Forget alignment, just agree on this

In this episode, we want you to forget all about the word alignment. Because even if you do achieve it, it won't drive growth on its own. Alignment should be an outcome, not a tactic.

In this episode, we explain why the classic concept of alignment is broken and what 3 things you should have your team focus agree on instead to drive efficiency.

Creators and Guests

Host

Mikkel Plaehn

Marketing leader & b2b saas nerd

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

TRF XX - Forget Alignment Audio
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[00:00:00]

Introduction
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Toni: Hey everyone, this is Tony Holbein. You are listening to the Revenue Formula. In today's episode, we're going to talk about alignment and you should immediately forget about that word altogether. Instead we're going to talk about three things that you actually need to agree on across your go to market team, and then you will drive efficiency and alignment as an outcome.

Enjoy.

Mikkel: So Tony. 20 minutes late. I feel like we used to be really aligned.

Toni: That was a quick quick one. I

Mikkel: just want to get going now. It's been 20 minutes. I've been sitting in the studio just looking at this episode. It's so awesome. We just got to get it in recording. I mean, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. So today. We are going to talk about one of my most hated subjects,

Toni: alignment.

Yeah, why is it, why is it so hated actually?

Mikkel: I don't know, it's just, I'm tired of that word, word. I think it's the word, right? You don't go [00:01:00] home to your wife and say, so let's talk a little bit about how aligned we are and how we can improve going forward to hit our goals. It's, it's just not. It's not really it.

That's not it. So, I, yeah, for me it's just, um, I, it's one of those words. I mean, this

Toni: could be a cool, boring episode to talk about while you need to meet more often, and to talk more often, and to coordinate more, and to make sure your goals are shared, and then, you know, need to collaborate a little bit more.

But

Mikkel: knowing us, that's not what we're gonna do. We're not gonna go that route. At all. Also because the title is like, Forget Alignment.

Toni: Is it going to be the title?

Mikkel: I think now it is because I said it. Yeah. So that's my little marketing trick right there to the listener out there. If you want to lock in messaging, just put it on, you know, in recording.

So

Toni: now that we are forgetting about alignment, what are the things we need to agree on?

Mikkel: I don't know. Just create a solid plan, hit target, and then done. That's it. That's it. No, no, no, no, no. So the, the thing is there's, I was literally reflecting

The classic sales and marketing alignment problems
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Mikkel: there's so much. Content you can read [00:02:00] about sales and marketing alignment.

They will all say the same things. You kind of listed them out, but here's the thing. The problem is still there. There's there's still misalignment between those department and you know what you have this little problem child in the corner called customer experience. Yeah, and you know, why not? Yeah, is there anyone who wants to lie with me?

And I don't know. I think I also have a feeling that sometimes when people talk about it, it's like, yeah, we need to be. And that's actually, I

Toni: mean, no, I think now that the real thing is like, when you talk to those, it's not like every VP sales and we'd be marketing, no, no, I'd say this number one that that's just, just factually wrong.

Um, and then the thing is, you know what, guess what they. They are talking, they are coordinating, they are sharing, they do all, they're doing all of that stuff and they're still not aligned. So how can all of these things apparently be leading to alignment if this is kind of missing? It's like, um, Hey, be aligned, use email.

Mikkel: Yeah. Totally recommend. Yeah. [00:03:00] Uh, I think the other thing is also just when you look at what alignment means, it's to give. support to a cause. That is the literal definition of it. And it's not that you have to be again, friends, or even on the same exact pages, like, are we supporting and working towards the same thing?

Let's get there. No,

Toni: the thing is, you could support someone else's, you know, goal that maybe is not aligned. Yeah.

Mikkel: Okay. So really, you know, why forget about alignment? The thing is, there's like three streams. Where we see disagreement and maybe is more impactful to focus a bit on that than just the overall elusive term alignment, but,

Toni: but let's, let's kind of, so what are the, so just in, you know, everyone has their own little stories, what are our favorite stories of, you know, misalignment, the classic problems, um, Um, my favorite is the website, the website sells a different story than the sales [00:04:00] stack than the product.

Yeah. You know, that's a great kind of misalignment, you know, um, then another one is, and this is what's creating, you know, white hot. Hate between the teams it's, um, and I had this a couple of times and sometimes they're sharing the floor. Sometimes it's like, you know, upstairs, downstairs. When the sales team can either see or hear the marketing team high fiving, celebrating, popping champagne at the quarter end when they hit the MQL number.

Uh, but sales is 20% behind. Great. You know, that is, that, that, you know, misalignment, immediate hate and, uh, VP sales, VP marketing can meet as often as they want and they can be happy for one another and everything, but the sales team will still hate the marketing team. And then obviously to kind of rope in the forgotten child a little bit, you know, sales closing some deal that, you know, Hey, I was here.

They wanted to buy it. I [00:05:00] said, yes. And, you know, well knowing that. You know, that's going to be a difficult one for CS too, even on board, you know, and who's going to get blamed? Well, CS should have done the onboarding

Mikkel: better. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's not my fault.

Okay. So, I mean, this sounds like a, an inefficient engine.

The real issue of misalignment
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Toni: So obviously, so the, the, the issue with misalignment, it's not that people don't like each other. I think we could go, uh, you know, we could be okay with that. I think the real issue is that. You're introducing inefficiencies into your engine that you should rather not have.

Yeah. Right. So, and, uh, you can maybe fold this in way, how this is, you know, continuous improvement and so forth. Um, but you're, you're, you know, for sure you're wasting money, like for sure, simply because you might be attracting the wrong folks to begin with, uh, in terms of, you know, prospects and customers, um, you're wasting money trying to process them through when it's not working out and then you're wasting money because you might be churning them out real quick.

Right. Yeah. And the wastage here comes in many different shapes and [00:06:00] forms. One is. Your conversion rate is going to be shitty. Your, your true CPL of acquiring an actual true ICP is going to be, you know, too shitty. Um, and then you will need to hire a bunch of people to process all of that stuff through, which is then kind of wasting money also on, on those salaries.

Right? So it's really. If you're really fully misaligned, then the first question I was like, Oh, how did you even get to pro market fit? Right. How did you even achieve that? Um, and by the way, truly and most often misalignment is something that happens at some point it's, it's almost like entropy.

It's like, well, you know, these things will always fall apart for whatever reason, by the way. So the, the sales team will close what they can close. I understand that personally, the outbound team will book what they can book easiest. Is that an ICP doesn't matter, you know, and the marketing team will acquire what they can get the cheapest cost per lead for.

I mean, that's literally kind of what's really driving some of these behaviors. And, you know, creating real fence [00:07:00] around clear guardrails around. I think this is a little bit the trick that really is missing here from the alignment conversation. It's not chatting more and having, having, you know, good coffee

Mikkel: talks.

No. And I think to make it even more interesting. So we've talked about the 10% rule. So many times it also works in deceleration, not just acceleration. And when you have waste across marketing, sales, and CS. Because of misalignment, then that's a compounding negative effect for the business. So this is actually pretty material.

Toni: I mean, think about it like this, right? So let's just say you're, you have a really strong RevOps team. It's actually doing exactly what Mikkel and Tony talk about all the time. You know, they're improving everything. They're scanning, they're monitoring, they're seeing issues, they're tackling those issues.

They're doing their sprints, they're doing their roadmaps, you know, they're having their daily stand ups. They're not data derbies. All of these things, um, and, uh, while they're improving these things, while they're improving the revenue engine. All these improvements might [00:08:00] be eaten up by misalignment happening on the other side, right?

When you think about this and you think like, Hey, we're improving all of these different things, but we're basically standing still. Well, you know, the, the overarching, you know, shadow that is basically kind of creating that issue. It might be the misalignment that creeps in, you know, continuously over time.

So

Mikkel: it's a big problem. Big problem. Yeah. Yeah. Really big problem. Let's switch gears then into solution dressing. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about those, the three areas and how

Toni: to attack them. Yes. So the three areas that we identified here, um, because we aligned, um, it's, it's really, it's really three things.

And some of that might be a bit boring, so sorry for that, but that's, those are the three things. Yeah.

Agree on ICP
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Toni: one is whom are we going for? The boring version of that is ICP. You know, ideal customer profile, blah, blah, blah, tons of conversations and organizations, about, you know, what it is. [00:09:00] I've seen, things where they said like ICP one, ICP two, ICP three, like a core ICP, non core ICP.

I mean, there's all kinds of conversations around this and you can see how the different, you know, wants and needs from the different, you know, leaders are coming well. You know, they're, they're kind of easy to book. So let's call them non core ICP, but still have the ICP here. So number one, getting clear and screw this alignment word, getting clear what you're going for as an organization, extremely helpful, and then trying to, you know, create as many guardrails as possible around that.

Yeah. And if you're going outside of that, then have that conversation, but be proactive about it. ICP can also mean, you know, almost the different markets that you're operating in. Right. So think about it, the following. So maybe you get a random inbound from India because your SEO, you know, you can't, you know, organic search, you can't, you know, guard against that, right?

You will get some people from non fit regions. Marketing puzzles through because like plus one on the [00:10:00] MQL, you know, sales maybe talks to them and, you know, overcome some of the ACV issues and, and then closes them successfully. Fantastic. But who's actually going to onboard them, right? It's kind of maybe different time zone, maybe different, probably not language in this case and so forth.

But this is then also a misalignment in, you know, where you're actually gunning for. And that's again, kind of part of the ICP, right? Be clear. Whom you actually want to attract and ideally which market, you know, speaking, maybe what language and which role and so forth, be very clear on that. And then a couple of things around it will get a ton easier.

Yeah.

Mikkel: I mean, just when you go and think about the advertising, even it gets a lot easier when you're aligned and. I'm also curious because we've, so we said in the beginning, you have the unwanted child in the corner. Usually when you talk about alignment, it's very specific to sales and marketing, but this is also the point you're making that, Hey, you know, there will be cases where you get a non ICP through and someone will need to figure out to onboard them.

How do you, how, how, how should you tackle that scenario with non ICPs? [00:11:00] Because at the end of the day, it's like Patagonia, guess what? There's other people than VCs buying it. Yeah. And they're still happily selling it to, you know, to non core

Toni: ICP. No, no stitching of logos anymore. Uh, no, but, uh, I think, I think the, the point here is to be clear and, make it very clear for everyone when they're going outside of it.

I think these things will happen. I'm not a big fan of jumping into, you know, a pipeline deal and ripping it out because of. Hey, Oh, you know, there's a problem with this over there. I think this is where, especially kind of teams, a 10 to a hundred million kind of range, I mean, you just got to figure out a way to deal with this to a degree.

But I think what's really, really important is that the. That this doesn't lead to a, unsaid and silent, moving of the goalpost suddenly. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It's, no, the goalpost is still here, but we are accepting this outlier. Yeah. Versus actually the goalpost was always here at the outlier and now they're in.

Right. Yeah. And, and [00:12:00] I think this is, this is really important because the silent moving of go posts, this, this happens on the individual level, on those teams. Mm-hmm. They don't actually, none of them. Get the ripple effects across the whole organization, right? Both down the funnel, up the funnel. It's like, Oh, well, you know, we closed this one deal from wherever, you know, whatever ICP and then someone in marketing will be going, you know, it would be pretty easy to take this box here and get this other title into my LinkedIn ads and, you know, that's going to drive down my CLP, uh, CPL.

And, you know, it's going to do all of those wonderful things. But that then has, uh, you know, crazy effects across, right. And suddenly they land on your product and they don't get it anymore. And then, you know, once you, so this is then the other thing, once you're starting to go down that road a little bit, what then is going to happen is you're suddenly locked in and bought in.

Suddenly it's like, Oh, now we need to change messaging on the website. Because we kind of gunning for. And then that dilutes the messaging with your quote unquote core [00:13:00] ICP. And, you know, you suddenly have all of those issues. Right. And again, I think it's okay to sometimes do it. I think it's okay to knowingly move the goalposts around the ICP because maybe you want to expand your market.

Maybe you found something else that, you know, works better or works slightly less and still okay compared to your ICP. Um, but that needs to be a conscious decision and needs to be a community across. How can you make it a conscious decision? Well, you need to document it in the first place. Boring. Right.

But you know, through the document, you then you also give people an artifact to go and defend. Yeah. But I think

Mikkel: it's also underscoring the importance and ideally using an analysis to actually drive home that point and show, look, we have all these different sectors we are dialing into. You know where the highest, the best CAC payback or the win rates are best?

It's this segment. So that's what we're going to go for. I think that's, that's a core part of the whole decision making process.

Toni: Be aware, be aware, kind of the, the CAC payback piece here, and I've used [00:14:00] this myself, you know, guilty, uh, you can, you can mold this in your favor. You can have very cheap organic stuff coming your way.

You haven't spent any marketing dollar on any of that stuff. Yeah, true. Uh, so it just happens to be there and maybe, you know, they're closed and was pretty good. You basically don't have any marketing expenses. No, that's true. So it's kind of unfair to say like, oh, let's do the full check payback. And then, oh, we should go for these guys.

Anyway, been there, done that. But just be clear on the ICP and when you do move the goalpost, which is totally fine. Move it knowingly and update that document and make sure that everyone is aligned around that. Yeah. So ICP check, next one. And,

Agree on message
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Toni: you know, I think we call it, you know, core impact or value or use case or something like that.

I would call it message. Be aligned on the message. We're not, what is it that you're telling the ICP, that they need to know. Right. And that message needs to work from your website. To your marketing [00:15:00] comms to what the sales rep, both inbound and outbound are saying on those calls, what is written into your sales and pitch stack, and you know what, what the product actually is delivering, you know, and obviously the onboarding and everything around that, all of these things actually need to, you know, fit together if you have.

You know, misalignment here, you will basically, um, uh, you know, be lucky that some of these things still work out, right? Your website says something, uh, that, uh, maybe your marketing comms isn't, and then you will just have some people fall off. It's like, oh, well, that's actually, I was not looking for that.

Um, and the same then in sales and so forth. Right. And obviously the worst thing, the worst thing is, uh, that this misalignment happens. Far down in the funnel, that's when you spend all the money already. Um, because, you know, obviously you paid the, the ad campaign, you paid the marketing staff, you paid the, you know, inbound MQL SDR, you paid the AE and you paid [00:16:00] commission, you paid the CSM and then they churn.

Um, you basically paid a lot of money for something that completely was misaligned, right? So the, the, the further down you push this misalignment, the worse it's going to be. Um, it's going to look better, obviously on your vanity metrics, uh, if you have a super broad, you know, marketing messaging and, you know, for ads and, you know, building a funnel around ads, that might actually be sometimes the right thing, right?

You want to be super broad. You want to talk about topics that get a lot of clicks and engagement, and then you filter down from there. Makes sense. Super high up in the funnel where you have that message alignment happening or not happening. The further down you push it, if you push it literally to the product.

That will be like a massive problem for you

Mikkel: financially. Yeah. So what I was going to say also is sometimes this whole messaging piece, it's just, Hey, let's give this to marketing. They'll run down, they'll, you know, get some post its. And a lot of, you know, fizzy, fizzy drinks and they'll just have a workshop for a couple of days and they'll return with something that we're probably not going to use.

[00:17:00] It's

Toni: going to be elsewhere. It's going to be a persona poster. Yeah. SMB Debbie.

Mikkel: Yeah, exactly. And there's going to be some messaging and the CEO is going to, you know, take it in a wild direction knowing this because we've worked together for a while, you know, and that's just. They'll take care of that, right?

But I think the core point here is this has to be agreed upon across the commercial teams at the

Toni: end of the day. So I think what is, you know, potentially misleading, the message messaging is not. No, you're totally right. So this could be, you know, understood as like, well, Tony, isn't this kind of a marketing thing?

I think it's, I mean, it more in the literal sense that carries through what people say and people write in terms of the message. Yeah. Right. And yes, that is messaging also on the website, but it's also what the pitch is, on the sales team. So that needs to be aligned and carry through and have connections.

And I think. The message can filter down further, right? So even on the website, you will be a bit more, Hey, this is for revenue operations. And then on sales is going to be, well, it's really [00:18:00] for that part of revenue operations. And you know, that, that totally makes sense. But it, needs to make sure that it's not completely misaligned.

And then the other piece on top of this is also, if you have a more complicated buying cycle, if things are, you know, if things are not just one use case, let me say it like this. You will find those, you will run those ads on those different use cases. You will get them to those landing pages for those use cases.

What you really want to do is you want to pitch them. That use case and you want to onboard that use case and so forth. Right. And you want to, you know, have a conversation about the renewal because of that value, that use case that has been promised from the start. Obviously you're going to build them into others over time and they're going to explore more parts of your product.

And maybe that happens on the sales side. Maybe that happens on the, on the CS side, but basically kind of creating that, um, almost those, those micro funnels within the, within the funnel, uh, where that, that alignment then happens. Right. And. Obviously then the masterclass is to say, [00:19:00] Oh, you know, we're going to, lock that.

Um, we're going to track it, maybe we're going to even do keg payback on it. Um, and have an understanding what are actually the, the value props that are driving the most, the most efficient and so forth. Right. Um, and you could even then do, where are we winning against competitors the most? And so I haven't seen many teams go to that extent, by the way.

Um, but yes, that would be a great way to, to slice and dice your funnel. I mean, the most

Mikkel: sophisticated teams right now, what they're doing is message testing through someone like winter. Yeah. That's, that's probably the most sophisticated. I, I think the, uh, sometime. We actually forget about the work required to deliver the right piece.

We, we sit and go, okay, we need to deliver messaging for this use case. Sorry for getting a supermarketing heavy, but we sit and think we need to deliver a message for this use case. And then what do we do? We research at the laptop, might listen to a few gone calls, but at what point do you sit down and talk with the top performing reps who had a lot of accounts fitting that use case to understand what is it that [00:20:00] makes the deal really.

Go through, right, really go through the different stages. What are the sticking points? That's, you know, that's actually the work at the end of the day.

Toni: And it's kind of funny, we're using this alignment work here and there when we're talking about this, but it's really, it's really about efficiency,

Mikkel: actually.

A hundred percent. This is, I think if you can ensure, like you said, that who marketing is actually shipping ads to and what they're saying in relation to use case. How it's being pitched and how you're onboarding people. Then you have a major efficiency driver right there.

Toni: Yeah. What I can tell everyone listening from a pro market fit perspective, this is a.

It's a major, major kind of puzzle to solve, uh, because you're, you're basically kind of testing on all the different areas of this funnel. And then once you figured something else out, it's like, Oh shit, now I need to align all the other stuff. And I hope it still works after.

Mikkel: I think that's just, you know, the stage we're in more chaotic, the further you get the chaos moves to other [00:21:00] parts

Toni: of the business.

That's. And I, and I think here on this message piece, I think again, message and ICP, I think again, There are forces that pull you in the wrong direction or the right one. It doesn't actually matter. Uh, but that will start changing, right? It might be a new sales that you're getting in. That might be an onboarding that isn't being executed well enough for your sales reps.

It might be an SDR team that. Oh, no, these accounts over there, they're pretty easy to book. Uh, it might be marketing trying to, you know, push down their cost per lead. It might, might be all those different areas that pull them in different directions that basically create that, that misalignment on ICP on the message and so forth.

Yeah. Okay. Uh, so be clear on ICP, be clear on what you're saying to each of them throughout the stages. And that, that word for that changes messaging to pitch and so forth. But I call it message.

Agree on goals
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Toni: The last one, which is really important and also really boring, uh, goals set the right goals. Yeah. [00:22:00] Right. So this is this whole, uh, marketing celebrating when sales isn't.

Um, and, uh, that really is, is fundamental for all the different funnel stages. For basically kind of left to right on the bow tie, but it's also really important for your, let's just say your pyramid, your hierarchy of people, right? You need to make sure that the SDR goals roll properly into the, um, ISM goals, inside sales manager goals that then roll properly into the inside sales director goals and so forth, and that those pieces properly support the AE team, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Right. Having full alignment across. Will, um, you know, at least based on what you have done previously. You know, now the complication comes in with, Oh, things are, well, things are a little bit changing and then these things will also be changing a little bit, but creating a set of goals that actually makes sense.

And I think where, where we see most teams go a little bit off here is they're kind of forgetting about time. [00:23:00] Yeah. So it's, it's fairly easy to say, okay, you know, we need to go from 25 to 50 million. So much as will be covered by net retention. So much will be covered by baseline, what we have been done doing previously.

Um, so we really have a gap of 20 million. That means to figure out what we do. Okay. We need to hire so many sales reps, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, but then forgetting about, Oh, wait a minute, actually all of these opportunities into close by the end of the year. They actually need to be created until January, uh, sorry, until June.

Right. Uh, versus, Oh, you know, we need to create 5, 000 opportunities. Oh yeah. You know, until December, that's going to be easy. It's like, no, it's 5, 000 until June. Yeah. Everything you do afterwards is actually for, for another time period already. Right. Forgetting about that coupled with. How long it takes to hire people, how long it takes to ramp up those projects, yada, yada, yada.

Um, that's usually where this misalignment on the goals, uh, you know, kicks in. And this is then where in this case, if you [00:24:00] forget about timing, marketing is hitting their targets, but sales isn't, and some of that might be caused by forgetting about the sales cycle that happens.

Mikkel: No, I agree. And I think also sometimes what happens is you will plan in, in isolation, quite frankly.

So someone will sit in marketing with marketing ops and do their plan in a spreadsheet. This is how we're going to get there. And someone in sales is going to do the same. Someone in CS is going to do the same. But ultimately you have revenue operations as a cross functional team that should bring together those commercial leaders and make sure that this happens.

And I think sometimes it's also difficult because you sit and, and hand out a revenue target to a team and then you think, Oh, we made them, you know, marketing accountable for revenue. Now we have alignment. That's, that's not how it works. To your point, you need to factor in the timing.

Toni: Yes. And you know, now, now comes what messes this whole thing up like real bad is you create those goals.

You calculated all of that really nicely. And let's just say those goals are ambitious. So there's pressure on the [00:25:00] system suddenly. Um, and then all of the teams go off and try and hit those metrics and MQL and SQL and opportunity, whatever it might be. Uh, and obviously you want them to get creative on how hitting this.

Um, but you don't want them to get too creative

Mikkel: because free hands until the point,

Toni: as long as they're tight behind your back. Yeah. Um, no, but the, um, the thing is obviously if they're getting too creative, what they're doing, they're moving the goalposts, uh, of either the ICP or the message or whatever, uh, which will get them to these MQL numbers, get them to those opportunity numbers.

But obviously to the effect of some of the efficiency metrics, you know, falling flat, right? Suddenly your conversion rates drop between all of those different pieces and see there you won't hit your revenue target. Yeah. Right. And, uh, I think the, the, the, the most cited one is this MQL changing of [00:26:00] definition, that's a changing of goalposts, if you will, um, uh, or, uh, you know, however you, whatever you do on your LinkedIn and Facebook, you know, ad accounts or whatever.

Uh, but, but generally speaking, kind of that moving around of the goalposts. Boom. Yes, we hit the opportunity count. We hit the MQL count, but actually they are now of lesser quote unquote, you know, uh, uh, quality because you move the goalposts, which then actually renders those targets a little bit useless.

So actually to recalculate those targets, which will then generate the same thing, right? So in order to have a proper set for your funnel and your goals. You need to keep these other pieces kind of strict and, and controlled. Otherwise these things will, will end up being quote unquote misaligned. And maybe

Mikkel: just to share a very real example, because, you know, I've been in that situation where working at a company, there was a rep really good at all of a sudden closing deals at half the ACV.

So all of a sudden S& B rather than mid market and up. And, uh, we saw from marketing that actually, yes, it's way cheaper and easier for us [00:27:00] to book those opportunities. And we have this opportunity to target. So we have all the incentives to actually go and do that. And what's going to happen is just the ACV from marketing is just going to start like deteriorating slowly to the point.

And then you miss target, but you hit the opportunity count. Right. And that's just, again, back to this whole efficiency piece. I think that is the mindset. You should have, when you look at this, it's again, it's not all about the alignment piece. It's about agreeing on the fundamentals of how you want to operate the business.

Toni: No. And it's, I mean, sometimes those little drifts, they actually massive strategic decisions that are kind of happening behind the scenes. Um, suddenly, uh, suddenly you think you need to change things in the product because you're seeing a lot of people churn, but they were actually acquired, you know, not how you wanted them in the first place and so forth.

Right. So it's. You need to be really careful with that stuff. Um, and it's easy to say, well, you need to tweak and review and make sure and so forth. Um, but I think that's kind of what's necessary, right? It's, I would, I would even say [00:28:00] that, um, for the different streams that you're having. Yeah. Try and, um, try and monitor the specific processing metrics for them.

So let's just say again, your, your CRO, your revenue operations. Uh, maybe a plus 10 million, uh, something like that. Um, you won't be able to listen to every call. You won't be able to dissect that. That is actually not ICP versus something else. It will be really difficult for you. Where you will start seeing, you know, shine through is in some of those processing metrics, actually.

Um, and obviously the, the worst is when you see it all the way down the funnel and churn, you really then. You really then know, Oh, geez, that problem was produced 18 months ago. But again, that, that is, that, that's how you need to think about this. Right. And yeah. And I think actually

Mikkel: a final important point for me is then when you go, if you decide to look into this and see that there's major inefficiencies, and then you want to go and make that change.

You don't pitch it as, we're gonna go fix alignment. [00:29:00] That's a no no. You talk about we have an inefficient engine. From a numbers perspective, here's what's happening. We need to agree on these things on a strategic level.

Toni: And you know what, what your CFO and CEO will like most talk about conversion rates and, you know, processing metrics and ACV and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, connect this real thing to it.

Um, because what they don't want to hear right now is more, more budget, more ads, more people, more stuff. They want to hear more ideas of how they can improve those metrics.

Wrapping up
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Toni: Perfect. That ended

Mikkel: up way

Toni: better than I had. Are we leaving this in or? Yeah, we're leaving this

Mikkel: in. I'm proud of us. This is good. This is good stuff.

Toni: Okay, so, uh, forget alignment. Just agree on, just to recap, ICP, the message across the funnel, um, and then the goals that you're setting. And by

Mikkel: the way, you just dropped a hilarious

Toni: rap letter called don't be a [00:30:00] data dummy. Don't be a data dummy. And this is an inside joke for Harry Potter people. There's this character that is very like, you know, please, please don't hurt me.

Don't don't be a data dubbie in any organization. And if you want to know more

Mikkel: about that You can check it out on your sub stack or go to Roblox. com slash revenue letter then you'll get you know,

Toni: all revenue letter dot sub stack. That's the way to go Wonderful. Thank you Bye