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Welcome to Opfocus’s podcast RevOps Rockstars. Join hosts David Carnes and Jarin Chu as they interview RevOps professionals and explore the challenges they face today. Throughout the show, we dive into how guests got started with their careers, their best tips and tricks, and what excites them about the future of the industry.
RR - Hugo Robein
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Hugo: if you remember like few, few years ago actually still the case, it was all about marketing and sales alignment. Now we start to understand that, well, you even need sales alignment with CSS as well, or CX in the, in the companies.
And that's where Rev ops is getting a new challenge. If you want not to be aligning just the, the, the usual marketing and sales, but also to be aligning sales and css because now with churn, with, um, retention of clients, you would want to have those two teams like very well aligned.
David Carnes:
Today's guest on the podcast is a rev ops leader who supported the growth of multiple generative AI companies. He's a compassionate leader who's skilled at building connections between people. He helps companies scale their growth through visible visibility, reliability, and enablement with a focus on people and processes.
The director of Rev ops at Phrase Z Hugo, To the podcast.
Hugo: David, thank me.
Jarin Chu: Hugo, you've done rev ops at all these different companies. Um, you've seen companies through different stages of growth. What is something in Rev ops that you've had to learn the hard way? I.
Hugo: I would say that the most difficult thing for Revs to acknowledge if. Nothing's gonna be ever perfect. So you always need to know that whatever you're going to implement, even though it's going to improve something, you will need to improve it at a later stage again and again, and again. It's that continuous process that you need to accept because that's gonna be your day to day.
Jarin Chu: I can definitely see how the iterative aspect is something that, um, Rev ops leaders need to remind themselves of because it's so easy to want to get it to the perfect state, want to get it to the ideal process. I feel like there might be some, um, experiences or stories behind that takeaway, that learning that helped you realize, oh, okay, there's no perfection.
There is no perfect end state.
Hugo: No, absolutely. So usually, you know, you, you look at the problem from a, a very external eye and you will find a solution and you'll be like, that is going to be the solution that is going to be helping everyone there. And once you implement your solution, I. This is when the users are going to go to you and say, by the way, it's not working, or This is not what I was expecting, or it gives me more work, and so on.
And that is usually when you start to understand that you would always need to be perfection in your solution, and you would always need to be gathering that feedback and to be testing in different angles in order to try to sort out and to always improve. Been happening to me countless of times.
David Carnes: So hug Hugo, your company Frazee, serves the marketing and content industry. You have about a hundred employees and, and you're raised a series A in 2018. In your words, what does Frazee do?
Hugo: So Phrase Z is a SaaS solution that is very much using generative ai. In order to be providing solution for marketers and content people in the, like different industries if you want, especially the P two C world. And we do that by using optimization, automation, and performance, um, testing so that people can be basically having a solution that is helping them through their work.
Um, workloads as well as like reducing if you want the, um, The level of manual inputs and the need of like content creators that you would have, um, or content writers that you would've in companies for them to be generating that content. So you can do it at scale through an auto, um, an automated process.
Um, and you always, like on brandand having some safety as well when it comes to, um, using ai, which you don't necessarily have with like today's solutions.
David Carnes: So I can imagine an an, uh, an AI tool sort of leaning in on a, on a, not on. Conversation, but when, uh, uh, you know, either branding or other marketing content's being created and, uh, saying, no, you, you don't want to, you don't want to market with that. No, you don't want do.
Hugo: Yes. Yes, exactly. And that's where it's been very interesting for us, the, uh, the rise of like chat G P T for example, because a lot of marketers went out and be like, you know, we have a solution now. It's a cheap solution, it's a free solution. We can create contents very quickly. You realize that the contents that you're generating is not necessarily on brands.
It's not the way you communicate to your, your, your customers. Um, so obviously you would want to have some like changes that are being applied. So already you are adding some workloads on top of generating the content. And sometimes the tool that you're gonna use again, like t is going to give you content that can't go in the market.
Absolutely not. So you need to always be careful about that and that's where Frazzy puts a lot of like, um, constraints if you want, on our own platform and our own generation to make sure that it's our on brand and save as well, so that people can actually generate content they can trust.
David Carnes: That's fantastic. Tell us about your rev ops team. Uh, how big is the group that you're working with,
Hugo: So I'm currently, I have a small team, so we have three in the team. I have one person that is very much dedicating non-marketing operations, and another one that is dedicating more on the sales and client services operations.
David Carnes: and then across your team, what does your rev ops function encompass?
Hugo: So a lot of things, uh, primarily it's around data and reporting. So we are making sure that every process that we built is serving a purpose in order to be giving us insights. Insights are very important for us as a scale up to understand, are we growing, are we not growing? Where are the different sources of focus that we need to be investing in?
And we are also taking care of, obviously, processes, enablements and commissions, uh, which is quite a, a big. Out of the day-to-day activities.
David Carnes: I spent a number of. Years at an early marketing automation company and I felt that it was a lot of pressure to drink our own champagne. To use our technology. Must must be interesting to find ways to, uh, weave in your own technology into your work.
Hugo: Yeah, it would be, I'd be very interested to know what's your view on this, David? Because marketing Ops is very much seen as a doer. So the marketing team has the, the, the creative idea if you want, and then marketing, marketing ops is going to, to implement it. But I feel that marketing ops. Could be actually having a more creative role, a more like leading and strategic role when it comes to like the tech stack that you use or how you're going to be using those tools or what ideas you could be implementing in order to be more data driven as a, as a team and so on.
I dunno if you've been facing the same in your previous roles.
David Carnes: You know, this was so long ago that, uh, I would, uh, I would, you would laugh when I talked about the technology. It's, you know, it's almost pre-computer. Uh, it's So So your title is Director of Rev Ops. What does your day-to-day entail?
Hugo: So day to day is very, Data driven. So I'm basically spending my life in our commercial tools, primary Salesforce, in order for us to understand what is happening. You know, it would be review of the pipeline forecasting, understanding the deals that are moving, what are the changes that are being applied to the, to the pipeline, and very much providing that information up to the leaderships in order for them to know on a live basis, ba basically, where are they?
What are the clients that are moving in the right direction, and the ones that are not necessarily moving in the right direction.
David Carnes: And then how do you measure success in your role?
Hugo: So, again, very much database. I think I'm gonna use data into all my answers on this, uh, on this conversation. But basically, KPIs is very important. So in my role, what you want to do is from the very beginning, align on KPIs and the definition of those KPIs with the people that you're collaborating with, your stakeholders.
Once you define those KPIs and you have an agreement about how you're going to be putting them together, The idea is that you are finding an automated way of reporting on them and having like a live view on them, and that's what I'm doing through Salesforce as our cm in order to all that data fitting into trusted KPIs so we know exactly where we are at any point in time,
David Carnes: Oh, that's excellent. All right, so last question about your role. What keeps you up at night?
Hugo: I think. Something that is definitely on my mind is how the Rev Ops role in has been expanding a lot over the last years. So initially you had SalesOps that was very much in the focus about five to 10 years ago. Rev ops becoming that big thing in the world. And what keeps me up at night is understanding how is that going to be scaling up.
'cause what you realize that you are a lots of companies that are implementing rev ops into very different manners. The question is gonna be around how big can Rev ops become and what is going to be eventually our sole focus in the company? What's gonna be that very strategical point as to why you actually invest in revenue operations?
Jarin Chu: I want to continue that thread around, you know, how big or how expansive could rev ops become? You know, your question earlier to David also was around, um, how much. Marketing Ops helps also with being creative and I, I, I kind of wanted to shape the question in a way where, like, how much is Rev Ops.
Eventually, or at a company like yours, touching into things like content ops, right? Because operations traditionally has been such a important center of insight to analyze the data and to advise revenue leaders, sales leaders, marketing leaders, um, CSS leaders to say, this is what works. This is what doesn't, you know, like these are the things that.
They are surfacing in addition to owning things like the tech stack. So at a company like yours, beyond just that traditional rev ops role, do you see yourself kind of expanding into things like supporting the content team? Do you see yourself expanding into things like, how do we help CSS or, um, maybe even things like pricing.
How does that all come together? Uh, especially in a gen AI context.
Hugo: That is very good question. So I think you, you're completely right in what you said about like revenue operations has been very often. Like in analyzing data and then providing insights. But the role has been stopping if you want to, uh, almost like an invisible threshold where you analyze the data that you've been giving in giving insight about this is looking good.
This is not looking so good. I think Rev ops, I. Can actually bridge that, that gap if you want, in order to understand not only what works, what doesn't work, but also what should we do about it? What is, you know, historical information telling us where should you invest as a company and when you think about content or customer success and so on, I think ops can be very much, um, Like a strategic partner to use for those teams in order to understand what content works and why does it work?
Because not only are you going to be able to be providing, you know, your, your basic KPIs as this piece of content generated that many clicks, that many opens, or these clients have an n p A of um, whatever score if you want, where if you move away from those basic metrics to this is the reason why it works.
You start influencing those teams in order to be strategic and, and smart about how they invest and how they actually spend their time. And I think that's where rev ops can actually scale up as a, as a team in order to become a strategic advisor rather than just providing insights to companies. I.
Jarin Chu: Yeah, I really love the idea of that. And I think even in-house, when I think about our own marketing function, that's oftentimes an area where I would love for, uh, a strategic partner to be able to come in and say, Hey, have you thought about it in this way? Or, don't just look at your usual input metrics.
Don't just look at your usual, uh, measurements. Look at this other interesting thing and how it ties into revenue, how it ties into how it supports opportunities and to think more critically. So I suspect you have a similar sort of, uh, position when it comes to things like. The pricing side. Right. That's also something I, I am hearing a lot more rev ops teams getting involved in, especially with, uh, the year that we have.
How do we make pricing competitive, but also maximize, um, that kind of pricing power? How does that, how does what you do tie into some of these other cross-functional initiatives?
Hugo: So, I mean, pricing is a great example When you, when you dive into that subject, very often companies have been using prices as we are going to be looking at the competition and we are going to be. Basically aligning to the competition. If we are providing more services, we are going to get, get higher in terms of price.
If we're providing the same level of service, we're going to try to get a bit lower to be more competitive. Rev Ops has been able to understand that pricing as an example, was not just about what the competition was doing. It was about what is the current market trend, what's happening in the world. Our clients more sensitive about budget or actually do they have budget?
If you were to ask, uh, a Revs team in 2020 to be pr preparing like pricing for, for whatever solution that you have in your company, that would go quite high. Companies add a lot of money. You had a lot of VCs, companies that were investing heavily into startups and scale ups. If you ask rev ops now to do pricing, everyone's gonna get low because everyone is more constrained when it comes to budgets.
People have less money, there is less investments happening. People are much more precious about where they actually put their money and they actually want to make smart decisions. So rev ops can be not only telling you what the market is, is giving in terms of like insights about. What you should do with your pricing.
It can give you information about what's been happening with your current clients. Where is the focus at the moment, as well as providing you a bit of more information about what can you expect, um, from the conversation as a seller, for example, you're going to have with your client when it comes to renewing.
'cause you look at the data, you look at the usage, you know they are using a lot, not using a lot. So you know exactly with that data how you can kind of place yourself for, comes to renewing your, your license with your clients.
Jarin Chu: I really love how, um, you're really taking that proactive. Approach to say not only this is what we are seeing with the data within, but also be aware of these things happening in the market. And that becomes much more of a collaborative process rather than, uh, product and pricing kind of working on their own.
Uh, I think that collaboration across the functions is really the intention of a function like rev ops.
Hugo: Yes. Yes, a hundred percent. And I'm keen to, to, to hear your view about it, because very often Rev Ops has been staying in that like very lane if you want about, you know, that is the project, that is the area. So I'm going to be sticking to it where I. Rev Ops has this power that almost none other teams and companies have, which is to be able to grab data from very various places and put it in, putting it together.
And I'm sure you are facing the same in your, in your world as well. But it's something that if I was to give a message, if you want to do rev ops, like managers or directors of this world, is always try to understand everything that you have at your hands and try to see if they can actually mix together in order for you to be even more powerful.
Jarin Chu: Yeah, I think, you know, to, to kind of continue that. Thread what you're just describing. We're hearing a lot more Sterling on this podcast with the guests that we've had, that rev ops is finally becoming more. Involved or enmeshed with the CSS function and also for some teams cx, right? Ultimately, revenue is tied to the entire customer journey and the entire customer experience, and being able to take a step back and have that more strategic point of view in addition to the daily execution, which is what these teams are tasked with.
I think that's been a really. Big change. We've started to see as sales and marketing ops have kind of solidified in rev ops, you know, CSS is finally getting rolled up. You know, the product and pricing is kinda getting rolled up and you know, Forrester said four or five years ago that the ideal sort of rev ops function is kind of across these four areas.
Hugo: Hundred percent agree with that. And it's quite funny if you allow me an analogy, if you remember like few, few years ago actually still the case, it was all about marketing and sales alignment. Now we start to understand that, well, you even need sales alignment with CSS as well, or CX in the, in the companies.
And that's where Rev ops is getting a new challenge. If you want not to be aligning just the, the, the usual marketing and sales, but also to be aligning sales and css because now with churn, with, um, retention of clients, you would want to have those two teams like very well aligned.
Jarin Chu: Absolutely. Hugo, I want to ask you a bit around preparing to. Present the kinds of work that your team takes on to the C-suite and to the board. You know, when we are here, you know, rev ops geeks sitting together, we're like, oh, well we can help with this and we can help with that.
And, you know, it's left, right and center. There's really a lot of, um, potential purview. How do we articulate. The impact that our team brings to the business. Um, are there times where we need to kind of narrow down our focus so that the board and investors can more clearly understand, um, you know, how the business is functioning and how well we are doing as a team?
How have you kind of approached that?
Hugo: So it's something that I've been facing since stepping as a, as a manager, if you want, like starting to manage people. Um, in revenue operations. Very often people like start getting. A lot of data, everything that they can get insights on, they're going to be putting it into, um, into their decks or their, their analysis.
Um, and if you ask them to explain, it's gonna last like pretty much three hours. And we know that the, the board of directors or the investors, they don't have that time. They need almost like a sentence about this is what's happening, this is what is going on, um, in, in the company. So it's very important to understand who is your stakeholder.
When you, when you prepare data, when you prepare an analysis as well as understanding what are they expect from you, what are the key focus, what are the key, um, metrics that they want to be, to be tracking? So it's a lot of collaboration with your stakeholders, regardless of the seniority in the company.
But let's, let's take an example with like board of directors or investors. To understand what are the KPIs you want to track? What is your definition of the KPIs? And then for us to be able to be putting the KPIs together, tracking them, and then providing insights on them, and obviously influencing the board in saying those are the reason why things are going good or bad.
Again. Now when you do that, um, it's. Equally as important not to be understanding the KPIs, but also that your team understand those KPIs. And I think as leaders in revenue operations, we have a duty to ensure that our reps have visibility and understanding about this are the expectation from the business.
And if you look at different levels, they understand the different expectation that they have so that they can prepare themselves in their career to align their communication styles depending on who they're speaking with.
Jarin Chu: That's a really great, uh, reminder that obviously we need to be very audience, um, centric when we're presenting this. My related question is, You probably need to do this kind of, um, K P I prep or board material prep on a regular basis. Maybe it's monthly, maybe it's quarterly. Do you have any tips for, you know, the folks listening out there in terms of how you stay organized on a monthly or quarterly basis?
And are there ways you can make that last week before a board meeting or a, uh, board report less chaotic?
Hugo: One big advice is automate as much as you can, so you will have rev ops that are more or less. Good at data analysis. I'm not saying that you need to be like a bi expert in knowing you know about, um, tools like Power BI, for example, but it's quite important if you're using like HubSpot or Salesforce, make sure that you have your reports ready.
Because the only thing you would need to do is to be extracting those reports and then plug them into either an analysis, like an Excel file for example, that you have ready that is just going to update with your fresh data or just take it directly from the system and provide it to the, people that are needing that data.
The more you automate, upfront, the less time you're going to be spending. And it's not just about providing insights to the board, it's also about commissions. For example, if you don't have an automated tool that is directly linked to your CRM you would want to have a methodology whereby you just take data, plug it into your, system if you want.
So your, Excel file is gonna update everything and everything's gonna be done in like 10 minutes maximum.
David Carnes: So Hugo, Would love to talk to you about technology for a moment. Is there anything in your tech stack that you just couldn't live without?
Hugo: False 100%.
David Carnes: And Um, uh, were you on board when Salesforce was implemented?
Hugo: Um, so not at the current company. Um, I was on board when we implemented Salesforce at Millman, um, when I moved into actually sales operation, um, as a sales operation lead. I was part also of the move from Salesforce, um, classic to Salesforce lighting, which was a very fun experience to be going through.
David Carnes: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I feel bad for how many companies will turn on lightning but not actually configure it or customize it. They're not actually taking
Hugo: Oh, yes.
David Carnes: good stuff, uh, within Lightning. Yeah. Part of the reason I ask is, you know, you so many of us have inherited old orgs.
Hugo: Mm-hmm.
David Carnes: You need to essentially figure out what do I need to do to revitalize this and get it up to a foundation where I can then weave in other, uh, tech stack investments.
Uh, but that's great to hear that that is the tool, um, that you couldn't live without. Uh, how about for reporting? Where do you go for an at a glance view?
Hugo: So again, same platform, um, Salesforce. So obviously I'm speaking very good about Salesforce. I did go through the very same example that you were giving before David, about jumping into a company, looking at the instance and being like, this is hell. I have no idea how I'm going to, to get around that. Uh, but once you actually, you know, do all of your cl pre-cleaning and you, you, you put your processes together, you put a bit more, um, rules in the system to make sure that, you know, you can control what's happening in there.
Um, this is when you can start, I think, um, and playing around with your report and dashboard. And that's exactly what I'm doing at Frazy today. I have a set of dashboards that are live in the business that are tracking different things and that you see, this is where I am going every single day to understand where are we, what's been happening since yesterday.
David Carnes: And is there any feature within reports and dashboards in Salesforce that's missing that you think? Gosh, if we could just have one more thing. I'm just curious. Sorry to put you on the spot, but I'm curious.
Hugo: No, no, no. And to be fair with you, we could spend an hour on that subject. 'cause I have plenty of requests. I would love Salesforce to action. But if there is one, um, it's to be allowing us to be creating more, more formulas in a, in a report being stuck to one role level formula for every report that you create.
This is just a nightmare.
David Carnes: Yes, yes. That's pretty limited. We can still create custom formula fields, but that uses one field per object.
Hugo: Exactly, and then you find yourself with like hundreds, hundreds of different fields.
David Carnes: Yes. Which you, you know, don't necessarily remember what they are and you'll end up creating multiple. Yes. So that is, um, I'm really glad that they gave us the one, uh, row level formula. Um, one little secret that's not well known.
So you can have up to five summary formulas on a report. Uh, if you change the report to be a joined report, that number explodes. You can have so many more. Um, uh, Uh, summary formulas, not row level formulas, but summary formulas. And then it also introduced, so joined reports, also introduced cross block formulas.
Hugo: Very good. That's something I need to on the back of this.
Jarin Chu: I love it. I knew that, uh, with David's new book out, there would be lots of, uh, tips and tricks on reports and dashboards available just top of mind.
Hugo: You can.
Jarin Chu: We can always learn. Um, well, speaking of learning, one of the areas I've personally felt most challenged and pushed to learn in the last six to eight months has been around generative ai.
And being that you work at a company where that is the central product offering, um, especially for marketing, what do you think might be the next big disruption to rev ops, maybe as it relates to ai? I.
Hugo: So I definitely think that AI is going to be in the, in the midst of it. In my, in my view, on the short to medium term, there's gonna be two big things that AI is going to definitely help rev ups on. The first one is automation of, of tasks. If you want, you know, when you think about, um, when you use Salesforce and DocuSign, for example, like AI, being able to be taking data from a document and plugging it directly into your system to be saving a lot of time, that's where I think AI is going to help a lot on the tactical side of things.
On the more strategic and enablement side of things, I definitely see. AI moving into a new form whereby there are going to be more predictive analysis. Today we have to rely on very, very smart and very expensive data engineers and data analysts in order to come up with like data pre, uh, predictive data models if you want, in companies.
I think that AI and Gene AI is definitely going to be moving towards. Having an assistant that is going to be using the data that they see across Outreach or SalesLoft or, or Pardot or Salesforce and say, well, based on all the behaviors I'm seeing in those systems, this client is likely to be X or, or this account is likely to be churning and so on.
And I think that's going to be helping us a lot on, on predicting the future if you want.
Jarin Chu: I'm excited to hear about both what you've just mentioned. I think automation for tasks is the most obvious one because there's actually so much manual work within rev ops that we've just kind of accepted. That is part of our job, right? Like outside of the system, especially when we need to do any kind of spreadsheet manipulation.
Um, and then when you mentioned the, uh, data engineer piece and how you traditionally need to pay people to come up with these expensive, um, predictive models, AI can definitely, I think, help with. Developing that without having as structured data. One of the tools I've been hearing about, um, in the market is this tool called G p t for work.
I don't know if there's any other tools you've encountered where you've, your, you've asked your team to start experimenting with. Um, you're like, Hey, this could help me with maybe data standardization or might help with, um, getting data between systems. Anything you're excited about thus far.
Hugo: So, To be fair, nothing crazy from what I, I saw or from what I've been experiencing. If you want through, through the systems that we, that we use, there wasn't like a massive disruptor when it comes to like ai. You take Salesforce as an example. Salesforce has been releasing a lot of hype around their.
Einstein AI system, um, even though it's only gonna be fully released if you want, in like maybe a year in 2024. Um, what is already there when you look into the content, um, about Einstein analyzing your, your opportunities to give, to give it a score and so on. It's very binary. It's like, This opportunities new business.
New business has less li you know, less chances to renew, um, or less li less chances to close compared to renewals. So I'm gonna give it a lowest call. Um, it's not ai, it's just like one and zeros if you want, type of, of analysis on those tools. So at the moment I would say that all the solutions, you even have solutions when you come to, um, tools like Gong, for example, are going to be analyzing your speech and so on.
Um, they are not. They are not in good enough, I would say, to really help us in our, in our world to really, you know, provide data or to make our life easier. We still need to always, um, double check if you want. What's the, the, the, the scores are telling us.
Jarin Chu: I think you bring up an important point, which is probably for rev ops or operations folks, which is more back office relative to the revenue team. The products that are available are probably gonna lag behind what's available immediately to marketers or salespeople. Um, and you also mentioned kind of the hype, right?
There's a lot of noise out there. Every single company seems to be making acquisitions with, uh, gen AI companies. Right now everyone's saying, well, we've got AI powering this layer of our product. Um, how does. A team like yours kind of sift through that noise that is the marketing hype. And when sales or marketing comes to you and says, Hey, by the way, we just heard about this new product, it seems amazing.
It's powered by ai. How do you kind of parse that out and say, is this tool actually meaningful, and is the technology actually going to help the marketing or sales team?
Hugo: That's a very good question. It's something that as a company at Frazzy, we, we were faced with very quickly when all the hype about D P T came last November, um, because we were in these. It was quite obvious to us the, the limitation if you want, um, that were coming from, from tools like that. But equally, we had a lot of like current clients or prospective clients that were telling us, oh, we are going to be, uh, implementing chat d pity because we've been asked by someone, leader, um, or senior in the company to be implementing ai.
Um, why no idea. What is it gonna do? No idea. And that's the problem with, uh, with generative ai, it's like people have been hyped up. But not necessarily knowing how is that gonna help me? Like, okay, I want to be writing like content. Perfect. It's gonna write content for you. What about, you know, uh, brands, brand voice.
What about safety? What about regulations? Are you going to use emojis or not? Emojis and so on, and all of that. The AI tool is not gonna know unless you want to be developing your own AI tool. Another thing that Frazzy has been calling out very early on when all the hype was, was booing about chat. D p t is generating good content, and that's something that we, we've been using as a differentiator as well.
Um, when it comes to, to chat d p t because. The content that you generate with chat d p t is gonna be as good as obviously the scripts that you provide or the prompts that you provide to chat D p T, but also your understanding of the subject that you're speaking about or asking for. Where Razzi puts a lot of work, if you want, in generating good content.
And what I mean by good content is content that is going to be optimized and it's going to be optimized through a lot of iteration of the same thing to understand what works, what doesn't work. And I think that is where. We are advising our clients, we are advising our colleagues in the industry to always be mindful about you need to understand what you want to achieve first before you're going into ai.
Otherwise, you're gonna get a solution and you won't have any idea of how you're going to be using it.
Jarin Chu: And so it comes back to our age. Age old reminder of understanding the use case and the wine the size of the problem before any kind of shiny tool, AI powered or not comes across the desk. Um, in the last number of months. I think for a lot of folks who are probably listening have been, I. Experimenting with different kinds of prompts on chat, G B T, you know, just trying to find ways to stay on top of the development, which is happening at such, uh, fast speeds.
What would you recommend, as someone who works at a gen AI company, what would you recommend Rev Ops leaders do to stay up to speed on the meaningful developments around gen ai?
Hugo: I would say you follow the Rev Ops Rockstar Podcast as a startup. Definitely. Um, another thing that is quite obvious, but I'm gonna say it anyway, is Google is your friend. You need to, you need to be curious. You need to always, um, try to understand like what is the new rev ops AI tool, or what are the articles that are being speaking about rev ops and AI and so on.
Um, another very useful thing to do is to be following or being part of communities. There are more and more rev ops communities that are popping up. Obviously, you need to be understanding, um, the content, if it's good enough, is it serving the purpose that you're looking for? But those communities are a lot of people.
Like yourself that want to understand or have like questions, um, or want to get some answers or one are interested into a specific subject and want to exchange with others. And I think that is quite recent if you want, that we're seeing, um, communities, rev ops communities, um, booming like this's quite a good thing 'cause it kind of shine some light on the, the need for us to be actually collaborating between each other even though we are not part of the same company.
Jarin Chu: I'm surprised earlier that you said to ask Google and not just ask Chat g b T for the answers.
Hugo: Well chair, d p t, you need to remember that unless you're using, uh, a paid version of chair, d p t Chair, d p t is gonna give you information from September, 2021. It's already updated. So, um, that's it. You can ask chair g p t quite generic questions about subjects if you want, but if you want to dive into specifics and very recent information, Google is still your friend so
Jarin Chu: That is an excellent call out in terms of the refresh timeline for the model. Um, my last question before we kind of transition and talk a little bit more about your background, Hugo, is um, whether there's any. Cautioning you would give to our listeners when considering how to incorporate AI into existing workflows or processes?
You mentioned passingly earlier, like there's a security element, there's a compliance element. What are the other kind of factors that people don't normally think about when determining whether or not, um, incorporating an AI power tool makes sense for that team?
Hugo: So outside of the like common ones, like obviously data security, ethical also, um, Like compliance. Sometimes you also need to be, um, thinking about cost. 'cause having an AI solution in your company, um, if you don't train it to your, to be your company specific, AI is gonna give you like very generic, um, answers.
You don't want that. You want something that is very much tailored to your company. If you want something that is tailored, that is going to be a hell of an investment because you need to have, people are going to be training the model. And you need to be understanding that it's not gonna be a quick and easy solution to implement.
Once you've been training your model. You need to also incorporate it with your system. So it's all about, you know, creating APIs and connections and making sure that you can surface information. So all of those consideration are raising questions about is it worth the investment? So that's something that I would be very cautious.
Um, or providing like an advice about being cautious, um, about when it comes to implementing an AI solution. And then finally it's all about is that really going to be saving you some time or is it going to be making you like win money? So you need to be very smart about it in understanding whether or not that's gonna be as much as the commitments to be implementing it in your company.
David Carnes: That is fantastic advice. Uh, thank you for all that. I think you, you've obviously spent a, a fair amount of time thinking about this, so we want to talk about you for a little bit. And your background. You're currently based in London, in the uk. Uh, you studied, uh, you did a couple of degrees at a school.
I'm gonna mispronounce the name. Is it E Rock?
Hugo: Yes. Iraq in France. Yeah.
David Carnes: Okay. Yes. Uh, so you did a, a Bachelor's of Marketing and Management. You also did a Master's in International Pro Project Management. Uh, you've also done a Master of Science and business with International Management at North Ambria University. Your previous position was at builder, uh, ai, uh, director of global Sales, operations and strategy.
Looking through your LinkedIn profile, I see this long list of sales ops and other related roles, which is kind of amazing. Um, how did you get into SaaS rev ops?
Hugo: The million dollar question I was in sales, um, before I moved into, into sales operation, which is very interesting because, um, despite all the degrees you've been speaking about, I never heard of sales operations before I actually started working. I. In, uh, in companies. Um, and before I moved to the, uh, to the uk, um, when I was in sales, I was like in, um, in the b d R type of, uh, of position.
And I, I'm a big Excel fan, so I was creating my own reports to track my activity, to track where my leads were gonna be and how much money I can make in my commissions and so on. And that's kind of, Is the reason it's not kind of, it is the reason why. Um, one day the managing director of the, um, midline company, the, the one I was working for came to me one day and he was like, Hey, we have a team.
It's called revenue operations or Sales Operation back in the day. Um, And I think it would be a good fit for them. And that's when it all started. So I met with the MD of self separation, um, and to understand the world, to understand how I could be helping in this. And then that's when I discovered the world of Salesforce backend, understanding the connections, understanding how to be setting in the apps, doing enablements to make sure the users were using it and so on.
So that's, that's the beginning of everything.
David Carnes: You've been in your current role for just, just over a year. Congratulations. Uh, if you. could go back to day one at Frazee and give yourself some advice, what would that Be
Hugo: Be curious. I am quite often falling into the tr uh, the trap of thinking I know everything, and that's pretty bad. Um, and I've, I would definitely come back to, to, to me, like one year, one year ago and say like, be more curious because one thing that I. I've been challenged with a lot was things that I never were exposed to be before, especially around like marketing operations and so on.
Um, or AI for, for revenue operations. And by being curious, you're actually allowing yourself to bridge quite a lot of pitfalls you can be falling under because you've been hearing about it. And that can give you guidance about where to be looking for. Um, so definitely be curious.
David Carnes: I think that's great advice. And then, um, I'm curious, uh, given your background, given what you're doing now, given how much you obviously think about things like AI models, what's next on your career bucket list?
Hugo: Good question. I wish I had the. Like the defined answer in my head. Um, to me it's very much two things for my, for my career. It's moving into, um, more of a strategic position. So either the p o c level, um, in companies so that not only am I. Banging at people's door to say, Hey, we need to be looking at this.
We need to be focusing on that and so on. But to be more strategic, if you want, in the company in terms of like advising the company, um, and striving the company into a specific direction. That's something that I'm looking for. Either that or like a board membership, um, where I can actually advise based on experience, based on knowing what other companies have been successful at doing or actually not falling into pForce that others have been falling in there.
David Carnes: I think, uh, both sound great and they're certainly not mutually exclusive. I'm wondering already, you know, maybe a dedicate a half an hour every morning in your current role to thinking strategically about the, the broader business and just get started. 'cause you're, you, it's clear you're on your way. So really, really excited for you.
Hugo: Thank you.
Jarin Chu: I am. Interested also in the Hugo, outside of the world of ops, the world of sales, the world of thinking about what's next, uh, in terms of ai. What are some of the things you get to do when you have that open half afternoon? Or let's just say, you know, that long summer, uh, European summer. What are some of those things you, uh, have picked up and helps you also unwind from just the intense kind of problem solving that you do day to day?
Hugo: One world travel. That's, that's the go-to. Um, I am lucky enough that my partner is a photographer, so we've been, um, we've been going to very remote places in order to be taking pictures at very early or very late hours in the day, and that's what I. Drives me outside of work to actually disconnect from all that technology, disconnect from all that communication or even social, um, social medias and so on, to be in a remote place and just yourself with your partner, your camera, and just like capturing that moment of nothing less.
That's, that's really how I am unwinding if you want, during the year.
Jarin Chu: What kinds of remote places are we talking about? Like mountain tops, like some continent you haven't been to yet?
Hugo: So it could be a lot of, lot of different things, to be fair. Um, things like the, the cost in Algar in the south of Portugal, things like the Philippines, when you are doing island opening and you're finding remote island that no one is living on. Things like Canada, when you're being lost into the, uh, the, the different parks and, and the lakes that you can find there.
Those are the, the remote places I'm speaking about.
Jarin Chu: That is really, really cool. I had the opportunity to spend, uh, two weeks in Siberia some years back. Act and it was the complete sort of change of landscape. It felt alien martian even, and the complete silence and quiet also in those areas, it's not. Overwhelmed by people. It's not overwhelmed by traffic.
It is just, I mean, in Siberia at least it was me and the iced, you know, frozen lake and just landscapes that felt like they were from a different world. So I can definitely see how transplanting ourselves into a different place outside of the digital, um, saturation that rev ops is typically a part of.
You know, that end of month, end of quarter high stress sales has an issue with closing quotes or whatever, um, sort of environment.
Hugo: We all know that. I think we should all get a drink at the end of every month in Revenue Operations World for all the work that we are doing there.
Jarin Chu: For yourself, since things are moving so quickly with Rev ops, I mean you obviously. Got this opportunity to join a rev ops team in, in ways, learn on the job, right? Learn, um, the different experiences of what different teams needed. What kinds of resources do you usually lean on for your own learning, and are there folks out there, rev ops leaders or just thought leaders in general that you wanna call out and recommend our listeners to check out?
Hugo: Definitely. So I'm doing a lot of, um, self tuition if you want. Not necessarily relying on, on the book per se, but following like articles and finding a subject and learning more about it. So I'm doing a lot of that. Um, In terms of like community, I'm being part of, um, of community that is called Rev Ops Coop, uh, that's been created by Matthew Vol.
I would definitely recommend him as a thought leader in the revenue operation world. Um, there's another person called a role talker. Um, he's the kind of guy you would want to follow when you are interested in like automation. It speaks a lot about automation and very interesting into technology. So those are two I would definitely recommend to be learning more about the the rev ops world.
Jarin Chu: Amazing recommendations and definitely Rev. Co-op has come up a couple of times before. Um, are there some thought leaders you'd also recommend for people to stay on top of, uh, gen AI topics, podcasts or articles or other kinds of, uh, influencers who are talking a lot about it that you've found to be, um, more substance than fluff?
Hugo: So this one is an interesting one because all of the thought leaders that I'm following, um, like all of them have been very criticizing if you want, when it comes to, uh, to ai. So it's, they're not necessarily creating contents about, Hey, those are the things you should be looking for, but more, hey, those are the things that you should be careful about.
Um, so I'm learning a lot on this side, not necessarily a lot about excitement, so don't know necessarily one person I would recommend when it comes to. Revenue operation and ai, but I'm sure those can be easily found. Just be careful about who you're following.
David Carnes: yeah. That's such good advice. So, um, you've, you've really shared a lot with us. If, if one of our listeners wanted to find you or follow you on online, what, what would be a good place, uh, for them to do that? I.
Hugo: Best place is LinkedIn. You go as as Robin on LinkedIn. That would be the place to find me.
David Carnes: Okay. And if they wanted to learn more about phrase Z.
Hugo: Same thing. Frazzy, you can follow, um, us on, um, on LinkedIn. We are also on like Instagram, Twitter, and then we have a website called Frazzy.
David Carnes: Okay. And then, uh, do you, you and your partner post any of your photos from wild places, wild remote places,
Hugo: I don't, I don't, my partner does, uh, she has a website, um, which I would be happy to, uh, to provide. It's called chloe ri.com and this is where you should go to find amazing pictures.
David Carnes: Oh good. Okay. And we'll be sure to include that in the show notes.
Hugo: Thank you very much.
David Carnes: So Hugo, this has really been a pleasure to have you on the podcast with us today. You've shared so much. I really appreciate the caution about the unpaid chat G B T model, uh, being outdated. Um, I'm, I'm thinking of my kids even. Looking for help on their schoolwork and not, maybe not realizing that what they're pulling could be based on really outdated information.
Uh, I enjoyed hearing about the training of a AI models and how important that will be for companies looking to adopt, uh, this technology. That there's actually some work to do, um, to have it be very useful and specific in your environment. Um, uh, I also really enjoyed your advice to yourself, so the, the be the be curious, uh, and certainly when, when beginning a new job, um, uh, how valuable that advice can be.
So thank you for all of that. We've really appreciated having you on the show today.
Hugo: Thank you for inviting me today, David. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Jarin Chu: And I want to, of course, thank the folks who've tuned in today. You know, this podcast has gone in all sorts of directions, different kinds of topics. Uh, we've spoken to lots of rev ops operators, we've spoken to some PE folks. We've definitely, uh, if you haven't listened to the last episode where David talks about his latest book, he should check that out.
Um, we're really trying to take what the most burning topics are and to address them head on and how give it a forum. So if there are topics you're hearing about, Starting Gen AI and rev ops that's coming up. Please drop us a note on LinkedIn or any of our posts and we'd love to incorporate that for a subsequent podcast.
For today though, Hugo, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. We've so enjoyed the conversation and, um, we're so glad that you are at the helm of, uh, generated AI company like this. Leading rev ops.
Hugo: Thank very, very much enjoyed the questions and.
Jarin Chu: Be curious, and this has been another exciting, curious episode of Rev Offs Rock Stars. We'll see everyone next time.
David Carnes: Stay classy. Rock stars.