to go fly and see them. You got to be in person with them because when push comes to shove, you're not going to remember the wonderful email you sent them or the call notes that you got, but they're going to remember, you know, when you sat down with them and had a real conversation with them where you tried to understand their pain and their customer journey and where you come into it.

So it's actually old-fashioned selling, I think, is going to come back in a really big way. I hope so. My fear, though, and this is what I'm trying to figure out, is that almost every entry-level position now can be done better with AI. AI can do it better. And so the question is, for somebody like you and me, I think AI is a godsend because it's a superpower. It's curiosity. Tell me more. And we have context. We have experience. Yes. So I can look at the answer and go, I don't know. Tell me more about that. Give me a different version of this. Why is that important? Who cares? Whereas all that grunt work that you and I did early in our careers to get to where we were gave us that context, all that's now being done by AI.

So my fear is, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but we have now a generation of kids that are coming out of a virtual world, a Zoom world, that they don't, you know, it's a transaction-based world. And so where do they learn the EQ skills to have those conversations, to make those memorable, so that I'm not reading off a list of qualifying questions, right? Like, as I talk to you. So that's my challenge is, and I know Snowflake is, or Snowflake, I know G2 is investing in AI coaches for the teams. Yes. But how are you addressing the EQ side of it with the team? Well, I mean, that's where good old-fashioned sales management and sales leadership comes in, right? Because at the end of the day, AI can make your job smarter, but the only way that AI doesn't replace your job is if you bring a human touch to sort of what you're doing and how you're selling.

And I think the proof will be in the results, right? So if you think about, like, the glide path of how this goes, obviously early disruption is going to be to those roles that we already know about, like our SDRs, our entry-level selling. But I think it's going to be, I don't think we're ever going to get there with enterprise selling because it's a very different game. But I think the proof will come in the results, the deals that are getting stuck, and the different outcomes people get when they actually do engage with a customer and pain. I actually think in the age of, I don't even want to say the age of AI, but in the age of AI, the most authentic thing you can do is be as real as possible because it's so easy to fake it.

It's so easy to fake it. And now it's, and there's something about AI, no matter what the message is or the email that I get, I always say I can, I still, maybe next year I won't, but whatever. But I can still tell that it's, there's something missing. And the only thing I come up with is, is it just doesn't have a soul. Yeah. And I don't know how to put my finger on it because it's a super personalized message. It's really relevant to me, but I'm like, ooh, something's off. It's a machine. At the end of the day, it's just a super machine. And people want it to be more than that. And it is very powerful. We just got to use it well. So we get to where we need to go faster. Exactly. All right.

Magic wand? Magic wand would be make pipeline a company level team sport. Right? I like it. So when you think pipeline, you always think of like sales. I mean, we both know this, but you can't create what you don't close. Right? Like you can't close what you don't create, actually. I said the other way. And so because of that, you got to make sure and you can't figure out within the quarter you don't have it because you've already missed the game. But I think the thing that people often miss is it's not just on sales. It's on marketing. It's on CES. It's even on ops. It's on everyone, especially going back to this human connection thing. The human connector that you have at every company, like good, old-fashioned, hey, who do you know?

Part of pipeline generation is very important. So if I could do one thing, magic wand, it would be focused on the human connection, but create your pipeline weekly and do it in the most cross-functionally aligned way for sales, marketing, CES. We all have the same definition of what pipeline even is. Right. Getting those silos down. All right, my question for you real quick, you have an interesting background that you come from accounting and risk management. So with as fast as things are moving right now, how do you, with your background of risk management and kind of what I would say is not exactly the most risk-taking backgrounds, how do you balance how fast things are evolving while staying in control at least a little bit of the risk factors?

Yeah, I think it's a great question. So the good news with growing up in consulting and private equity is that you get tested, kind of going back to the point you made on like you kind of grew up with the grunt work, right? You went through making sure you're taking measured bets and measured investments. But at the same time, not having been in tech for like 15 years, like things move fast, right? So I think for me, the way I test it is you have to be thoughtful. So in my mind, when I think AI, I don't want to be left behind and I don't want anyone on my team or my organization to be left behind. But we have to be thoughtful in how we use it, the use cases it deploys and the workflows that we bring into it.

AI just being the most recent example. But that's usually my, like, I want to make sure it's going to be a long time before I say that, hey, we don't need sellers in XYZ segment because AI is going to do that. That's the training. But then the tech is, hey, but we got to make sure we embedded within our RevOps workflows because otherwise, what's the point? Right. So. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Shefali, thank you so much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for joining. Cheers. Thank you. Absolutely. Great chatting. Hi. Hi, Dana. How are you? Good. How are you? Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. Thank you for having me. Of course. It's good to see you. You have a very interesting background that we're going to get into, and you have been in RevOps to start for some pretty interesting companies.

So I want to ask you about building from the ground up versus reverse engineering the mess. But before we get there, the relationship of sales and RevOps, what's the one thing you wish sales teams, reps, whatever, would stop doing? Stop doing? I think taking the backseat when it comes to building the top of funnel pipeline. Okay. I think the landscape of sales has changed drastically over, I would say, even in just in the last three to five years. And having the sales team, the account executives more engaged with the marketing team and the SDRs, I think is pivotal to the success of the and quality of the pipeline. Totally. And I think that over the years, there's been some more of the, like, taking the backseat, right?

Waiting for the meetings to be booked or waiting for the inbound lead. And I think we need to get back to that traditional model of where AEs are leaning into more of the top of funnel activities. Do you think it's just because of what we've done in this industry and we've overprocessed it and we've segmented the roles? Predictable revenue kind of, you know, it was great when money was free and it was a grow at all costs and nobody cared, right? But I think it almost did a disservice to the sales organizations because now it was like, okay, I got to do this prospecting stuff and let me get out of this role as fast as I can so I don't have to do it anymore. And I've never understood the mentality of a sales professional not being in control of their own destiny.

You know, I've always said, like, I want to bake my own cake. And whatever SDRs give me, whatever marketing gives me is the icing on that cake, is the cherries on that cake, is the extra side of cake. But I'm baking my cake because I would say it like if I was an AE, if I was a manager now and an AE sat in my office and said that the reason that they didn't hit their quota was because SDRs didn't give them enough leads, I think before that even got out of their mouth, I'd fire them. So, how do you bring it back, right? We've gone pretty far down the segmentation. AEs don't feel like they need to do it. So, how do you get a team that has been conditioned to expect leads, easy, to now buy into, especially from a rev ops standpoint?

You know, I think we need to leverage the systems that we are already using, engagement platforms, and make them multi-threaded internally in the organization. And make steps not just for the SDRs, but for the AEs, right? And really foster that collaboration between them, I think is probably one of the most important things to break that silo that we've created over the last few years. Do you have, like, a structure that you work at StrongVM, right? Do you have a structure that you almost force? Because I always find it also really interesting that we put these poor SDRs, 22-year-old kids with very limited business acumen, and they have to manage five AEs that all have different opinions, that all have different likes and different dislikes.

Like, one AE wants it qualified all the way to the end before, you know, so it just closes. Others are like, I'll take a meeting with a janitor, I don't care. And you're asking this 22-year-old kid to be able to manage all those relationships. So, what are you doing at the org to kind of foster that collaboration? You know, I think one of the things we need to do is really use, do training to foster these activities. So, anecdotally, recently, someone mentioned, an account executive at our org mentioned they don't cold call, that they haven't in a long time. And one of our super bright BDRs that recently joined the RevOps team said, I want to do an enablement session around cold calling. We're talking about someone that's been doing this maybe a year.

Yeah. Is, wants to train the seasoned AE on cold calling. Great. And so, I think it's that. It's just that. It's taking that part of that hustle back into overall across the roles in sales. That is, I think, is what's going to get us back. Well, you just hit a sword button for me. The hustle. I just feel that hustle's gone. I feel like the. I agree. I feel like the, you know, there's. We went and saw Glengarry Glen Ross, you know, a few, like about a month ago. And as cringy as that movie and that play is, it brought me back to kind of the essence of sales and the grind and the hustle. And I just feel like, unfortunately, I feel like we've just lost that. And I'm trying to figure out if it's a generational thing or if it's a structural thing or if it's, you know, just us as businesses, we can find a way to get back to it.

Or if it's just really hiring the people that have it. I think we operationalize so much of this business over the last, I would say, five to six years. It's recent. It's not even. We're not talking 20 years. Right. We've tried to build everything into systems and automation. And so we've created those silos. Right. And so I feel like everything is we're in this era of everything is coming back. Yes. Right. And I think in SaaS sales as well. Yeah. Because we I mean, we have so over engineered the sales process. It's I even my keynote, I position 2010 to 2022 is the golden age of sales. And I say, look, sorry, if you got into tech sales after 2010, I've been that hard. Like we've been able to get away with blasting out template emails, setting up disco calls to anybody with a pulse, droning through, you know, demos, offering a massive discount.

Like that's been sales. Yep. And now it's hard. And it's not their fault, by the way. Like I actually put it on us because it's like the people who bitch about the trophy generation. It's like, oh, all these kids want. Well, who gave them the trophies? We did. Yeah. So we got to get back to those fundamentals. I'm just curious what the fundamentals are anymore. That that the one the one I'm struggling with is because of how that fast things are moving. I'm like, well, we got to get back to the fundamentals because none of these kids know the fundamentals anymore. But the question now is, well, what are the fundamentals? We need to re-envision them. Yeah, I do. For today. And any idea on what you think one or two of them would be that we have to get back to?

I mean, EQ wise, but that's a broad topic. Is there something that you would say is critical for us to kind of refocus on? I think we need to bring heart back into sales. And it sounds really corny. I'm there with you. But I just think that that truly is where it lies. I call it the give a shit factor. Yeah. It's like, do you care? Exactly. If you care, like I said, sales isn't about convincing anybody of anything. It's about helping people solve problems or achieve goals, period. Yep. And if you're trying to convince somebody, you're doing it wrong. But if you believe in what you sell, it's just the transfer of enthusiasm. Yep. So what would you ask them to sort of stop doing? But what do you want them to do more of?

Yeah. You know, I think it loops right back to my stop, which is to be more creative. We know very well that all emails and even calls, they're going on deaf ears, right? And so what are we doing to actually land in people's, not even inboxes, in their like project roadmaps, right? More than anything. And so they need to be more creative. We need to work cross-functionally more and not just think of, I'm receiving things from across the organization, whether it's marketing product or SDRs. We need salespeople that are curious and want to lean in and collaborate across the aisle because really that's when I think we're going to see kind of a shift in selling. And that's another, again, curiosity.

You're hitting on all my hotspots here. You know, the curiosity I ask all the time is like, can you teach curiosity? Can you teach genuine curiosity? And I don't know. What are your thoughts? Like nature, nurture? You know, I think that curiosity has been like put at risk because of the, like so much of everything is on our phones, right? And so you get that instant gratification. And so people aren't thinking critically anymore. And I think that's why I love what I do, revenue operations, because it forces me to think critically. Yeah. Right? Absolutely. And so I think, I think it has to be a little bit of both. Like I think we all are born with a sense of an ability to want to be curious, but we also need to lean into it.

And I think the only way I've come across, like, because I think you're, I think you're either born genuinely curious or you're not, but I think you can become curious if you're interested in something. Yeah. But you have to be interested in something first. So it's like, we have, we have to figure out a way to tap into the interest for them to then foster the curiosity. It's like this AI topic. Yeah. Totally. Right? You have to be curious to it. You have to be open to it because if not, you're going to be left behind. Absolutely. And, and, and, and you're irrelevant too. Like if you just treat it as the answer engine that it is and cut and paste, why do I need the human involved in that? So that's the fear that I have.

All right. Magic wand. I would create the perfect ICP with a customer buying intent solution because that would coupled with AI is really where selling is going, right? There's all these tools that I've demoed recently. They all have their own flavor of how they identify your ICP. But truly taking that and buyer intent signals coupling with AI truly is, I think, where the SaaS sales industry is going. And I think it's just a matter of us figuring out how to not lose the human aspect of selling using all this technology. I agree. Like if we could all have like, you know, you've heard the stat that, you know, every one of us, there's only 5% of our addressable markets actually in market. Everybody else is at some level of it.

If you could really truly know who those 5% were or even who the top 20% were so you can nurture them to get to the 5%, then you could just focus all your efforts on that. And then everything else is marketing, right? Everything else is just marketing and nurture and brand awareness and everything else. But sales happens when it should. Yeah. Because I think a lot of what sales reps are doing right now is marketing, quite frankly. I think a lot of outbound should be considered marketing because it's not sales. Yeah. It's an impression point. It's something that, right? Yeah. I totally agree. I think gone are the days where you would build, you would back into, if I send this many emails, I'll book this many meetings and it'll generate this much pipeline.

I think those days are gone and it's just a different landscape. Yeah. All right. Let me ask you this question. You have five different roles of RevOps, right? Is that right? Eh. And most of them, have you started, have you been the main, like the originator of the RevOps team? So, in a couple of those roles. What do you find from the different roles that you've been in? What do you find is the consistent playbook for you that you know you have to do in the first time to get an order? And then where are the variables for you in each role? So, when you come into a new situation, is there a process you put in place? Is there kind of a 30, 60, 90 that you have? And what are the variables that you found in the different orgs?

You know, I think, so I've stayed true to my kind of interest in supporting cybersecurity organizations. Yep. So, I don't find myself stepping out of that too much. Yep. Right? But I will say, I think, like, where it really begins is, even if it's scrappy, is building a sales process from the beginning, defining your sales stages and actually leveraging the system to kind of start giving you that foundational data. So, in my most recent role, we were not using, we had tools, but when I joined, the team wasn't using them in any capacity that was going to be, give data that was going to enable the team to be successful. So, I think establishing a sales process that even at the beginning might be scrappy, I think it's the first thing I like to do.

And really, this might seem really, like, common sense, but making sure that people are sending order forms, not out of Google Docs, and like an actual document generator and e-signature solution, because that's really important. Yeah. Keep it off the local hard drive. You know, just those types of, like, really foundational things. But more than anything, building a sales process, you know, in these stages and defining them. Is there a consistent quick win that you look for to kind of build the credibility and trust as you're starting to do this? I think the thing that I do is not even a process or a system, it's listening to the leadership that I'm supporting and really taking that time to build that trust.

I think no matter what we do with systems, process, anything, it doesn't matter if you don't have the trust of your leadership team. And so, and I think the other aspect of it is being brutally honest, always, because that's the only way to get real results. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, it goes back to the people, the human connection. Well, Diana, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. It's a pleasure. Thank you. All right, Kyle. What's up, man? Keeping it going. Keeping it going. Keeping it going. All right. So, your question, I'm doing some research. ChatGPT has some fun stuff about you. Oh, really? I'm eager to know. You got some cool shit that you've worked on. Oh, thanks.

So, I thought it was kind of interesting in a lot of ways. Well, I'm glad you found it cool. But before that, let's get into, well, Kyle, a quick background just for the audience. I haven't been asking everybody else, but I'll ask you. So, you've got, because that's what, you had like five different titles. Yeah. So, you're over at Figma now. What's your role over at Figma? I do marketing operations, technology and systems. So, basically like all MarTech, bringing in MarTech, pretty much like for the marketing team. I'm the IC on the team that handles all, you know, lead scoring, any new marketing technology, working with sales to make sure they're following up with leads right, everything like that.

Fantastic. All right. So, let's start with the, what do you want sales reps to stop or sales teams to stop doing? Oh, to stop doing? Yeah, let's start with the stop one. The interesting thing about this question is I think there's things that I could reverse and I could do better. So, I'm just going to focus on what sales could stop doing. But just to be clear, I could do a lot better to help to support them with this. We all can. But from a marketing perspective with MQLs, and I think this has been every company I've gone to, there's just like a negative connotation with MQLs and sales reps are really quick to just say like, these leads are junk, these leads are shit, like why would I follow up with them?

But when you look at some of the conversations they're having or like the types of multi-threading they can do on these MQLs, it's really clear that sometimes they're just not looking fully into the picture of like what other engagement outside of marketing is happening on these leads. Like when you look at, you know, the product interaction at Figma, like product engagement is the biggest thing, right? Like what are people doing in the product? Of course, like they're interacting with marketing materials, which is engaging them and resurfacing them because of that. Well, how do, so let me ask you from an MQL because I'm right there. I was one of those reps, like my background's marketing, so I have such a healthy respect for marketing.

But the reason that most of the time the eye roll happens is because it's the bullshit trade show. It's the, you know, like Dreamforce is a hysterical example of this. You know, I'll walk through the halls, you know, the floor on Dream, and I'll just get people scanning my badge just because I'm walking by. Totally. Not because I'm having a conversation. And then you send this over to a reps, and then they're responsible to make these phone calls. They know they're bullshit. Yeah. They're looking for the needle in the haystack, but they'd rather make a cold call needle in the haystack than follow up on this crap because at least this is me doing it. So I think that's the perception. It's the trade show bullshit.

But when it comes to intent and product like, ooh, they're using this, is there still that hesitance to – because that looks – to me, that's like, holy shit. Like, you have a client who just did these things, and they're already working with this, and you're giving me insights here, and I can now make that conversation. Like, that to me would be gold. Yeah. So do you feel there's still a hesitance just because it bundles under the MQL umbrella? I think so, but I also think it's just a lack of process on our behalf, on the operations team's behalf. Like, we haven't gotten to the point where we're really structured with the intelligence we're providing reps. Like, hey, here's all the signals on this person and on this account.

Like, look through these signals, then go to this tool and do this, and then go to that tool and do that. And it's like, why aren't we just doing the research for you? And that's – I mean, like, we're a little bit behind, and of course, like, that's what we can use AI for. And, like, the genius of it is, like, let's just do some of the work for you, present you with this really solid intelligence, and you'll know why you should be reaching out to this person. Of course, maybe they went to that trade show. Right. But look at what their account's doing. They're, like, they're really hitting these product features that we know are turning into more expansion, more seats, things like that. Yeah, I think that's the balance, right, is the day – I mean, is spoon-feeding it to the rep.

Totally. Versus, you know, because I go back to, like, if you get something for free, you don't put a lot of value on it, right? Right, so you got to work for – so how do you balance – because I love the mentality of, like, A, we got to make it easier. Because if you – we're – sales reps are coin-operated. Yeah. Like, keep it simple, stupid. You make me do anything more than a click or two, I'm not going to happen. Totally. So how do you balance that with, like, you're still going to put in some work so that you have the context around this information so that you can use it. Do you – are you on your journey to figuring out what that is? Yeah, we're definitely on the journey. And what I realized when I first started at Figma, the incentives for sales and marketing were kind of off.

Like, I think this is a trend everywhere. Like, marketing is incentivized on MQL production. Like, hit that number no matter what. That's your top of funnel goal. Hit this number. Because what we see is MQL generation is, like, correlated to pipeline generation. Not always the case, but, like, that's kind of what it is. And then sales is, like, no, we want to generate meetings with, like, decision makers at these companies. Why would we follow up with those ICs you're sending us? And I think we're really starting to be on the way with how we help sellers get this information. The difficult thing is, like, how do we know we're presenting the right information to them? And how do we know what's the most important thing?

And this is where, like, combining a lot of teams together is how we do this. Like, we need data science involved. We need sales involved. We need sales enablement involved. We need operations involved. Everyone has to be on the same page. And incentives have to be somewhat linked to make sure that we're all working towards the same thing. Is that, you know, kumbaya, I'd love it, where we would all get together as teams. But is this more from a leadership standpoint, a management standpoint? Or do you try to really get the teams cross-functionally working together? We're really trying to get the teams together now. I think that's, it's just been, like, a learning, you know, finding, like, marketing ops will work in a silo with, you know, marketing.

And then sales will work in a silo. And you're not really getting the full feedback loop of, like, okay, this person didn't work. Let's understand why. And we'll start to bring that into our modeling, you know? I've been recommending to almost every client that I work with that they should turn their sales orgs into a sales lab. Yeah. Where once a week get together, the whole GTM function, pick a problem, I don't care what it is. Yeah. Break up into little teams and hackathon, like a sales hackathon, basically. Whoever fixes that problem and comes up with a better way of doing it than we're doing it now wins. And then next week we apply it to see if it makes an impact. And we talk about it the next Friday and say, did that work, right?

No? All right, what's the next thing? Picking it and just keep iterating and iterating and iterating. Because right now it's moving so fast that whatever you decide six months, two months from now, it's not going to be relevant anymore. So if you're not iterating constantly, it's just a – and that's where I think you can actually breed that relationship. Absolutely. And it's always a growing thing, but Figma is such a volume game, you know? So it's like we're all so guilty of like, hey, we're just sending you a ton of volume. You're going to get lucky with some of them, but now we have to think about quality too, right? Yeah, you got to get down to that. All right, so now what's the one thing you want them to do more of?

Oh, when I first started at Figma, we had this third-party tool for account intelligence. And the person who owned it left the company, and it was kind of the standing tool that was there. And when I started, I was like, who's using this tool? Like, there's no owner of it. Like, it's not being used. And I went in, and there was this one sales rep who was like a nerd in it. Like, they were like the top user, the only person using it. And I was like, I got to check this person out in data, see what's happening. Conversion rate, way above everyone else. Pipeline, way above everyone else. They've moved up through the company like faster than anyone I've seen through the sales org. And it was because they were like really interested in what the account was doing.

So they were getting MQLs. They're like, cool, I'm going to dive into this account, see what the account's doing. What are they doing in product? Who should I reach out to other than this MQL? They were killing it. And I wish more sales reps would have somewhat of an interest in ops and like understand, like, these are the tools you have accessible. Obviously, like, we don't want you to have to go into all these different tools. But if you're interested, it's going to work. And that was proof. Like, this person was killing it compared to everyone else. You know, most sales reps aren't the scientists, right? They typically are the artists in a lot of ways, at least in their head. But, man, the more you can get into the data, the more you can get into the insights.

It's that whole work hard and smart, right? Like, people say work smart, not hard. Shut up. You have to work your ass off. Yeah, you have to do. But by looking at the data, I use a simple example. Like, I knew my equation when I was brand new in sales. Like, I didn't make $400 a week. Got me eight meetings a month. Got me four proposals. Got me two pieces of closed business. An average deal size is $3,500. And I just ran that because I just brute force. And now looking back on it, I'm like, shit, I really wish I split tested this. And I did 100, 100, 100 and figured out which one worked versus just brute force effort. So, the more you look at it, the better you can get while still putting that effort on top.

Totally. And I think we can obviously do a better job at, like, giving reps a better idea of how to speak to this person. But the reps that are, like, really personalizing messaging and, like, tailoring it instead of, like, hey, I saw you attended this conference. Do you want our enterprise plan? Like, the ones that are, like, really tailoring it to, like, hey, thanks for joining this conference. You know, you're running into some issues in the product in this place. Like, we've helped other companies like you with this. Like, those reps are doing so well. All right. Magic wand? Ooh, magic wand. I'm going to try and give something that hasn't been said. I would love to wave a magic wand. And then everyone, one, everyone's looking at the same data.

Sales, marketing. Right now, it's, you know, everyone might have a different page that they're looking at or something. But also, clear alignment between, like, all GTM teams, customer success, marketing, sales. Like, we're all trying to, you know, drive more revenue. That's what we don't talk enough about is CX. Yeah. But that's for another podcast. There's an upside of CX. Our CX team does a pretty good job at driving revenue. And, you know, like, we get a lot of people who are coming in, support requests, hey, this isn't working. And then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, hey, you're actually should be on our next plan. Let's send you over to sales. Like, they're doing a great job at that.

And I think, like, if we were all incentivized in the same way, it would be fantastic. All right. I mean, I got to ask you. Your background is cool. You're a composer, music for mobile games and concept art. Ruishi City? Is that you? No. Or Moon Cave? These aren't part of your, because you're SongTrader's in your background, right? Yeah. So, I worked at SongTrader. They're a music licensing platform. They're a music licensing platform. But you're not on the composer side of the house? I used to make music, but I didn't make that music. So, this is the chat GPT is wrong on. Because I've looked at it, and your name's right on it. It's actually in YouTube, too very specific, your exact name. Maybe there's a really talented Kyle Ketchum out there that I need to meet.

Moon Cave in Ruishi City. It's the first secrets, concept art, and film scoring, and showcases the ability to create immersive soundscapes. So, I was curious how that's going to be. If there's royalties for that, you can send them to me. I was going to say. Well, so, for your music background. So, where do you pull from your background on Reb Ops Night right now? As far as, what was the light bulb for you that you said, like, this is the career I want? When I first started in my career, I'm from Vancouver, Canada. And Hootsuite was kind of like Vancouver's tech baby. And I was super lucky. Right out of college, I got a job at Hootsuite working in marketing automation. No idea what it was. I had absolutely no idea.

I'm sure, like, no one has an idea of what marketing automation is when they get into it. But I got that job and I was, like, working on lead scoring models and building integrations and just, like, building cool workflows and all of that. And I just love building shit. So, as soon as I got into that, I was like, this is exactly what I want to do. Like, time would just fly by and the day would fly by and I've just been building stuff all day and working with different smart teams. So, yeah, that was – it didn't take long working in marketing automation at Hootsuite for me to be like, this is it. It's funny how that one job, that one boss, that one career, like, kind of kicks in. You're like, holy shit, I didn't even know this was a thing.

Yeah, and I fell into it. I had no idea. I was just like, I don't know what I want to do. I know, like, I dabbled in, like, development and kind of, like, I was more technical, definitely. And then I also had worked in different marketing roles as internships and whatnot. And then the two kind of combined together and I was like, bingo, that's it. Love it. Awesome, Kyle. Well, thank you so much for coming there. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. All right, awesome. And welcome to Make It Happen Monday Podcast. How are you doing? Good, good. Great to be here. Yeah, I did all my prep and then you had to bail. And so, I was like, all right, he's gone, but now you're back. You know, I like to keep things interesting.

I love it. I love it. Well, let's dive right in. So, we're talking – and now, what's your function at Clay, just so everybody knows? So, at Clay, I lead our GTM operations team. Yep, okay. So, let's start with the thing that you wish sales teams reps – you can take leadership reps, or whatever angle you want on this – would stop doing? That's a great question. I think I can answer this in a lot of ways, but I think the top thing I wish sales reps would stop doing is expecting a fully, like, prepared, like, roadmap for how they sell. I think with, like, AI and how fast, like, things are changing, the, like, reality is, as a rep, you do have to make some, like, level of decisions like yourself and kind of have to be creative.

I think from my perspective, what I've seen is that the, like, reps at Clay that do best are the ones that don't look for a, like, playbook. They, like, reinvent the playbook or they, like, they actually call out what they feel doesn't make sense. And they're kind of, like, pushing the, like, water team to, like, be better. So, how do you balance that, like – because I agree, like, let's break things, right? Move fast, break things, see what works. And Clay, I think, is a perfect example of that. But how do you do that from an ops standpoint and to maintain consistency and structure so that it can be repeatable? Like, how do you balance that? It's a great question. And this is, like, something that we have put a lot of, like, thought into because our, like, sales reps are very good at using Clay.

You know, they like to do their own thing sometimes. They like to, like, go and, like, build their, like, own workflows. And the approach I've come to kind of try and, like, go with is we implement a lot of, like – a lot of, like, guardrails. And we ensure that, like, everything they do is tracked. And so, if they want to go and sequence a lead, they can go ahead and do that. You know, it'll be tracked. We can tell if they reply. If it works, great. We can, like, you know, we can go and, like, replicate that across the team. The other, like, side of this is having some set of rules around when you can, like, reach out to somebody and ensuring that those rules are, like, hard-coded. Those, like, rules are, like, hard-coded in your CRM, ideally.

Where if there's a lead that a rep shouldn't sequence, you shouldn't have to, like, rely on them, like, not doing it. It shouldn't be possible for them to do it. And so, we try and strike a balance that way. And then two is we give our reps, like, access to a lot of tooling and data. So, they can all access their call transcripts, like, you know, like, if they want to have those pushed to a clay table that, like, that is built by them and that they've kind of put in, like, work into, they can do that. We do a lot of pre-meeting prep and, like, post-call follow-ups and a few reps want to do their, like, own. And, like, as a result of that, we've learned a lot of new things that we've put into the, like, standard notes just from having, like, reps do their own and, like, go and experiment.

Love it. Okay. What do you want them to do more of, sales teams? So, this may be a little bit controversial, but I would love if our sales reps came to us with more, like, vague problems. I think a lot of the time when we get a request, they've kind of already either, like, thought of a solution or they'll let, like, resentment just kind of, like, build up instead of saying, hey, I don't know what the answer is, but this is a problem. And we can kind of go. Interesting. Because a lot of people are, like, don't just come with problems, come with solutions. You're saying just come with a problem. Yes. Come with a problem. But I think it's because of the nature of clay. Yes. That you can solve almost any problem.

So, be as vague, let's dive into it, right? Yes. I get it. Okay. Exactly. Love it. All right. Magic wand? I think if I had a magic wand, really what I would make happen is reps would never have to go into Salesforce or into their, like, CRM and, like, manually, like, add data. I think there's a constant tension between, like, finance teams and, like, data teams want more data and more reporting. They want to know, like, all the things about a deal, what were the blockers, who showed up as competition. But it is a kind of, like, drag on reps time. And so, we try and, like, automate that. But current state is there is still some amount of fields that you can't automate. Yeah. Yeah. Your lips to God's ears, whatever they say on that one, man.

Because I don't ever want to update CRM ever again. All right. Last question for you. You talk a lot about RevOps going from order takers to strategy. How do you get, you know, and it's, I look at RevOps in the similar realm as enablement. It's inherently, or at least it's grown up as a very reactive thing, right? Executives are like, go fix that. Go do this. Go do that. How do you transition from the order taker and reactive nature to becoming a true strategic seat at the table when it comes to the executive suite? Yeah, so, the way I think it starts is by being very curious about what's happening in the business beyond your team and your responsibilities. Like, RevOps has a sort of, like, a kind of, like, a, like, a, like, very deep view of the business across, you know, from, like, product data to, like, marketing and sales.

And we see how the, like, sausage is made, you know? And I think having a deep understanding of where the, like, the, like, business, like, as a whole is going is really important. And I think the other piece is, yes, in, to a large degree, the work is, like, naturally reactive. But in a lot of ways, it doesn't have to be. I think, you know, like, every company is different. But there's a common set of, like, challenges that you know you'll hit. As you hire more people, you'll need more, like, playbooks and more, like, repeatability. You'll need more training. As you enter, like, new markets, you'll need new, like, reporting and you'll need to build out capacity modeling and so forth. And I think if you really understand where the, like, business is going and where the department heads that you have to work with, what's, like, top of mind for them, you really gain, like, trust.

And I think the other part of it that I would be remiss not to, like, mention is you do have to be responsive. And I mean, you know, you have to make the, like, urgency of your, like, marketing leader, like, it has to be, like, you have to kind of, like, feel it as well. If you're not, like, invested in the problems and pain that, like, they see, it's going to be hard for you to gain their trust. I appreciate that. Yeah. That's the challenge is, like, how do you, how do you have that appreciation for those challenges without being in those roles? But I think RevOps has such a unique view of it because you see it from a data layer as opposed to the subjective feeling layer of it. Yeah. And you do need both, right?

Yeah, absolutely. You have to go and, like, maybe you can, like, shadow a rep or go see how marketing builds campaigns. I've seen, I've seen a lot of teams start to do these, like, these, like, audits of the, like, manual work that the teams are doing and really go through and document, like, every step and see where can we improve things, where can we make things, like, more, like, more efficient or just better, like, less manual. Love it, man. Awesome, awesome. Well, been a pleasure, man. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming on and good luck at Clay, man. Thank you. You guys are a rocket ship. Appreciate it. 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.

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