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We think we need RevOps because: Systems. Tools. Data.. And they all have merits, but, there's a few other yet very important reasons to bring RevOps on let alone have them in the first place.
Listen in and find out!
***
Listen in and find out!
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (03:47) - Why do we need it?
- (05:04) - "We gotta call someone"
- (11:55) - When is a strategic focus even needed?
- (16:44) - At some point it's a factory
- (18:39) - This is why RevOps matters
- (21:52) - When does the VP Finance get fired?
- (26:19) - Take the information monopoly away from finance
- (29:58) - Flag problems earlier
***
This episode is brought to you by Growblocks. Finding and fixing problems in your GTM shouldn't take weeks. It should happen instantly.
That's why Growblocks built the first RevOps platform that shows you your entire funnel, split by motions, segments and more - so you can find problems, the root-cause and identify solutions fast, all in the same platform.
***
Connect with us
✉️ Newsletter: revenueletter.substack.com
Creators & Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, together they look at the full funnel.
With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.
If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.
[00:00:00] Toni: hey everyone, this is Toni Hohlbein from Growblocks, you are listening to the Revenue Formula with Mikkel and Toni. In today's episode, we talk about why people bring on revops for the wrong reasons and what the right reasons actually are. Enjoy. .
[00:00:22] . I actually didn't read the email. Did you, is it like, do you have the, do you have the slides maybe now?
[00:00:27] Mikkel: No, just checking in. He, he's like anxious, like any organizer would be that he's going to get it morning of and he gets like 20 slides and he needs to kind of.
[00:00:37] stack it all together and not fuck it up. Uh, and then someone raises their hand like an hour before. I was like, Oh, so there was a typo. Can I just, here's the latest version. Please use that. Also, I switched around 10 slides. It's like, God, no, it's a very ungrateful job to have assembling all those slides for a conference, man.
[00:00:58] Toni: Feels like you had that job before. I
[00:01:00] Mikkel: I did. Well, I outsourced it.
[00:01:02] Toni: Ah, okay.
[00:01:03] Mikkel: I had a team around me. Oh,
[00:01:07] Toni: back then when you were a
[00:01:09] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:01:11] and I was making money. That's the start of life.
[00:01:17] Toni: exactly.
[00:01:18] Mikkel: Not a lot of holidays, not a lot of pension, but boy do we work hard and have fun. It's like Sundays. Can you?
[00:01:26] Toni: win.
[00:01:29] Mikkel: Oh, man. Oh, man. Enough, enough of the
[00:01:33] Toni: So what did you do on Sundays?
[00:01:35] Mikkel: Yes, let's get into that because So actually, let's go a bit further back because we had a public holiday.
[00:01:41] Toni: all the way to Saturday?
[00:01:42] Mikkel: the way to Thursday. Because we had a public holiday, as you know, and it was a great day. Awesome weather, go to bed, totally knackered.
[00:01:50] Toni: Germany, this is Father's Day.
[00:01:52] Mikkel: On the Thursday? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Thanks for clarifying. It was also Mother's Day. Did you remember?
[00:01:57] Toni: I did.
[00:01:57] Mikkel: Yeah, that's
[00:01:58] Toni: Here's a drawing.
[00:02:03] Mikkel: a drawing. No, so, um, so basically we went to bed. Everything was fine. We obviously sleep with the window open because it's warm now and what happens is all those young folks rummaging around in the streets in the suburbs making, you know, Loud noises, yeah, making a ruckus. I was about to say, I was like, no.
[00:02:24] And you know what I realized as I laid in bed there and, you know, woke up because they were so
[00:02:28] Toni: You're old, because it was 7. 30 when you
[00:02:30] Mikkel: like, yeah, number one, it's 9 PM. Number two, I'm thinking about walking out the door, yelling at
[00:02:38] Toni: Oh
[00:02:39] Mikkel: And yeah, and I was like. Oh, no, it's official. Ja alt. No, that's, that was the massive realization I had.
[00:02:47] And I decided to just lean into it. So we did a lot of practical stuff during the weekend. It was terrible. It was terrible. It was like, actually, I was a little bit envious. I think that's why I got mad. It's like, why am I not out there with beer, having fun, instead of in here, having to wake up in a couple of hours to give a bottle to one of the kids.
[00:03:06] I mean,
[00:03:06] Toni: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, at least the last one is, that's your fault, my friend.
[00:03:11] Mikkel: It's like, why do we, there's a reason, sometimes there's a reason we think we need kits and then there's why we actually need them. And it's, it's such a hard, hard thing. I don't know how we
[00:03:20] Toni: I don't know if there are any reasons.
[00:03:22] Mikkel: I don't know.
[00:03:23] Toni: know.
[00:03:24] I
[00:03:24] Mikkel: was, I was texting with Evelina. It's like, so you still have one?
[00:03:27] It's like, yep. You still have three? Yep, apparently you can't get rid of any of them once you have them. It's like one of those, you know, it's, it's not a two way, uh, revolving door. It's like, once you walk through it, then you're
[00:03:39] Toni: I think it's a fair question for someone who has one.
[00:03:41] It's like, you're still at one, because it's always like this, this hidden thinking of like, yeah, we're gonna have two.
[00:03:47] Mikkel: I don't know how we're going to salvage this episode now. We're not even started talking about the good stuff. We've talked about so many crazy things. We are not terrible people. We love our children and our wives and our work and everything is good. Uh, but actually, uh, we're going to talk about another thing we love and we are very passionate about.
[00:04:04] Revenue operations.
[00:04:05] Toni: Revenue Operations.
[00:04:07] Mikkel: It's one of those episodes. Uh, so don't tune out now that we said the, you know, buzzword of 2023. please stay on because we're going to talk a bit about some of the mistakes that are actually happening. You basically did a, I mean, this is the setup for so many. Of our episodes by
[00:04:22] Toni: I mean,
[00:04:23] Mikkel: you did a post that didn't tank.
[00:04:26] It was not terrible. People actually commented on it and liked it, you know,
[00:04:31] Toni: why, why do you always seem to hurt in my feelings,
[00:04:33] Mikkel: it's just more fun
[00:04:34] Toni: Yeah, I see, I
[00:04:34] Mikkel: It's just more fun that way. But basically going into this good old, you know, almost, I want to say strategic revenue operations, and there's some folks who hired because they think they need it for something.
[00:04:46] And then there's the real reason why you actually need it. And I think we're going to start by covering some of the, let's say the common things folks hire RevOps for and what, you know, some of the maybe watchouts are. Not necessarily that it's a bad thing, uh, those reasons, but then we want to get to the point where it's like, hey, this is actually why at the end of the day you need it.
[00:05:04] Toni: So the thing is, hiring operations, whatever you put in front of it. Sales, Marketing, CS, Revenue, Go To Market, whatever operations, lunch operations, we had lunch operations actually.
[00:05:17] They're always there for a very specific reason. And it's a very tangible reason most of the time. The problem with the hype around revenue operations has been that people were trying to ascend the practical reasons and trying to do more bigger stuff which is also great.
[00:05:35] And this is also what? Uh, you know, we're probably going to get to in a little bit, but that gap between what people wanted to do and what they were sometimes hired for, I think this is, is causing some of the, the issue here basically, right? And ultimately, you know, when you, when you go out, let's just say you have super early on, you are a hundred employees, you're going to hire someone in operations for very simple reasons, which are, you want them to manage the CRM. Right? That's usually the start or you kind of realize, ah, um, you know, we have Salesforce or we have HubSpot, whatever you have. And, um, then you have Outreach or Sales Loft or whatever you have, and you want to stitch them together. And the VP of Sales sits there and is like, I don't know how to do
[00:06:19] Mikkel: I messed it up so bad, I don't want to do that.
[00:06:22] Toni: then it's like, I gotta, I gotta, we gotta get a guy.
[00:06:25] Mikkel: Yeah. I'll go. Yeah, Yeah,
[00:06:27] Toni: we're going to get, you know, I got to call someone. Um, and that's usually then the, the realization of saying, ah, okay, this was not just a, you know, two hour project was not just a quick, like, ah, can you just come over here and do like a clickety clackety usually that ends up being like, no, actually this is a full time role.
[00:06:43] Um, and that's then where you hire that person. I think some people try and justify it with what should the ratio be. Should be 1 to 10, 1 to 6, to your kind of, um, your frontline staff and so forth. and that's the reason. They come in because they need to fix something that suddenly doesn't work anymore, which might be kind of the CRM, right?
[00:07:00] Um, and then usually on top of that, There's a couple of other admin tasks that they get just, you know, handed. Um, a typical one is to manage and to calculate commissions.
[00:07:12] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:07:14] Toni: And, um, in the beginning, when you get this task as a new, you know, young rev ops, uh, It's fantastic because you feel like so much more empowered and important.
[00:07:24] and as you calculate commissions, you will, you will learn that you're getting extremely popular and unpopular at the same time with the sales team. people are doing you favours and stuff, you know?
[00:07:35] Mikkel: Saw this and thought of you.
[00:07:36] Toni: Yeah, exactly. And the other thing is also like, Ooh, you know, you get to decide which comp plan to build and what to kind of, you know, do these things like that's really cool.
[00:07:46] But ultimately it's actually an admin job, right? Because, you know, once it's set, you kind of want to forget about it. And then it's really calculating. And then it's also a lot of like BS that needs to be done with the calculation itself.
[00:07:57] Mikkel: So can I just point out, it sounds like some of these jobs I mean it's not like they weren't getting done before but it sounds like someone maybe wanted to just get rid of them.
[00:08:05] Just hearing it, that was, the first one
[00:08:10] Toni: So the CRM thing, I don't think it really gets done. I think, you know, can you, can you use a CRM even if it's built poorly? Sure you you can.
[00:08:19] But some of the other things that you want to do in the CRM, it's like, forget about it. It's like, it doesn't, it's not going to work.
[00:08:24] I think the calculated commission usually is something that's being,
[00:08:27] Um, pushed back and forth between finance and rev ops.
[00:08:32] Mikkel: . Wordpress. No, I don't want to have it. You take it. It's your
[00:08:34] Toni: No, there's always like, well, but if we buy that, then you need to do the commissions. Okay. And there's like, kind of, it's a little bit like a, like a, you know, a chip that's being passed back and forth. Um, And, and I think then there's like, um, building, um, specific reports and dashboards and you know, um, back then when I started in that role, it was always, um, some guy on my quote unquote team that had to build the sales report.
[00:08:59] was not doing anything else the whole week long. He was a part timer. So doing anything else, but building a sales report every basically. and, that's, you know, in Excel, that's, that's what he, that's what sales operations, is, is predominantly doing. There are a couple of other things where like, Hey, you know, what about this?
[00:09:15] Sure, yes. Also, that belongs to revenue operations, but I think those are the very tangible tasks That someone is, is giving to rev ops or sales ops.
[00:09:24] Mikkel: But you know what was so funny? Because as I read it and you said the keyword, there are sales ops. As I read some of the points, it was like, you need someone to manage the CRM. You need someone to do commissions, territory, whatever. It's like CRM. Why not hire, you know, a CRM manager? For the sales stuff, why not hire a sales ops person? Why, you know, why not go that route instead of, you know, making the decision to bring in a RevOps in that case?
[00:09:50] Toni: I think, um, and this really goes to the heart of the RevOps word by now is, um, I think in many, many cases, so, I mean, we obviously kind of selling to revenue operations.
[00:09:58] So we're kind of interested in this, but I think RevOps itself, while growing a lot, we're still talking, like really five to 6, 000 people globally only that really kind of have the RevOps, um, in their name, and their title, sorry. And then you have something like 50 or 60, 000 or even a lot more. I don't know the exact number for sales operations, actually.
[00:10:19] And I think what's happening in many, many, many cases is that someone decides that they're in sales operations, but they just think it's cooler to, to call themselves revenue. It's a little bit like the, you know, chief sales officer. That, you know, um, Chief Sales Officer, that doesn't sound, CSO, you know, maybe I'm confused with a Chief Security Officer whatever, um, and, um, and then they go for CRO.
[00:10:44] It's the same, it's kind of the same thing, there's some vanity with the, with the RevOps thing, that's why there's now this new fraction of which are like only, you know, 50 people or something like this that are go to market
[00:10:55] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:10:56] Toni: really show us like, no, it's not sales operations, not revenue operations, go to market operations.
[00:11:01] And the thing is, what's going to happen is, um, some rev ops and then some sales ops will just be like, Sounds cooler. Let's do
[00:11:10] Mikkel: take that.
[00:11:10] Toni: So I think it's, this is kind of an ever evolving thing, but in many cases, especially in B2B, because there's lots of stuff with people in the sales process in B2B, you will have someone operations basically there.
[00:11:23] And then, you know, the marketing operations piece, it's, it's kind of a different ballgame in many cases. It's, it's so many, you know, it's, it's campaign execution. There's so many moving pieces that they need to kind a track on. There's all kinds of things they're stitching together. I'm not talking about, let's say about Marketo or something like this.
[00:11:40] But I mean, even in our small, you know, marketing operations team here.
[00:11:45] We're still using like five, 15 different tools or this. And there's always something that needs to stitch together. Um, there's always work, uh, that, that needs to be done there as well, but it's a different, it's a different ballgame.
[00:11:55] Mikkel: different ballgame. Yeah, it Okay. So, um, I guess that's why most people think they need it. And I, and I think also, by the way, it's totally legitimate if, if the CRM is a mess, so you need to make full use of it to actually bring someone on board to, to fix it.
[00:12:09] Basically, I think, I think that's totally legitimate. We've had that, you know, talk in the past. And it's also not like at any given point in time that a business can just hire someone to only do the strategic stuff. Like it also doesn't work like
[00:12:22] Toni: eventually they can actually, but you need to be fairly large at that
[00:12:25] Mikkel: And what, at what point in time though?
[00:12:27] Toni: I think this is, this is when you're starting to have, um, really this strategic stuff is, is being done and carried by the head of revenue operations. Like say you have a team. Maybe director of or VP of it's being carried by that person, until even that person You know, it has too much of an, uh, of a, of a job to that they then say, okay, let's hire a director of revenue strategy that reports into the, um, VP of revenue operations.
[00:12:57] But you know, at that point you need to be a company of four or 500 people
[00:13:00] Mikkel: people,
[00:13:01] right?
[00:13:01] Toni: Kind of, you need to be fairly large and, and potentially even larger, um, on the, on the back of that. I think the big issue though, and this is, this is what's been driving, you know, the Um, you know, the, the surge of revenue operations and then the, I don't know, the un surge of it, um, it's still growing.
[00:13:18] I think head of revenue operations was actually, no, director of revenue operations was actually, um, among the top five fastest growing. Um, rolls in 2024. is not only a, you know, last year thing is also this year thing. So it's still growing. Um, but a large, a large reason, you know, when I talk to CEOs, CROs, a large reason for why they hire revenue operations is not that they're like, Ooh, you know, this is the strategic unlock for me.
[00:13:44] Um, that gets salesforce in order. That's not how they think about it. They think like, well, you know, it should do all of those wonderful efficiency
[00:13:52] Mikkel: things. That Toni and Mikkel talked
[00:13:55] Toni: It should be doing all of those wonderful things to stitch things together and, and now suddenly my CAC Payback is better, right?
[00:14:02] Um, but the, um, you know, in many, many times that, that is, that is completely disconnected from what they then actually end up getting, right? Um, and I think that jump is RevOpsers to achieve. but this is where, I mean, you and I and a bunch of others believe Rev ops should actually really, this is where they should sit actually
[00:14:25] Mikkel: do, you think it's because of lack of experience? Right? Because I can see the scenario that you start as head of RevOps company, 20 million, whatever, there are a couple of hundred folks, and then obviously there's all these endless tasks and requests to fix and change something.
[00:14:40] It's like, You know, you can call it a mundane task, but you'll definitely see the fruits of your labor at the end of the day. It's like, that dashboard, I built it. Now, now you have it. You're welcome, right? Um, so you can quickly get stuck in this, you know, just taking in the requests, knocking them out of the park, and then be left with, well, how do I start this strategic work?
[00:15:01] Do you think there's something with the experience with the function being fairly young?
[00:15:04] Toni: I think, I think there's something in the experience of the person that operates in the function.
[00:15:09] Um, that's what I actually think it mostly is. And you know, there's always this, oh, you know, we don't have time, don't have time to be strategic. That doesn't work like this.
[00:15:18] Mikkel: It's for any role, by the way
[00:15:19] Toni: so exactly, and, and there's. Whenever there's any role in a company that says strategy in there, I'm always like,
[00:15:26] Mikkel: Does that mean selling?
[00:15:28] Toni: Yeah, exactly. Is he or she doing really? Or, um, So,
[00:15:35] um, that's, that's the thing, right? And I think many times what, what is lacking is this, this connection between yes, I'm in the tool and the data and the process and understand all of that stuff. The commission, what the people are doing, all of the roles.
[00:15:49] I get it.
[00:15:50] But how do you connect that all the way up to CAC Payback, right? I think that connection is usually missing. and I think this is, you know, we talked about this in, um, the, the rev architecture guide. We talked about this in the, uh, in a couple of other assets kind of that we, that we pushed out.
[00:16:07] But that's the leap that someone needs to make, To go from, I have all of the data stuff here that I'm interested in. and over here is my CEO, CRO, that are really interested in, you know, growth and, you know, CAC, Payback and, you know, all of that good stuff. Um, how do I bridge between those two things, And, and then, you know, maybe you, you get it from a metrics perspective, how to, you know, calculate CAC Payback, for example, but then it's still difficult to then make the leap to say like, okay, here, um, here are a couple of things we can do to actually improve it. That's, I think where a lot of people just fall off.
[00:16:42] coupled with,
[00:16:44] I mean, imagine a person that maybe has a consulting background or finance backgrounds, or maybe has a little bit of junior, uh, go to market experience, like a salesperson or person. Um, but it's still like end twenties, early thirties, and then, proposing all kinds of things to the team that they should change.
[00:17:04] and then, you know, the, the CRO or COO, whoever kind of, you know, Rolling their eyes like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Sure. Sure. And, and the problem there is actually a lack of, um, understanding that, that the way you generate revenue, it is at a certain point in time, it is a factory and those things that sound silly, they do work. All right. That's, that's actually the thing, right? Because in the beginning you have like, Oh, wow. All of those. You know, um, you know, unicorn sales reps and they're all divas and you all need to manage them. And then if someone comes and says like, Oh, you know, we should really have a, um, a, a discount hierarchy that would actually, you know, increase our ACV and we will grow 3 percent faster.
[00:17:50] Everyone with like too much frontline experience is like, What, what the fuck are you talking about, man? And, and I think this is, this is where, There's, there's a lack of experience on the RevOps side to kind of push in that direction. And then I got to also say there's a lack of appreciation and experience on the, on the leadership side.
[00:18:11] That that's actually the right thing to do, right? Kind of that, that revenue engineering that actually needs to happen. And, um, and you need to be, you know, I'm not saying that every single idea is a great idea, you need to be able to like, then spar on that. It's like, you know what, actually, yes, we have an issue with ACVs and actually kind of, that could help us, but maybe rather do it like this instead, right?
[00:18:32] You can't expect this junior RevOps person to kind of come up with the right solution, but at least they can help you push you in the right direction,
[00:18:39] Mikkel: Yeah. I think also at some point, actually, when, when, when you have those ideas, actually at some point you end up with just the boring ones because they work.
[00:18:47] You know what? We just spend a little bit more here and then we get more and that then it changes, right? So let's maybe get into why do we actually need RevOps at the end of the day? What you know, what should be the purpose because you and I have talked with a few companies by now We talked with Harrison Rose about the paddle story And I think the pattern we've seen by now from, from talking with a few folks is some, they actually over invested in RevOps.
[00:19:12] And all of a sudden, you know, I'm kind of taking a leap here maybe, but all of a sudden those, that work led to some improvements for them to really start taking off. So let's get into some of the stuff on, on why it actually matters.
[00:19:25] Toni: So,
[00:19:27] you know, and this is really thinking about where does RevOps sit and how does it actually work out, right? And I think the first unique skill that RevOps can bring to the table is that it's probably the only team that actually is trying to connect all the dots across the full go to market funnel. you might say, hey, it's, it's also a CRO problem, but then the CRO is really focused sometimes on the sales area. Can be the same thing with revenue operations, of course, but really the, the only team that tries to, okay, what is going on in marketing? How does that connect to sales? How does that connect to CS?
[00:20:06] Really trying to understand the whole end to end process, the full funnel thing, kind of, that is. Um, that is the, you know, sometimes the only team that really actually cares about these right? Because even finance, finance, they care about the forecast and they care about dollars closed, um, and maybe the structure of the contract and stuff, but they don't really care that much about how the funnel looks like and how it works and so forth, right?
[00:20:31] They don't really have an appreciation for that. And that almost brings me to the next point, which is, um, they're probably the only team that understands commercial stuff. Understands the funnel, understands the numbers, you know, is fluent in that language, um, but it's also unbiased. Meaning can be a great source for unbiased reporting, right?
[00:20:54] Which is also one of the reasons why sometimes RevOps sits under finance because, you know, They are numbers guys ladies and, and they're unbiased, so therefore, maybe they should sit there. Um, and, and revenue operations is, you know, when you go through the, the different things, finance, they, they can't really help you with looking at the funnel and saying, oh, you know, you're weak over here.
[00:21:18] I mean, it doesn't work like know? And, and if they do, And, you know, I had some finance folks that, that were doing this with me. And I just looked at them and was like, you don't have a fucking clue. You know, like zero credibility.
[00:21:33] Zero understanding of the actual thing. And, and, and granted they probably had a couple of good points there here and there, uh, but they were just not understanding with me as a CEO to, to actually, you know, really take them seriously and kind of think about it.
[00:21:46] Right. And, and RevOps has that, has that position though, to be able to achieve that.
[00:21:51] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Toni: The, the next thing, which,
[00:21:55] Which many people are kind of forgetting. And I just, you know, this weekend read a good post by, um, Kevin Dorsey. He was basically asking when, when the VP of sales finally gets fired for putting forward a
[00:22:10] Mikkel: yeah.
[00:22:10] I saw that one. Yeah, that was so good.
[00:22:12] Toni: you know?
[00:22:13] And I mean, there's a bit of, there's a bit of saltiness in there. can see that. Um, but basically he was talking about.
[00:22:23] Why is it always the VP of Sales that gets fired for not hitting the plan? Like, always. Um, and he is basically kind of talking about the conundrum between making a planning mistake and making an execution mistake.
[00:22:34] And he says, Yes, there, you know, you as a VP of sales, you can, you know, F this up and, and have an execution mistake you should get fired for it. It's like, no question. He's not trying to protect the role of the VP of sales or anything like this, but at the same time, he's also like, but You know, on the, on the flip side, if this is a planning mistake, why isn't the VP finance getting fired for this, right?
[00:23:01] Because he or she put this thing together. Um, why, why isn't, why isn't there some accountability towards the board where like this plan just is not going to work
[00:23:11] And
[00:23:11] we're executing against it. And when it doesn't work, we're going to fire the VP of sales. Why, why is it like that? You know, um, it's, it's the, it's literal zero skin in the game for the VP finance, um, and all the skin in the game for the VP of sales.
[00:23:25] Right. And, and basically revenue operations can be a team to try and kind of get those two teams a little bit closer to one another. so we recently were on a call, And, um, you know, we were talking through some of the bottom up planning pieces that, that Growblocks offers. And, uh, the one prospect went to the other and was like, Hey, I don't know, I'm making up, Hey, Jimmy, just imagine when we get those targets in, I don't know, October, we, we have two and a half minutes to answer.
[00:23:57] We can actually. Have a, like a data driven pushback and say, wait a minute. Those targets are out of whack for X, Y, and Z reason. If you want us achieve that, you basically need to kind of do this, that, and the other thing. Um, and, and, you know, we talked with Arun from, uh, from Pleo as well. That's how he does it, right?
[00:24:20] kind of goes through line item by line item, you know, What would need to be true for this number to actually be achieved? And then, oh, you know, we need to improve the ACV by 10%, you know, by way of training. Yeah, CFO, do we have a, do we have budget for the training piece? No? Well, I guess that we can't
[00:24:38] afford this this increase
[00:24:40] Mikkel: say we have budget for December? Yeah, I don't think it's gonna help us either.
[00:24:45] Toni: is, this is basically what this is about, right? And revenue operations, um, can help with that stuff. And, um, the, the trick here is, um, because, because the thing is, and I've, I've, I've been in those, in those, You know, conversation with CFO so many times and it's, it's so hilarious, you know, some people call it the layered approach, um, where the, you basically have different layers of, you know, layer one, we do this,
[00:25:11] layer two we do that, layer three, we do this.
[00:25:13] You know, it's just three projects, makes total sense, but, you know, because all of these things add up to one another or, you know, um, what is it, um, it's always kind of a massive impact coming out of this. Um, and, um, you know, then having the ability to just say like, hey, wait a minute. You know, before we do anything else, dear CFO, let's start where we are today.
[00:25:34] at the baseline and then let's say how big is the base, how fast the baseline away from what you want to do and what would be the things that we need to start by when in order to get there.
[00:25:45] Mikkel: it's also just like imagine you, you just concluded a really strong year. Your win rates were, which probably won't be the case, but your win rates were off the charts. You, you just got really lucky. Let's say it like that. And all of a sudden Finance goes, great, we have this win rate now. What can we lift it another 10 percent maybe?
[00:26:03] And then it's like, well, We don't even expect we're going to be able to maintain that level. And I think some of that truth, you know, that's why we talked about benchmarks as kind of that reality check, as well as being able to have that conversation that, no, this is not realistic at all. And I think.
[00:26:19] The other reflection I had is like, you have all these go to market leaders.
[00:26:22] You have the VP of marketing, CMO, you have the C, uh, so right whatev, whatever it is, and they're always gonna be busy closing the quarter, hitting the numbers, and then at some point the planning cycle hits. Do you really want them to spend time and at at least think about marketing? Do you want them to spend time on a spreadsheet and potentially mess it up?
[00:26:41] Versus having a team that totally gets how it all hangs together. If you produce X leads, you know, in fab, when is it going to become revenue and how much? And I think, you know, that it's just to say, I think, again, when you have that person looking across the entire revenue production stream, I think it can change the conversation you
[00:26:59] Toni: Yes. And, and you kind of take this.
[00:27:02] information monopoly away from finance.
[00:27:04] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:27:05] Toni: You know, think about it like this, because when they come, come with a spreadsheet and it's really difficult to push back against the 2 percent month over month growth on leads, it's really difficult like, yeah, it's not that true. It's not that much actually.
[00:27:17] sure. Let's just say yes to that. Um, but if you flip this around and rather have a conversation, okay, what can we do and what results will kind of come out of that, Suddenly, wow, there's 2 percent that sound, you know, pretty big actually, right? And, and I think, um, putting yourself in a position where, where you can have that conversation, uh, in a, in a, in a good way.
[00:27:39] I think RevOps is basically kind of there to help you with Right. Another thing is, and we touched up on this, you know, previously, right? So there's this whole revenue architecture. Sometimes I call it revenue engineering. Um, that really kind of goes on in, in. in a way where you look at the factory, so to speak, how you generate revenue.
[00:28:01] Um, and you try it on each different, you know, in each step, you try and improve things a little bit. And the thing is, each of those small little improvements, you know, if you can make them stick, right? So if it is something that is systematic, right, then it's going to stick immediately. If it's something with people, you need to make sure through training and enablement that, you know, the change sticks, but these things compound over time.
[00:28:25] And even if you find a one or 2 percent change, here and there, and if you do this over years time, it's going to be massive, it simply will be massive, right? And, uh, and the, the thing is we as humans, we're just so bad at spotting those minute changes. Like, all appreciating that and, and we have just so much difficulty with the exponentiality.
[00:28:48] So compounding is nothing else than exponentiality, actually. We just can't deal with this
[00:28:53] Mikkel: No.
[00:28:54] Toni: So, um, when we, it's, it's a little bit like, uh, this whole, you know, compounding interest. It's all big deal, I get, you know, 11%, you know, from whatever, it's like, who cares about that? Just heard a cool stat from, uh, Galloway.
[00:29:10] I'm not sure if you know this guy. He's a, he's a, he's a cool dude. Um, and he was basically saying, well, the, the S&P over the last, uh, 30 years on average, uh, returned 11 percent annually, which is pretty insane, by the way. and he said, if you, if you, If you have 11%, you know, return annually compounding, he says over 21 years, which is like, okay, it's a long time, but at eight folds, it eight folds your investment, right?
[00:29:39] You get an eight X. out of 11 percent that just happens, you know, um, over 20 years. And, you know, I'm not going to say it's the same thing necessarily in, in go to market, but it's kind of the same thing. It's kind of the same thing. And, you know, RevOps as a team, this is the team that kind of cares about those little details that you just also need to wake up to.
[00:29:57] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:29:58] Toni: and then maybe lastly, um, I think it's, it's also the team that, And it touches a little bit on the reporting thing, but it's also the team that flags potential problems early. They're a little bit paranoid, um, they're sometimes telling you things that you in the back of your head already knew.
[00:30:16] You kind of saw the numbers, you're like, oh, oh, this isn't, this isn't going well. where I wanted to be. And, and, and those, um, wonderful people are the ones then saying it out loud in a meeting and you're like, ah, you know, I want, I wanted to keep that secret a little bit longer. And, um, and that's, it's a good thing.
[00:30:36] It's, you know, you need to have those, uh, you know, truth speakers, so to say. and they, um, they are, they, they are helpful. They're pushing this whole thing forward. Right. You need to have the right people. You need to, you know, enable them to kind of achieve that thing, but. If you have that, instead of just someone that runs a tooling stack, I think then you're starting to get, you know, value for your money, um, when you invest in this thing, right?
[00:30:58] Mikkel: like an in house consultancy that's always analyzing, diagnosing your business, helping you improve ultimately. And I mean, they're never going to be able to do it if it's like, Oh, we need to change this validation rule in the CRM. It's like, it's never going to happen.
[00:31:11] Toni: No and, and I think you know some people that maybe hired the wrong. RevOps profile, that is really strong on the, tooling side only they sometimes end up having something like a chief of staff. Or like an executive assistant to the C level team that is actually running some strategy items, and maybe it's very commercially focused, right? So you end up having this role somewhere else, anywhere, anyway. Um, but, but not with the, not enabled in the right way, not, not kind of really being so close to the commercial teams in order to achieve it, right?
[00:31:46] Mikkel: Okay, so that's kind of why you really need it at the end of the day. Do you want to take us home then?
[00:31:52] Toni: So if, if you are a VP of sales or CRO or someone else in the organization that, you know, sometimes looks a little bit down on the RevOps function, just remember that the reason why that RevOps function isn't delivering some of the stuff that you want it to deliver, which is actually just, you know, more money.
[00:32:11] less costs or both. So efficiency, basically, it's probably because two, one of two reasons, one, the profile isn't right to connect the, Uh, the down in the mud stuff the investor stuff that you really care about, right? They're not able to connect those two things or that they are, but you are just not getting that you are part of engineering a revenue engine, um, or revenue factory, and you're not letting them influence you.
[00:32:40] Kind of that, it's, it's one of those two things that's usually broken. Um, and, and then please don't, don't just kind of point at the RevOps folks that, ah, you know, that's why they're only system admins. Also kind of look at yourself. It's like, am I actually using this resource to its fullest? Um, or am I, um, am I pissing that money away?
[00:32:58] Mikkel: Yeah. It's like your last 10 interactions, was it about something you needed in the CRM? Was it actually analysis work on how to grow? No,
[00:33:06] Toni: No, no, no. It was about this report that you then got and never looked at.
[00:33:09] Mikkel: looked at. Yeah. Story of my life. Story of my life. That's it. So thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode or one of the previous ones, uh, do hit follow, subscribe, it helps us out grow the show spread a lot of the knowledge that we try and share here.
[00:33:24] Thanks so much, Toni.
[00:33:25] Toni: Otherwise, have a good one. Thanks Mikkel. Thanks everyone for listening and bye bye.
[00:33:28] Mikkel: Bye.