Become unfireable

What does it take to become unfireable as a revenue leader?

We boiled it down to three things you should do (besides just hitting target)

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:27) - Who's usually at risk?
• (05:48) - Are some roles more vulnerable?
• (08:47) - What are the table stakes?
• (10:12) - Keep a pulse on these 3 daily
• (10:45) - How's this quarter looking?
• (15:29) - And what about.. next quarter?
• (20:31) - And what if both quarters aren't great?
• (22:06) - And focus on the full year

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. In today's episode, we are going to talk about how you can become unfireable as CRO, revops, or revenue leader. Enjoy!
[00:00:18] Mikkel: It's so funny. Have you seen, uh, you've seen King's speech, right?
[00:00:23] Toni: W what?
[00:00:24] Mikkel: Have you seen King's speech? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like you and I were in the end scene and I'm just trying to get you to, you know, complete the next sentence. I was just like, come on, come on. One more, you can do it.
[00:00:36] Toni: Oh, am I the king?
[00:00:37] Mikkel: Yeah, in this, in this case, the one with the speech defect.
[00:00:40] Toni: Why would there be a question?
[00:00:44] Mikkel: Come on, come on, come on, come on. It's Monday. We're going to do this
[00:00:49] Toni: Uh, last weekend
[00:00:50] Mikkel: I slept like a baby. And the thing is, you know, I woke up every two hours crying. The thing is, ever since... I've become a grownup and I have too much alcohol and then I, yeah. Yeah. True. And I go to bed and sleep. I have a terrible night's sleep for some reason.
[00:01:08] Yeah. It's just, just, and it used, didn't use to be a thing, now it's just, you know, you wake up 3:00 AM can't fall asleep again.
[00:01:15] Toni: Yeah, so we had a Groblox summer party on Friday.
[00:01:18] Mikkel: Yes.
[00:01:18] Toni: Right, which is obviously the right time to do it because it's Friday and then Saturday is kind of a scramble. But the thing is for us, I mean, I had to get up at seven o'clock on the Friday.
[00:01:30] Um, we had two birthday parties to attend to, not our own, it's like, you
[00:01:35] Mikkel: Oh, you mean Saturday?
[00:01:36] Toni: uh, well Saturday and then another one on Sunday. So both of my parents in law, boom,
[00:01:40] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:01:43] Toni: So this was fun.
[00:01:44] Mikkel: That's why you didn't slack me that much. Okay, cool.
[00:01:47] Toni: Just busy running around with the kids like, No, don't touch this! Don't touch this either! But it was good.
[00:01:53] Mikkel: I don't know. Um, I mean, it's an easy segue. It's a total layup. Because I was worried. You didn't slack me. Am I fireable? And today we're going to talk about how to become
[00:02:05] Toni: Just slack more with the
[00:02:06] Mikkel: Yeah, exactly. The more you slack, there's the slack CEO ratio you want to have.
[00:02:11] Toni: to be on the green side of that.
[00:02:12] Mikkel: Yeah, whichever.
[00:02:13] We're not going to tell you in this episode, you know, where on the curve that is, but, uh, you know, I guess that's the dream for a lot of people, especially after the couple of rough years we've been through, um, and, uh, really.
[00:02:27] My reflection going into this episode, well, in this climate we've been in, who usually actually gets dropped?
[00:02:34] Toni: Yeah. I think it's, if, if not the c e o by the way, which could also be, I think it's probably gonna be your commercial leadership most of the time. And that could be the CRO, it could be the CMO.
[00:02:47] could be the VP of sales. I think if, if you're not proven enough and if you're maybe too expensive, it could be your VP of revenue operations and so forth. I think there's, you know, all of those options on the table. And the reason is product and engineering, they're still building product like they did, you know, on the good days, they're still kind of doing the same thing and they're going to complain about, Oh, we don't, we don't want more resources.
[00:03:11] but, uh, the, the other side of the building. Revenue, so to speak, they're not, they're not hitting the targets as they used to, uh, and therefore they're going to be much more vulnerable, um, to someone saying like, Hey, maybe this is just not, just not the right leadership. We tried all of these things and you know, the market should be coming back.
[00:03:29] The NASDAQ is going up where all those buyers, it must be leadership.
[00:03:33] Mikkel: G2 Crowdset is going better and yeah.
[00:03:34] Toni: out. Um, and
[00:03:35] Mikkel: Boom. Yeah. Uh,
[00:03:38] Toni: I think that's, that's a probably pretty universal problem actually. So, and even, even before, even before the slump you had. Uh, CRO CMO tenures decline, uh, by quite a bit. And, um, yeah, I think today we're going to talk about how to, how to try and, uh, stay unfireable.
[00:03:55] Mikkel: Do you think companies have become a bit impatient, like just a side tangent on the tenures?
[00:04:01] Toni: I think
[00:04:02] they have become impatient, and they have become impatient because of the crazy funding rounds and therefore also multiples and therefore then also expectations that have been out there. And, uh, yes, some CFOs, some CEOs, uh, sold really, really big plans. Um, going from 10 to 30 in a year or whatever it might be.
[00:04:21] And, um, then it didn't happen. And the reason why it didn't happen obviously was commercial leadership, because it can't be the CEO or the CFO who kind of built the plan or that have that ambition to begin with. Um, but also to be, to be clear, you wouldn't have captured those 30, million in venture capital.
[00:04:40] Without putting forward such an aggressive plan, it just doesn't work like this. but, uh, where then gets squeezed is going to be in the commercial leadership. Now you could argue with some of those round sizes coming down, with some of those multiples coming down, with some of those expectations now coming down, there is a little bit of more patience potentially, uh, going to happen real soon.
[00:05:00] And, um, I think as an overall outcome of that depression of funding, companies will simply grow slower. That will just be an automatic outcome. If you have less capital to deploy in order to grow in order to build product, whatever you want to do, I think an automatic outcome will be those companies will grow a little bit slower, and therefore reinforcing those multiples that they got to begin with anyway.
[00:05:24] And I think we saw the first, the first stats coming in. Where we see backed companies drop from 45% growth to 35% growth. I think, uh, some folks around Ray Rike, uh, raised that data. I kind of forgot who specifically. but basically kind of coming down 10 points is quite a, quite a lot actually. Uh, and specific, the VC backed ones, right?
[00:05:47] Not, not the other
[00:05:48] Mikkel: ones. Hmm. So before, I mean, we've, we've obviously lined up some tips for how to become unfireable, but actually I'll just, before we head into the, the practical stuff, one more question for you. Do you see that there are some roles, Oh, do you see that there are some, we didn't prep this by the way, but do you see that there are some roles that are a bit more vulnerable actually?
[00:06:07] And, uh, I just think it's going to be important as we head into the solution mode, um, that maybe we carry that into the mix as well.
[00:06:14] Toni: Yeah, I think, I think everything that smells like luxury is more vulnerable now than it was two years ago. And the way you measure luxury is distance to revenue.
[00:06:31] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:06:33] Toni: if you're a podcast host...
[00:06:38] Mikkel: Hey, my Slack CEO ratio is great.
[00:06:40] Toni: you can, you can measure the distance to revenue yourself. Um, but I think that's generally is the thing. Um, there was a big hype around community. People don't have community folks anymore on their payroll. Um, there was a, uh, you know, all kinds of hypes going on. And I think. The, the farther you are away from, uh, from direct revenue impact, either by way of you being able to prove it because you bring in the signature and then, I mean, that's easy or by way of attribution, which is, you know, less so easy, um, or by way of you arguing that you do.
[00:07:11] you know, if, if, if you can't do any of these things convincingly, if they ever is a question, um, I think, I think you're going to be, uh, it's going to be more difficult for you. And I think, you know, if you, if you go through the whole thing, it's. Sales folks by themselves, they will kind of sit around and be like, Hey, you know, I bring in the signature so I've, I have something to do with revenue.
[00:07:31] And it's less so a question around the role. It's just, uh, that the person and do we need so many of them. Yeah, and I think as you go into the marketing team, you will have people being called performance marketing. they will likely be very close to revenue because you have basically kind of the, uh, the demand capture going on on those channels.
[00:07:51] And then you have people that, um, uh, you know, roles that are further away from that. And then it's like more and more people will probably ask in boardrooms, like, do we really need this role? Do we really need two or three of those and so forth? I think that's, um, that's certainly a thing. And then, um, so this is on the, you know, the role level.
[00:08:09] And then I think. I think CS is, as it is in good times, also in bad times, it's going to be fairly stable.
[00:08:16] Mikkel: Hmm.
[00:08:17] Toni: Uh, because there's just clear expectations, hey, there's stuff that we need to deliver to our customers. We need those CX folks to do it, so we won't really get away without. You know, doing any of that stuff.
[00:08:27] Right. And, and I think if anything, you will have some more squeezing happening on, uh, you know, on all roles, but probably specifically CS. And then you will have a lot of more folks defaulting back to firefighting, being reactive, backward looking and so forth. Right. You will have all of that stuff happening again.
[00:08:43] I think that's, that's, that's, I think how the, the, the cookie will crumble.
[00:08:47] Mikkel: so, we've prepared, something that's not, you're not gonna necessarily find this as usual in a blog post somewhere. This is, um, kind of a different approach. But just to position it as a different approach, let's just quickly hop through. What are, like, the table stakes for you to... At least be ready to become unfireable and then we head into the good stuff.
[00:09:08] Toni: Well the, the, the question of you getting fired never comes up if you hit your targets.
[00:09:12] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Toni: So if, if that's happening, high five, no problem. The, the problem arises when, when you aren't hitting target, which will be. You know, happening a bunch of times, right?
[00:09:24] And I think then there's, you know, you could say almost on the table stakes side, uh, kind of this culture fit, this culture fit thing. but I, I, I, I don't think that this will be, um, we, we won't be able to coach you out of
[00:09:39] Mikkel: No, it's also going to be like, Hey, Tony, you've been with us for two years. We just realized yesterday, you are not a culture fit.
[00:09:44] So it's like, uh,
[00:09:47] Toni: this. So no, I think, I think that's, that's pretty straightforward. But I think let's, let's dive into. Uh, you know, what you should, what we think you should be doing, AKA also what, um, I've been doing and actually kind of when I, when I discuss it with some, some of the CEO calls I have, like it's, it's what a couple of people actually also doing.
[00:10:04] So I can really recommend this actually. Yeah. Um, so it really breaks down into.
[00:10:12] Three different areas that, you, you should have a pulse on daily.
[00:10:19] Mikkel: Um,
[00:10:19] Toni: and it's really, it's really important to be able to look at some of that stuff on a, on a daily cadence. Um, because it's, it, it helps you also drive the organization behind it, right?
[00:10:31] So, um, ideally, uh, if you can, you should be trying to look at things that, uh, might move daily and have a target for daily, right? So that's why kind of that cadence is pretty important. However, the way you look at this. differs quite a lot, right?
[00:10:45] So let's go into the first one. And really the first one is surprise this quarter. Yeah. you need to try and understand and see what is it you could be doing to improve the result of this quarter. And if you are a CRO of your revenue operations, In many cases, depending on your sales cycles, you need to realize your quarter is in many, many cases already baked, yeah? and maybe you have some wiggle room in the first half of the quarter if you have like a month or two sales cycles, but usually there's really not much you can do.
[00:11:24] that doesn't mean you should be giving up. Uh, there's always things like, um, uh, stuff stuck in legal. Stuff stuck in infosecurity, some rep suddenly being sick or being fired or being out and the pipe needs to be picked up. any kind of bottom funnel tricks? Uh, that the CRO, you or whoever can come up with to kind of help and support the VP of sales.
[00:11:47] So really your problem set will very much center around the bottom part of the funnel. If you, if you can, and if you have that option, are there any things on the super short term area that you can, you know, pull, pull a lever on and, you know, try and achieve something? Uh, for me, it always has been SPIFs
[00:12:07] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:12:08] Toni: always.
[00:12:09] I think it's a, it's a habit I picked up in the U S. and, and then brought it, I mean, we used it globally, but, you know, I feel we brought it to, to the EMEA folks actually. And you can do SPIFs around, I'm not sure what SPIF again stands for, but it's a sales performance improvement, FFF,
[00:12:25] Mikkel: Incentive something.
[00:12:27] Toni: um, and it's, uh, it's basic kind of, you say like, okay.
[00:12:31] Uh, the one who books the next meeting gets a hundred bucks, uh, or the one who books the most meetings this week gets 200 bucks or whatever it might be. So that kind of stuff for SDRs works wonders. And those kinds of SPIFs you should totally deploy, early in the quarter. Especially when you're starting to see on your daily review that, Oh, my, my opportunities are not, not starting to hit where I actually need to hit.
[00:12:55] Um, and especially early in a quarter, you want to very much avoid that because that might still impact your current ongoing quarter. So make sure with some SPIFs to maybe get these SDRs or even the MDRs, uh, to book some more meetings. Right. Later on, um, you know, folks do a lot of. A lot of SPIFs for AEs.
[00:13:14] it's really, I found it's really hard to cut through the noise there sometimes. I think you can do something around them, you know, self prospecting, but it's, it's such a, it's so easy to game. So I always try to stay away from it. And if it's, If you then do it around not the meeting opportunity being, being booked, but something later stage, and it's like, ah, you know, that you don't have that, the, the immediacy to it.
[00:13:36] So I always struggled with this. Um, and even doing a SPF for later stage stuff in a pipeline, um, you know, if someone has a great idea, please, please DM me or something, but, uh, I always have struggled to come with good stuff that had a felt impact, right? So when you do it on the SDR level, people are crazy.
[00:13:53] So sometimes I had. I had one guy book two meetings while he was at a wedding, not
[00:13:58] Mikkel: wedding,
[00:13:59] Toni: but at a wedding, right? So it's like, um, the people, you know, that, that can actually work. Um, and then again, you know, look into discounts, look into executive sponsorship on those late stage deals. Make sure that the legal team is staffed for the last two weeks of the quarter at least.
[00:14:15] Make sure that infosecurity is there. All of these things need to just be as smooth as possible because otherwise you will push them over the line. And you have deal slippage. Um, and that usually then means it's another form of revenue
[00:14:27] Mikkel: Yeah. Okay. So this quarter there's some limits for what you can do.
[00:14:32] Toni: And, um, and I think if you do see a problem here coming up, um, first of all, you should have flagged it already. otherwise, if you see only a problem coming out early in the quarter, then, you know, you're going to land within five to 10% ideally. Um, and otherwise. If, if everything is hinging on a big deal, I think you should proactively talk about that this deal is really important.
[00:14:57] Um, and, and those are all things that help, to build trust and, um, and confidence in you from, you know, the, your boss, basically, which makes it a little bit less fireable, right? So if you come at the end of the quarter and say like, Hey, we really need this deal to come in and didn't happen. And now we're like 40% short, that's not great news, right?
[00:15:16] Mikkel: And actually, uh, if you're not the CRO or the revenue leader in this scenario, but below the pro move is still to follow this process
[00:15:25] and flag these
[00:15:27] Toni: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
[00:15:29] but so this is this quarter and I think this is where many, many, many, many, many CROs stop. And I think this is what's leading, uh, them to get fired real quick, uh, because they hyper focus on this quarter and kind of forget that there's something after this quarter.
[00:15:47] And it makes sense. I think in many cases. It's also burned into them, uh, through decades of sales leadership. Uh, this is still where many CROs are coming from. It's like, well, I need to hit my number and my number is this quarter's number, right? And of course you have, you have different flavors, enterprise VPs, uh, sales.
[00:16:08] They, they think about the end of the year anyway, because that's the timeline for everything. But when you're talking mid market and maybe a little bit up of this, there's always a hyper focus around this quarter. And to be honest, this should be with your VP of Sales or the VP of Sales team that you have.
[00:16:24] They should be focusing on that. If you as RevOps or CRO spend too much on this quarter, I think you are, um, I think you have either a problem VP leadership or you just have a really shitty quarter coming up. So, which then means... You should daily have a look also on to next quarter.
[00:16:42] Mikkel: What?
[00:16:43] Toni: Yeah. Um, and the cool thing about this is the, the problem set will shift.
[00:16:50] Um, you will not be thinking about is legal around. You will not be thinking about, you know, is there anything in the pipeline that needs executive sponsorship, blah, blah, blah. Those won't be topics that are top of mind for you. What you will be hyper focusing on is, your funnel and how your funnel is operating.
[00:17:07] And are there, are you hitting the funnel targets that you need to hit today in order to hit the revenue target that you want to hit by the end of next quarter? Right. And really this battle for next quarter is won or lost today. Right. And, and I think that, that realization Everyone has that theoretical in their head, right?
[00:17:26] Everyone knows, oh yeah, I know, sure, I totally need to do this. I think what many, many are lacking are daily reminders that also that needs to be managed. Because you have your forecasting tool, you have your pipeline management tool, you're kind of so focused on this number. but some of the other pieces, they're kind of not that clear, right?
[00:17:44] And it's like, are we doing good on opportunities? Maybe, maybe not, right? And, and, and having a daily focus on this is, is extremely important. And obviously... You wouldn't be bringing those things up daily? Uh, but you would bring them up in, in, in your weekly sessions. Right. Um, again, here, um, the, the, the problems for, um, you know, the problem sets you're going to be focusing on, on the one inside for your inbound stream is sure they have some tactical ad spend stuff to do, um, maybe there's, um, I don't know, maybe there's a big campaign going out or something like that.
[00:18:17] Um, I think on the, uh, outbound side, it will be about hiring. Do you have the right people in their seats? And. To a degree, even this quarter is almost a little bit too late, right? To a degree, even that is too late. so, but still kind of, this is, this is really, uh, those will be the things you need to be focusing on.
[00:18:36] And, and less so all of the other stuff you, you know, depending on your sales cycle, even pipeline might not be so super important to you. Right. and those are basically then things, if you have a, sorry, if you have a partner, uh, if you have a kind of a partner process. There might be things where like, Hey, we need to onboard more partners.
[00:18:53] So we need to kind of do X, Y, and Z. You need to do a bunch of boring stuff that you need to get done in order to prepare next quarter. And I recently talked to RevOp's guy of like a, I think a 500 million. Uh, AR company. And, and for him, it was like almost everything that doesn't have a dollar sign to it as a vanity metric.
[00:19:11] And I was like, Hey, Hey, um, I understand. And you know what? I understand that the CFO also think like that. That's totally fine. Um. But, uh, first of all, that's not the definition of a vanity metric. Don't want to go into this, but number two, Yes, there are things in the funnel that you need to hit in order to make sure that you can hit, you know, a specific quarter coming up, right?
[00:19:32] So, and those would be the things you're aiming for and working on in order to make sure that next quarter is not an issue. The wonderful thing is If you see things coming up, uh, that will, you know, impair your ability to hit target next quarter, you can start flagging it now, which also means when you then set target for next quarter, uh, you have then the ability to, you know, adjust it a little bit.
[00:19:58] You know, if you're a CRO, you won't be able to adjust it for your own comp plan. You know, that, that's, that's done,
[00:20:05] But you might be able to adjust the, the company target a little bit to, you know, keep the winning, uh, habit up and, and the good vibes. And also it makes you a little bit harder to get fired because everyone thinks we're hitting target all the time.
[00:20:18] So why did, why did the CEO get sacked? That doesn't make any sense, right? Um, so, and I think those, those are kind of tricks, um, that you should be thinking about in order to make sure you're preparing the way for next quarter.
[00:20:31] Mikkel: But so even though... You might be looking at this quarter and next quarter. There are going to be cases where this quarter stinks and next quarter also doesn't look great. And at some point, you know, I guess you will become fireable if that keeps keeps happening.
[00:20:46] Right. So how do you balance in this scenario? Right. So, so you have two problem sets. You have this quarter, next quarter, how should you as a revenue leader then approach, you know, that such a scenario, if that was the
[00:20:57] Toni: Yeah. So first of all, if you, if you do a bit of a rough cut here, this quarter is your VP of sales, next quarter is your VP of marketing, right?
[00:21:07] So you have two sets of different resources focusing on those different areas. So it's not like you need to, you know, divert resources to go from one battle to the other. I think you can work on both of them at the same time. and I think as, as CRO depends also where you are, where your strength is. If, if you're good at helping, uh, some of those deals jump over the line in the end, then go and maybe spend your time there.
[00:21:32] I think I myself have always been, training towards trying to fix next quarter instead, uh, because that's where I felt real impact can still be had, right? Because otherwise you're going to be the... Okay, I'm going to stay this quarter because my magic hand can fix it, uh, to get it over the line. And then guess what?
[00:21:51] You're going to be doing next quarter, you know, it's going to be again, your magic hand to fix it. And, um, and, and we all know, uh, it's not, it's not going to work out sustainably, right? So at some point this is going to crumble, um, and then usually it crumbles really, uh, really heavily.
[00:22:06] Um, so those are. You know, we said three things.
[00:22:09] Mikkel: Oh yeah. I wonder what the
[00:22:11] Toni: so this is one and two, you know, this quarter, next quarter, the third one is the year. And I think many people. completely forget about the year. Um, and, and the reason is, uh, the reason is, and this is confusing and the CFO and COO doesn't think at all is confusing, but as CRO and RevOps you might be thinking it's confusing.
[00:22:35] This quarter, next quarter, they usually numbers that you need to hit. Right. in terms of, okay, you walk into this quarter, you started zero. Now you need to get to a new number. If you overperformed last quarter, do you get a benefit for this quarter? No. If you do 120% last quarter, your target will still be what it was, you know, Um, if you underperformed last quarter, like 80%, will you now need to perform 125% this quarter? Also, no, it's, it's usually. What can we do, right? It's usually kind of a flow number, you know, uh, what's the process leading up to this thing. The year though, the year is always measured in an actual revenue number that, that doesn't, that doesn't change however you, however you operate.
[00:23:26] So if you are starting to create a gap, Uh, in one or the other direction, uh, that gap will carry through. It will not carry through, through the next quarter as you know, it does somewhat still anyway. Um, but for the end of the year, uh, that gap will, will come back and haunt you. Um, and, um, uh, especially because this is, this is what, uh, the board will be looking at, the CFO will be looking at, the COO will be looking at, you know, hitting targets as kind of a high five and feel good moment.
[00:23:58] But at the end of the day, it's actually gonna be the revenue number that you achieve, right? You know, no surprise, depending on your size, that revenue number will be largely depending on your customer base. So there's, there's all kinds of different, uh, aspects at play, right? And the, and the problem with this is, uh, you need to...
[00:24:19] Uh, first of all, you know, work on some of the longer term stuff leading up to this, but you also will need to realize that, uh, okay, we missed Q2, Q3 is a bit soft and
[00:24:31] Q4 I think will be, will be okay. You can hit Q4. But you might still get fired for drastically missing the year, right? and having, having that duality in mind, I think is, is pretty important.
[00:24:43] And you know, what is it that you should be focusing on for the year? Obviously, if next quarter and the year is both Q4, then, you know, uh, you know, that's, that's a little bit of a different thing, but generally speaking, all your bigger plays, all your bigger bets throughout the year, they will usually try and aim towards the year end and not towards the current quarter, right?
[00:25:03] So, Uh, the easiest one, biggest revenue leakage usually comes from, uh, bad hiring, late hiring, the late hiring, all of that stuff. Then it won't be your marketing campaigns, but it will be bigger plays on the marketing side. Uh, whatever you might have planned to do, uh, they usually fully accumulate then in Q4 because when you, when you, when you plan the year, let's put it all into the end of the year.
[00:25:27] So we have some time before some of that stuff hits. and, um, I think then there's also things like, uh, product releases and your assumptions and everything. Most of that stuff, if it has been planned for before and didn't happen, it will still accumulate towards your year end and will then have an impact there, right?
[00:25:45] And I think, one way to help you get out of this is to stay at least... Uh, verbally in control and be able to pinpoint and tell to your, uh, to the folks around you and say like, those are the reasons why we're lacking behind on the annual target, right? And ideally, ideally, you want to be able to point at things like, Oh, the CFO put like an conversion rate improvement of, you know, 5% in here.
[00:26:12] Well, I don't know where he had this number from in the first place, but we didn't, we didn't get to achieve it. Or, Hey, we wanted to have an ACV increase. Um, Because we released another piece of product, well, we didn't release another piece of product and we didn't have the ACV increase, so, you know, you ideally, you want to be able to, uh, not completely evade.
[00:26:34] Who's, who's fault it was, but you want to have a bit of tracking going on to at least clear your back just a little bit. Um, because as a revenue leader owning the full number, you're, you're kind of dependent on all the other pieces in the organization going, well for you to then be able to deliver the number on time.
[00:26:53] It's a little bit, so we're doing sometimes some house, house. Uh, renovations, and I talked to the painter there, and he was like, you know, Toni, the painter always gets fucked, and it's like, I don't understand that. Well, the thing is, you know, when you have a big house project, right, I mean, the walls need to get built, electricity needs to go in, all the other things I don't have a clue about need to happen
[00:27:13] Mikkel: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:14] Toni: What happens at the very end? The paint job, right? Kind of paint needs to get on. But, you know, while the start point is clear and the end point is clear, everyone has their own little delays. And then the painter is like, you have two days. And it's, it's a little bit like with a, with a CRO in that case, right?
[00:27:34] The, the product needs to work out. The economy needs to work out. Uh, HR needs to hire all the right people. You know, depending on, you know, whether you own this market, he needs to do the right thing and so forth. All of this is squeezed then towards the end of the year and, you know, the revenue number. A lot of things need to go your way for the CRO to have, you know, hands in the air and kind of celebrate.
[00:27:57] And, uh, and I think, um, while, while not pushing blame away, but at least being clear on why something was missed, I think that can help you, uh, retain your job.
[00:28:08] Mikkel: I also recall we had a very strict focus on just the commercial projects when working to make sure that they were actually being delivered. And if there were challenges, we, you know, we and you knew about it, so we could act accordingly. Right. And that's really what you're saying.
[00:28:23] You, you know, You maybe want to avoid everything squeezing into Q4 by then actually monitoring the plan throughout the year. Yeah,
[00:28:30] Toni: and I think the, you will have smaller stuff going on and then you will have bigger bets. And really the bigger bets usually arise from a gap that you determine already at the beginning of the year and you realize, okay, we are gonna have a 1 million ARR gap, a 5 million ARR gap, whatever, whatever the number's gonna be for you. And then you're going to sit there and be like, okay, we can't hire more people because we are out of budget already. we can't tweak some of those assumptions even further because I feel uncomfortable with them already. and then it's like, okay, what could we do? Then you have this typical, okay. CRO calls all the VPs into a room for maybe a weekend, uh, and then everyone's like, Okay, what could we actually be doing?
[00:29:13] You come up with all kinds of fantastic stuff, and, uh, and the way, the way I've been operating this was basically by saying, Okay, each of the bets needs to at least have a chance, buy it on itself. to close the gap. Now, I'm not so sure if this is the smartest way to go about it, but that's kind of how we actually did it.
[00:29:30] Um, and then we ended up with, uh, I think four bets that each could deliver a million or two million by the end of the year, which was actually kind of a fairly big number. but I think it's, you know, while we hit in the end, I'm not sure if this is the golden nugget to drop here, um, because it's, it, I think what people generally don't understand or don't fully see is it pulls a lot of focus away from all the other crazy stuff you need to do also,
[00:29:56] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:57] Toni: right, it's always the, ah, okay, we don't have more, um, uh, Uh, budget, aka more resources, but for some reason we believe that in everyone's brains there was still some slack capacity that we can tap into and then they kind of do that stuff, right?
[00:30:10] And, and the, the, uh, you know, usually it's just not true, right? And I even see it in some of our customers. It's really a, okay, we need to push, we need to get to this thing. Uh, they add some more projects, some more stuff that they want to do. And I would, without fully being in it, I would even say that by adding more stuff, they decrease the chances of the standard, quote unquote, uh, you know, revenue motions to hit the expected target.
[00:30:39] and, uh, obviously the special stuff doesn't, it's way more risky in the first place. So I would even say that adding more of those crazy stuff, crazy projects on top, I think you even decrease your chance to even get to the, uh, you know, the standard number, so to speak, to begin with. So would be super careful with that.
[00:30:58] And, um, also, uh, in that sense, right. And it's almost like a little bit of a planning topic in that sense also. Uh, making sure you communicate where the risks and gaps are in the plan to begin with. but you know, that's planning less or less on the
[00:31:13] Mikkel: side. I mean, there's a bunch of other episodes we could attach onto this, but I think as a frame of, as a framework to follow and, you know, not, you know, you don't get un fireable by just looking at next quarter, obviously. Right. We've walked through a couple of steps you can take and ideas for how to approach them.
[00:31:28] But I guess the, the bottom line idea for, for what you're delivering here is, well, there's gonna be. Problems, there's going to be opportunities and that's why you need to shift the timeframe.
[00:31:37] Toni: Yeah. And, and it allows you to communicate with a bit of a heads up. Uh, if you, if you re reduce the amount of surprise. Yeah. It's, it's really good. You know, some of those bad news being delivered over time and drip, drip, drip, drip, drip is a different thing than, you know, one big bucket of water.
[00:31:56] Um, and, uh, and, and that will lead to. The folks around you trusting also your judgment, right? Um, so I can, um, uh, from, from that perspective, kind of those two things, kind of keep this in mind, right?
[00:32:08] This quarter, what can you do about it? Next quarter, what do you need to do about it? This year, what do you need to do about it?
[00:32:14] And then as you see problems arise, tackle them. And if you can't tackle them, communicate about it. there you go.
[00:32:22] Mikkel: Solid advice, as usual. As usual.
[00:32:24] Toni: As usual.
[00:32:26] Mikkel: We're full of ourselves. Oh, wow. No, but this is good stuff. I also like this approach, because it's not just necessarily tied to a CRO. Like we talked a bit about in the beginning, anyone can actually follow this, and pull some pro moves, which is pretty cool. There's obviously a bunch of other advice that can be followed, but I think this is a different take, let alone an important one.
[00:32:50] Toni: That's what it is. Mikkel, thank you so much.
[00:32:53] Mikkel: Thank you, Toni. Thank you, listener. Thanks, everyone. Bye.