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What do video games have to do with business growth? More than you think.
In this episode, Toni and Raul explain how their gaming past helps them spot company issues almost instantly. Using the idea of levels, just like in video games, they show why businesses get stuck, how to know what level your company is really on, and what it takes to move forward the right way.
Want to be a guest on the show? Learn more at revformula.io
Want to be a guest on the show? Learn more at revformula.io
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (06:53) - Levels Explained
- (11:53) - Hiring the Right People at the Right Time
- (16:41) - Strategic Roadmaps and Levels
- (19:12) - Situational Dependency in Business Advice
- (20:14) - CRM Implementation Challenges
- (25:28) - The Importance of Process Maturity
- (31:47) - Three Main Problems
- (35:13) - Our Solution
- (37:30) - Next Week: Zero Waste GTM
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.
What Video Games Taught Us About Fixing Companies: Levels
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[00:00:00]
Introduction
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Toni: Today, Raul and I talk about how our video gaming past helps us to understand and spot issues in companies almost immediately. Sure. Having seen now one to 200 revenue teams from the inside might also help us a little bit. With that, we will go into how we break it down into. And levels and what common pitfalls are for using this approach yourself.
And if you stick around until the end, we talk about how you can be a guest on the show. Also. Now,
Raul: enjoy. There are certain levels that you go through and for these levels that are requirements that you need to pass from level one to level two, to level three, to level four, and so on and so forth. And the important analogy is not just, oh yeah, there's a logical steps to things.
It's also that these parts of the journey. Make you ready for what is to come. So in that castle that you're building towards, there will be an enemy and you will need all the weapons that you have collected to get to, uh, slaying that enemy.
Toni: There's an order to [00:01:00] things. It would make your life a lot easier when you start thinking about it in ways of levels and say, okay, in order to progress with.
With the CRM of this size, do my processes need to improve in order to actually achieve that? Right? Does my data entry need to improve in order to achieve that? Are there, are there other things that are dependent on one another?
Raul: You need to, for example, to get from where you are right now, within the next six months to advance one step further in CRM to advance one step further in your hiring.
And to advance two steps further in your process risk, for example.
Toni: So we ended the last show by me teasing a little bit that Ro and I wanted to talk about something serious here today, and I think we've been dropping hints here and there and everywhere. So, uh, so I don't know, maybe some people are interested about what's going on here.
Raul: I also really think this is an interesting topic in itself. Yeah. So we're, we'll be using today to talk about what we've been working on, how you can work with us. But I think more importantly, for, even if you're not among that group of people, um, the [00:02:00] learnings that we made and a model that we, we use to, to arrive at the conclusion, which might be really helpful for you.
Toni: Yeah, absolutely. And um, and really kind of all of this started by us thinking, okay, we've been now. Doing this show. I mean, previously obviously Michel, and maybe we're gonna have Mickel on this show actually at some point to kind of interview him, but previously, uh, RO and I did the Revenue Brothers, uh, et cetera, et cetera.
So we've been actually working on this for a while. Right. And I think one of the thoughts we've been, you know, playing around with, I was like, okay, cool. How can we, how can we add more to this? Right? We've, we are giving, I feel great advice and, and people tell us that it is good advice. Um, but how can we, how can we add that even more?
Right. And I think the, talking to some folks, like, I didn't do any interviews, but like loosely chatting about this, what I heard here and there was like, oh, your, your advice on the revenue form is really great. But you know, [00:03:00] my issue is different. I'm a snowflake. I have different needs. You're talking about this thing for this enterprise thing, but actually I needed this for my SMB thing.
Or you talk about these guys, about 20 million, I need this for 5 million, et cetera, et cetera, right? Kind of to a degree. Um. The, you know, taking some of the advice we kind of we're talking about and, and our guests are talking about and, and breaking this down and applying that, that was still pretty difficult.
Right. At least that, that was some of the feedback. Um, I've been hearing. I don't, did, did you hear something? What, what did you hear Ru what, what triggered you to, to think about, uh, what we could do next? Yeah,
Raul: so this would be a great point to say something like, many people have asked me this, and then the other, and that's bs that's not true.
Like, we're not getting. And a request every single day on, on helping people. That's not what happens, but what happens is some people talk to us and we talk to people we're already working with, we're already talking to, and there's this kind of, this, this bulk of ideas that, that all gather on the same idea, which is, okay, cool.
How do you now get [00:04:00] to me being an actually better company, making more money through. This advice, right? And obviously advice alone is not enough, right? It's, it's maybe interesting to you, maybe this, you'd listen to this on your car drive or in the office when you're, when you're trying to take some time away off the day, but.
That's not ultimately in its own, making it better. Um, and so the idea that we had is, okay, how can we get all the projects we've done in the past at this point, over 400 projects. Um, all the, the ideas and the execution. We've also executed, uh, ourselves to be of help for real value for people. No bs. Yeah, we hate bs.
Maybe you've seen at this point no. Thinking about how to charge maximum hours and how to stick in there and just extract the life out of people, but what is something that we would've used ourselves and would've been actually helpful for us to make us better and faster? Yeah. And that's what [00:05:00] we're talking about today.
Toni: And I think the obvious things, um, to your point is like, hey, let's build an agency, a growth agency, uh, you know, that's charged by the hour. Let's leave people with some slides and, and basically done with this, right? But, and I think this is, this is where, where, you know, you and I roll, we're kind of thinking a little bit differently.
I think we have very strong roots in being the operators, being on the receiving end of help. Um, being very reluctant to, in many, in my case, I've been very reluctant to kind of receiving and accepting help simply because I was always feeling, um. You know, uh, either it was really not tangible what came out of the advice or just took too long, like month and month of, you know, back and forth and what have you.
Um, or was some, some cookie cutter stuff that, you know, to a degree, you know, you can call it BS or not, but simply wasn't. Wasn't fit enough [00:06:00] for me to really actually take it and, and, and, and run to the next, to the next level, so to speak. Right. And, and as we were talking about this, saying like, those things are that we hate, basically we're basically creating the limitations of how we wanna help people.
So. Instead of kind of going into a long spiel role, what's, what's the glimpse on, on what we do? Yeah.
Raul: The idea is you get maximum value, meaning actual executable, uh, advice to go to market excellence within 14 days, and no bullshit, nothing that comes off the rack, just tailor made for you specific to your situation, giving you what good looks like for your company at the time,
Toni: and everyone is gonna be like.
Oh, wait a minute. In 14 days, no cookie cutter stuff. How's, how's that gonna work out? Right. Kind of. That's, that's what everyone would be thinking. And we were like, no, that's actually pretty clear to us. Right.
Levels Explained
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Toni: So let's, let's maybe talk about what we've referred to and we've, we've teased this a little bit in a previous episode, [00:07:00] what we've referred to as elements and levels.
Let's talk about this and, and if you, if you're listening to this like levels, well, you know, it sounds like a video game. Yeah. Yes. Ro and I have a little bit of a video game past. Um, I think many of the folks listening probably do have the same, uh, leveling up and, you know, progressing through things. I think that makes intuitive sense to us.
So that's why, that's why we are actually. Using this way of decoding how, how companies, where companies are and how they work. Um, but before we go deeper on the level piece, actually kind of the first one, really important elements role. You know, when you. How, and, and you did come up with that, but, you know, how does this elements thing work?
How should people, you know, conceptualize that?
Raul: Maybe just as a quick side note, 'cause I think it's a funny one. Uh, just to prove how much of gamers we are, despite the fact that I'm playing in the World Cup of Magic, the gathering, uh, next month, by the way, again, next time in in Atlanta, um. [00:08:00] Initially, the first podcast Tony and me did was called Super Revenue Brothers, and some of you might even know that.
And there was a Super Mario theme and the jingle before was also a gaming themed. And, um, we were a little bit fearful of Nintendo copyright strikes. So I think that's why we kind of went away from that. But, uh, we really are serious about this kind of gaming thing, but we're also serious business people.
Right.
Toni: But also, and few people know this, um, it's not like it was professional, but I was playing video games. In my past and got paid for it. Like, uh oh. Really? Played, uh, Warcraft three, which is like a real time strategy game. Like this is now, it feels like it's 20 years ago, which it probably is, maybe even more than that by now.
But, um, just FYI, so we, we are not, we are not joking around when we saying, you know, there's a, there's a, a gameplay connection. Yeah.
Raul: So what's the connection, right. Um, in a game. Let's say an RPG, which is a role playing game, but any other kind of game, even if you're a non gamer, you will understand this concept.
Um, there are certain levels that you go through, [00:09:00] and for these levels, there are requirements that you need to pass from level one to level two, to level three, to level four, and so on and so forth. So. If you're, uh, I dunno, maybe not Super Mario, but like Zelda or whatever, uh, playing that to get to the castle, you need to find the key.
To find the key. You need to find the fire sword. To find the fire sword. You need to do this and that and the other, uh, adventure first, right? So there are things that build on top of each other, enabling you and making you ready for the next thing that is happening. And the important analogy is not just, oh yeah, there's a logical steps to things.
It's also that these. Parts of the journey make you ready for what is to come. So in that castle that you're building towards, there will be an enemy and you will need all the weapons that you have collected to get to, uh, slaying that enemy and then comes the next enemy. And that enemy will need the stuff that happens in between.
So away from gaming, how does that look like now for business and go to market? There are, and this is the obvious part. There are the elements of your go-to market strategy, right? There's number one strategy. You [00:10:00] will have heard about this. There's the people, there's the process, tech, and the data. These are the five elements that make up your company, uh, or your go-to market strategy.
You can double click on them, and then there's many more. If you're missing a certain word there, there's more coming, right? What's important for the execution is that there are certain levels that each of these progresses in and. The important part for you is that you don't need to be at the max level at every single point, but you need to, for example, to get from where you are right now, within the next six months, to advance one step further in CRM, to advance one step further in your hiring and to advance two steps further in your processes, for example.
Mm-hmm. Uh, but also, for example, work on marketing, work on your interconnections with other departments, right? These are the, the double click elements that we are talking about. And that's the challenge, right? The challenge is finding the right point that you should be aiming at, not overshooting, right?
Because that's wasted time that maybe you don't have early on, and then executing towards those.
Toni: [00:11:00] And I think this is how we are able to actually jump in. Help assess, understand your current situation and help and tell you exactly kind of where to go from here, right? Like a little bit more later on. But that's really how we're overcoming this.
Well, how can you give non cookie cutter advice? In like this short amount of time, right? Kind of. That's our unlock. And we've been doing this, I dunno, role what you've been like doing a hundred, 200 projects or something like this. I've with Roblox myself seen like 20, 30 different organizations from the inside.
Like I think that's, that's the superpower here, right? But let's make this all a bit more tangible. Um. What, you know, let's go through two or three examples. Let's see where we land. Um, let's jump into it, kind of what is a good example for people to understand that there are levels two things.
Raul: Yeah. And so I think this will be interesting for you in general, even if you work with us or not, right?
Hiring the Right People at the Right Time
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Raul: Um, very typical example is there is this saying that you should hire the. Person in [00:12:00] sales at the right time. Um, there's a time to hire a vp. There's a time to hire a C level, there's a time to hire executors and then, uh, military people and all that kind of stuff, right? Uh, there's all kinds of advice. If you read Ben Horowitz, then you maybe know what I'm talking about.
What matters is how do you approach this topic and how do you answer that question for yourself? And, uh, one way that I did this once for a company that really helped them is, look, um, there's. These levels. For example, when it comes to processes, and I like to think in five levels, but whatever, it's not as important yet what these exactly are, but let's call it from very little maturity to high maturity process, full automation, whatever.
There's kind of, uh, steps in between. And then there's also the, uh, different similarities that you can hire. What is important is to look at where you should be in now. Maybe you're lagging behind, so that's why where you should be now and where you want to be in three months and six months, and so on and so forth.
The idea with hiring is that many times a [00:13:00] certain person, but also a certain kind of person, a certain seniority is fit for a certain stage because they're good at getting you from where you are right now or where you should be getting you there to the next one. Complete example, maybe a VP sales is actually the person to get you from level three in processes to level five, right?
And that's maybe a two year span, which where you will go from, okay, we kind of have a little bit of a scalability in processes to now we're fully automated and we can have this 200 people, uh, machine there. Um, but maybe, uh, at the point where you're in right now, you need to get to level one, even at first.
Which is, uh, get it from the founder's brain onto paper onto some semblance of A CRM and onto some kind of repeatability, which maybe that's not what a VP four is for. Right? And that's when you get the scrappy person who can do all kinds of different things and is ready to build a, a quick CRM in a day or two, and then enable that with a little bit of clay and get some automations in there just as a first version.
So the link here is [00:14:00] that. The level that you're at and the transition that you need to make within the now, but also within the next couple of months and years, maybe, uh, is a good North star for the kind of person that you should hire. And each of them covers certain ground, and this is true on seniority, but then again, also of course on individuals, you will sometimes find VPs who are scrappy enough to be early stage, but also corporate enough to do later stage.
And that's kind of a gem that you found there. But typically that's kind of how hiring works there.
Toni: The hiring advice on VP of sales and we. Discussed this previously that, that I usually see is, oh, you want to, you know, 5 million, whatever, this kind of guy at 10 million, whatever, that kind of lady, at 20 million, whatever this, right?
And, and to a degree, this is a way to express the same idea, but like in a little bit of a clunky way, right? So what I've seen many, many times, uh, myself, I made this mistake myself, by the way. Um, had, you know, US team hired a VP of sales, had to fire him within, I don't know, three weeks or something like that.
[00:15:00] Simply by getting the levels wrong. You know, I went for the really cool, nice logo, um, you know, big company steps in, and then we realized, oh wow. Uh, none of the things that he needed were in place. Like none of them. And, and the thing is like, they, they usually haven't learned how to put these things into place when they're coming from like a, you know, think about a Salesforce or something like this.
And, um, uh, so they can actually not get you from. Level two to level three or where, wherever they can actually dock in and be successful, right? So in that case, fantastic guy, fantastic. Did all the right things, blah, blah, blah. Nice guy as well. But simply, uh, we were not yet far enough progressed for, for, for having him, for actually utilizing him, right?
And the, the alternative would've been. Uh, to try and hire like a, uh, like an ops person that can help us to then get there, but it would've taken another one or two years to then actually use the VP sales in the right way. And we just decided, you know [00:16:00] what, actually this doesn't work out. We kind of hired the wrong guy for the job and then, you know, went back to the drawing board and hired someone specifically.
You know, we didn't call it level fit back then, but specifically fit for that situation. Right. And, and I think. This happens more than people think. Right. Um, basically over hiring or not hiring someone that actually can take you from where you are today, where to where you need to go. Right. And I think one of these issues that at least I myself had back then, you know, I was, you know, since then was talking to someone, um, about, you know.
Planning and those roadmap stuff and, and, and, and so forth. And, and he gave me an analogy that now clicks for me, like extremely well.
Strategic Roadmaps and Levels
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Toni: He was saying like, well Tony, if you wanna climb Mount Everest, you first need to know where you are. Like, are you, are you, uh, are you at the bottom? Before you even hit? You know, the mountain itself, like there's a long trek to even get to mount.
I haven't been unfortunate yet. There's a long trek to even [00:17:00] get to the mountain. And then there is, you know, a couple of a thousand meters up. Then there's, you know, base camp, and then there's like different steps in between, like, where are you? Right? It's like step number one, figuring out are you at base camp or not, right?
Um, and then from there, you know, where do you need to go and how do you progress? Kind of that seems intuitively sometimes easy. You have to know these things before you can make the next decision there. Right. And kind of in that level of thinking about it, I think was just not super clear to me back then.
Raul: And if you're thinking. Yeah, I've heard that advice before. This doesn't really help me. So the specifically, the differentiation here is this is not just telling you at 5 million, you need that and tell me you need that. These are just proxies where I think the levels help you understand what actually is underlying these, these decisions, right?
And these strategic hirings and these, uh, moving ahead, it is much more helpful to you to know that. If we want to move from, uh, level [00:18:00] two in CRM to level four, this is the kind of person we need if we want to move from level one to level three in processes, which we will need to make within the next six months.
So you have this roadmap ahead of the things that you need and the moves that you need to make. That is the kind of profile we're looking for, because these levels, they can happen at 5 million a r. They can also happen earlier. They can also happen later, and that is your specific situation. No two situations are ever the same in this sense.
Saying something as, yes, we're special is actually true. Right? And if the investor tells you, oh, at 10 million you need that person at 1 million, you need that person. They're trying to be helpful and in a way they're telling you the same thing, but just on a level that is maybe not actually helpful to you and your specific situation applicable.
Right. I
Toni: just wanted to interject here. So one, one thing that you just said there is like, um, actually really resonated with me, which is the, um. I think people make fun of the fact that everyone thinks they're special. I just did this in the intro, right? I was like, oh, everyone is a snowflake. Um, snowflake already is a passive aggressive, uh, you know, [00:19:00] throwing shade kind of thing.
Um, and, and I think what, you know, this in reality is like, no. Companies are not all super different. I don't think that's the case.
Situational Dependency in Business Advice
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Toni: But your current situation is very different from the situation of the advice that you've been giving, uh, getting, right. So I talked to one listener the other day and, uh, he was in an SMB company previously and he listened to all the SMB uh, advice we had to give, and he skipped all the mid-market enterprise advice.
Uh, and now he's running an enterprise business. And now he's kind of going back, listening to that stuff and, and that, that idea here really is, well, it needs to be situationally dependent. And I think in this situation is the, is the snowflake if, if you know what I mean? Right. Kind of. Yeah. In, in the actual situation that you're facing right now.
That's where the uniqueness actually comes in. But let's kind of jump to the next example that we've kind of lined up, which is really about, um, you know. You know, the typical process, CRM stuff, but we wanted [00:20:00] to kind of tell it in one or two stories that I think makes sense to people. Um, and not in a, in a rev ops way, but maybe kind of, maybe you take it from your role,
Raul: a very common one.
And, um, again, this is much more relevant than you might think, even from your vantage point as a founder. So.
CRM Implementation Challenges
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Raul: Uh, this is not just one story and, and there's not one person that's singled out here, but I have worked with many companies where, um, I've had to do a CRM introduction, for example, or I had to introduce some kind of process.
Um, and what typically happened there was that the, the person who gave me, uh, the job to do, typically a sales leader, a CRO founder, whatever. They were underestimating how much work had to be done to get to that level. And so a very practical example, this has actually happened to me exactly that way. I go to a company, they want this big CRM implementation and, um, I talked to the head of sales, head of inside sales, and the head of inside sales tells me exactly about the process that they have, and they show it to me on a map, on a, on a, on a slide.
They tell me this is exactly what the process is. Everyone's following that. [00:21:00] I'm already a little bit wor we, uh, wary here because typically that's not how it exactly happens. Um, and they say, we don't really need to work on processes. We don't really need you to understand all that stuff. Just go ahead and build this.
This is what I want. Right. I'm like, okay, cool. Let me just go to lunch with your team. Uh, lemme just go to lunch with the inside sales team and talking to them, just two salespeople. Uh, what happens is, uh, not just that they tell me they never saw that slide or they barely remember it. Uh, and not just that they work differently from what their boss told them, uh, told me that they work like, but also that they have completely different processes from each other, uh, including.
Just the basic understanding of what things meant. What is a closed one, what is a lead and what is an SQL, and how do we actually move these things forward? But also things such as when do I enter it into Salesforce? When do I, uh, get the data from clay and everything that comes with that. So talking to three people, one of which was the leader and had would've sworn on their firstborn [00:22:00] child that there was just one process.
Uh, talking to just three people, it was already clear that there was three different processes. And so what turned out, what, what started to be a CRM project where they were thinking, oh, we need to move one level ahead in CRM actually was interdependent with other things in this case, processes the people, educating the team, getting that level right first.
Toni: And the thing is right, we. We, we can't really hear drop the specific names of the companies, but, uh, I mean, you know, role was working for Project A previously, you can just go on the website and, you know, look at some of the really big companies that they have, you know, very proud of right now. It's one of those, or actually several of those where, where that example came from.
So super, super relevant. Um, we're talking unicorn territory.
Raul: Like, this is not an early stage startup. You're talking unicorn territory startup at that stage already.
Toni: I mean, I can just echo some of this, right? This is my, my own experience. Um, we wanted to roll out SalesLoft, like now, now this even sounds like ancient history, talking about [00:23:00] SalesLoft, who's that?
Um, but basically we wanted to roll out SalesLoft, uh, sequencer. We had around a hundred s STRs or something like that. Um, and we're like, oh, cool. Now, now that we are rolling this out, you know, we, this will be so easy. What we then discovered is. And we were priding ourselves in our operational efficiency and how good we are and how strong we are.
Um. Maybe another item on like, self-assessment sucks. Uh, but, um, what we basically discovered was, uh, we bought SalesLoft, we started to roll it out, and we realized that out of the 10 different teams we had, we probably had 12 different processes that were followed. And the, you know, the, the, you know, who gives a shit that, you know, you follow, you know, 12 different processes kind of.
Well, the problem was we couldn't roll out the tool. We couldn't get all the gains that we wanted to have. It took us three months to clean up everything and, and cleaning up something. When you're a hundred people, this was not easy. Uh, everyone had their little pet peeves of how they wanted to do things or not do things.
And, um, once we got to [00:24:00] the point of doing this, actually, we were like, oh, wow. Now we have, you know, performance management that actually works out across the company. Now we can tweak a couple of steps here and here and see, oh, now actually suddenly our fly rides kind of increase, et cetera, et cetera.
Right. So once you make it into a process, you can start to change and improve things. If you don't have that, you know, you can't do anything. Right. So that's, um, uh, that's kind of, you know, my, my experience from this, um, from, you know, this angle of the story that you just mentioned there,
Raul: and this is very common and I would venture to say that 75, 80% of the times when tool implementations fail, such as Salesforce, SalesLoft, even if you're using that anymore, outreach, whatever, they're.
The failures typically don't come from the tool. They come because of these kinds of reasons, uh, and they. And, uh, typically that's a great point where people just go in and blame the tool and it's like, oh, Salesforce sucks. It's too complicated. It's do that. Well, no, you suck. Right? Your company's processes suck, and your team, [00:25:00] not in general, but regarding the processes, is just not ready yet.
And that is why any tool would've failed achieving, for example, your next level of, uh, dashboards that you need, your next level of processes and automation. You're not gonna get there with any tool unless you do your homework. And what happens is. Some companies go through this never ending loop of going from tool to tool to tool.
I've worked with companies where that was their third attempt at building Salesforce, which blows my mind, and they still were making the same mistakes.
The Importance of Process Maturity
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Toni: I think the the point here in the story really is, um, there is, there's an order to things. Um, and you, you would make your life a lot easier when you start thinking about it in ways of levels.
Right. Um, and say, okay, in order to progress with, um, with the CRM of this size, like maybe you're doing this pipeline to Salesforce jump or something like this. Now, do my processes need to improve in order to actually achieve that? Right? Does my data entry need to improve [00:26:00] in order to achieve that? Are there, are there other things that are dependent on one another?
Right? Um, and, um, and, you know, enough of tools, but really kind of that level thinking is really important. And I think if there's, if there have any other advice here for you, um, is really the realization that, um, to, to a degree, whoever is doing the assessment. Um, very likely inside of your organization probably is gonna get it wrong.
Um, there's a little bit, you know, we are always talking about rev ops being the, um, you know, the neutral person in the room and so forth, right? Um, but you know what, that's not true for the own setup. Um, you know what, whatever you're doing, like in that case, you know, basically pro self preservation bias kicks in and you will kind of assess things in a different way.
Like we talked about hiring and people like your HR leader, people leader, self preservation kicks in when you talk about, you know, the, the maturity of the, uh, where they are and the level that they are and so forth, right? You will, you will just be [00:27:00] biased. And, and also founders are biased in, um, hey, how, how strong are we in our sales maturity?
You know, why? And this is maybe another topic to, you know, squeeze in here since we're landing there. But, you know, this typical founder led sales transition, again, we talked about this I think another time. This is not only important for people that are just getting started with a million, this is also important for people.
That is, you have issues around 10, 20, 30, 50 million. But the realization there is like, well, I'm, I'm doing those sales. Why isn't, you know, this, this a, that hayat, you know, it must be him That is bad. Uh, but in, in actuality. Uh, the sales motion was simply not mature enough. The levels weren't progressed enough for this to actually work out, right?
The ro kind of, you see it sometimes from a, from a different angle, but that is another way, again, to look at this problem and, and say like, well, actually on a, on a, on a level perspective, did we actually, you know, set everything up in a way where this could work out or not? [00:28:00] And many, many times people get it wrong.
And using this way of thinking about it, I think will help you to get it right next time.
Raul: I've heard dozens of times this exact story, and this is really not an exaggeration, it was dozens of times. Um, some version of this, I've done 500 k so far, well, a million so far, basically on my own. As a founder, I now hire three salespeople or two or one.
How can it be that we're still only at 500 K? This shouldn't be possible, right? And I'm not even an educated salesperson. Um, well. It's almost always because you weren't ready for that person or you weren't ready to make a hire like that yet. And uh, the way I flipped that is because the founder then almost always is like, okay, we hired the wrong person.
We made mistakes. That guy sucked. She was not good enough, he was not the right fit. Right. Okay, cool. Maybe that is true, but how about you hired that person? You, not just you as a person, but your whatever HR department, whatever is part of that process, [00:29:00] produces these kinds of hires right now. That is what happens.
And that is why the first person you hired was, came out the way and the second person and the third way, and that's why they didn't have a success. So the whole machine just typically right now, spits out maybe the wrong person or maybe the right person at the wrong time with the wrong process and all that stuff.
And so you better level up. You are hiring, you better level up the understanding of who you're looking for. Maybe you need to move away from, we have these seven step interviews where all the founders talk to them, and after that, uh, all the assessment we have about a person is, um. Yeah, she was cool. I think she could be a great fit or he's a killer.
We need to hire him. Right. And that's, I, I mean, I'm, I'm belittling this a little bit, but that is how very often it is done, right? Yeah. And you need to build a process where there's five people who don't ask all, ask the same questions, and who have actual things they assess against. And if you build that machine, then maybe once you hire those people and they come in, you need to have an onboarding ready so they can hit the ground running and you don't get [00:30:00] six months of waiting time until they're successful, but maybe, maybe three or four and so on and so forth.
And then you can make it so you can actually build a machine that works.
Toni: And I think one, one last, um, example here, um, is really, let's take the, we are a mid-market company and uh, and we want to sell to enterprise. Right. Um, that is a very typical progression. Companies want to make because better, uh, net retention rates, uh, bigger deals, bigger logos, and so forth.
Um, and the issue here is really thinking through levels about are we ready for something yet? Right. Thinking about it from a, well, not necessarily our sales process, but the maturity of our and seniority of our salespeople. Um, you know, do we have the top funnel to support that? Do we have the product to support that?
Do we have all the, uh, soc to paperwork to support that? Um, can we actually, you know, service [00:31:00] them in the right way? Do we have the right rollout process in place and the team in place in order to support these? Do we have the right process in place in order to upsell them? Do we have the right messaging in place?
Do we understand that we are not, you know, instead of talking to a VP in a mid-market company, talking to a VP in an enterprise company, it's two completely different worlds. They, they not only drive completely different cars and have much, much more salary difference than you might think, but also the way they think about the business and their objectives in the business are completely different.
Right? And thinking through those levels. Will actually help you, um, not to mess it up, which basically everyone is, is doing right? Basically everyone is messing up, uh, the, the enterprise go to market. But this is just another example of how to apply those elements and then, uh, you know, uh, levels in, in conjunction of that.
Three Main Problems
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Toni: We touched on some of those areas just now, uh, but I think we're across the board seeing three main topics emerge. One is people usually get this self-assessment wrong. [00:32:00] You see, know, sometimes we say like, self-assessment sucks. Um, and, and simply because of the way we talked about self preservation to a degree, right?
So again, if. If I'm the founder talking about my own business, I will have a completely different sense of what's good, what's bad, versus me the same person looking at the same business, but from the outside. Right. And, and I think that is true for founders, it's true for CROs, it's true for our marketing leaders.
You know, the whole thing basically. Right? So, self-assessment is really difficult, um, you know, to begin with. And that leads to the second problem, which is trying to understand what does good look like for right now? Because you can do a, you know, multiple different mistakes here. One is simply not knowing what good looked like, good looks like for you in this specific situation.
One of, one of the folks I've been talking to. They said like, Hey Tony, I know what Xero looks like and I know what Excellency looks like because I worked in a big company, but in between, it's a [00:33:00] bit of a jungle, right? It's really difficult to figure out where do, where am I over-engineered or where I'm undersupplied.
I, I just don't know actually. Right. Kind of really figuring this out is difficult. But if you combine this with the first one of your self-assessment being wrong, you might actually be thinking your way further progressed in some area than you actually are, and therefore think it's not a problem. Right?
Kind of those two things kind of interplay. And then the last thing is really. And I think, and I think that's true for CROs, it's true for founders, it's true for rev ops, it's true for like everyone out there. It's not like people don't have anything to do. Like people are already extremely crazily busy.
Um, I think the difference is instead of adding stuff to the list, I think. Having someone help you with that self-assessment, with the where should you be? Um, you know, figure out what are actually better priorities than what you have right now in order to move the needle. And figuring this out is not only really difficult because you need to combine a [00:34:00] bunch of these other things, but also you need to have confidence in what are the things actually will work out.
Right? Um, pushing then suddenly a big project out. You know, let's just say you're the CO and you wanna push a big project out. Based on, um, based on the priorities that you, that you settled on. If you don't have super strong confidence in this being right, it's gonna be just difficult. Right. And I, and I think that is, that is the other piece, right?
And again, this is commercial founders. It's s it's, it's everything. And this, it's really the, what's your confidence level that the priorities you've set are actually the right ones. Um, and then bridging that to the execution itself, right? Kind of that's. When, when we look at some of those things, those are really where, where we feel, uh, the, the non-obvious parts of why this feels so difficult, why it feels so obvious on the surface, but why it's feels still so difficult below where this kind of hits.
Right? And then this is in this mash off. Poor self-assessment, not [00:35:00] understanding where you are right now, not having confidence on your priorities, and then therefore execution is kind of falling apart. Right. Kind of. That's, that's the, the fur ball that we are, that we are usually seeing that people get stuck at mentally.
Our Solution
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Raul: Yeah, and that's exactly what we've built, so we have. A solution for that. And obviously a big part of the solution will be you just running like crazy and executing this. But what we wanna help you is give you that compass, give you the mirror, or in other words, assess you correctly. And as a solution, by the way, also making you better for future self-assessments.
Yeah. As a first thing, right? Then we will work with you on exactly what good looks right like for you right now and within the next couple of months. And then we will put that into an execution plan that you can actually realistically achieve and start that off with momentum all [00:36:00] within 14 days.
Toni: What that gives me as a leader, as a CRO, as a founder is a very simple roadmap that I can focus on and concentrate on in doing what I am doing best, which is execution.
I'm great execution. I think everyone listening is great at execution. I think the sequence of events and why and how is sometimes the difficult part to figure this out, right? And attaching that to where you are really and not where you think you are. I think that makes all the difference in turning this from.
Some, you know, BS cookie cutter slide deck to real revenue, real growth, real execution happening on the backend of that. So we are fucking excited about this. I hope you're too. Uh, the first three folks that are signing up on the website, um, what's the website? revformula.io? Yeah. Um, we will select one of them to be on the show.
Uh, maybe do a case with them, ideally do a case with them and see how, how much we can talk about it. [00:37:00] And, uh, we are very much looking forward to kicking this next, I don't know, chapter of, uh, the revenue formula off together with you.
Raul: Very excited. And, uh, again, be among the first three if you want to be on this show.
Uh, but in general, hit us up and let's first discuss what this might look like for you or if it's a fit at all. If it's not, we will tell you.
Toni: Yeah. Thanks a bunch, Raul. Um, and thanks everyone else for listening and, uh, see you next week. Cheers.
Raul: See you.
Next Week: Zero Waste GTM
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Toni: Next week. We are talking about a concept you should be getting familiar with asap.
Zero Waste GTM. You haven't heard about this yet? Well, you should change that. We talk about what it is, why it matters, and how it can execute to get there if you don't wanna miss it. Hit subscribe and see you next week.