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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 - Yin Cheng
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Yin Cheng: I wanna ensure that I have my team in the right place to be successful. I wanna set them up for success. And Understand every individual's aspirations so that we don't have misalignment when it comes to career compensations or what projects at I may ask to manage.
Welcome to Rev Ops Rock Stars in Pursuit of Unicorns. I'm David Carns. And I'm Jaren Chu. Join us as we interview Rev ops leaders to explore the challenges they have faced, the biggest lessons they've learned and what they think makes a rev Ops rockstar. This show is brought to you by Op. Focus on a mission to help companies run their businesses better by letting you focus on growth while we scale your operations.
Let's get this show on the road.
Jarin Chu: Today's guest is an operations powerhouse. He has led global sales ops teams at a wide variety, well-known tech brands like Tassian, recorded Future CarGurus and Veracode. He's a proven track record of successfully scaling up companies, including preparing for IPOs. We've got the VP of Sales Operations at Dutchie Yin Chang.
Welcome to the podcast.
Yin Cheng: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Appreciate the kind words.
David Carnes: You know, yin, I'm trying to think back. Is it it, is it over a decade since we first met while you were at Verico?
Yin Cheng: Yeah. Right around a decade. Um, maybe a little bit more. So yeah, you and I first met Avera code. I had just started my, uh, journey into the tech startup space at Veracode. That's right.
David Carnes: Well, uh, I'm really curious in the years since, And given all your work in rev ops, what's something in Rev ops that you've had to learn the hard way?
Yin Cheng: Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say probably two things come to mind. One is like, as I progress in my career in the rev op space, the whole notion of over communicating is not something that should be overlooked. What I mean by that is because we're a highly cross-functional team, and because I'm, I'm in sales ops currently, I know like I'm a little dated because rev ops is a new flavor of, of sales ops.
Um, but because I work largely still with the sales team, I do often partner with marketing, customer success, finance, and other departments. And so what I mean by airing erring on the side of Overcommunicating is don't just not just. Focus on the stakeholders that you're often interacting with.
But what we're also focusing on is largely cross-functional projects, which means every stakeholder along the way needs to be communicated with regularly. And so like the challenge with that, being in a rev ops, uh, spaces, you're so focused on actually managing the work, there's very little time to focus on communicating with the folks, making sure like everyone's on the same page, things of that nature.
But I have learned that you just have to find the time to do that, to ensure that everyone is on the same page. So that's one, one aspect of what I've learned the hard way. The other is just getting more comfortable with prioritization. And what I mean by that is as you're sort of like a junior to intermediate professional in the whole rev op space, You're somewhat specialized in, in your work.
You could be like a tech stack guru. You could be, uh, analytics maven. You could be, uh, a number of things within the whole space. And so like if you're not careful with, um, just sort of like aligning to some of the most important company strategic objectives and how you connect your work to that, that's also an area that takes time to learn, takes time to improve, and making sure like whatever objectives you're managing.
And again, to my earlier point around like there's just so much work to do for any rev ops professional that you just have to be laser focused on priority alignment, alignment with, with your immediate supervisor alignment to the, uh, most important strategic objectives.
David Carnes: So those are both amazing learnings that you've shared with us. I'm curious what the first one, uh, around communication, given there are so many ways to communicate now, um, are you, uh, trying out all the different modes of communication or do you have regular cadences? How do you keep the stakeholders up, up to date with what's going on with your projects?
Yin Cheng: Yeah, there's, there's definitely an evolution along with the evolution of, uh, technology that's available. Um, back to my vari code days, I don't, I don't think Slack was a thing, but like over my last two or three companies, it's been Slack heavy and email like, believe it or not. And so like with my current employer right now, There's actually like, the default is Slack.
We've got Slack, uh, channels for just about every topic available and we leverage the heck outta Slack communication. It works. We, you know, when I get a Slack communication, I tend to look at it like more quickly than an email, uh, thread. So like that absolutely works. So Slack has essentially enabled us to be better communicators and area on the side of over-communicating as well.
So technology has certainly helped.
Jarin Chu: I have to completely agree with that. I came back from about a month away for my, uh, sabbatical, and I was gone for all these weeks, not signed on at all to Slack or email and coming back, being able to look at what I needed to catch up by organized topics already, right
by channel. It's not a pile of just, is it anyone?
Is it actually someone I care about that wrote to me? Is it something urgent? Like there's no organization whatsoever in email
being able to come back to Slack to say, oh, I know these projects I care about the most, so let me start with those before I look at the other fun stuff that might be also in that Blackboard space.
Huge. Difference. What a game changer. I'm so glad we have Slack for our communications. Now,
Yin Cheng: a hundred percent.
Jarin Chu: your company, Dutchy, serves the cannabis industry and there's all sorts of fun questions. I wanna ask about that. In the words of some of my friends in, in the industry, they kind of like to call, it's the toast for cannabis, but I know it's a lot more than that.
I think you're right around 600 employees right now. Most recently raised a 350 million Series D in October, 2021. I think that brings funding to a total of like almost 600 million or more. In your own words, what does Dutchie do?
Yin Cheng: Actually, the way you described it, where you compared it to TOS is also the way I have described it to my friends and family as well, because TOS is somewhat of a well-known brand within at least the Boston's uh, market. But certainly like once. You know, after hit i p o, it's become much more of a prominent name.
So like, that's also how I described it, where essentially an all in one platform that powers the cannabis dispensaries. So like the similarities there are actually even more of a parallel with toast because they're all in one platform for the restaurant vertical. So much like Toast, uh, we will continue to innovate and, and bring more value to our dispensary partners.
Um, I would say like we're, we're in the early stages, uh, for sure as a company, but also because cannabis, uh, the whole industry is so nascent. I would say we're also in the early, uh, endings of, uh, the industry itself. So there's, there's going to be much more work, uh, to, to be, uh, to be seen for sure. Um, like even from a regulatory and compliance standpoint, this whole like industry landscape changes.
Every quarter, every year. Um, there's also the Safe Banking Act that which means like if it gets approved, complete game changer for the industry because now, now the big banks could potentially be a partner of ours. So like there are a lot of headwinds, but also a lot of tailwinds behind this industry, which makes it super interesting.
Jarin Chu: Wow. I, I think the coolest part that I've heard thus far about what Dutchie does is those very complex tax calculations that is associated with all the different kinds of layers of regulatory involvement, right. In places where cannabis is legal. When you are thinking about supporting the sales team, the marketing team, you know, your role right now is in sales ops.
Give me a sense of how many folks you're supporting and with what size team you're supporting them with.
Yin Cheng: Yeah, I'll start with my team. So I lead, uh, sales operations, uh, the Salesforce engineering team, which is a little bit of a misnomer because they're responsible for much more than Salesforce. It's really Salesforce and it's ecosystem of applications, which extends from marketing to sales to customer success, all the way to billing and finance and accounting as well.
So it's more like a business, uh, applications team, if you will. And then I also have a sales enablement, uh, function as part of my team as well. So in total we have about 14 to 15 people with a few additional open recs, uh, to, to fill, Um, so if we look at the sales organization, I would say probably about 40 or so people from AEs to BDRs to sales leaders.
We have a pretty, um, sizable customer success team that does implementations. the support case, um, and then the, um, more of the standard customer success management, uh, uh, managers of the team. Um, and then on the marketing side, we also have a pretty decent sized marketing team as well.
Um, so all in all, I would say it's probably close to. Upwards of 150 people now. Like there are other parts of operations team that, uh, aren't part of my team today. So there's one marketing ops person. There's also like some customer success operations and implementation operations team members that roll up to directly, uh, that, that, uh, department as well and that those leaders.
Um, but yeah, it's, it's a pretty good size, uh, team. Go-to-market team, again, we work cross-functionally with, with our finance partners as well on top of, uh, um, supporting the go-to-market team.
Jarin Chu: Thank you for that wonderful overview because I think the definition of rev ops, bis ops, you know, whatever you wanna call it, so different team to team. Your, uh, ti title and team is sales ops, but you're really working across a whole bunch of other functions and like you called out billing, finance, accounting, those are often considered finance ops or whatnot, but we're increasingly seeing in the marketplace it getting absorbed into the revenue teams because that is how the systems interact.
When you think about the other teams that are kind of outside of your direct purview, I think you mentioned marketing ops, you mentioned CS ops, um, you know, how you support the implantations of the, the different projects. What would be kind of your secret sauce when it comes to that cross-functional development, that cross-functional, uh, collaboration really that you were referring to earlier?
How do you actually get on the same page in terms of priorities and projects?
Yin Cheng: Going back to communication. Um, we do have a leadership Slack channel, um, in which we share a lot of information. We meet regularly as a group. Um, on top of that, on a weekly basis. We also have on the calendar certain types of meetings to enable again, uh, effective communication, uh, within certain teams.
So there are, um, certain meetings where as a ops community, we get together to ensure we're all on the same page. There's also a meeting on the calendar to allow the team to essentially, um, have a, have a, a discussion or just get on the same page with the Salesforce engineering team as well. So, and largely because we're we're remote first company, so like everyone's, uh, used to getting on Zoom calls.
Having those types of structured meetings only helps because we can't have those unstructured conversations that we used to have when we're in person and office.
Jarin Chu: That makes a lot of sense. And maybe taking one step further, I'd love to learn about kind of traffic copying in a, in a, to an extent. How do you field requests, and then how do you then distribute that either to your in-house team of folks to work or to outsource consultants, outsourced advisors, or just developers to help with kind of that additional workflow.
Yin Cheng: Yeah, we've got, um, essentially a, a, a few cues, if you will. One is, um, you know, anybody who needs help in generally from the sales, uh, uh, team, A request that then leverages our, our Slack channel. So if they need, uh, help, um, from any of the sales ops team members, generally in the form of like quoting or deal desk or reporting, whatever the needs are, generally from the sales team.
There's a queue for that. And then there's also a separate queue through Jira because we're actually managing our Salesforce development process directly in Jira, um, where certain people will, um, uh, submit a request, uh, through Jira gets logged. Um, there's actually a form that they have to fill so that we can sort of like get into the meat of the, um, uh, request itself.
And then that goes through a scoping and evaluation process by the, uh, technical team. Um, the technical team also consists of, um, uh, employees that are local to North America. We also leverage an offshore team. So depending on the nature of, of the requests, then it goes through sort of like an assignment process, which is manual for now.
Ideally, I, you know, we should automate some of that for efficiency's sake. Um, and then in terms of like, Who manages it, whether it's onshore or offshore, that's really dictated by the skillsets because we've got, um, you know, a few developers on the offshore team that will help us with Salesforce or financial force, whatever the case may be.
And then on the onshore team, we have a slightly different skillset that, uh, they will own certain types of requests as well. So it depends on the nature of the request itself, but we've got it narrowed down to a little bit of a system. Could it be refined and improved upon? Of course.
Jarin Chu: Amazing stuff. I love that. The nature of the way you even described the cues are. Quite different sales, like as easy as just posted in Slack. Whereas if it's a more technical request, fill out the form and gimme all these details, which sales will almost never do. Right? So I, I love you calling out that, that nature difference.
Are you hiring right now? Are you building your team further?
Yin Cheng: I am actually, um, I've got, uh, four open roles, um, right now. Um, one for leading the whole sales and implement side of things. I'm looking for a new leader in, uh, sales operations. It's a brand new role. Um, I'm also looking for two Salesforce admins. Um, we have quite a bit of tech debt as a result of, um, scaling the company quickly, growing quickly.
We also had a couple of acquisitions, so like all in all, it's just compiled onto like a lot of tech debt, everything that we can fix, good problems to have, but we need more help.
David Carnes: It's an exciting problem to have. So excited for you. Um, your title is VP of Sales Operations at Dutchie. Uh, I'm curious, what does your day-to-day entail?
Yin Cheng: Well, let's see. I started back in March at the beginning of March and um, the folks that I interview with were super transparent about the situation, what I would walk into, which I appreciated. And so like the biggest, biggest project for me right now is, uh, fixing our Salesforce instance and it's ecosystem.
I think I mentioned a couple times now, we have a lot of tech debt and the reasons why. And so like for us to really be able to help the company scale and, um, and we're already a market leader in this space. And even though it's a nascent industry, There will still be more and more states that get approved for recreational cannabis use.
So once that happens, there will be a new market for us to tap into essentially. Um, feels like every year that will continue to happen. Hopefully that's a goal, and if it ever gets federally approved, then that will also be a game changer for us. So right now we're preparing as though like something major is going to happen in the future.
And in order for us to scale to the next level of growth, we need to have our applications to be able to be nimble, to support that as well. For any sort of like startup, uh, any early to mid-stage company, changes only going to be a constant as the cliche goes. And so like for us, we have to plan for new products, new ways of going to market, new pricing and packaging ideas.
And if we can't support that in a, in a nimble way, then we're holding the company back from being able to drive scale and growth in the future.
David Carnes: It's such an interesting challenge. So you're, you're, uh, two, three months into the role and you want to get ready to scale and take on these projects that'll help scale the scale, the business. But you're realizing that you essentially have to reset the foundation. To be able to, to go do that.
Yin Cheng: That's right.
David Carnes: H how do you measure success in your role?
Yin Cheng: I would say it comes down to probably a couple of things. One is like, when it comes to the team itself, I wanna ensure that first and foremost, um, I have the, the, my team in the right place to be successful. I wanna set them up for success. And also, on top of that, I wanna think about career development.
Understand every individual's aspirations so that we don't have misalignment when it comes to career compensations or what projects at I may ask to manage. Um, so that to me is a big element of my success. My team's success reflects, um, on my success as well as a leader. The other aspect of this is, um, just ensuring that I am in constant conversation with my manager, who's the C F O of touchy with the senior executive team, as to what I'm planning to drive in the near future, in the not too distant future, so that my objectives, again, are aligned with theirs, what their expectations are, how they ladder up to the company's, uh, OKRs.
We actually use OKRs, uh, to drive prioritization. Um, so for me it's like making sure that what I'm driving and directing my team aligns to senior leadership, their vision, how they expect the company to grow. Also putting in place, um, my ensuring that my team is set up for success. If they have blind spots, if they need additional training on whatever the case may be, opening that up to them as well.
David Carnes: So I'm curious, given all the things that you own, uh, either at a prior job or at this one, do you ever have a challenge justifying the existence of the team and the team growing and taking on all this? Infrastructure and.
Yin Cheng: it's a constant conversation. David. so Dutchie is my fifth startup and I've been pretty intentional with which startup I join. I look for certain types of characteristics. High growth is certainly one of them. And so like when you're working in a high growth environment, the projects tend to.
Uh, pal on. And so like, there's no shortage of, of projects to manage. There's no shortage of work. The company will, will be growing at a healthy rate. So like, and when you're in those environments, you're also starting to think about, okay, what, what are some of the gaps in skills that, I mean to target in the form of a new hire?
Where, where am I seeing tension within my own team? I e are they ticking on too much? Do I need to add another resource? Um, so that's always top of mind for me. Um, and so like the conversations around getting more help tends to be why do you need more headcount? And of course, like being a rev office professional, I need data to support that.
The data being the, the. It could come in the form of like, uh, help desk, uh, key, uh, ticket volume, uh, essentially the queues that I mentioned. How many are there? Um, how many do we really need to, um, uh, manage on a regular basis? Um, where, what's our capacity? How does that align to the requests that are coming through?
What are some of the objectives that I'm planning to, um, deliver against? Why, why do I not have enough resources to tackle those deliverables? So being, so, being able to have much more of a data driven conversation, even when it comes to a resourcing conversation, would be super helpful.
David Carnes: So again, you know, uh, coming up on three months in the role, I'm curious, is there anything that keeps you up at night already in your, in your new role?
Yin Cheng: I am a little bit impatient when it comes to our Salesforce instance. It hasn't really quite kept me up yet, but I do feel like there's a, this, there's a tremendous opportunity for Dachi as a company and I, I do wanna make sure that, uh, we, we get this whole business applications ecosystem in, in gear. And so I am a little bit impatient when it comes to like, seeing the change through, making sure that I'm not putting too much pressure on my team to deliver against that roadmap.
Um, that hasn't really quite, um, kept me up at night yet. Um, but maybe the time, time will dictate that a little bit. But, uh, yeah, I would say three months into the role. Um, not too, too bad. I do feel super supported by, by the company, by the executive team, by my own team. Um, but. You know, my impatience itself may, may keep me up at night a little bit.
Jarin Chu: I wanna broaden the conversation bit, especially cuz you mentioned previously kind of that wide purview of the kinds of initiatives and of projects that your team works on. You mentioned earlier that you roll up to the C F O. I'm wondering if you have any interesting cross-functional, sort of like these higher level corporate level initiatives that you might not traditionally have considered to be sales ops, but that you are taking on or trying to tackle right now that would be worth mentioning and sharing with our audience.
Yin Cheng: so I would consider the whole management of the, uh, Salesforce ecosystem somewhat of across functional, um, ownership. Um, but apart from that, I would say something else that, um, Sometimes maybe owned by sales Ops, sometimes maybe owned by other groups, is along pricing and packaging.
Um, I do think that's more of a corporate initiative, um, based on where we are as a company at Dutchie. Um, we haven't even, you know, really discussed this at this stage, but, uh, I do think there's a role for, um, sales ops to play, uh, more of a ownership role in leading some of that effort. The main reason I feel that way right now is because there's no clear owner at this point.
Sometimes it could be product marketing, sometimes it could be product management. Sometimes it could be even be finance. But because of where we are with, with our, um, Salesforce instance, I would love to own that and drive the ball forward. The reason behind that is, Any sort of change will have an impact on the Salesforce engineering team.
So if we're not careful with what we're actually requesting from the team, there's a negative consequence to it on my own team. And so therefore, like both from a strategic and tactical standpoint, it makes sense. We're close to the data. We know where all the skeletons are very, we know, understand how to like write reports on what the true discounts are, slice and dice it many different ways, how we're winning the market, et cetera, et cetera.
So like from that standpoint, there's absolutely a big role for sales operations to, to play. Um, that's an obvious one to me. And then, You know, I mentioned, um, scaling the business, getting ready for potentially an I P O, which is something, you know, in an outcome that, uh, most, most startups sort of like have, uh, as part of the journey here.
Um, and so like even something like i p o readiness, um, it's again, more of a corporate initiative, but sales ops will often get involved from many, many different angles as well.
Jarin Chu: At risk of getting into a deep rabbit hole here, you have helped other fast growing businesses with their I P O readiness process. Would there be anything you would flag in terms of calling out what companies should keep an eye out on sooner than later? If I p o is in the near future sort of horizon?
What are the kinds of things that you're like, oh, you know, having gone through this, I wish I started doing this, you know, three years in advance or something like that.
Yin Cheng: I think managing effective governance of your data, which then leads to like, how am I being, how am I able to report on certain types of important information that bankers are interested in, i e like
revenue. Billing, all the good stuff. Um, you know, it actually all starts from like, you know, how you manage close one deals and how you, like, even the data models, uh, how you architect the data in Salesforce.
It all kind of starts from there. And then of course they're gonna wanna understand, uh, very deeply, uh, the different slices and dices of customer performance. Product performance. Again, it all starts in Salesforce, so like the more you can get ahead of that from a data architecture standpoint, the better off you'll be.
And if you can't easily reconcile revenue bookings billings, then, then that's a good starting point.
Jarin Chu: I love that you call that out because one of the biggest areas we've seen at OP Focus in the last several years when the IPOs were coming like Fast and Furious, the number one demand we saw in our services was actually helping with that re-architecture of account structures and data model, because so much of account structure had.
Just been that way since the beginning, right?
Like nobody ever really thought to say, let's take a step back and does this make sense for who we're selling to anymore? And so they weren't able to do a lot of that reporting that, like you said, investors would wanna be able to see. Um, I think it's so compelling that you just called out how important that data model is.
It's not sexy, but it's absolutely what's required for you to be able to access the data.
Yin Cheng: Yeah, a hundred percent. In like in look in early stage startups, they're just trying to get by, trying to understand, do we have a real company here? And then most often they don't even have a rev Ops pro. Help them think through and plan through like what is, what does good look like in a data model? Who, who should manage our Salesforce instance?
And so like once they get into that mid-stage late stage, then they start to plan for that. Then, you know, all of those questions become real questions, especially when they get serious about a path to I P O.
Jarin Chu: Because we're talking about bankers. And investors, I'd love to hear from you, yin, where you've had experience previously interfacing with or preparing materials for board meetings. Do you have any proven sort of approaches, any tips you would offer to other folks who need to go through this regular cycle of preparing board materials?
Yin Cheng: so in my role as a sales ops leader, I, uh, have either reported to, um, the head of sales, who's usually the CRO or some, uh, or c f o. And so like, Um, obviously both of those individuals, both of those roles will be part of any sort of board meeting and so I have had the opportunity to, um, be part of those conversations, putting together board deck, what's our narrative plan for that.
And so like when you're meeting with board members, it's generally just once a quarter and maybe it's a half day, maybe it's full day, so you want to, maybe you want to optimize your time with them. And so like if you're just thinking about it slowly from just a weather reporting standpoint, then that's not the best use of their time.
They're individuals who are incredibly smart, capable. They've seen a number of other companies, their performance, um, they understand market conditions. Probably early signals as to what's changing in the economy. So you absolutely need to tap into that sort of knowledge and intelligence. And so like what we usually try to do is come up with at least one or two key things that we wanna hear from them.
Get the feedback, uh, we thinking about the business the right way from this angle. Um, you know, at the very least it validates at least some of our own theories walking into that meeting. But best case is maybe they'll help us think of some information from a new angle that we hadn't thought of
Jarin Chu: Wow, that's, that's really interesting.
Yin Cheng: Oh, thanks.
David Carnes: So
Yen, I'd love to talk to you about technology now. Uh, we've talked about Salesforce since we first met. Uh, and certainly the go-to-market tech stacks have just blossomed in the years since. The number of tools that you're managing now is just an incredibly multiplier above what, what you managed when we first, uh, when we first interacted.
Uh, is there a tech stack tool that you could just not live without?
Yin Cheng: a car from Salesforce. Uh, yes. Uh, um. I have been a big fan of clarity since I first, um, bought them at, let's see, I record a future, uh, bought them again at, uh, Tesion. Huge, huge fan because it automates and streamlines a number of things that I would otherwise I or my team would otherwise have to do manually in the form of spreadsheets.
Um, so not only does it facilitate forecasting, but also, uh, Connects to Salesforce. So there's like, you know, a bidirectional sync between Salesforce and Cleary so that reps can manage their pipeline within Clary, while it also writes back to Salesforce. But the most interesting aspect of, of Clear is the analytics engine that it comes with.
It helps me understand at the rep level, at the team level, at the company level, conversion rates by stage, how has the pipeline moved from one date to another? Things of that nature. All super, super important information as we think about driving predictability in the business, which of course is like one of the tenants of any Rev ops pro.
And so like, I actually don't have it at Dutchie today. Um, and it's okay, like there's, there's a lot of stuff that we have to figure out from a foundational layer standpoint, but that is actually one tool that I am missing dearly and would love to have again at some point in the future.
David Carnes: You know, Salesforce has been slowly chipping away at the forecast module, uh, all these years. It's, it's in its third iter, third iteration, um, collaborative forecasting. Um, and, uh, it's still used by, you know, 1% or 2% of Salesforce customers. So it's been just great to see what Clarity has done across the last number of years, and how many clients like, like yourself, that are just really, um, uh, pleased with what it does, you know, what it supports in the organization.
Yin Cheng: For sure I'm a big fan.
David Carnes: So then, uh, the question, you know, sort of a na natural next question, uh, reporting wise, because, uh, it's near and dear to my own heart. Where, where do you go to get an outta glance view of how things are going on in the business?
Yin Cheng: I tend to lean towards Salesforce. Um, Salesforce reporting, Salesforce dashboard. The reason why is if I'm not able to produce 80% of my reporting needs directly in Salesforce, it also signals to me that I've got a data. Structure modeling issue. So like for me, I tend to lean into that. And if I can't, like there are of course limitations to Salesforce standard reporting and dashboard.
Um, but Looker is, is a really nice tool. I've used Looker, Domo, and to lesser degree Tableau as well. Um, and this whole bi space is, is, has been pretty busy, but Looker I would say is, is, uh, a little bit a notch or two above. Um, the rest of the, the pack there. Um, the visualization, the, the ease of use. Um, and it's just, um, next level essentially compared to the other, uh, vendors that I've used in the past.
David Carnes: Yeah, that's great to hear.
Jarin Chu: Ian, it's very exciting to hear you speak about Looker. Several weeks back we had, um, a head of rev ops who came from Looker, and of course, everywhere she goes, she tries to bring Looker in. So it's very, very cool to hear other customers very excited about the tool.
If we continue this thread a little bit further, you know, the tech that gets us excited, the kinds of change in marketplace, in the industry that gets us excited, what do you think might be the next big disruption to rev offs? What are you seeing on the horizon that's getting you excited that you'd be like, Hey, I'd love to experiment with that, or, this is something I gotta keep my eye out for.
Yin Cheng: Yeah, I would say my answer probably won't come as a surprise to you. Like everyone's all over chat G B T these days. So I think like where. In the very, very early stage of what we can do with chat g b T across the go to market space. Um, there is, uh, a potential for us to interact and engage with Salesforce in a very different way through something like ai, which is like, if I'm able to actually type in prompts for then Salesforce to deliver a certain type of report of information to me, that would be super helpful.
Or if I can turn Salesforce into somewhat of, like, I, I know they, they have Einstein, the vision was for that to happen as well. Um, I don't know where that all sits right now, but I do think with the advent of chat C B T, some of this can be realized actually sooner rather than later. If I can interact with Salesforce, much like how I interact with Alexa at home, that would also be super interesting as well.
So I think, I think those days are actually not that far from where we are today. I know there's probably a lot of work being done in both Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRMs out there. Um, so I am absolutely looking forward to that day when that happens, and then that will be truly a game changer when it comes to all the different insights that we're all trying to glean from our, our, uh, Salesforce or c r m.
David Carnes: And Salesforce just announced a c e o of AI today, and I got to see her at the New York World Tour Keynote. Uh, it was, um, the first all female keynote of my entire career, which was kind of awesome. What an amazing group of, uh, leaders within Salesforce. So one of the women that spoke was just promoted, uh, as c e O of ai.
Um, the Einstein is up to over 2 billion with a b predictions a day, and I think they're working to reconcile, um, you know, that, uh, predictive model. To, you know, what this new realm of the generative, uh, ai, uh, will, will offer. So there's all kinds of interesting things that people are doing with it, but it still feels very, very early days.
Yin Cheng: For sure.
Jarin Chu: One other question I'd love to find out about is whether there's anything, you know, especially looking back on your various sales ops roles, is there anything in sales ops or of ops more readily that you'd like to fire yourself from? Like if you'd never have to do that again, if that could be just handled or taken care of, like that would be amazing.
Yin Cheng: There's always a bunch of repetitive, mundane, somewhat like lower value responsibilities that, that we own. Um, and so like I wouldn't necessarily fire myself, but rather maybe like potentially outsource that to other groups. Certainly like automate, like understand why it exists and automate it to the extent that it's possible.
we are constantly getting requests around just helping the sales team tweak certain things within a quote because they don't have permissions to do so. Um, so there's a delicate balance between like, you know, uh, enabling them with additional provisions so that they can have more self-service responsibilities versus like just protecting them from actually adding on to the data debt, detect debt that we have.
So there's a delicate balance here, I would say, like I. If I can, I would focus a lot of my own energy, my team's energy to like understand like what's causing these types of requests that we continue to get, which is something that I've, I've discussed with the team and think of ways to automate it or somewhat of a workaround so that we can focus our time on more value add projects, which is always a conversation that we're, we're constantly having.
Um, but like when I think about, you know, what things I want to gr get rid of, it's more of the tactical responsibilities enabling my team to be more of a value add to the organization essentially.
David Carnes: for this next part of the, uh, the podcast episode, we want to talk about you. Uh, you studied accounting at Suffolk. Uh, you did a, a Master's in financial services from, uh, Boston University. Uh, very cool. Um, you, um, had a previous position. You, you're a VP of Sales Ops at Tesion. You've also had sales ops roles that recorded future and, uh, CarGurus.
You, uh, were a director of fp and a at Veracode, among other roles. Uh, there. I'm curious, given this long, long background, like going way back to the beginning, like how did you get into SaaS sales ops and SaaS, rev ops?
Yin Cheng: Yeah, it's, uh, it's been an interesting journey, although I've heard similar paths to rev ops as well, which is I started off in finance, I worked for larger companies, um, in the bioscience and medical device space. Um, and so. There, there wasn't actually a sales operations team. It was more of like, you're in finance and you are a business partner to certain departments of the company.
And so that was my first cent, um, being a business partner to the go-to-market team. So supporting the sales and service organization from a finance standpoint, doing a lot of the forecasting and budgeting and planning, which is like one of the, uh, responsibilities of now the rev op space. Um, and also like, you know, working through other, uh, needs as well.
And so it's through that, through that experience where I started to fall in love with just the energy that comes with working with go-to-market people, salespeople. And, it was when, I, I landed in startup and tech with Vario, which is how we met David. And at that point I didn't intend to move into this new space.
For me. At the time, it was a recruiter from Vari code that pains me on LinkedIn, which is like how all recruitments take place these days. And we started having a conversation. It wasn't an easy decision because I was changing industry. I was actually going to move from a management role to an individual contributor role.
But at, in the, in the end, I thought that the opportunity to try something different in a new space was to get to pass up. So that's when I decided to move into very cold startup technology, disruptive technology. And I haven't stopped since, like now I'm addicted to the whole startup technology SAS space.
So this is, this is home for me. This is what I love to do.
David Carnes: Yeah. That's so great. You had such a fun period of growth. And we worked with Veracode for many years. I remember being in this teeny, itty bitty little office. Uh, one of the, it must have been their first office, and then their next office was a little bit larger than the next one was even larger. And then the next one was huge a after that.
Um, so what a fun run that, that you must have had. And I can totally see how you got, you know, bitten by the bug of, uh, being part of high growth SaaS companies.
Yin Cheng: Yeah, we, uh, it didn't hurt that I worked with a number of incredibly intelligent people. I still keep in touch to today. A lot of 'em have been super successful. I see their, you know, posts in LinkedIn, their new job changes, promotions, et cetera. So that has certainly reinforced this whole like, idea of staying in this space.
David Carnes: If you could go back to the beginning of your career and give yourself a piece of advice, what might, what might that be?
Yin Cheng: I would say a couple things come to mind. Um, one is probably begin my startup tech journey a little bit sooner. Um, I didn't actually move into that space until, um, about 10 or 11 years ago, which was at the time, probably like several years into my career. Um, and I would say if I had a choice, I probably would've started sooner to learn about this, uh, space a little bit sooner in my career.
Um, the other is, Probably having a stint in sales, like not necessarily like auto carrying sales, but even if it's something like being a B D R S D R calling in the phone so that you can truly understand what a day in their life is really like, because ultimately I am trying to help them gain more efficiency, get better at selling, landing bigger deals, whatever the case may be.
And so like for me to like really live a day in their life and having, and I can actually say that that would go a long way.
Jarin Chu: I think you're probably the least finance person I would've ever expected because you saying that you wanna have a ST in sales, you know, have your time as a bdr, S D R, your quote earlier, I started falling in love, working with salespeople. I'm like, no finance person would ever say that you are quite the special breed.
But it does explain, I think, in many ways the success you've experienced in these last number of roles because you have that financial background to be able to successfully roll up into A C F O to be able to successfully look at sales ops in a very analytical way without losing that very human curiosity that you're clearly demonstrating on our conversation right now.
Yin Cheng: Appreciate that.
Jarin Chu: In an ideal world, what's next on your career bucket list?
Yin Cheng: Ooh. a couple of roles come to mind. Um, I would say either, A c o o role or a CRO role. Um, and the CRO has to make sense for both the company and myself because like I said, I, I've never carried a bag before. So like for me to all of a sudden step into that, uh, CRO role would be somewhat interesting, to say the least, but in the right environment it could work.
Um, I actually met a gentleman, um, not too long ago. He actually made a similar move. He was leading sales operations or revenue operations and made a move to become CRO of a company. And so like, where it wouldn't make sense is where relationships matter. Like in cybersecurity, sales relationships matter.
So for like, for me to be a c a CRO in that world wouldn't make sense. But like for me to be in an industry where relationships matter a little bit less, that probably could make sense.
Jarin Chu: And I can definitely see a scenario where companies in different maturity or growth stages, you know, especially if they are unable to have kind of a dedicated ops function. I feel like a lot of companies grow into that. They do want someone who can think about revenue, but also have a very strong ops background.
Yin Cheng: right. Especially in this day and age where like, you know, sales ops was a thing 10 years ago, and now it's all about revenue ops, connecting all of the go to market teams in one umbrella. And so, like, that's, that's even more of, um, substance to the fact that a Rev op Pro could sit in a c r role role, um, because that person will have actually worked closely with, uh, the entire go-to-market team.
Jarin Chu: So aside from thinking about, hey, wouldn't it have been great for me to have a S D R P D R stint, what do you do yin to unwind from the insanity of your role on a daily basis?
Yin Cheng: Um, I watch tv like a lot of people. I, um, I read from time to time. I, uh, connect with friends when I can, uh, with family. I have three children, so they keep me prep. Plenty busy, so more of the usual stuff. I also, um, go to the gym, unwind, uh, things of that nature.
David Carnes: You know, just thinking of a, a podcast episode where Elon Musk was on smoking a, a, a joint or something like that, and I just thinking of, uh, you know, Dutchy might have a, an answer that it supports, but, but we, we won't, we won't push you there. I'm just teasing.
Yin Cheng: Potential partnership. There's something about Tesla and Dutchie there.
Jarin Chu: My last question for you, yin is. You've mentioned earlier that a lot of the folks you worked with early on, they're brilliant, very passionate professionals. You're seeing them move throughout the industry. Moving up, what kinds of resources do you turn to and who do you turn to for your own rev ops learning?
Are there folks you'd like to shout out on the podcast or even recommend to be on a future episode here?
Yin Cheng: Yeah, I, uh, I listen to podcasts. I, um, look at, I follow certain, if we're not connected, I follow certain individuals who are on LinkedIn and that generally, um, write a lot of interesting posts around rev ops or otherwise. Um, I, um, I think those are the main sources. There are other avenues that I tend to tap into, like certain, uh, companies that will produce a lot of good information.
Like Clarity is actually has a lot of great content about, you know, how to run revenue, rev op space, et cetera. Um, and Insight Partners is also, uh, an interesting, Investment firm that I've had interactions with in the past through Recorded future. Um, so they have a Center of Excellence team.
Phenomenal folks know the space very well. Uh, I was able to tap into an intranet that they have that I was able to lean into a lot of the content that they created as well. So great resources there. Some of the folks on the podcast side I listened to, um, Sean Lane has an interesting and very informative podcast around rev ops.
Um, Rosalin Santana also has an interesting podcast. Uh, I think she started, uh, a collective in the rev op space. Um, and she also has a, has a ton of great content on LinkedIn, uh, on her LinkedIn feed as well. Um, there's a s podcast that I listen to from time to time. Also a ton of good information. So, um, if you're, if you're eager to learn, there's no shortage of resources out there.
David Carnes: So Ian, I'd like to talk to you next about, or ask you next about where people can find you. I know you've got a LinkedIn profile, uh, you mentioned, uh, you know, connecting on that 10, 10 years ago or, or so, or, or being approached by a recruiter, uh, through that. Is that the main, uh, social platform that you're on?
Yin Cheng: It is a main social platform that they can find me. I, uh, I just don't have enough time for anything else, unfortunately.
Um, and, uh, because of my children, because, um, I, I try to stay away from social media as much as I can. LinkedIn is one that I, I, uh, visit religiously. Um, but yeah, that's the best place to, to find me as LinkedIn,
David Carnes: And where can somebody learn, uh, more about Dutchie.
Yin Cheng: uh, at, uh, our website, uh, ww dodgy.com. Um, there are, um, other resources out there as well, but that is the main source.
David Carnes: Well, fantastic. Uh, yin, this has been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast with us today. Uh, it was so interesting to hear your movement from accounting and finance over toward sales ops. Um, hearing about your experience with tools, uh, like Clarity and Looker, uh, and also the advice, uh, to yourself that you wish you'd, uh, had a role in sales or to, to consider a role in sales as part of, uh, someone's learning.
Having empathy in the, in the role of sales ops. Uh, we really appreciate your time and sharing so much with our audience today.
Yin Cheng: Thank you, David. It's, uh, it's been a lot of fun. Thank you for having me on. Uh, enjoyed the conversation very much.
Jarin Chu: And I of course, wanna thank so many of our listeners for following us on this journey and listening into your story today. If you learn something today from our conversation with Yin, please share the podcast with someone. Subscribe, like favorite, whatever it is on your preferred podcasting platform.
Send it to a colleague. We would love to con. Building this rev op community and help each other learning the best. Thank again, again for being on the podcast today,
Yin Cheng: Thank you, Jared. Appreciate it.
Jarin Chu: and this has been another exciting episode of Rev Ops Rock Stars. See you next time.
David Carnes: Stay classy. Rock stars.
And that wraps up another episode. Thank you so much for joining us. For show notes and other episodes, visit rev ops rockstars.com. Rev Ops Rockstars is sponsored by OP Focus. Visit op focus.com to learn more about how OP Focus helps SaaS companies scale their revenue operations.