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Who really owns GTM, and what are the symptoms when you don't really have someone leading it?
This and much more we discuss in todays episode
This and much more we discuss in todays episode
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 Holbein from Growblocks.
[00:00:02] You are listening to the Revenue Formula. In today's episode we're talking about what happens if no one owns Go-to-market in your organization. The symptoms you might see, who should maybe own it, and what the responsibilities are for the person who does. Enjoy.
[00:00:23] Toni: So Michael, um, maybe you tell everyone what happened to you last week.
[00:00:29] Mikkel: Basically my daughter, uh, I told her to give me a high five. And she pursued to high five me directly in the eye, at which point I just couldn't see
[00:00:43] Toni: It's literally this facepalm emoji just landing in your
[00:00:47] eye. Yeah,
[00:00:47] Mikkel: pretty much, pretty much. And I couldn't see for like a good 60 minutes. And you go, ah!
[00:00:52] It'll, it'll be over soon. It'll be over. And it just kept on
[00:00:55] Toni: How did you even finish the, I don't know, the, the, the poop job was finished already
[00:01:00] Mikkel: Yeah, everything
[00:01:01] Toni: the high
[00:01:01] Mikkel: everything was done. Everything was good. And I couldn't see a thing. And then obviously, as the good employee I
[00:01:06] Toni: employee I am What I don't understand is like, what about the other eye?
[00:01:09] I mean,
[00:01:10] Mikkel: the thing is, um, I couldn't just close one and have the other open for some reason. That was just impacted as well. It was pretty weird actually.
[00:01:19] I mean, but
[00:01:19] Toni: you can have, can you wink? Okay, you can, you can do it.
[00:01:24] Mikkel: And then actually as the good employer, I was like, ah, you know what?
[00:01:27] I've been sick. We had, so we had COVID by the way. Uh, so that also happened to the family and was just, you know, I've been to work twice this year. Yeah. I've been to work twice this
[00:01:35] Toni: this year,
[00:01:37] Mikkel: better, I better write my boss. And just let him know what's up. And it was, you know, with extreme agony to keep the eyes open and, you know, find the
[00:01:46] Toni: Because I don't pickup this random call from someone.
[00:01:49] No, exactly.
[00:01:50] Mikkel: And then, and then the first reply I get back from my wonderful, caring boss was just Laughing out loud and ha ha ha and then the next message was like, okay, surely now he's going to show compassion. It's like, this is going to be such a good intro. But now I'm back. It's good.
[00:02:08] I've been eager to get back.
[00:02:11] Toni: was funny was like, hey, but your eyes are okay when we're texting, right?
[00:02:14] Your eyes, your eyes are okay? You know, yeah, no problem or something like this and like five typos,
[00:02:20] Mikkel: Yeah, it's all good. It's all good.
[00:02:23] Toni: like, ah, I'm not
[00:02:25] Mikkel: So the thing is, I think I told you this when we spoke on the phone. It's like, it's such a boring injury to have. Because you can just sit with your eyes closed and listen to a movie.
[00:02:35] And what's going to happen is, even no matter how good the movie is, you're going to fall asleep. You're going to fall asleep. That's what's going to happen.
[00:02:41] Toni: told you, you should have listened to like old podcast episodes of ours, kind of reminiscent of the old times, you
[00:02:47] Mikkel: yeah. No, that's
[00:02:48] Toni: I think it would have been a good thing for you, but it's, it's fine, it's fine.
[00:02:51] Mikkel: yeah, yeah. No, I was just, uh, laying down on the couch, thinking about podcasting. It's not like
[00:02:56] Toni: It's not like your own podcasting, you
[00:02:57] Mikkel: No, no. And then also, who owns it at the end of the day? So, thanks for the layup. Thanks for the layup. So, you're giving me an easy start today.
[00:03:04] Toni: that's good, that's
[00:03:06] Mikkel: No, so, uh, one of the things that I've noticed when, you know, I got my vision back was there was some chat on LinkedIn on Wahoo!
[00:03:13] Who actually owns go to market? And we had Sangram on the show. I was like, it's the CEO. It's, you know, I spoke with Brian Halligan at HubSpot. He said it's him. It's the CEO, right? So we're gonna talk a bit about what happens when no one owns it and who should own it and how do you actually transition ownership to make sure you're succeeding as a company?
[00:03:31] Toni: don't actually think the CEO should own it, by the way.
[00:03:34] Mikkel: Good, let's hop into that then.
[00:03:35] Toni: into Wonderful. I mean, so one of the problems, and I think this is from us, from like a RevOps perspective, right? Is that, , I think companies have been starting to wake up a little bit to this. You know, go to market being a thing, not just its own pieces of like marketing, sales and CS , and RevOps, , it hasn't been maybe articulated like this, but RevOps was a little bit the solution to this is okay, you know,, revenue operations,
[00:04:01] Mikkel: just put it in the name.
[00:04:02] Toni: The full funnel, not just sales, , and, , they should actually own kind of the things in between and ideally be a bit strategic.
[00:04:09] So if the CEO or CEO comes like, we're going to do PLG. That they have a little bit of something to say about this, right?
[00:04:16] Mikkel: Sorry, actually.
[00:04:16] Toni: yeah, or, you know, new market, new whatever. , but also making sure that all of these pieces are aligned between those different silos. , it didn't quite
[00:04:24] Mikkel: didn't, happen yet. You know what, it really grinds my gears. We've been on and on about this for feels like one or two years by
[00:04:30] Toni: just not listening to
[00:04:31] Mikkel: No,
[00:04:33] I think that's probably what it is. That's probably what it is. So no, we haven't as an industry succeeded in positioning revenue operations everywhere like that.
[00:04:41] We're still working on it.
[00:04:42] Toni: I think, and , maybe I'm kind of cutting through the episode a little bit, but I think to a degree, there was this super hype coming up, early last year, like, oh, Revenue Operations, Head of RevOps, fastest growing job , in, in ever. And I think a lot of CEOs, a lot of people started to like, Oh, wow, maybe , we should have a RevOps person as well.
[00:04:59] , and I think what just simply happened due to the sheer amount of demand versus experienced people there were, , I think a lot of people just get hired that didn't quite have the strategic piece figured out. , maybe out of school, maybe just focus really on Salesforce or something like that. And I think what happened ultimately is that, , a bunch of Salesforce admins , were hired with the RevOps title, which is, you know, it's totally fine.
[00:05:24] So it's, I'm not, you know, talking down to that actually. It's, I think that's the career ladder for sure, but I think it's really difficult for those profiles to live up to the, Oh, and now we're going to do go to market strategy and align everything. It's going to be just impossible to do.
[00:05:38] And, you know, this goes a little bit hand in hand with almost , the RevOps movement, which is kind of the CRO movement. And when I say CRO, it's usually , when I refer to it, it's not only sales, right? At least CS on top. , and ideally I believe, ideally also marketing and many people will disagree.
[00:05:56] , but someone owning the end-to-end piece , from top of the hierarchy, being strategic about that stuff. However, what we are seeing most of the time. , there's a lot of beef between, or the CMO doesn't roll to the CRO, , or, and the CRO really just being a sales guy, girl, , which is totally fine.
[00:06:15] But then that person, you know, they can have the title, they can have the title 20, 000 times. I don't care about this, but it still means that person will have a difficult time living up to the go to market wide responsibility that they're having, right? So also that's not really kind of fully covered.
[00:06:31] Mikkel: Yeah, and I think we also spoke a bit about the whole you get stuck sometimes chasing plan.
[00:06:37] And just making this quarter and, you know, part of the gig is not just that you can see end to end in the bowtie. It's also that you have the foresight to say, well, next year, this is what we want our engine to look like. It means that this year, I think we had, was it Dave Kellogg who talked about moving, I think it was win rates or the sales cycle length.
[00:06:56] And he was like, well, yeah, it takes a couple of years to do that work. It's just, it doesn't happen in a quarter.
[00:07:01] Toni: Yeah. And then I think, you know, one of the other issues with this is that, you know, it's like this, um, all star basketball team or the, , super expensive.
[00:07:12] Football club or something like this, , where you have all stars in each of the different, I don't know, ranks or whatever it's called. I dunno what the
[00:07:21] Mikkel: I'm just enjoying you using
[00:07:22] Toni: trying to talk about
[00:07:23] Mikkel: No. Yeah.
[00:07:24] Toni: Yeah. Um, it was easier when I wrote it, you know,
[00:07:29] Mikkel: Hey, hey. Chat. GPT. Yeah.
[00:07:31] Toni: And the thing is right, even if you have a perfect striker, even have a great midfield.
[00:07:35] If you have a great goalie it defense, everything is, all of them are great. All of them are like. Playing in the separate national teams, all of them are winners and stuff. It doesn't actually mean that team will produce like the next champions league. No. Like, you know, win.
[00:07:47] Mikkel: no, I think the best also one of the better ways usually it's being put is you can have the best Defensive players in the entire world on your roster But what about scoring goals, you know, you probably want to win some matches So
[00:08:00] Toni: and, and the overall thing here is, , you wanna make sure that the team, in this case, like soccer, so you know, football, European football. Um, is playing together, right? And it kind of, it works together and all of these parts are optimized to one another.
[00:08:16] , and, uh you kind of want to have the same thing as with your go to market. , and if that's not the case, then, you know, you should almost ask the question, well, if, if my team of all, all, all stars. It's actually not optimized, you know, together, then maybe I need to have another striker and maybe that striker is actually worse than the other one, but overall it might produce better results, which is mind boggling to a degree, but I think people are more and more waking up to hey it's.
[00:08:41] The goal to market is not just optimizing each of the different parts.
[00:08:45] Mikkel: Yeah. So, that's kind of the problem when no one really owns What are the consequences? Like what's the outcome going to be at the end of the day?
[00:08:55] Toni: day? Mikkel, you start with the MQL one.
[00:08:58] Mikkel: Looks down at his notes and goes Well, I think it's the classic, uh, you know, so back to the short term piece.
[00:09:06] We need to hit and we need to hit now. One of the things that's happened over the last 10 years, and you've heard folks like Chris Walker from RefineLabs talk about this stuff, is Martin gets jammed to Basically just produce more and more leads for sales, right? And the thing is not all those leads are created equal.
[00:09:21] Some are going to be your regular inbound hand raiser. , you definitely want to process those. , they convert great, you know, high predictability and stuff. And then you have all these other small. Gambits, you're going to run, you're going to do an ebook, you're going to do a webinar. You're going to do all kinds of things that generates a lot of email addresses from folks who, you know, after having filled in all their details, hit download, already forgot everything about it, by the way.
[00:09:45] And then some poor guy or girl, SDR, you know, gets these leads in their lead queue in Salesforce. And it's like, yeah, and I'm going to call those. And they just. They haven't even read the thing. They don't know what the download is. Like, yeah, , that's terrible, right?
[00:10:00] Toni: And the issue here is the CMO is hitting his or her lead targets.
[00:10:05]
[00:10:05] Toni: Which is by the way, actually fair. So I'm not even attacking that. That's not actually the problem, right? I think there's a misalignment that, , obviously sales is expecting 5000 demo requests versus 1000 and then 4000, whatever. , but you know, they're hitting their target and they're optimizing to hit that target and that's great.
[00:10:21] And then they're basically saying like all of that low converting stuff, I'm just going to push to another department. , because I, you know, checked my, I had my, I had my, my target and now I need to pass it to someone else. , and I would even say, well knowing that this is probably not the most optimal.
[00:10:37] So what I've actually done in the past, I've sometimes given the inbound SDRs to marketing. And see their behavior changed.
[00:10:43] Mikkel: Yeah. Oh, now we need to deliver
[00:10:45] Toni: meetings.
[00:10:46] It's, oh, it's my, my department now. , and when you see some of those things and so, by the way, for everyone who's not maybe following, so if you send those 4000 low quality MQLs to inbound SDRs.
[00:10:56] It's going to happen, they're going to waste a lot of time and money on trying to pursue those. Conversion rate is super low, sometimes even lower than outbound. And then number two, because those webinars or like white paper downloads, they come in like in spikes. What's going to happen in the week where the
[00:11:12] thing is being released, where all the emails are being collected.
[00:11:15] , basically the team's getting swarmed and they're going to neglect even going after the really good ones, the demo requests. Right. So overall, actually a net minus for the whole organization. , and this is one of those signs, like if no one owns this whole thing, then basically these things will just happen because while the CMO did his or her job and now sales just sits with the other stuff, right?
[00:11:36] Mikkel: It's a classic, like you can deflect all the responsibility.
[00:11:39] Um, and, And I think you're right. There's, this is a result of not having someone who understand how the engine hangs together and that we need to optimize across. And sometimes , you can have a certain growth rate in marketing and you can try and force it and say, well, we've done 30 percent year over year, the last 10 years, I want you to do 60 now.
[00:11:57] I mean, that's not just going to change like that. So you need to look at , your portfolio of sources you have.
[00:12:02] Toni: And so I, so there's this very arrogant saying, and I'm going to say it out loud, and people, you know, if you have listened to this before, you probably kind of know me a little bit by now, but there's this saying of, , never assign to malice what you can assign to stupidity, right?
[00:12:16] So, meaning I don't think the individual players of the team, of the GTM, are doing all of these things because they're evil. Or because they wanna be like, you know, oh I'm gonna set you up to fail, I get my bonus check, but you won't. I don't think it works like that, I think they don't understand these things sometimes.
[00:12:35] And the funny thing is, once you explain it, it's like, totally obvious. It's like, duh, yeah sure, I knew that. But in the moment, they might not, right? And this is just one of those examples. Another example is really this typical, and , I've done this myself, , you have a Spanish SDR on the team.
[00:12:52] Oh, she can speak Spanish. Why don't we send her to Spain, to prospect in Spain? And it's like, Oh wow, it's really simple. You know, we have like good lists. There's like existing demand, like let's go. And then she books 10, 15 meetings. And then it's like, Oh, wait a minute. Who's, she did that in Spanish. We don't have and AE in Spanish.
[00:13:11] So that's a problem. But then the bigger thing is like, you know, let's just say you even close them. We don't have CS folks in Spanish, we don't have support in Spanish. , , the even better example, even worse example is like, Oh, let's just, you know, build a little bit in APAC or a little bit in South America. And then like, Oh, we don't have any support hours for this at all. Kind of, those are those typical things where you are being opportunistic in one part of the organization. , without thinking about, well, how's that, how does it actually work further down? And honestly, I've been there myself and kind of the VP of CS came to me, Toni, are you like, are you nuts? ,
[00:13:48] you know, another one and, you know, we're just going through the list of things that
[00:13:51] Mikkel: like talking about
[00:13:52] Toni: you know, could come out. No, but it's like,
[00:13:53] Mikkel: to the solution,
[00:13:54] Toni: it's, it's this, um, I had this happen to me. So, uh, account management to upsell, the upsell team sits with sales because it's a bit more of a salesy motion, which, you know, people can disagree, but I think it's actually still correct.
[00:14:07] 80 percent of their, , compensation is going to be on dollars upsold.
[00:14:11] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:14:12] Toni: right? Because that's, this is a kind of a sales team. So that's what you want to do. So if you, if you don't, you know, balance it out, right. What they can basically do is they can churn through the whole customer base. Push everyone around in order to find their money creating a really poor experience for everyone else and then, , potentially them churning, right?
[00:14:31] And you can say, Oh, this is an incentive problem. I think it's an incentive problem on the individual. I think that's right, but it's actually a go to market problem on whoever the F set it up like this, , and, not that thinking through of like, yes, individual behavior and so forth.
[00:14:45] But again, it's like, hey, it's a little bit, it's not my problem, it's being pushed to someone else. But then again, you know, , don't assign to malice what you can assign to stupidity, right? So, and stupidity is, I think, a tough word here, but it's like, you know, just simply not knowing.
[00:14:58] Mikkel: in the way. I think the other, , stupid one, and it's such a classic as well.
[00:15:03] I think Sangram called it, Who Moved the Cheese? The whole, who gets credit for that deal we closed over there? And it was so funny, it made me think about the other day we were sitting in, uh, in the office. And, , Anton goes, Yeah, close the deal. It's outbound. And I go like, look at the history. It's like, there's a lot of inbound activity here, my friend.
[00:15:23] I think it's inbound. And then we, we, you know, argue for a little bit. And then from the back, the furthest back of the room, someone just looks over the shoulder and said, Guys, you're idiots. It's a referral. I refer to him. It's my it's mine. And I'm just trying to imagine having a go to market meeting You have all the top brass everyone sitting there and you have poor RevOps in the corner and all the discussion is around Who deserves credit?
[00:15:48] Why aren't those MQLs converting and all those other stupid things. Are they gonna move the new for the business?
[00:15:54] Toni: No, for sure not. I think that all of those symptoms, and we could go on on
[00:15:59] Mikkel: Yeah, we can go on a two hour
[00:16:01] Toni: and the, and the funny thing is, right, sometimes Some people, you know, get it a little bit and take one step up and it's like, Ooh, it's, it's sales and marketing
[00:16:10] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Toni: That's the problem. The VP of sales and VP of marketing, they just need to talk a little bit more. That, that's the solution. We solved it by coffee meetings every week. Now we're aligned. , and I think it's actually kind of one step further up than just sales and marketing alignment. I think it's the methodology, it's the knowledge, it's the understanding of the whole engine end to end.
[00:16:29] And someone kind of feeling responsible for it. This is where I kind of go like, I'm sorry. It's just not the CEO, you know, it's,
[00:16:39] Mikkel: not? Why not?
[00:16:40] Toni: okay. , if you have a 50 people company, it's different
[00:16:44] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:16:44] Toni: right? But let's just say 250, 300, 500, whatever the number might be, is the CEO really going to be like, , all those, , webinar, , meetings that shouldn't have been going to the inbound SDR or the, um, you know, that you cut the
[00:16:58] ad spend in UK and now the AEs are underserved. , you shouldn't be doing that. Or, like, that stuff, they wouldn't be doing,
[00:17:05] Mikkel: isn't that also more operational, where you have a steward that takes care of some of that stuff? Because then I think the question becomes, What types of go to market decisions then sit with the CEO, right?
[00:17:14] Toni: So, and this is where I simply disagree with, , what is his name? The HubSpot CEO guy previously and Brian, Brian, I mean, Brian, we met over a beer the other day. I think, you know, and, Sangram basically was retelling the story of like, I own, I own go to market, right.
[00:17:30] The reason why I kind of call a little bit BS on this. It's like, sure, he does own the ultimate strategic decision. Are we going to do PLG? Are we going to go to APAC? Are we going to, you know, create this other product in order to serve? All of these things are like for sure CEO decisions.
[00:17:45] , but the way they get there is through some of the collaboration and understanding below that level. , and I think once you kind of actually own go to market, it's like you own, so let's just say you own sales, right? , you don't only own that. Someone needs to do a discovery, and someone needs to hire, and someone needs to kind of close a deal.
[00:18:03] You also own the hiring plan, and the strategy, and you want to You own the whole fucking thing, right? And I think when you think about go to market, that's the same thing. They're like operational pieces, they're tactical pieces, and then they're strategic pieces. For the operational pieces, you need to get sign off from the operational person, and since they need to do the clicking.
[00:18:21] And for the strategic stuff, you need to get sign off from the CEO. And yes! You know, he will be thinking he's making the big decision, which he or she is, but the preparation towards that and like, Hey, this is how we would do it. This is how we kind of, you know, structure, this is kind of how we can execute it.
[00:18:36] , I think that would need to come from someone else
[00:18:38] Mikkel: So I totally agree that the CEO will not go down to the depth of actually taking on the project of opening up a new market, but I'm also just sitting and reflecting.
[00:18:46] I think part of the strategic work the CEO does is the direction and say, Hey, , we're gonna need to open up a new market to sustain our growth or, you know, consider a new motion. But I think you're right. It's, it has to be someone else who then goes and says, okay, these are the options. , let's find the path forward that fits with the growth rate the CEO kind of needs us to maintain.
[00:19:06] Yeah. So we've ruled out the CEO.
[00:19:09] Toni: Yes. So who else could it be?
[00:19:11] , so I have like two or three. , and I think what's really important is, , we shouldn't get hung up on the title. Right. It's not necessarily about the title. The title can provide some clues, but it doesn't need to be kind of, that's the title and , that's who it is. , I don't think we should kind of push for like, Oh, we need a chief GTM officer or something.
[00:19:30] , I don't think
[00:19:31] Toni: that's kind of the right way.
[00:19:32] So I think number one, yes, I think it could be a CRO that oversees at least more than sales and has, a revenue architecture understanding. So the bow tie and how all of these things hang together, , has some data and tooling skills also, because that's kind of the backbone on, you know, what this whole thing is sitting on, , and then brings on all the already existing leadership skills of the CEO, kind of the leadership piece, you know, hiring, retaining talent, you know, all of that good stuff.
[00:20:01] , but I think in order for the CEO to actually kind of achieve that, that there needs to be an understanding, not how marketing works or how CS works or sales necessarily works. But it needs to be an understanding of all of these pieces work together, right? , and, , there needs to be a bit of an ownership that either he or she has, , themselves or creates for others between those handover point and friction points.
[00:20:23] This is where the, , the go to market alignment sometimes then comes to light. It's like the handover piece, right? , and not only the operational piece of like, here's a lead, you need to process it. But also, was it even the right lead to be processed, right? Kind of these, these kinds of pieces of thinking.
[00:20:39] And yes, you can, you know, outsource it to VP sales and VP marketing. I've done that, but in many, many cases, you will need to be the person pointing out, Hey, I think there's an
[00:20:48] Mikkel: issue going on. I
[00:20:49] Toni: I think you guys need to be looking at it, right? Um, so I think there, there is a, there's a case for, . And, you know, this can be called Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Customer Officer, VP of Revenue, whatever.
[00:21:02] But basically, someone leading the commercial organization or the go to market organization, right? , so I think , that's one option. Another option, which is, everyone's going to be, of course, Toni. , I think Revenue Operations has a You know, role to play here. I do think though, this is not the out of school, , one or two years kind of RevOps person.
[00:21:27] I think we're talking a VP revenue operations profile. Yeah. Someone that has been working in this environment, not necessarily as a revenue operations person, but you know, in a senior position, , for a while. , brings , the rev up skills of like tooling, data process, all of that stuff, but also brings the understanding of all the different pieces of the go to market work together.
[00:21:51] And then that role can roll to the CRO, the CEO, whoever it might be, , or the CFO even in some cases, but basically kind of that then is still owning the house, everything actually working together. Yeah. , and, , in order for that voice to be heard, you can't be a Senior Revenue Operations Manager.
[00:22:10] You need to be a VP, , you need to be sitting at the table , where some of those decisions are made and it's like And I want to clearly say, it's not about, Oh, you know, I'm a head of revenue operations. I should be sitting at the table in order to kind of, it's no, you know how this thing works. , people are tapping you to be pulled into the room and then you're able to manage the conversation and, you know, direct and divert, you know, priorities and bring your go to market perspective and data and logic perspective.
[00:22:39] to drive some of that conversation. , and I think , this is something that, , it's just not, you know, it's, it's kind of rare out there, honestly. Right. When you think about how old the RevOps role is in general and how many people have been doing this successfully over the last 10 years, or like at least eight years or something like this, not so many.
[00:22:58] Simply not so many, right? And, , and I think this is the confusion with people running around with RevOps titles. It doesn't mean that they can, you know, fill those shoes that I just kind of laid out, right? , but I at least know four or five or six different senior RevOps folks that basically kind of fit that mold 1000 percent and could actually exactly do that, right?
[00:23:16] those,
[00:23:23] Mikkel: Those teams, right? It's a big move, actually, and I can see a lot of folks, if you're a CMO, being very, you know, nervous about who, who gets that role. It's a profile who gets my world, same for sales and CS, right? Is there a step when you're, like, pre, let's say, 50 million AR, to maybe go for , the senior RevOps person first and have that be the right hand man or woman for someone at the
[00:23:44] Toni: table
[00:23:44] So, so first meeting before the
[00:23:46] Mikkel: Yeah, before you hire.
[00:23:47] Toni: Um, yes. So, I mean, I've seen this now a couple of times, , in actuality, and it also has to do with lots of turmoil, lots of turnover in the executive suite, lots of firing going on, lots of CROs. And then , the senior rivals person I talked to, , they, you know, they're obviously careful about saying it, but to a degree, they're like, well, I'm kind of.
[00:24:08] You know, , some of the pieces that are left behind from the CRO, I'm kind of picking those up. , I'm the one, , trying to kind of, you know, stitch all of the different items together. And that for me is like a sign that naturally , that is a kind of a good idea. , if you don't want to do the CRO and I think CRO from like 15 million up can be done.
[00:24:27] If you don't want to do that, you know, hire someone, , senior revenue operations, maybe even at. 8 or 10 million, right? Kind of to help you a little bit with that transition. , and depending on how your organization works out also later, it can be, you know, I would even go so far that your CRO is probably going to be pretty useless for the first six to nine months.
[00:24:46] , if you don't have revenue operations already in place.
[00:24:48] Mikkel: And also , if there's career path and you find someone really strong and experienced, that person could potentially become the CRO.
[00:24:57] Toni: Yes, I, so this is almost kind of a different topic, right? But, , I believe, , also because of myself, obviously, that I think , this is a pretty good skill to have understanding the whole thing and then becoming the CRO.
[00:25:09] , in order to also manage and lead it, I think there are usually some, I think what's usually difficult for Revops people to kind of, to make that leap is this, , oh, you haven't managed a team of a hundred
[00:25:20] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:25:20] Toni: like that, that kind of thing, can be overcome, can be fixed and so forth, but that's sometimes a little bit the, the leap that needs to be taken.
[00:25:28] Um, but generally speaking, yes, I, so it's, it's not about which title should be CRO, but it's, Everyone who reports to the COO has actually an equal shot to become cRO.
[00:25:38] That's actually how I see it. Um, and, uh, I think revenue operations should report to the CRO. And like, if that then is reached, um, yeah, there's, there's a legitimate case for one of those five people that sit below the CRO to take that job eventually.
[00:25:51] Mikkel: So before we, uh, wrap the episode, there's one thing actually we should get into.
[00:25:58] Which is what does the and we kind of teased it a bit and discussed a little bit in the beginning But what does the responsibility actually entail? Because I don't imagine it's just making sure that you know, okay those MQLs We're not gonna pass anymore. There's so much more to it
[00:26:10] Especially with the go to market decisions.
[00:26:12] So what are kind of two in your perspective some of the core responsibilities that You know, he or she will have the person responsible for go to market. Yeah
[00:26:23] Toni: So, I think, um, And it's almost like, you know, where, you know, on which end should we start here?
[00:26:29] I think on the super strategic piece, I don't think they're there to find M& A opportunities, don't get me wrong, but I think they should be very much, um, involved in the M& A process. Um, not only because there's a lot of tooling and so forth to integrate, sure, but also there's, there's, there's simply a new go to market engine to be integrated.
[00:26:52] And how's that going to fit? How's that going to work? Not tooling wise, but logic wise, right? Um, and hey, we're selling to the mid market all the time, but this is not an SMB player. How does that actually work with us? Right? And I think sometimes those, those kinds of thoughts aren't fully articulated, maybe by the CEO who sees like, Hey, that could be a cool deal and the product is great.
[00:27:12] And it might be all reasons why this is good, um, but really the integrating, you know, those two engines, I think, uh, a strategic revolves person is actually good to kind of, you know, work on
[00:27:23] Mikkel: But isn't it also like you have finance usually doing due diligence, meaning let's run through all the to kind of do the same from the commercial perspective, basically run the engine and figure out how does this, how does it work? How much leverage potentially do we have in terms of further growth
[00:27:41] Toni: Yeah. So, I mean, we are, uh, we, as grow blocks, we talk to like private equity firms that, you know, consider us to do, um, commercial due diligence or help to do commercial due diligence. Right. And I think ultimately this is what revenue operations is also doing those M& A situations.
[00:27:55] It's, um, Uh, you know, pull the data, figure out if this thing works, figure out if those graphs were right, that we're kind of being sold on, um, figure out how this thing can scale and so forth, right? So there's a commercial due diligence, which, which they should be taking a part of, right? But this is like fine in between those M& A pieces, right?
[00:28:14] But I think the next thing that happens pretty often is pretty straightforward is, um, is resource allocation. and I think this is actually a skill that is you know, I think about it the other way around. It's, the VP of sales, VP of marketing, VPC is they don't need to be great at resource allocation.
[00:28:31] They usually have two or three options and they will figure out, you know, what's most important for them right now. But if you sit on top of it on the go to market side. You don't have two to three options per silo. So this is now nine or something like this, but it's also, well, if I go for this option over here, what is going to be the downstream impact of this and what other investments do I then need to make in order for this to actually work out, right?
[00:28:55] Suddenly it's not just two or three per department. Suddenly, you know, I don't, you know,
[00:28:59] Mikkel: Yeah, the Spanish SDR I'm thinking about right now.
[00:29:02] Toni: so, so there, there's like a lots of other stuff suddenly going on. Right. Um, and I think making the right resource allocation decisions, I think this is something where. Uh, that profile could step in and just help out.
[00:29:13] And yes, that will be captured in CAC Payback and, you know, uh, CAC 2LTV and all these other numbers. But ultimately it's, um, it's making sure that the money is spent, uh, in the best possible way throughout the organization. Right. Um, and, um, and I think this is something that, probably happens way more often.
[00:29:32] So I think this is a conversation you might have quarterly. Um, but I also sometimes feel, uh, in my case. I don't know, it felt like daily, someone came to me and was like, Hey, Toni, I want to have, you know, more budget for this. I want to have an SDR there. And, um, then having the ability to make those, um, those financial investment decisions, understanding the whole thing, front to back.
[00:29:52] I think that's a, that's a piece that, um, is pretty key actually for this. Right. I would also add, and I think here I've been historically pretty weak myself, understand, understand, like, product market and, and how, how to kind of work in that dimension in terms of scaling the go to market. Um, so if you are entering your first or second or third organizations on product market fit, also go to market fit, you're just scaling this thing.
[00:30:20] You kind of forget about. How difficult it was to get there initially, right? From the founding team, but also you forget why it ended up there, right? There's really good reasons why your organization is setting mid market with SDRs and doing like this and all of these things. They're good reasons and you just take them for granted.
[00:30:38] You don't actually understand, right? And if you don't understand, you can't change things. And like responsibly at least, right? Because whatever you're changing, um, you can't really know for sure. Are you, are you changing something to the worse or to the better?
[00:30:55] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:30:56] Toni: Because from your own one specific perspective, or that's better now, but you know, you might be knocking over with your tail, like five other things.
[00:31:04] And really trying to understand how this thing works is pretty key. Um, and also, you know, in reverse, it might give you some clues on why something isn't working out. Right. So I had this, um, you know, we were, uh, with this one organization, we were like in the Nordics, we were in Germany, we were in the UK.
[00:31:22] And we're just trying to push more in Germany because, Hey, it's a big market. We should be getting like so many more, like whatever customers from there, but it didn't work out. And one of the reasons was that, well, the product just doesn't work for that market, like not as well, basically. Right. and you know, understanding all of these things, you need to get to a specific threshold for this.
[00:31:41] And if you don't understand that, you will kind of just sit there and sit there with your bowtie logic and say, well, I don't understand it. You know, we put more money here. The conversion rate is like this and then it doesn't work out. So there's this other dimension to it that, that you kind of need to , not only understand, but then also use in order to maneuver things, I think then there's also a piece of, and we talked resource allocation and so forth, but there's also a piece of, well, how do you put all of these things together and then, you know, create a plan. Uh, not only a plan of like, Hey, those are the numbers we need to kind of hit, but also a plan of like, here are the things we're going to do in order to hit those numbers, right?
[00:32:18] For, for many people, those are two different things actually. and I think that needs to be orchestrated. it's number one is a process, a planning process, if you will, or strategic process. And then the other thing is like, well, now this is a massive, massive, you know, cross departmental Go to market product finance project, um, in order to hit this revenue number, I think revenue operations is, uh, or that role, which revenue operations could be, is a great one to own the execution of that, like, you know, that can be chunked into weeklies, you know, monthly check ins, however you want to do it, but basically kind of not only generating the plan or kind of working on, on, on getting that done, but also making sure that, You know, the whole organization is in lockstep to achieve it.
[00:33:04] Mikkel: Okay.
[00:33:06] Toni: Wow. We went through a lot of
[00:33:07] Mikkel: sapped through a lot of stuff. But it's also like, I'm just holding up the notes here for the
[00:33:11] Toni: three lines. It's
[00:33:13] Mikkel: it's like, I felt like, It's like Mikkel
[00:33:15] Toni: talks, Toni talks and Toni talks.
[00:33:17] Mikkel: I,
[00:33:18] you know, drafted, uh, created a shitty draft. That's how we usually do it. Threw it over to you and then I was sick for two weeks. And then I come back and it's just like, There's like three pages here. I'm going to cut it.
[00:33:29] Toni: Anywho, so what we talked about today is, uh, who actually owns GoToMarket? Uh, who are the provosts that maybe should, but aren't? You know, what are symptoms of no one owning it? And I'm sure all of you can recognize your own organization here. So someone needs to own this thing.
[00:33:44] We talked a little bit about like, who could actually own it? What are the skillsets to have? And then, well, once you say like, well, I am running this thing. Uh, who should be in, you know, what, what are the responsibilities that you should basically be running for? That's it. Thank you so much, Mikkel.
[00:33:59] Thank you everyone for listening and have a good one. Bye bye.