200 QBRs later: They’re broken

We've run more than 200 quarterly business reviews (QBRs), and we've realized something. They're broken.

Fortunately, we have a solution that improves them by a great deal. We're calling it QBRs 2.0 - listen in here.

You can check out the blogpost here: https://growblocks.com/blog/qbrs-are-broken/

If you're interested in GTM live, sign up here to get access: https://growblocks.com/gtm-live/ 

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.

[00:00:00] Toni: Hey everyone. This is Toni Holbein. You are listening to the Revenue Formula.
[00:00:04] In today's episode, we are going to talk about our learnings from 200 QBRs over the last year, our realization, how they are broken, and much more importantly, how to fix it. Enjoy.
[00:00:15]
[00:00:18] Toni: so I mean, one big thing that happened is, uh, you know, we moved the marketing team close to the sales team.
[00:00:27] Mikkel: Yeah. Alignment.
[00:00:29] Toni: forced alignment. Um, and uh, you know, maybe we need to do an EP on this. Like, Ooh, you know, people need to sit next to one another.
[00:00:37] Mikkel: look at that and actually talk.
[00:00:39] Yeah. Wow. Boiler room.
[00:00:42] Toni: room.
[00:00:43] Mikkel: let's boiler room. no, but we did, a go-to-market live not so long ago. That's right. And in that episode it was you and Olafur. He's been on this show before and, uh, he didn't freeze up. He actually delivered a pretty good presentation. Yeah. And, uh, was a good, you know, session and you talked about QBRs.
[00:01:01] Toni: We did. And I think actually the whole Olafur and Toni combo. I think we're gonna keep this up. It's
[00:01:08] Mikkel: a thing. It's, yeah. The only thing is he kind of, I like that he had his, uh, head behind the mic, so he was hiding. I was like, why don't you just move out of the shot instead? Move out of the shot. That's
[00:01:18] Toni: No. The funny thing is actually that, you know, after five minutes and you know, it was burning in my head, I was like,
[00:01:25] Mikkel: and
[00:01:25] Toni: I said like, Hey, Olafur, you kind of, people can't see you. And then he is like,
[00:01:28] Mikkel: like, yeah. is
[00:01:30] still, yeah, he's still
[00:01:31] Toni: way. It's like, do it.
[00:01:32] Mikkel: Uh, anyway, you can watch it. Uh, if you're a member of our little, you know, secret list. Uh, it's not secret. You can sign up on the website. Uh, it's called GTM Live. We do them biweekly. It's pretty cool talking about, anything process-wise related to revenue.
[00:01:47] Yep. Um,
[00:01:47] Toni: and as a Q and a, sometimes it tends to be an AMA and stuff like that. It's really fun afterwards. Um, so dial in and, um, have a look.
[00:01:55] Mikkel: But anyway, that episode. It made me kind of reflect that we should, you know, it's been a while since we've talked about quarterly business reviews. We did it, uh, early, early on in the show was actually a fairly popular episode.
[00:02:04] You can go back and check it out. It's called Our Favorite Growth Hack QBRs. And what we dealt with in this episode was basically a new way of doing qbr. Yeah.
[00:02:14] Toni: Yeah. So I think the, you know, the, the reason why we wanted to kind of open that chapter up again is because we realized that after doing this, I don't know, like a hundred or 200 times now, uh, you know, for our customers over the last year that, um, there's quite some room for improvement for QBRs in general.
[00:02:33] Mm-hmm. First of all, you know, doing the QBI in the first case, um, and then doing it well, that's, that's, that's a science in itself. And, and that's what the other EP was about. But after 200, 200 of those, we've actually realized, hey, wait a minute, there's, there's a completely different way of doing this.
[00:02:51] That would basically be 10 xing the output and that's what we wanna talk about today.
[00:02:55] Mikkel: Yeah. So 200 times doing it not fully, correctly, perfectly, but you know, that's,
[00:03:01] Toni: I mean, I guess that's how you learn. And you know, I welcome anyone else who's done 200 MBS or QPRs. Which is no one, uh, to, you know, uh, also go through the same learning curve and come up with what should be better actually.
[00:03:13] Yeah.
[00:03:14] Mikkel: yeah, yeah. It's always like when you have that realization, it changes everything. And you look at the past and we're like, is that really how we did it? I can't believe it. And so the, the first step I think for us is really to just peel the onion on the problem here a little bit. What is it actually we are seeing from all those qbr.
[00:03:30] We have run, um, both, you know, internally together and in the past, what, what problems are actually surfacing. Um,
[00:03:37] Toni: and, and we can, we can, uh, uh, go back and forth on this a little bit, but, uh, what, what the, the, the main thing that I kind of hate about most QBR is executives walk in and then expect to get entertained for an hour and a half or something like that. And this is not, this is not our case necessarily, but it's also the internal case, right? So you kind of. Uh, use a rev and we prepare and we now know that rev ops is involved in it in different ways. Sometimes they just do a data package, sometimes they do the whole thing. Sometimes they kind of only support or whatever.
[00:04:10] but usually it's kind of a, sometimes kind of a laid back kind of feeling of the executives walking. And then, okay, now, now it's a tell. Now tell me what happened. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um, and, and obviously then you get into the, um, Hey, didn't you read the, the, the, the pre-send? Yeah. like, oh, no. No. Was
[00:04:26] Mikkel: too important for that.
[00:04:27] It's Busy.
[00:04:28] Toni: and then you obviously get, uh, into our other, uh, um, you know, most fantastic problem, which is, you know, ambushing people. Right. Um, and uh, and obviously I feel this is a story that comes up all the time. Yes. So back then when I was running those QBRs, you were one of the executives coming in, not so laid back though.
[00:04:48] Um, and, uh, um, and you with what kind of an attitude did you step into the
[00:04:52] Mikkel: No, I kind of said I think we've recorded maybe before talked about it at least, but I was always. We had this mindset of, okay, how are they gonna fuck me today? Yeah. That was always was you always had it in your back of your head.
[00:05:04] Even if you actually had a solid quarter, you were like, okay, what are they gonna hit
[00:05:07] Toni: with, come on. It's easy. You can always find something that's fucked up at marketing. No, but uh, so, uh, so that's the other thing, right? You, you tend to ambush people and, uh, that then, you know, sometimes leads to people being defensive and, and that's.
[00:05:18] Fundamentally not what you want, right? What you want to do is actually want to create a forum of discussion, uh, forum of gaining understanding from all the different angles, uh, in order then to use that to improve, right? QBs are there for continuous improvement and each little, you know, improvement that you make will stack up and compound and, you know, all of those wonderful words over time.
[00:05:40] and, and getting to that point is extremely difficult when you have someone incoming with, uh, coming in with like, um, you know, how, how they're gonna screw me over
[00:05:47] Mikkel: stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think it's also like you going into that meeting, you were always. Have a pretty good idea of how the quarter went.
[00:05:55] Right. So if it, if, if it was a miss, you'd know already. And it's not like you need that meeting to feel accountable. You're already feeling the pain. Yeah. To be honest. Right.
[00:06:03] Toni: No. And you know, when you, when you're then on the defense, what is, what is it that Mr. Executive's gonna do next?
[00:06:09] Mikkel: yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:06:11] No, I brought my own numbers for this session.
[00:06:12] Toni: Where, where did you get those
[00:06:13] Mikkel: Yeah, exactly. I've
[00:06:15] Toni: seen that before. Uh, I sent you the send out for it.
[00:06:17] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:18] Toni: I haven't seen that, so, uh, I'm sorry. Um, and, uh, uh, you know, the whole, uh, good old data quality piece around it and, uh, all of that jazz, right? and this is, this is why QBRs are really, really difficult to execute in the first
[00:06:34] place.
[00:06:35] but there is, you know, a larger issue actually around it. Yeah. Which is, which is, you know, the main point that needs improvement and, and accidentally. So some of those problems get, you know, you know, pushed aside by actually fixing like this. And we've been, we've been thinking what other metaphor or analogy to use here.
[00:06:55] Mikkel: here.
[00:06:56] Toni: Like with back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but, uh, but we, we kept landing on. Uh, if you do the QBR, which is then after the quarter ended, maybe two or three weeks in, what you're really doing is you're performing an autopsy on the corpse. Yeah. You know, why, why did that person die?
[00:07:17] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:07:18] Toni: Um, and. And that's fundamentally not how, you know, real life really should be working out, right?
[00:07:25] So you should at least try and save the person. uh, but in order to do that, you kind of, you can't wait 90 days.
[00:07:31] Mikkel: no.
[00:07:32] Toni: Yeah. It needs to be a little bit more real time. Uh, and that's the whole piece around the QBR 2.0. You kind of need to, uh, those insights, this understanding, the root cause analysis, all of the stuff we're gonna dive into today that needs to happen.
[00:07:46] Um, when, uh, when someone is. Falling off the chair needs to be rushed to the ER. That's when it needs to happen. Not, uh, oh. You know, let's, uh, anyway. No, I'm not gonna go further into the,
[00:07:58] Mikkel: Also
[00:07:58] think we
[00:07:58] Toni: I think people got it
[00:08:00] Mikkel: was thinking can I transit, transition this into a car example?
[00:08:02] You know, the oil light is starting to flatten. No. Okay. We we're sticking with the patient.
[00:08:05] That's cool. So, so what we're saying is,
[00:08:07] is,
[00:08:08] It's, it's done. You can't really save the quarter anymore and you're looking back and see, okay, we missed because here's why. Great. What can we do about it? Nothing, because it's over.
[00:08:16] It's done. Right? And, uh, that leads to this scenario of, okay, how am I gonna get, you know, punished in the next Q B R, everyone going on the defense and actually not talking about problems that needs to be solved or any continuous improvements that can be surfaced.
[00:08:32] Toni: No, I mean, you will still talk a little bit about these things, but it's, uh, it's, it's too late and it's only looking forward. And keep in mind, so this is one of the, You know, I'm maybe preempting something, but we, we say usually only take one thing forward.
[00:08:45] Yeah. Like one thing. And um, and that might be just very little that you can improve, uh, if you kind of focus on this one thing and there's a good reason why it's one thing and blah, but, uh, generally speaking, this is this some of the issues that come with it. Right. And, and when you think about what. The different, um, operations that need to be executed in order to get to this being real time.
[00:09:07] Right. So let's, let's talk maybe about this here for for a second, right. So what would, what would a potential solution actually look like? In order to, um, in order to get to that point. Yeah. Yeah. so, and this is very, very similar to how, uh, normal QBRs also should be performed. It just needs to happen now instead of in, you know, 90 days from now.
[00:09:26] Number one is, uh, really understand, what is happening? What is the issue? Is there an issue? Mm-hmm. Um, so this is the first thing, right? On your dashboard, you wanna have like a, a light go off and say like, Hey, this here needs attention
[00:09:41] Mikkel: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:41] Toni: Um, and you can go there several different ways. It can be proactive.
[00:09:44] Great. Cool. So that it can also be let's scan all through all the 100 different dashboards that we are having to find where we are, you know, where we're starting to be off track.
[00:09:52] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:09:53] Toni: So then you get into the next problem with that is what does off track actually mean? Right? Is it, um, and, and then to be honest, obviously we, from a Growblocks perspective, we say like, well, you need, you know, targets and projections and all of that stuff.
[00:10:06] And that might help you then to gauge, right? Because, uh, and, and commercial, not every line should be, horizontal. It should rather go into, you know, top top, right. Right. Um, and, um, And therefore you kind of probably need targets around to understand what is good performance, what isn't. Um, but what we used back then was, um, I think the technical term is chart analysis.
[00:10:30] You look at the graph and they're like, squint your eyes, like shouldn't this go up a little bit steeper? You know,
[00:10:36] Mikkel: and not just marginally
[00:10:38] Toni: yeah. Where, where it does work is, um, where it works really well is actually for conversion rates and these kind of things. They should just be flat ideally, uh, and on, you know, at least not going down.
[00:10:48] So this is kind of a chart analysis kind of approach where like, hey, oh, here's something wrong. Let's go and, you know, jump on it. And then the last thing I think that, uh, that we use and everyone else is using is, Um, uh, common sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's, Hey, we hired 20 people in outbound. Shouldn't this graph go up?
[00:11:05] Yeah. Yeah. Should we see more opportunities being booked instead of fewer? Yeah. Um, and, and that then is, uh, is another, you know, kind of analysis that you can run around it, right? But that's how you then realize, okay, wait a minute. Something is off here. Something is not going as it as it should. Right. and, um, Now you basically kind of as a, as a next step, you then would try and understand why is it wrong?
[00:11:28] Yeah. You know, why, what is causing it? Yeah. Right. Root cause analysis. You find a signal, something is off, you're not hitting a revenue number. Um, just staying on that level and saying, oh, we hit outbound. Uh, we missed inbound. We, we missed P L G. Revenue. Revenue, yeah. Let's just say it like that. that is not going to help you with anything.
[00:11:47] No, it's, it's, you know, you can, you can now scream at the PLG team. good luck with that. Yeah. But, uh, it doesn't help anyone to actually correct, uh, whatever is going on. So in order to understand what's going wrong, you need to do root cause analysis, right? You need to dig into, you know, dig into the data they say.
[00:12:05] But, uh, basically what it means is you need to go from the top level of revenue, uh, further down in the funnel. And try and understand or further up in the funnel or further to the left in the funnel, whatever framework you're looking at, um, in order to understand how do I get from, you know, revenue to the root cause.
[00:12:23] Right? obviously in order to do that, really helpful to have an understanding. Where, in which of those steps you were supposed to be higher than you, than were, right? Again, you're going through the same, mechanics of chart analysis or comparison to target or, you know, uh, all of that stuff. Um,
[00:12:42] Mikkel: I think, and I think all of what he had, um, a great point.
[00:12:45] Usually those problems you're gonna find when you run the root cause, they're either gonna be related to quality or quantity. Mm-hmm. Right. So, and I think it's important for you to have an understanding of where to potentially look, and that's a
[00:12:57] Toni: it could also be, it could also just be lack of execution, right?
[00:13:01] There's typical, you didn't hire the folks that that can be something. Um, or it can be, Hey, we overestimated the impact of that campaign. Or it could be,
[00:13:09] Mikkel: be million things.
[00:13:09] Toni: or the, the, the, uh, product, uh, release was too late. That could be some of those things that are sitting at the end of it. Um, if you really think about it, um, Data will get you only so far.
[00:13:21] Yeah. And then behind that there might be then personal stories. There might be someone, um, getting fired, some manager not performing. And then can you add more to the team? No, there might be some other things around it that then, you know, leave the data a remit and uh, but data usually can give you a really good clue where to dig in the organization.
[00:13:40] Right? Yeah. So now you have figured out what's wrong, and you can debate now on the next step, should it come earlier, you know, before or after this step. Um, ideally all of that stuff should just happen by itself. Um, it's a little bit of an understanding of, uh, what's the, what's the impact? How, how big is that problem?
[00:13:59] Is it, is it a problem we should be worrying about? Right? Yeah. And, uh, and, and one of the examples was, um, we, we did a QBR with one of our customers, and I'm not sure if it was me leading or it was all of four leading. but basically, uh, we spent like a lot of time on, on the outbound, uh, piece. Yeah.
[00:14:18] Like, Hey, you need to get this up, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and then we got to the next chapter, which was inbound. Inbound. In that case, And, uh, basically we realized that, um, and we could have maybe prepared just a little bit better here, uh, but we realized that outbound really was just 10%. And, you know, inbound was really the 90% Yeah.
[00:14:37] The course. And, and we basically were like, you know what? Actually forget everything I just said. Uh, marketing this, you know, let's, let's dig into, you know, that's the problem. Yeah. You know, what is going on here? And, and have an understanding of, uh, what are the big or the small levers to pull. That's really important.
[00:14:52] And the way you measure it is by revenue impact, at least we call it revenue impact. So you know what you can, you can, you know, try and calculate I on a what if analysis. What if that stayed like that? Yeah. What if it kept trending down? What if we stayed like this behind target? and, and basically if you calculate that out, you might then see.
[00:15:12] How much revenue has one already been lost? Mm-hmm. Because you were behind with plg. Yeah. Um, how much revenue will likely be lost already because you didn't acquire those leads and, you know, they're, they're now processing and they won't close tomorrow or next week. Right. Um, and then how much revenue then is still at risk, right?
[00:15:33] Let's just say, if you could fix it today.
[00:15:35] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:15:36] Toni: Versus you will not fix it for the rest of the year. What is that gap? And usually those three different periods, early in the year especially, uh, they end up being, you know, might, might be a big sum. and that kind of sum is what you really wanna, um, use as a yardstick to figure out.
[00:15:57] What to prioritize. Right? You don't have, you know, so much time around. Right? and you know, now thinking that all of that happens in real time, you sit down on Monday morning, you open this thing, you would see what's going wrong. Uh, you immediately go to the root cause because you know, that's part of the whole thing.
[00:16:16] You can, uh, slack the person that. S you know, owns that metric or sits on top of that team and you can say, Hey, what's going on? How can we fix it? maybe, you know, dream world, uh, that person has already kind of seen that him or herself, and it's like, you know, I thought about it, you know, I'll get back to you tomorrow.
[00:16:33] and, uh, and then have a, Hey, this is really important because it's a lot of revenue, right? Kind of have all of these things kind of there. Yeah. Um, which then means on Tuesday you, uh, might have a. Way to try and, you know, fix it. Yeah. Instead of, again, that's the difference here. Not seeing it for another 90 days
[00:16:53] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:16:54] Yeah. It's terrible. No, but
[00:16:56] Toni: no, but think about this,
[00:16:57] Mikkel: imagine you're sitting, if you're in the marketing department and you're spending, I dunno, 50 k a month on Facebook ads and it's not delivering anything, and you do that for 90 days until you figure it out.
[00:17:09] That's not a great scenario.
[00:17:10] Toni: No, I mean, uh, I had, I had things in marketing where the trial form simply just stopped working regularly.
[00:17:18] Mikkel: Oh, great.
[00:17:20] Toni: And, uh, you know, I had my usual upbeat self when there are no trials of demos are rolling in, you know, where the fuck, where the fuck are my demos? And, uh, see there was, uh, nothing was a problem, was just this form was just simply not working. Yeah. Um, and, um, uh, and you know, seeing that, uh, two or three weeks later, massive, massive, massive difference.
[00:17:46] And uh, um, and people might laugh, so obviously I look at this every day. It's like, you would be surprised, first of all, how many things are going on in your organization that you're not looking at every
[00:17:56] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:17:57] Toni: Um, and number two, you would be surprised how many organizations there are that don't look at things every day.
[00:18:02] Right. And again, does it mean you need to look at conversion rates and ACV every day? No, I don't think so. I think this is still a slow moving thing, depending on your volume and velocity. Maybe it's a. Monthly thing only or quarterly thing, but the volume pieces you can, you should be looking at every day.
[00:18:17] Right. So this is kind of my other pieces. Um, when I, when I was at the peak obsession, uh, peak Toni obsession, um, uh, we had a team in apac, we had a team in Europe and we had a team in the US. And basically I had three different check check-ins. Uh, my morning 9:00 AM check-in, because that was kind of afternoon for apac, my noon check-in for, uh, EMEA to understand where they're trending and, you know, APAC was done.
[00:18:48] Um, and then, uh, US waking up and then in the evening, ea done Apex done us halfway through, kind of gave me kind of a good kind of measure where we are. this was, you know, three times, three times a day, by the way. I don't think it was healthy, but that's, you know, that's kind of how you reacted to this.
[00:19:04] And then obviously you jump in and, uh, try and, I don't know, I yelled at you, it was like, Hey, where, where are those inbound leads
[00:19:10] Mikkel: stuff so I
[00:19:11] don't know where, where they are. Can't find them.
[00:19:13] they're
[00:19:14] Toni: they're lost. Um, Yes.
[00:19:17] Mikkel: but I think there's one cool bit we've talked about in, uh, in a previous episode as well is, you know, some of the bigger and, and best companies, they do a weekly check-in, which is also a good frame because you kind of said, well, do you need to look at it daily? But weekly would also kind of work out at, at the end of the day.
[00:19:33] Right. And I think it's just having that structure around seeing where is something going off that has a revenue impact.
[00:19:39] Toni: So I, I think it's, it's almost a little bit different. I think, I think those folks scan those dashboards daily, by the way.
[00:19:45] Mm-hmm. Um, I think they just need to discuss them on a weekly basis just to kind of cut out all the noise. Yeah. Um, and I think that's, that's the right approach. I, what, what I've also learned talking to a lot of those companies is, uh, Toni Hohlbein is not the only obsessive person out there. There, there are a couple of others as well.
[00:20:03] And, uh, you know, saw some of seeing some of those, um, uh, patterns, uh, uh, repeat actually.
[00:20:08] Mikkel: you formed, you formed the support group. That's it.
[00:20:11] Toni: So now that all of that stuff is happening, you know, uh, in real time, you can react to it in real time. Uh, you don't have to wait until, uh, the, the end of the quarter to actually have a conversation about it.
[00:20:22] so. That obviously changes the QRBs themselves. So, uh, what are you then still supposed to do in those QBRs?
[00:20:30] and, um, I think, That was kind of a little bit of a thing for us, right? We were like, so, hey, wait a minute. How does it, how does it change the face of the qbr? Should people just not have QBRs anymore?
[00:20:43] Um, and obviously the answer is no. You should still have your QBR simply to create this forum and to have the conversation and so forth. But now the whole thing kind of shifts completely. Right? Um, so this whole data piece is out the window because you've basically been clearing this up as you, as you went.
[00:21:01] Yeah. Um, and sometimes those, Hey, here's an issue. It might actually be a data issue by the way, right? So if something pops up throughout the quarter, it might simply be that, oh, you know, actually we measured this wrong. We need to kind of tweak this. So, and as you kind of work through this, uh, over the quarter, you know, the, the data trust will just tick up eventually.
[00:21:20] so you have less of that. You have. Definitely less of the ambushing because basically, um, folks are coming to the table and tell you potentially what they have changed. Yeah. It's just that they have run into and how they overcome them or how they're still struggling with them. Yeah. and, um, uh, and I think the, uh, because all the, all the negative stuff is already clear to everyone, kind of the, the posture is way less defensive.
[00:21:44] Yeah. You know, you're kind of sucking out the air of the situation If, if it's clear for everyone that, Hey, this is red, and we've known this now for a month, and everyone had a little bit of conversation about it already, it's kind of. It's not a hostile situation, uh, anymore. which then obviously opens up the whole room for a better, uh, much more fruitful conversation around how to move forward, you know, what to, what to fix now, and, um, these, these fixes and how to move forward.
[00:22:11] I think there, um, uh, they're kind of two-fold. one is obviously if there was a, a bigger change. And a bigger change, you know, so small changes might behavior behind on the, uh, on inbounds and then it's like, Hey, let's spend some more money or whatever. Right. Bigger change would be, uh, okay, we've seen that this team in APAC doesn't work out.
[00:22:37] We gonna scale this down or not scale it further and take the money and put into the us for example. Um, that is now a bigger change, uh, that people need to understand, uh, because it will have knock-on effects across the funnels. Suddenly CS needs to know, oh, wait a minute. I need to hire differently now.
[00:22:55] Blah. Right. There's a couple of different things that, you know, suddenly, uh, come to mind that that need to be aligned around and that can now be a meeting for some of that stuff, right? You know, what did change, what are we planning to change, align around these things?
[00:23:07] And then I think one, one, uh, bigger piece is actually, so we started calling it re-baselining, and I was throwing this around with some of those.
[00:23:16] Very, very big companies, and they're like, yeah, no, we actually also call it re baselining.
[00:23:21] Mikkel: And so what
[00:23:22] Toni: So I'm not sure if I came up with this or if, if I heard it. Um,
[00:23:25] Mikkel: just say you came up with it.
[00:23:27] Toni: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Thought leader. Yeah. Um, uh, no, but the, the idea is that, um, as you execute the year, things will slightly change.
[00:23:38] Yeah. And our, you know, the, the examples always like conversion rate will go one or the other direction. but let's just say it in a different terms of, over the last three months of the year. You have learned something comparative to when you started the year, you know, locked in this plan. Right?
[00:23:53] There's something that happened there, some learning happened there. Some of that learning might mean that, um, you're gonna make more money. Mm-hmm. Some of the learning might mean that you're gonna make less money. Yeah. Right. There might be things that change and rebased lining, uh, in, in a simple, uh, format, basically means to incorporate those learnings from today.
[00:24:12] Into the future. Yeah. Right. Basically said like, you know what, uh, we thought we gonna have 15% conversion rate. It's not the case. We have 12. Um, we now, you know that. How, how are we gonna resolve that issue now? Yeah. can we just have more opportunities Please? Okay. Difficult. Uh, does that now mean we will have less, uh, revenue?
[00:24:29] Maybe, maybe not. We need to kind of figure this out. Have that conversation because that's really fruitful. Yeah, right. Just saying, Hey, it needs to be 15 and you need to figure out how to get to 15. I don't think that helps anyone around the table. It's also really useful for things like, um, you know, d and newly joint cm o that really urgently need to change the MQL definition.
[00:24:49] Uh, suddenly conversion rate drops and now you can have the re-baselining conversation. So like, yeah, you know what the new conversion rate is. Whatever we've seen now. but no, we're not gonna change the revenue target my friend. Uh, you're gonna need to create more, but, uh, more MQLs now, right? Kind of that, that is also a, a, um, rebased learning conversation you have.
[00:25:09] Um, and that's, that's what re-baselining means. Um, and this again, is a, if you will, a change that requires, uh, alignment and coordination and, you know, syncing between, between those leaders.
[00:25:20] Mikkel: Yeah. And I think it makes sense, like when, when I, whenever you even create a marketing plan or whatever, you work with certain assumptions or historic data that do move over time, whether it's the cost you pay per a lead and it, and it is significant if it, you know, I've experienced that myself, a competitor all of a sudden raising the prices, meaning they could buy leads at a higher cost.
[00:25:40] So we were being out-competed and I was like, well, if we wanna maintain the cost per lead, we set in the budget. I'm gonna have a gap of 10%. Yeah. That's, that's reality. Uh, and nothing I can do about it other than either bid or don't.
[00:25:52] Toni: I think what's, what, what people are struggling with is, um, and Allon, I are struggling with this. Even conceptually is okay, if you re-baseline, you then open the door for all kinds of excuses all the time. You know, uh, people say like, I can't do anything about the conversion rate, decrease.
[00:26:06] But, uh, um, hey, you can't slap on a higher ACV now that we've achieved that. Right? You can't penalize me with, you know, having achieved a higher ACV. Um, I think there's, there's, you know, still something to be figured out and how to, that needs to be solved. But, uh, generally speaking, there's some gamesmanship around it.
[00:26:24] Sure. But generally speaking, you need to ask yourself, does it make sense to include your last three month learnings into your future? And if you believe that the answer is no, then you know what? Don't do it. If you believe like probably everyone, uh, that yeah, you might have learned something that you want to take forward, then you need to probably re-baseline and to kind of have a, uh, a process and a, and a stream, uh, work stream around it, which, you know, could happen.
[00:26:48] This QBR conversation and then couple of other things. I don't think that haven't changed that much. Again, identify one clear thing that you want to work on. Don't do five. Don't do you know even two? Yeah. One focus on one thing. Uh, chances, um, of you, actually achieving this one thing? Yeah. Um, much, much higher if it's just, you know, a single item.
[00:27:11] and the idea is not to, uh, do lots of things at the same time. The idea is to consistently do one thing over time. Yeah. That's, that's the idea. Continuous improvement, that's what that means. It doesn't mean step change today. It means small tweaks over time that then compound.
[00:27:25] Mikkel: And how, how do you see that? Because there's usually a lot of potential actions you can take when you run the QBR and especially if you run cross-departmental, you're gonna have things on sales and marketing on CS and and so forth.
[00:27:38] Do you see that as a one thing across the company or one thing department? How, how do you go about that,
[00:27:43] Toni: It depends a little bit. so number one, you should obviously prioritize by, you could say ice, like impact, confidence, and effort, right? Ease,
[00:27:50] Mikkel: Ease. Yeah. Ease.
[00:27:53] Toni: Yeah. Oh, the Danish guy. So cute. Uh, no, but basically kind of the, the impact here is the revenue impact, confidence. This is actually gonna happen.
[00:28:00] And effort is like, how much work do we need to put into this? Um, I think this is, you know, one way to stack rank these pieces a little bit. And I think then, then the, the other side of this is actually, um, so who's gonna do that? Yeah. And in many cases it's gonna be revenue operations. Yeah. Period. You know, do you really think the VP of sales gonna go and do some, you know, new slide deck?
[00:28:20] I mean, no, it's not gonna happen. and uh, so you obviously there will be a stakeholder, don't get me wrong, but they usually won't run it. Um, so it will land on the rev ops table. Um, and as everyone knows, the rev ops table already is pretty crowded with lots of, you know, stacks of paper and, you know, I don't know, rubric groups to be figured out.
[00:28:40] Um, and, uh, and, uh, you know, these improvement projects, they, uh, need to be, um, slotted into your, sprint cadence or your cycle cadences in, in rev ops as well, right? So it's not like you have. Automatically new time because you're running QBR. It's, it's, you know, um, so that's why it should be one thing and, uh, probably it's gonna be a revs thing.
[00:28:59] And then there might be, you know, tons of learnings that each of the different leaders take away from it for their own departments. That doesn't need to be a big process around it, but they will, they will just by accident, incorporate those learnings into their day to day from now on. Right. So that's, that's kind of how I see it.
[00:29:17] Mikkel: Okay. So,
[00:29:18] Toni: So
[00:29:19] Mikkel: Basically, how did the course corrections help was the, the first change to the QBR, right? And then it was re-baselining and then identifying one thing is, has always been there. And, um, I think what's really cool is, like you said, it, it kind of removes a lot of the friction around, know, the, the usual connotations around the meeting with getting defensive and all this stuff.
[00:29:39] So you can actually focus on the course corrections you made. Did they have an impact? What do we need to do next? Um, so it becomes way more productive.
[00:29:48] Toni: No, exactly. yeah, I think, I think that puts a frame around it. I think you have written, uh, a longer piece on this actually. Yeah,
[00:29:55] Mikkel: that's actually true.
[00:29:56] So it was a complete knockoff of the live, if I'm being honest. No, I mean, we've talked about it so many times, um, and I found this to be so interesting, so I was like, let's, let's get this down on paper and get it out on the blog. I think it's also nice if you want to refer back to some of this stuff.
[00:30:11] Maybe it's better in written form. So you can check it out on growblocks.com, uh, and check out the blog
[00:30:16] Toni: and obviously kind of the instrumentation around it.
[00:30:18] You can do it in spreadsheets and try and pipe it into Looker and then you can try and take this into, I don't know, PowerPoint or whatever. Um, and then there's obviously something around Growblocks that can help you with that instrumentation around it, right? So if you wanna check that out. What is it? Get a demo.
[00:30:32] Mikkel: Yeah. Our trial form is working, but there's just not a trial, but it's
[00:30:36] working. It's working. That's the most important piece. I fill it out every, every day and I'm the only one. No. Cool.
[00:30:43] Toni: Um, nice. Nice.
[00:30:45] Mikkel: So let's, uh, I guess it's also about time for us to do a QBR again soon.
[00:30:48] Toni: That's right.
[00:30:50] Mikkel: All the data we're gonna
[00:30:51] Toni: I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna send you anything up front.
[00:30:53] I'm gonna let you walk into the trap
[00:30:56] Mikkel: and you're gonna stand there with a bat ready to whack me. That is cool. That podcast episode didn't perform up to level. Thank you so much, Toni.
[00:31:04] Toni: Thank you, Mikkel. Thank you everyone else. Bye-Bye.
[00:31:05] Mikkel: Bye.