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How do +$100M SaaS companies keep hitting their revenue target? We've talked with a few and share our findings in this episode.
Creators and Guests
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 Hohlbein.
[00:00:01] You are listening to the Revenue Formula. In today's episode, we are going to talk about how companies. That a hundred, 200, 300 million in ar are hitting target again and again, and again and again. Enjoy
[00:00:24] Mikkel: you know, it's been a while when you don't live. Are we not live? We're recording. We're recording. Recording, recording. You never know. No, say, you know, it's been a while since you've recorded, when you don't know which way is left or right on your headphones, like
[00:00:40] Toni: bar. What happened to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was the, was the release the launch? Was it that stressful sweat? Did all your beautiful hair go by?
[00:00:53] Mikkel: The funny thing is, you, you can't make fun of any other body parts than lack of hair. That's .
[00:00:59] Toni: Oh, and ageism. Ageism,
[00:01:01] Mikkel: okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. . Yeah. I was wondering what, what's gonna happen?
[00:01:06] How are you gonna tear me down today? Tear
[00:01:09] Toni: you down. I couldn't be more happy to have you back, Michael.
[00:01:11] Mikkel: Oh my. It's good to be back. Good to be back. And, uh, listening to the intro, music again. Missed it. Missed being on air. You too. It's, uh, one of the better, richer. I have, let's go. So today we're gonna talk about some pretty big companies.
[00:01:28] The a hundred million dollar
[00:01:31] Toni: companies plus, plus plus, plus plus. Yes.
[00:01:33] Mikkel: So what we've kind of been discussing is. Everyone wants to hit revenue, obviously. They want to hit that target and they also wanna have a big target. Especially considering what's happening now, it's a pretty tough out there. Still, there's even more pressure to actually hit that target and we, or specifically you've talked with a bunch of companies, especially since I've been away for like.
[00:01:56] Two, two to three months, two years. That's, that's what it feels like. You know, you've had lots of conversations, especially with some of the bigger, bigger, bigger companies out there, logos that everyone will know. And what I find super interesting is they're following a method or process that leads to them hitting.
[00:02:17] And it's not really obvious. It's not, you know, the, hey, growth hack, let's do PLG and add a freemium or something like that. It's. , it's not that intuitive.
[00:02:26] Toni: So to put this into perspective, I don't wanna name this specific logos. I talk to everyone listening here knows all of them. So let's just be very clear about that.
[00:02:35] Um, and the smallest organization is 200 million AR plus, right? And the largest organization is, I think in a couple of billions, uh, in, in revenue, right? . So these ipo, not, not this, not this funny, fluffy. Valuation, you know, thing? No, no. An actual revenue, you know, thing, money coming to your bank, account revenue, you know, that, that, that kind of level.
[00:03:00] And, um, yeah, no, I kind of had a, uh, a bunch of chats with, uh, a few of them, and this really. Taught mostly with, uh, and sometimes they call VP of, uh, revenue ops, sometimes they're called go to market. Mm-hmm. Uh, ops and so forth, and chatted obviously with them on how, how they're hitting target all the time.
[00:03:19] You know, how how's that even, how's it even possible at that scale with so many different moving parts? Yeah. and um, and that's what we're gonna chat about today, which is
[00:03:27] Mikkel: pretty cool. And I mean, it's, it's super critical, especially if you have ipo. , it's gonna cost you a lot of money to miss. And obviously also if you have an ipo the same cuz you need to go potentially and raise and and so forth.
[00:03:38] Yep. So it, it's super critical. I think everyone will agree this is something we want to do and now before we get into the solution, there's one thing we should get out of the way. Mm-hmm. , which is maybe you're not working at a, you know, billion dollar company yet, and the things we're gonna do is, is it gonna work out for them?
[00:03:56] Toni: So that, that was actually one of the really interesting. Findings and aha moments from that, from those conversations, the methodology of how they're going about it, uh, very much, uh, very much something that everyone can copy and use. Uh, you will, you obviously struggle to have. a team of 10, 15 people only doing that, right?
[00:04:17] You need to find a way to scale it down and either do it, do it with one person or a tool or something like that. Uh, but generally speaking, the, the, the approach that they're taking in order to hit those targets, I think this is something that's applicably, uh, applicable, generally speaking. Mm-hmm.
[00:04:34] Mikkel: So we are a couple of minutes into the episode.
[00:04:36] Let's, let's jump into what are they actually doing? How are their process and method? different. Yep. In order to hit
[00:04:43] Toni: revenue. No, exactly. Let's jump into it. So now I think really, um, thinking about it, it's, uh, you know, no surprise it does, it does split into two major, uh, approaches or, you know, steps. One is really about, generating a great plan to begin with.
[00:05:01] Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And, uh, generally speaking, the, the way that they need to think about it, simply because it's such, you know, those are really big organizations. They in, in step one, they need to actually think about, Tam, you know, how much, how many more people are there that I can sell stuff to? I think this is lesser so a problem for, you know, some other folks listening here.
[00:05:24] I gotta say though, when, uh, I was at, uh, at Plan A, we did hit some of the TAM problems. In local markets after a while, by the way, so the TAM is not just a Google and Facebook, so I didn't talk to either of those. Google or Facebook problem. It's a, it's, you know, it might hit you much earlier than your think problem, right?
[00:05:43] Mm-hmm. Um, but usually kind of the, the tam um, uh, lens to the problem usually is then augmented by. Uh, them doing some m and a and so forth, and then Tam expansion, all of that jazz. Don't wanna go too much into this, but there is, generally speaking, a process that's being kicked off in June, early June, June for next year.
[00:06:04] So this is, this is, I think this is the one thing that people might not need to copy here necessarily, but obviously when you have a thousand or 5,000 or 10,000 employees, you kind of need to start thinking about this fairly early on. Especi. with all the, uh, you know, in some cases when you're public with all the expectations that need to be built around this, right?
[00:06:23] Yeah. So you start this in, in June and, um, basically what the teams are and so on is led by finance usually kind of that kickoff, right? And they're, they're usually, um, managing that in a, in a funky way where they're basically not necessarily giving the bottom up. So finance has a top-down understanding.
[00:06:46] Um, and then the bottom up is built by revenue operations, go-to-market operations. These, these folks in, um, almost every single case that I talk to. Mm-hmm. they're not giving them actually much guidelines sometimes. Yeah. As in, in one case there was basically like, you know, what, what do you think you could do, uh, dvp, rev op.
[00:07:07] Next year. Yeah. Tell me about that. And, and some other case there were some more, uh, guardrails around it where someone basically, Hey, we wanna grow. , 30%, 50%. Um, how would you get there? Right? Yeah. So there's a bit more of a guard rail kind of, uh, approach around it, but usually those guard rails are held extremely fluffy and extremely wide.
[00:07:28] Uh, because what, what basically you wanna, you want to achieve is that you have two different teams, you know, finance and revenue operations going at the problem with two different approaches. Yeah. They will obviously come to do two different results, but they will come to. , you know, things will be found that the other team isn't finding.
[00:07:45] Mm-hmm. , which is kind of a, kind of a funny, uh, funny approach in this sense. So basically what then happens, uh, revenue operations, uh, does the straightforward bottom up model, right? They start, okay. churn in upsell, and all of those different regions. That makes total sense. We can, you know, model this out.
[00:08:03] Yeah. We understand that. then they take usually, what are. Existing revenue streams that are, uh, stable, so to speak, right? Where you have a very clear path, uh, a historic data set of how it has been developing and how it's gonna be growing, uh, forward. You very clearly know what the inputs are in order to achieve that.
[00:08:23] Mm-hmm. . And then you have, uh, things that are a little bit less clear on the new business side, um, that, you know, might be incorporating a new acquisition. And, and in bigger cases it might be going into, you know, new markets, new segments, and so forth. Right. Obviously drives a bunch of, complexity in those organizations is that they don't only have the dimension of, you know, two or three different regions and, uh, one or two channels.
[00:08:50] Yeah. They have all of that stuff. Plus different segments. Yeah. Because they're already on smb, mid-market enterprise. Uh, they don't think in regions. They're thinking markets in terms of, you know, Germany and France and uk, Northern ea. Uh, they think in terms of. , um, especially when you're at the scale, you will not only have a single product approach, you will have a multi-product approach, and you will need to understand how all of these different products across those different regions, a et cetera Yeah.
[00:09:21] How they're behaving and how they should be behaving, right? Mm-hmm. . So there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of additional granularity necessary to, build something out like. That, you know, to some degree, um, can be simplified for, uh, for, for small organizations. And in the case of, for example, multi-product, small organizations just have one product.
[00:09:43] It's kind of, it's kind of easier to figure this out, right? Yeah. So there's a lot of that stuff going on. figuring out how the whole revenue plan comes together and what the number is in the end. and then there's really the, uh, the moment of truth where those two models are. Uh, brought together.
[00:10:00] Yeah. Um, it's kind of like
[00:10:02] Mikkel: a Tinder swipe. Is there a match?
[00:10:03] Toni: Yeah. . Yeah. But I think again, in this case, usually finance plays kind of the, uh, the. I, I don't have a good dating app comparison. . I'm sorry. So I was, I was trying to figure this out. No, but, um, uh, finance za, Hey, show me your stuff first. Okay. So that's kind of how it works out.
[00:10:23] Mm-hmm. , and then there's a Oh, oh, they think they can grow much more in that region over there. Mm-hmm. We didn't know about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a little bit of that approach happening. Um, and then obviously the best of both world. Is being taken forward, obviously. Um, and, and as in all cases now, there is a, there's always a gap.
[00:10:43] Yeah. You know, finance always wants to be, uh, bigger and faster and all of that stuff. Mm-hmm. and, and revenue operations much more tied to, well, there's this reality thing happening here and, and we also will need to be, uh, we will be held accountable for that number as well. Right. So there's a bit more caution on, on the side of revenue operations or, uh, than, than it is on the, on the finance side, finance side.
[00:11:06] Fields in those conversations more, connected to the board and the shareholders. Yeah. That basically always want more period, uh, revenue operations is a bit more rooted in what, what can actually be done. Yeah. And, and that, that rift really then comes to, uh, comes to a hat than, you know, when those two approaches are being compared.
[00:11:26] And then there's a gap identified. Right? Yeah. And that gap conversation. In some cases, someone said to me, um, uh, obviously there's, there will then be some assumptions around how things might behave versus not, right? So, Very much assumption driven approach of that conversion rate. We assume that conversion rate magically will go up by a couple of points.
[00:11:47] Yeah. and um, and, and this one gentleman I talked to, he basically said like, well at some point, um, we, we, uh, get to a point where we say we disagree, but commit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This green commit. Yeah. So I really like that as it was actually for me, it was the first time hearing that, but basically the two teams saying, You know, you want this and obviously finance you.
[00:12:09] In the end, you will have the, the, the, the, the last say, so to speak. And we need to, uh, somewhat agree with that assumption. Uh, we don't agree that it will happen like that. Yeah. Um, but obviously you can't carry that, uh, that, that rift forward. You need to, you know, lock, lock in and, you know, shake hands.
[00:12:27] Mm-hmm. , there was one, one specific piece mention. And then something else was, um, which I find super interesting, uh, is really this, well, finance, if you want more here, you need to give me more money here. Yeah, yeah. And really have this very logic based approach because I feel, um, I do feel settling on an assumption.
[00:12:54] basically, again, like how a converter rate might change. Let's just stay with that super simple argument. Yeah. It's the cheapest way to get out of that conflict when you think about it. Yeah. Right. Because there's um, uh, there's no hard data around that that will happen. There's, they're the experts, revenue ops, they're those experts saying, well, we, we don't believe that's actually going to happen.
[00:13:14] Hmm. Um, and for it to happen, you would need to invest. Time of an existing team. Yeah. New hires, something else. I don't know what, in order to actually get that assumption to, to, you know, be fulfilled in the end. Um, and, and this other approach, um, is much more interesting because suddenly it costs something also for the finance side.
[00:13:36] Yeah. Right. If the finance side wants that assumption to be, uh, achieved or if, if they want to have more revenue or something like that. Yeah. Then basically rev ops can say, , let's do that. Yeah. But I need X amount of budget, uh, to get to this point. Right? Yeah. And I think what is, uh, really interesting is how, you know, how this is very much a data driven bottom up.
[00:14:02] Yeah. You know, blah, blah, blah. Approached revenue planning, which obviously view from the grow block side very much, uh, very much agree with. and it's being lived in those large organizations. Um, and, and really kind of. that, um, rift between finance and the top down pressure. Mm-hmm. , uh, and revenue off the bottom up piece.
[00:14:21] you know, we see that in 5 million Euro companies and apparently now we're also seeing 1 billion Yeah. Uh, Euro dollar companies. I think
[00:14:28] Mikkel: what's pretty cool about the approach is because it's two very different views on how revenue is generated. We've, we've talked about this before, right? Financial plan won't tell you how you're gonna get there, but it tells you other things.
[00:14:40] They will know things like how the cash flow, you know, varies over time and that might be a factor that needs to be accounted for in the plan. Yeah. And they might have certain efficiency metrics that you don't when you, when you run and do the bottom up. Yeah. Right. So I think there is Men's power as an organization in doing that is almost like, You know, silent auction where you don't know what is being bit and then all the carts are put on the table.
[00:15:04] Yeah. And then that replanning, uh, to me seems
[00:15:07] Toni: incredibly powerful. Yeah. And so one, one logo, I talk to, uh, everyone who knows them as well. Um, they're currently a little bit in the news because they're going through a rough time actually. . Um, and I talked to a, a former go-to-market planner for them. Um, and, and what came out there was really that that organization has a very, very, very, uh, top-down process, only very little bottom up.
[00:15:33] Um, basically you go from, you know, Tam and Tam expansions, aka acquisitions, uh, break that into the different, uh, geo geographies and those geographies then get labeled t. and then is just a territory management for the AEs, an AE manager to, you know, stack against that, what that approach is, um, fully lacking.
[00:15:55] And that was also the conversation I had with, with that gentleman was, uh, this really big question of, so how is all of that. Spreadsheet demand landing in AEs in boxes. Yeah. And how's that act? You know, how's that stab really happening? Uh, and he was like, yeah, that, that was, that was a big problem. . And, and then, you know, that that company obviously is extremely, extremely successful and has been riding that wave for, for super long, very successfully.
[00:16:23] And I think they're stumbling a little bit into trouble right now. And I think. Honestly, I mean, they don't need to take my word, uh, but I think, uh, um, some of the planning approaches that some of these other really successful companies are doing. Yeah. They also probably in terms of size, probably only 10, 20% of that.
[00:16:40] Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, I think what probably helped them to, to get out of this crisis right now. So I think
[00:16:46] Mikkel: the, the first learning and takeaway for how they hit is, Running a top down and bottom up, which, which should be doable. You can figure out what scale you can do it at, depending on size of business and
[00:16:56] Toni: so on.
[00:16:57] Yeah. So the, the first, the first step really is to, um, build a solid, solid, solid plan. Mm, while knowing, and it's mostly revenue operations, while knowing that regardless how solid the plan. It's never actually gonna happen like that. No. Yeah. And I think that's, that's kind of pretty cool. And also from the perspective that revenue versus finance has.
[00:17:22] Yeah, finance has this, well now we're done with the budget. And especially in those companies, and we're talking pre I P O I P O, you know, or even on the way back to private being privately held, um, you know, those companies, um, they literally cannot change their budget. Mm-hmm. , I mean, Theoretically they can.
[00:17:42] Right. But the, um, what happens to your stock price when you go out and basically, you know, the, the, the term is lower guidance. Yeah. Yeah. When you go out and say, ah, we said we're gonna do, I don't know how many, hundreds of millions in revenue mm-hmm. , it's actually gonna be a little less than that. That is, that is usually a big problems penalized a lot in the market.
[00:18:02] And also when you're pre i p o and you have that happening around the time you, you basically, in some case, you basically need to pause your, your IPO process, right? Yeah. Um, so the budget cannot be touched. Whatever, whatever is being, uh, you know, agreed upon later and happens really later, the budget cannot be touched.
[00:18:19] Um, which really has this mentality of. To a degree through that process, finance needs to kind of say, no, this will be the plan. And that's exactly how everything will be going. Revenue operations very clearly is, uh, well that's the best guest step at this, and that's how it probably will be going. Right.
[00:18:39] Which then kind of leads us really to, um, the, you know, the execution side or, um, The observability side almost revenue observability, kind of in that sense. But really the, the approach here is, okay, we have, 1st of January roll around. we, uh, communicated this plan across the organization. We gave some people to, you know, participate.
[00:19:02] There were like varying levels of, of degrees of how to, how to build consensus around this, and then it's really execution time, right? Yeah. Planning done is done, budget is done, everything is done. Now, let's go. What usually happens is that Q1 basically goes according to plan. More or less surprise. Yeah.
[00:19:21] More or less. Right. And, and, uh, the, the reality is, well, congratulations. You were able to look three month into the future. Yeah. Um, and, and no one is surprised about that. Q1 usually goes great. Um, what, um, what, what, you know, one specific team was doing or is doing, uh, was basically, you know, Michelin, we talked a lot in BART as well.
[00:19:43] We talked a lot about MBS and qbi and so. , um, that particular team is basically doing weekly man, um, uh, um, uh, weekly business reviews Yeah. To the C level of that public company. Mm-hmm. . Think about that. Yeah. Every single week, uh, the, you know, VP operations persona, Uh, on a call with c level of a publicly traded organization.
[00:20:12] Yeah. And in that call going through the main pieces of basically the, you know, the steering of the model. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, giving a traffic light system on what's on track, what's not on track. And if, if your corner of that organization lights up. Suddenly there's, you know, the, uh, what is the, the eye of Mordo
[00:20:38] There's suddenly a lot of attention on you. Yeah. And then there's like, well, okay, cool. How are you gonna get out of this? You know, what's the problem? What's keeping you from it? And, and so forth. Um, and tracking that, and obviously the discussion around that is kind of limited and, and probably that hour.
[00:20:54] Yeah. Of a weekly call. Um, but, but still, right? That's, that's the level of steering going on. And, and if, you know, when you think about it, this is like a multiple thousands employees organization. When management, top management spends an hour on this per week, uh, first of all, Sends a message throughout the whole organization, number one and number two, well, there's a bunch of people that need to prepare that stuff, and by preparing, they're like, uh, oh, yeah, my, my traffic light is red.
[00:21:22] Yeah, , it's, or it's yellow. And you know, the dread already starts then it's not when, when the report is being gone through and stuff, it's like, no. You
[00:21:31] Mikkel: know, I mean, we've been there. The pro move is to try and even preempt the meeting saying, we know this is happening here. But, so actually what I wanted to ask is what are they tracking?
[00:21:40] Are we talking only KPIs or is it also like bigger strategic
[00:21:43] Toni: initiatives? So it's, um, it didn't get into that. Okay. Deep, deep level of detail. Um, but number one, it's metrics and KPIs that basically make up. Uh, backbone of the model and the plan. Yeah. In that case, it's, you know, different conversion rates, it's different, you know, product lines, how they're behaving.
[00:21:59] Yeah. Um, different regions, different segments and so forth. So I don't know the specifics. No. Um, and, uh, uh, surrounding that. Then also, uh, some bigger strategic initiatives, right. Whether or not that might be, uh, incorporating, uh, a recently, you know, acquired company or something like that. Right. Kind of those, those things kind of happen there.
[00:22:20] don't know to what detail obviously, though, right? No. Um, and, uh, uh, and again, I think the, the, the, the point here really is around, the visibility that's being created, and then the accountability coming out of this Yeah. Uh, throughout the organization.
[00:22:34] Mikkel: So I think the point is really they have a, a, a system to monitor progress.
[00:22:37] It's not just annual kickoff and. Annual review, they, they're intermediary steps that needs to happen. We've talked about, you said at qbr NBRs in the past, really great tool to kind of have your hands on the steering wheel. Yeah.
[00:22:51] Toni: And if you will, right. What they're, what they're discussing there, two degree, that's the, that's the post-mortem conversation that people that have only a qbr.
[00:23:03] Go through it the end of the quarter or after the quarters ended. Yeah. Uh, but instead of making the postmortem, they're basically having it immediately when it happens. Yeah. Which then allows them to uhoh, uh, something is going, you know, from green to yellow, what's going on? Why is that happening? Hmm. Uh, you know, basically a triage around it.
[00:23:19] Yeah. Um, and then, okay, so this is now the action plan of how we wanna, uh, fix it. Mm-hmm. and potentially, you know, maybe we need to reshuffle some things. Yeah. Which is kind of the, the next piece here.
[00:23:31] once, once you see some of those deviations happening, right.
[00:23:35] Once you see the, the, the gap widen. Um, and you know, this doesn't happen in Q1 and happens at some point later. Yeah. Uh, you basically get to the point where it's, you know, this, this, this light has been read on the report now for a couple of months. Yeah. And then there's a bit of like, I don't think this thing is gonna go back to green anytime soon.
[00:23:55] No. Um, so what's the revenue impact of that thing? Yeah, that's ax. Um, and how can we fix it? How can we still get to target, you know, despite this thing being read And, uh, then really the conversation is very much about, um, potentially leveraging other pieces of the organization. Yeah. Um, or giving more or less budget, you know, moving things around.
[00:24:18] Again, within the confines of the budget. Right? At the end of the day, no one will, no one will care if revenue number is being hit, but the way to get there, so the budget below has a bit of reshuffling. Yeah. And abita. So profit is being hit. If, if top line and bottom line are there. Investors don't, I mean, I'm just saying this now, but investors don't really care how you got there in the end.
[00:24:41] No. Uh, for finance is really important because every month they're being asked of, you know, why did this number deviate from the plan by how much percent then, then to explain. But at the end of the day, . Um, as, as long as you're hitting those top and, you know, bottom line, uh, parameters, I think everyone is happy.
[00:24:58] So really what that needs to go on in that slight replanning or readjustment is figuring out how it can shuffle those resources, uh, in a, in a better way potentially to still hit that target. Right? And I think this is some of the insane superpowers when you think about this approach, which very much is while you get early warning signs immediately, right?
[00:25:20] Something is turning yellow. , you immediately jump on and fix it. and, uh, uh, and if something kind of widens too much, you might need to do some recalibration. But in that case, you, it's, it's, it's not like, oh, we are behind on hiring. Let's hire more. Uh, because you know what the revenue impact is, I don't know, 5 million.
[00:25:40] you basically, uh, now can go out into the whole organization and figure out how can we find 5 million? Yeah. And it doesn't need to be one initiative. It could be 10 initiatives that in total give you a five. Uh, but really having that approach, um, basically ensures those companies, um, that they will hit this.
[00:25:57] I mean, yeah, within one or two points in our margin will hit that revenue target in the end. Right. So the planning piece is all good and dandy and fine. And I think rev ops has a lot. Contribute there, especially from a finances perspective, to make this even a realistic plan. The magic comes from when you then have that somewhat realistic plan.
[00:26:19] It's still not perfect. The magic comes from tracking it extremely closely, seeing early warning signs when something is slightly veering, of course. Mm-hmm. catching it immediately with a person responsible to the team responsible. Um, and then having the ability to basically, fix the issue and we are talking conversion rates in the funnel.
[00:26:40] Yeah. To fix the issue before it actually, you know, materializes in the revenue number. Right? Yeah. And if you think about this, and I think this is something that, you know, people should be taking away here, and when you think about having a, a quarterly review cadence, um, the things that pop up throughout the quarter, Um, you basically will be too late in fixing them.
[00:27:02] Yeah. After, after that thing happens. Right? So if you have a three month sales cycle, let's just say something like that, um, you could actually see the early warning signs appear in month one or month two of that qbi of that quarter. You can now start immediately when that happens. Uh, you know, cost correcting, fixing, um, or, you know, if, if you can't fix the issue at hand, you can come up with another thing that maybe could close the gap.
[00:27:28] Um, and then, you know, getting close to the original revenue number instead of not fixing it, not seeing it in many cases. By the way, that's really the big problem, not seeing. then walking out of the quarter being, ah, we missed, why would we miss? And ah, we could probably have, you know, fixed that if we had known about it, you know?
[00:27:47] Yeah. And I think this is what those organizations are much stronger at. Yeah. Uh, compared to, to other teams. Uh, um, basic kind of, uh, having that, having that insight, having that, um, uh, having that ability to then, you know, move around tactics and, and tackle this. I. ,
[00:28:07] Mikkel: I mean, we, it's kind of clear you need to have that system in place to monitor progress, in order to get, to get there, right?
[00:28:15] To have that time on your side and become agile. And we kind of joked about it, uh, a bit the other day. You have a, you know, whatever sales manager behind track. Ask the rev ops person, can you help me figure out what's happening? You know, two, three weeks. , then there's already a decision made when the report arrives.
[00:28:31] It's too late. Yeah,
[00:28:33] Toni: no, it's so, I mean, that example is really about how currently many teams are operationalizing this. Yeah. It's like a sales manager VP is like a gut feel. I've pin that myself by the way. Yeah. Have a gut feel, Hey, you know, can you check this out as an ad hoc report for that specific thing?
[00:28:47] Um, and then, you know, two weeks later, , those reports, they do take some time. Yeah. And it's not like rev ops doesn't have anything else to do at that moment. Um, they come back and either say, you know, usually they say, Nope, it's not, it , you're wrong. And then, and then, okay, let's do another gut feel. Yeah. Um, uh, and, and the other approach is very much, well, there's the, the triaging, the, the diagnosing, you know, the, the, the seeing of symptoms and treating of the disease.
[00:29:17] Yeah. That really happens. immediately. So you save all of that wasted time, uh, and to, to basically kind of course correct. Yeah. And then not see that impact. Hit revenue, right? Mm-hmm. , and it's, it's so funny how time sensitive some of these things are. Oh, yeah. The longer you wait, the larger you get. Basic will be on the revenue side.
[00:29:37] Yeah. .
[00:29:39] Mikkel: So I think we should maybe just try and wrap everything up together here. Mm-hmm. , uh, we've been through a couple of things, so the whole planning
[00:29:46] Toni: element. Yeah. So I think number one, again, those are, uh, companies in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. Um, they're very good at hitting those targets is insane.
[00:29:56] Um, and, uh, I think the methodology that they're using, can be used from very small beginnings. Yeah. Uh, that's, that's basically how I see it. Um, there's a, there's a very clear, uh, finance, revenue ops, uh, relationship in the, in the planning process. And this is really about creating a best possible, you know, uh, most realistic plan.
[00:30:18] Um, and then there is a instrumented system that is in. in order to alert you, uh, on Hey, these things are going off. Mm-hmm. Uh, you need to fix it right now. Right. And I think this is where revenue operations plays a huge role. Yeah. In instrumenting that and making sure that the commercial, uh, leaders and decision makers can actually react to that super quickly.
[00:30:39] Mm-hmm.
[00:30:40] Mikkel: So I hope there's gonna be a lot of work happening to implement some of this. Hopefully, I mean, it's, the plan is already done if we're being honest for most companies, unless you're, you know,
[00:30:50] Toni: years pushing whatever. Yeah. Fuck the plan. I think, I think that's usually kind of over now. Yeah.
[00:30:54] It's re
[00:30:55] Mikkel: replanning. Yes. Being able to monitor and get some alerts if things start sliding.
[00:30:59] Toni: Yeah. I think if people are listening to this and a bit antsy now, number one, uh, one thing you might have screwed up already is that finance was leading that planning process by themselves. So basically the plan is, Unrealistic.
[00:31:12] It's not about the eventual revenue number, it's about how you kind of get there. It's so unrealistic that basically, uh, all your, all your measurements are red right now. Yeah. So that means you would probably kind of need to do re-plan in this. Uh, but the other side of the coin is really okay, whatever has been planned, uh, you know, where are we on track?
[00:31:31] Where aren't we? And I think some of those conversations, um, , you know, should happen monthly. Yeah. Um, but I think also some of those conversations should happen once the trigger, you know, uh, uh, you know, what is once, once it happens, right? Once, once, once something veers, of course. And then it should basically alert you and say like, boom.
[00:31:51] Right? Yeah, no, I mean, so obviously what was really cool for me as a founder talking to all of those folks, it's like, The way you guys are doing it. We are building exactly that. Oh, it's
[00:32:04] Mikkel: wonderful. Oh, you're stitching in a small pitch there. Of course. I think we can leave it at that. Was that a, A small pitch
[00:32:12] Well, if you listen to this entire episode and listening to this, you can go and check us out www.growblocks.com. We can help with some
[00:32:18] Toni: of that stuff. You can probably help with some of that stuff. Wonderful,
[00:32:21] Mikkel: wonderful. . Good to see. We're still in sync. So nice to have you back. Good to see. We are still in sync. I haven't forgotten how this works.
[00:32:30] I was. You know, Hey, do I know how to set this up still?
[00:32:34] Toni: And you clearly didn't I? No. No idea.
[00:32:36] Mikkel: I had to get bar . Wonderful. This substitute. Thank you Toni. Thank everyone for listening. Turn this up again.