Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to Founder-Led, featuring founders scaling 7 and 8 figure companies who share the strategies and mindset driving real growth.
Brought to you by LinkedIn Growth Engine. We help established recruitment and staffing firm owners land new clients from LinkedIn by turning their executive content and insights into a trust building inbound lead engine.
We partner with $1M to $20M+ agency founders to build visibility, authority, and trust that drives pipeline, without turning you into a “content creator.” Over the last 12 months, we've helped drive $20M+ in booked revenue from LinkedIn.
If you're done relying on referrals and want prospects coming in pre sold, you're in the right place.
welcome to founder LED every episode
I talk to operators building real companies
to learn what's actually driving their growth
I'm Rohan founder at Frontier Content Studio
where we help business leaders
become the obvious choice in their market
through LinkedIn now let's get into it
welcome to founder LED
where we sit down with some of the sharpest founder
operators to learn what's working in their business
today
today's guest is Richard Ellis
CEO of Revenue Innovations
a revenue enablement consultancy
helping b to B companies
fix the disconnect across sales marketing
customer success and channel strategy
Richard brings deep enterprise experience from roles at
SAP and Corporate Visions
and a founder operator lens on what actually breaks
as go to market teams scale
Richard also hosts some goodness
a podcast built around real conversations
with business leaders and operators
so if you care about go to market alignment
sales leadership
and what it really takes to build a revenue engine
that works across teams this one's for you
Richard welcome to the show
well thank you
it's really a pleasure to be here
Richard would love if you can share
you know the highlights of your founder story
maybe some of the origins there
that LED you to starting Revenue Innovations
sure well
you know my background
I'm an engineer by education
but quickly found myself
in the enterprise software market
at the front end of the business
doing value engineering work
sales work sales strategy
sales operations
and just found a passion around growing revenue
and long story short that LED me to uh
becoming a career consultant
in that world of growing revenues
for the past you know 15
18 years and had a opportunity and
and just pleasure to serve
many clients across industries
and a few years ago about four years ago now
we just noticed there's a time
and a need in the market
to do things a little bit differently
to really adapt
to the modern complexities of b to B buying behaviors
I selected a couple of partners to
to help me found revenue innovations
so that we could really lean in to the um
you know the new dynamics in the b to B market
and specifically go to market um
and and address those needs for clients okay
yeah I think it'd be
important to maybe zoom out and talk about
you know what does rebops mean today given
you know technology shifts that are happening
you know a lot of the AI
kind of like revolutions are happening around
the corner so
maybe
provide a concise definition that you might provide to
on your sales calls
when folks just need a bit of like that 30,000 foot
definition
and then we'd love to get into your core methodology
and what that means yeah sure
well
I like that you started off with the right phrase or
or terms Rev ops or revenue operations
that is certainly a trend that uh you know
the market has noticed over the past few years
whereas it traditionally was sales ops
sales methodologies sales training
right now
there's a real need in the market to think about it
broader than just sales
and think about it more broadly
in terms of your whole go to market engine
so not just sales but marketing sales
customer success
your channel team and your channel partners
all those customer facing resources
and so we look at whether it's revenue operations
or revenue methodology
it really needs to consider all of those functions
and align to the way companies
and buyers want to buy from you
want to partner with you
when you think about the framework
that you have found to work
having worked with the clients you've uh worked with
talk a bit about that give framework that you
that you've developed
and what are the key differentiators there
and yeah I would love if you can provide some
some detail around how that works in practice
absolutely and before I get to the answer
of give that is the name of our methodology
let's talk about just a little bit the problem to solve
right when you think about the go to market engine
traditionally there's been a lot of silos
you know in there and you've seen
you know lots of firms and researchers talk about the
the sales and marketing divide
you know so that's one
you know area where marketing
you know
has their own perspectives in terms of positioning
and market awareness and demand Gen
and a lot of times you'll find that they're
kind of throwing the ball over the wall
to sales
and then now sales has to catch that ball and say
am I gonna accept this lead
is it a quality lead
and there's a lot of finger pointing right uh
you'll see some chasms in organizations
where marketing will
be creating materials and assets for the sales team
and they're frustrated cause the sales team says
I don't wanna use this
it doesn't align with the way I'm talking to my clients
or what my clients wanna hear from me
so there's been that very traditional
Silo and breakdown between marketing and sales
that companies are starting to really recognize
and get better at addressing
but there's still an opportunity to address
that in a more cohesive way
but then there's also
the next handoff is between sales and customer success
or customer or or service delivery right
those that are implementing your solution a very
you know typical
challenge that we'll see in the market
is that sales has set expectations
on value delivery they've sold the deal
with the promise of certain value drivers
you know delivering these outcomes
and that message those priorities
don't get translated efficiently or effectively to the
the customer service team right
so they're all just making assumptions
you know kind of blindly going forward
implementing the solutions and maybe not guiding the
the customer
to use the solution in a way that gets those outcomes
that they've been promised right
so there's a breakdown there
and then you finally have kind of your partner
ecosystem that in many cases
we're finding is just not being addressed at all
in terms of cohesiveness of revenue methodology
positioning mind share differentiation
all of that good stuff
that marketing and sales should be focused on
and then now of course customer success
then you've got these partner managers
and the one step
remove channel partners themselves that
that are very disconnected
mm hmm okay
and so with that if you want me to go into kind of
what we have developed to solve that
I can or if you have specific questions
you wanted to drill down there yeah
would let would be great if you can
now that you've identified the problem with the silos
and you know
the value drivers not really meeting say
what is hand it off
or what the expectations of the delivery team are
it'd be helpful to know how you create that alignment
and just a better more cohesive customer experience
based on the methodology that you've developed
so I will say that you know
there's
there's been a lot of methodologies over the years
right we've been around and so
you know whether it's spin selling or solution selling
or value selling lots of good stuff
challenger sale right
and every one of them had
you know merit and continues to have some goodness
you know built into that
that does good things if you implement it and adopt it
well what we're finding is that those tend to be linear
based and based on kind of old sales motions
that are very linear of
you know you've got to qualify the deal in or out
make sure it's worth your time
you've got to you know
then discover and do your appropriate solutioning
and cast that vision and craft the proposal
all of that good stuff right
well today
that sales motion is not necessarily as linear
as it used to be right
it it's
it tends to be just kind of a messy
you know loop
and different stakeholders
getting involved in different times
throughout that sales process
and so there's a couple of problems that that we
we solved with give
one is we want it to be applicable across the silos
2 we want to recognize
the messiness and the complexity of today's
buying behaviors
and the fact that the buying committees are larger
and so we've developed give that stands for G I V E
and so it's real
four components that come together to really address a
a lot of those dimensions
one is give the G stands for god guided decision making
so you need to in your sales process
in even up funnel
in your marketing work in customer success
when you're trying to grow your accounts
you need to guide the customer
in their decision making process
and why they should be doing something different
or doing something next
or doing something more with you
and why now what is that urgency and why with you
what is your differentiation
and so you really need to make sure that
you're guiding that decision making process
and there's that external component of why now
and why you but there's also an internal component
where many buyers you know
they haven't purchased this type of solution
or platform over and over
like you have sold it right
and so you need to help them navigate the
internal machinations of how do you secure budget
how do you justify budget
how do you get all of these stakeholders on board right
so that guidance
of the decision making process is Paramount
the I stands for insight and so today
whatever methodology you wanna call it
whatever methodology you wanna use
you have to be
in a position of providing insight to your buyers right
there's plenty
of research out there from Gartner and Forrester
that shows that you know
every buyer is much more educated
before you even show up and they're
they're far down the decision making path
before you show up
so you can't play 20 questions with them
and you can't waste the executives time
of what keeps you up at night right
what are your big pain points
you need to get that information
but you need to lead with credibility
and test some assumptions
and lead with insight and I always like to say
you know um
you need to help them identify blind spots
what are they not seeing right
tell them something they don't know
litmus test of mine is
whenever I meet with an executive
would he have paid for that meeting right
did he get value just in our discovery conversation
because I LED with some insight
I shared some trends
some implications going on in their industry
so your process
and your methodology needs to include selling
and leading and engaging with insight
so that's what the I is the V then is value
now value in you know
has been I I would say
a big trend in a good way over the last several years
people are more value oriented
but what I will say is that a lot of times
companies can be a little bit short sighted
in terms of value
and just really relegate that to business
case development you need the ROI
you need to build the business case
you need to connect the value of your solution yeah
but really today that's table stakes
and so
what we're seeing is you need to not only do that
but you need to provide value in every interaction
of the sales process especially when you have Forrester
coming out with a study that says
75% of executives
would prefer to buy without talking to a sales rep
at all right
so when you get that privilege to talk to somebody
you need to really be insightful
you need to provide value in that conversation
and and a quick example is discovery
a lot of times you know
the discovery is so self focused self centered
I'm trying to understand your pain point
so I can sell you the right thing right
diagnose before we prescribe
but really there that's a great opportunity to provide
insight into where the market's going
where technology's going
what are some things that they haven't considered
where it may have served them well the last five years
but going forward
it's not gonna serve them well at all
and they need to pivot right
and so in those early stage discovery processes
how are you equipping your team to provide value
and so uh
so we think of value is a key component one of the four
but it's a lot more strategic and holistic
than just a value prop at the end of the day
and then finally E
stands for empowering
or equipping your buyer to sell on your behalf
I think we've we've seen this a lot as well
a pervasive trend of the buying committees
getting larger
and different studies show different numbers
but it's anywhere between
you know you'll see reports from 9 to thirteen
in complex b to B sales
nine to 13 different people with different budgets
different priorities different objectives
different interests different biases
getting involved
and potentially getting in the way of your deal
and so does your methodology
include equipping your rep to equip their stakeholder
their buyer
to go sell on your behalf when you're not in the room
mm hmm and I would submit that no
a lot of times they aren't
and so we like to really partner with marketing
as an insight architect and an insight engine
to also not only create assets for the sales team
but also assets for that seller
to provide to our champions
our sponsors
to sell on our behalf and convince that CEO
to convince that CFO
convince the CSO that this is the right move for them
and so that's give G I V E yeah
I I really like that
I like how uh
holistic it is and
you know
the key common thread there is leading with value
like I heard that multiple times throughout this thread
where you know
now so many people are able to do so much more research
there's so many more touch points
they're able to pre educate
cause so much more information
and intelligence
is available for them to make an informed
buying decision yeah
um yeah
I really like the way you've presented this
so let's I'm curious to know
I mean you have a podcast as well
how are some of the businesses that you work with
how are they thinking about providing that education
and value up front
maybe bubbling it up into social or LinkedIn
or whatever it might be
where a lot of these buyers and decision makers are
I was just reading a sales
like a an executive sales report from Hubspot
and they said that one of the most
most important channel right now
that's also the most effective is
is social selling right
compared to other channels
say email or events in terms of response rates
the the quality of people they're able to connect with
and identify and have conversations with
and then ultimately
it's now a key channel to have a direct relationship
and actually close deals and revenue
so my question to you is how has social selling
perhaps through LinkedIn become available
and become effective as part of this process
sure uh
I I will say that um
you know the
the old days of relationship selling
where people buy on trust
um it's
it was kind of out of favor for a while
right and you need to
you know sell value and sell your
solution and all of that good stuff
it's kind of coming back because of the noise of AI
and automation
and all this digital stuff that's thrown at us right
and I I think
where I see sales
and reps and teams do a really good job of
using social is like LinkedIn
sharing thought leadership and perspectives around
you know what's going on in the market
in this specific industry that you're serving
how is technology changing
and it's changing so quickly now
that might impact businesses in new and unique ways
that maybe they haven't considered right
and so when you leverage LinkedIn as kind of a um
you know brand builder
a personal brand builder for yourself
and to generate some thought leadership
we're finding that in outreach
executives are more quick to go see
does this guy or gal do they live on LinkedIn
are they even present on LinkedIn
what are they saying
and they'll do some quick checking to see are you legit
are you trustworthy
do you kind of know your stuff before they take a call
and so I think that's a real opportunity for uh
sellers to lean into is is building more personal uh
brand awareness through their
their social channels yeah
I think Hubspot also published a stat that
only 1% of the people on LinkedIn
are posting
at least once per week
so have some level of consistency
so that seems crazy low but isn't that yeah
I think it's about maybe 2 to 3% now
that's over the past two to three years
like it starts up to I believe it
I believe it it it's
it's been you know
early on LinkedIn was kind of your online resume right
and then it was okay this is my networking
you know app and uh
and and now it's kind of turned into more of
you know that well
is it a lead source and a lead gen engine for me
but if you don't have you know
some activity on there to break through the noise
and come across you know
trustworthy and experienced and credible
you're gonna miss out on the opportunities that it does
you know bring you yeah
and so just leading to that
you know AI is obviously coming up more and more
in these conversations
I'm sure the conversations you're having
you've got to have you know
very clear POV now in terms of Brevops plus AI
what does that even mean so
maybe
talk a bit about the conversations that you're having
when when this comes up
and how you're starting to see teams operationalize AI
within workflows within teams
within the text deck yeah
there's a few things that I would highlight
one is I'm a guitarist just a hack
not a great guitarist but I love to play guitar
and so I I like to think of the analogy of
AI as being an amplifier
and so it can amplify noise and ugliness
it can scale your ineffectiveness
or it can amplify good stuff right
and so many companies and sales leaders
marketing leaders are finding that just throwing an AI
tool or a set of AI
tools on top of a broken process is not the answer
right you really need to fix or re
look at your underlying workflows
the data etcetera
to really get all the goodness out of your AI tool set
and um going with that
we like to think of AI
as really being more of a compass and not an autopilot
and so what that means is you still
where I see it used most effectively
and teams getting the best out of it
is where there's still that human
judgment component applied to it
so you can't trust everything it says
you can't purely automate everything
cause the data is not always right
but if you have the right interaction
points of human judgment and human application
then it can do really cool things
and help you scale your efficiency and effectiveness
yeah okay
I like that I really like that analogy where yeah
it really is an amplifier
it can amplify a clear signal or a distorted signal
so it's important to get that absolutely
underlying data structure
and kind of like the people
operations really dialed in
so now I'd like to just get practical and
cause we have many folks listening in
who are operators building their businesses
and they're not even aware of some of the common
mistakes they might be making
so based on what you are seeing on the ground
what are some of the most common mistakes
you see teams making
as they try to modernize their revenue function
or the Rev ops function yeah
uh that's a great question
so and there's so many things that we could get into
one of one of the things that I would just say is that
I think there's an under appreciation
right now in the cost of inaction
there there's a lot of testing of AI or hey
we're gonna throw this AI new
this new AI tool at this problem
and then see what happens
which is great but
you know many leaders that I'm talking to today
they're kind of questioning
do I bring in some outside help from some consultants
or you know
do we invest in a new methodology or approach
or reengineer our processes
versus just see if this new AI app is gonna help us
and those are hard and tough questions
they don't always have the same answer
but I would say that the real issue
is not doing anything right
I'm a big fan of failing fast
and so if you have the right spirit of throwing AI
on top of broken processes
isn't going to help use that as a lens to say
let's quickly reanalyze and rethink our workflows
and the tool set to match
and let's make some decisions and let's test it out
and let's see what works
and let's be prepared to pivot
we don't all have the answers
AI tools are changing you know
by the week it seems like right
there's a new cloud capability that just came out
and you're just like oh my gosh
this is just happening so fast
and you can't just get into analysis paralysis
or just a wait and see
I'm gonna wait and see where this settles down
no you pick something
go for it apply it
and then just have a good mechanism in place
and a governance in place to make sure you understand
if you're getting the value out of it
and then be prepared to pivot if you're not
so that would be the one thing is just you gotta move
you gotta pivot with the market
and see what works for you
the going along with that is
I would just say
systems and processes are often underappreciated
with respect to the new AI apps
and so just I've said it before here and other places
I'll say it again just throwing AI tools on top of
you know a broken foundation or just add a problem
generally speaking is not a great strategy
and so really if you're thinking about increasing the
you know pipeline
or improving pipeline health or market awareness
really think about the problem to solve
the underlying processes and workflows and the people
as well as the tool set
don't just get enamored with the latest AI
answer that says it's gonna solve all the problems
yep I really like that
I just listened to a podcast around Spacex
and Elon Musk and basically
their algorithm for how they move so fast
but also how they're able to just move so effectively
right and have real outcomes
one of the things they talk about is really
finding the constraint and being so laser focused on
a particular constraint within the supply chain
or in manufacturing or whatever it might be
and then just that and then being the hammer
and throwing yourself at that particular thing
and he'll actually participate in things like
daily stand UPS and bringing more resources
and bringing leadership to make sure that
that constraint is solved
and then just move on to the next constraint
so I like that idea of being so laser focused on
what is the job to be done
what is the taking action
what is the job to be done
let's make sure we solve that
and then move to the next constraint
instead of
increasing your surface area for figuring out
of what you might want to do
and that can lead to that paralysis
so I think that's a great point
yeah and you know
going back to my engineering hat or background
I'm a big fan of like the father of quality engineering
Deming you know
and his plan do check act cycle right
uh that's decades old
but we can we can apply that now with
you know any kind of AI driven project or new process
you know let's plan what it is
let's go do it let's check to see if it's working
and then let's act based on what we find out
is working or isn't and adjust
yeah that's great
so Richard one question I like to ask our guests
as we wrap it up here is
if you could put a message on a billboard and
you know a busy intersection that people would see
you know founders and operators would see all the time
what is a message that you wanna
get out into the market
I would say that if I could just make it brief
AI should make us more human
not less we should use AI to do the heavy lifting
so that we can focus more on peer to peer
and human connection
and I think there's a real hunger for that in today's
digital world
that's great I completely agree
uh it should allow us and give us the tools to
to be more of ourselves and be more human to each other
and so
I think that's a great way to end our conversation
Richard thank you so much for joining the podcast today
well it's been an absolute pleasure
thank you and I'd like to extend a uh
an offer for you to join us on our podcast
if you're willing that would be great
let's make it happen alright
sounds good alright take care