Why 75% of scale-ups will have RevOps

Why you need RevOps and what that looks like across the different growth stages. Already have it? We also discuss how to get more value.

Show Notes

Whether you already have RevOps or just thinking about it, you might want to put on your headphones and listen in.

We discuss why most b2b SaaS companies have or will have revenue operations by 2025. We get into how the team evolves with the business, how you can get more value from RevOps and succeed.

Creators and Guests

Host

Mikkel Plaehn

Marketing leader & b2b saas nerd

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

[00:01:10] Mikkel: Today we're gonna talk a bit about why. Actually 75% of scale ups, they're gonna have revenue operations in 25. Yeah. And, and this was really a stat.
[00:01:25] I came across that Gartner had put out then I, I just got so interested and I found that, you know, even in 2021, there was a 300% increase in job titles of VP revenue, operations.
[00:01:38] Yep. And I mean, you, you get asked frequently about, you know, when and how to implement revenue operations. we've seen, a couple of studies showing that there's a rapid rise in the amount of titles in revenue operations. So we are gonna talk about all the rage. Yeah. What is, what is all the rage here?
[00:01:54] Toni: And, and I think the, the important piece is not to, you know, feed into the. but really talk about what should be your reason to either implement revenue operations or progress it throughout the maturity stages.
[00:02:09] and we are gonna talk about all of these two things a little bit more in depth, but really, you know, putting some more meat to the, oh, you know, this is cool. We should have it, but actually, Hey, why, why is that right? and I think, yeah, that's what we're gonna spend the next 20 minutes on actually.
[00:02:26] Mikkel: So I think it's, it's obvious we should start with the why. Yeah. That's, that's the first, first step and both you and I have noticed, of a very interesting conversation and, and kind of movement within revenue operations, where there's the traditional purpose and there's, The future purpose or the, probably the right way it should be looked at.
[00:02:46] So let's get into the why and we'll get into that as well.
[00:02:48] Toni: Yeah.
[00:02:50] Mikkel: So
[00:02:53] Toni: I think the why when you really take a couple of steps back and try and detach yourself from this whole system admin thing that you might be looking at this from right now, it's really the one team or department or group of people, depending on how you wanna define it, that can help your organization move closer to predictable revenue. Yeah. So on what does that actually mean? How do you achieve that predictable revenue? The. Our, our point of view on this is obviously that you have a finance team. They do, financial planning. They work closely with the board to figure out a number. and then they need to create a budget. And, and unfortunately that budget also needs to have a revenue line item, and then they just put something into that revenue line item.
[00:03:43] But that usually isn't fully backed up by how the commercial organization actually works. Right. And basically already here. Now on the planning stage, you have a, you have a, a rift that's forming between those two different departments. Revenue operations is here to bridge that.
[00:03:59] Mikkel: gap
[00:04:00] Toni: Revenue operations can, you know, number one, understand the numbers from the finance side and relay some of the commercial numbers to finance and, and at the, and then when it goes into execution modes, meaning executing that plan, they can work extremely closely with the commercial side, and keep supporting them on the numbers and so forth in order to actually, you know, go towards predictable revenue.
[00:04:23] And again, that really means creating a plan. That's. Ideally based on data because that's the most solid way. And then executing, we sometimes say relentlessly, but I think the better word is more diligently in terms of really making sure that everything is going according to plan and it, by the way, won't, and then spotting that immediately bring this up as a topic to discuss and then fixing it immediately instead of, oh, it's December.
[00:04:52] And that thing stopped working in March and we've totally forgot about.
[00:04:56] Mikkel: And now we are way far behind.
[00:04:57] Toni: it. Yes.
[00:04:58] Mikkel: And I think it's also we've we. It it's kind of a pet peeve of ours. Yes. All the tools are important. All the processes are important, but if you're in revenue operations, you have revenue in the department title that has to be the focus and you, because of the unique position of knowing the tools, knowing the data, knowing the processes, you do have a unique, unique view that goes across the customer
[00:05:21] Toni: journey mm-hmm and all of the things that revenue a is doing, they're obviously extremely beneficial and, and, and worthy. We're gonna talk about some of this in a second, but really you need to think about what is the overall outcome of that, you know, what can you use that for, to generate lots of value for the organization?
[00:05:39] And, and that is really the predictable revenue piece that we've just been talking about. Right. I think, that is kind of the, That is the masterclass of, of revenue operations. And if you are yourself revenue, operations, pro I can. And simply also due to my, journey through, you know, not corporate, but startup life.
[00:05:58] if you're talking about those topics, you will go up the letter quicker. and if you have a revenue operations team, but that isn't giving you those outputs yet that value, then you should probably be trying to get them there over.
[00:06:12] Mikkel: time.
[00:06:12] Toni: Hmm. So
[00:06:14] Mikkel: There's gonna be different stages that a company goes through and we're gonna get a bit into, the timing and your experience with adding revenue operations.
[00:06:23] So how do you see that? You know what, what's the entry point for revenue operations and when should you start considering it?
[00:06:30] Toni: Yep. So I think revenue operations, before you have product market fit, doesn't make a bunch of sense.
[00:06:37] Mikkel: Why is that?
[00:06:38] Toni: So you're basically in. Research mode all the time. everything changes week over week.
[00:06:46] You probably will have founder led sales. You don't need to manage a sales team yet. There's not a funnel by any means all of your, all of your interactions with potential customers and customers basically are ways to source information and put it back into product until you really reach that point where. The product that you're building is creating a benefit in a market that is large enough and can pay for it. and that's de facto product market fit. There are a bunch of different ways how to measure that and so forth. We're not gonna go into this, but at that point, having a revenue operations person sit around is probably not gonna add the, the value that you would need to pay for, for that role.
[00:07:30] Right. And what we usually see is, organizations.
[00:07:35] Basically get to product market fit, around 5,200 employees, obviously that's a stretch. Some people do that earlier because they're more cash constraints. Some people do it later because there's, you know, lots of cash involved, but that's really, you know, that's really the time where then, you know, once you've passed it, when you then start thinking about revenue operations, Which then really gets me to the point where you should have, where you should seriously starting to consider revenue operations, which is around finding, go to market fit.
[00:08:03] Mikkel: Mm. What is, can you define, go to market fit?
[00:08:06] Toni: Yes. Go to market fit is number one, you have achieved product market fit. That's the requirement in order to move into that stage. At that point, you will probably be looking like having around a million in AR you will probably be around 50 to a hundred.
[00:08:22] Mikkel: people.
[00:08:22] Toni: and maybe you've just received series a funding that, maybe is 10, 15 million euros or something like that.
[00:08:31] And your task now is to figure out how you can repeatedly sell the stuff that you're trying to sell. And, and that really goes back to you.
[00:08:45] Toni: What are the channels that we're gonna use? You know, find the one thing to scale. There's an episode on, on exactly that thing. And ideally you wanna find two or more things that you can scale.
[00:08:56] and that really means, you know, your next milestone as an organization is probably gonna be 10 million euros. In AR and getting from one to 10, that is a tall order. But some people, the, the, the best teams achieved that in actually two years. Yeah. And that's, that's where this whole triple triple comes from.
[00:09:14] You go from one to three and then from three to nine, AKA 10 ish. and that's really, that's really, you go to market fit stage, and the only way to get there in their timeframe is, you know, for you to figure out a way to repeatedly. Hire people, that you, take through an onboarding school, that then are able to sell your product.
[00:09:35] and that's not, you know, that can't be the founder by definition anymore. and, and those people need to have enough leads and opportunities to work on in order to actually, you know, create that right. And the reason why revenue operations is really powerful in that stage. Number one, you. Start to, using tools.
[00:09:54] Yes. That's, you know, that's the starting point still. but number two, you will start to look at all of those different, channels, that you're building out and you wanna, you know, go with the microscope and try and figure out is this actually working. Other things that we are hoping to scale, are there, are they moving in that direction?
[00:10:13] And revenue operations can basically help you, as an analyst role, more or less, and that point to try and prepare some of the reporting around it, obviously, but really kind of see the end to end final impact of what you're trying to achieve. Right. And that. Might sometimes mean also looking at the churn site, right.
[00:10:32] And many, many companies maybe have annual contracts, but many others just don't and then seeing, Hey, this funnel really works, but it's creating customers that churn basically that, you know, puts you back to the drawing board. so that's why revenue operations in that case. Wouldn't only be looking at the sales side or the marketing side, but full funnel and be able to help you, make sense of the data mess while you're doing all of these other things.
[00:10:57] As a founder, going from one to 10, you will be busy with all, all kinds of other things, right? And that's really where revenue operations, can help you here in the go to market fit stage and figure this out.
[00:11:08] Mikkel: so it sounds like there will be a lot of work still within, the tech tooling data process, because you're scaling teams, you know, more sales reps, updating processes, all, all that stuff, but you're also kind of tapping into the revenue side, which is really key.
[00:11:22] Right? Yeah. So how does that switch when you go from towards the end of this stage, what does that look like for the team? Is the scale kind of shifting or will it, will it remain
[00:11:31] Toni: the same? Yeah, I think the, I think once you cross into the 10 million plus stage, So when, in company maturity stages, we're now talking scale up by the way, that's an, it's a really good FYI for everyone here.
[00:11:48] If you are not really at the point where you can pour money into your revenue engine and get money out. You are not considered a scale up, but really scale up is a new term for a startup. And people need to, I feel people need to stop, conflating those two, those two terms, there's a startup phase.
[00:12:06] And then there's a scale up phase and scale up really starts around 10 million ARR plus minus. You will, usually, this is, this is the time where you're talking series be investment with those big guys. And they will usually give you, upwards of 20, 30 million euros in order to execute. And, and the question that they have is how can we take those 30 million euros we just gave you, put it through your revenue machine and ideally see, 30, 40, 50 million coming out of.
[00:12:33] In the next two years. And in order to have that conversation, you will need to have completed at the go to market stage to be able to. Well, based on what we've seen so far, those two channels work, we can scale them to a very large degree and we basically kind of have a great way to process all the funds you just gave us.
[00:12:53] Yeah. That's really how a VC thinks about that. So why is revenue operations important for this while now? You're you just, you just playing with bigger chips right now? My friend,
[00:13:02] Mikkel: I remember you called it Legos yeah.
[00:13:05] Yes.
[00:13:06] Toni: You just got 30 million Legos to play with and you're not spending them one by one.
[00:13:10] You know, you're spending them in blocks, right. In, millennium Falcon blocks, you know, and the, and the thing here really is that, at that point, what you're trying to, you know, make sure is that, you know, Because you're gonna be burning a million plus at this point. And that usually means, even spending more because you do have revenues coming in, giving you additional cash.
[00:13:33] So you wanna make sure that the money that you're spending on your revenue engine is spent in the right way. And then doesn't go Asray and that's not really just a budgeting thing. This is also an efficiency thing. This is looking. Everything, you know, in total and revenue, operations will probably be the team that's being tasked with this.
[00:13:51] Right. And if you don't have revenue operations in place here, then it's, it's just a larger stakes. It's a bigger gamble on, you know, all the money that you're spending at that point. so really I feel, at 10 million not having revenue operations in place. I think that might just be a risky move.
[00:14:10] Let's just say it like that. You know, having at a million maybe feels like a luxury, not having a 10 million. I think you're exposing yourself to a pretty aggressive flank here that, easily could go wrong.
[00:14:21] Mikkel: I think it's also just interesting, right?
[00:14:23] Because most of the teams will have a finance function, but you kind of wanna counterbalance. Sure. There are things we need to hit on the financial side, but there are a bunch of funnel metrics that drive those. And, if you are in this state where you've raised a lot of money and there's a plan you need to be able to hit, it's probably a good thing to have more eyes on how that plan is laid out.
[00:14:45] Toni: So I don't wanna be too machiavellian about this, but at this point you will get in, been there, done that VPs, on the marketing side, on the sales side, on the CS side. also obviously on the product and, and so forth side and, and these guys, they will be a little bit more political. They will be doing a little bit more maneuvering.
[00:15:05] They wanna make sure they don't get fired in the 12 months. There will be a bit higher stakes and some of the blame will be shifted around a little bit. And you need someone that actually knows what's going on in order to help you tell the truth.
[00:15:21] Mikkel: Mm.
[00:15:22] Toni: And that person will not be your CFO in many, many cases, simply because the stuff on the commercial side is a little bit too intricate to expect from any financial organization to call this out.
[00:15:34] We had, we had one example recently where there basically was, MQLs to op conversion rate dropped by a lot. And, you know, obviously sales guard blamed for.
[00:15:45] Mikkel: it
[00:15:46] Toni: As, as, as it should be, as it should be, honestly. And, and the, and the reason here was like, well, you know, sales is apparently not picking up those MKS fast enough.
[00:15:56] So, so damned them. and then, you know, because obviously we were around and, you know, we could, we could look into the funnel a little bit differently. We basically dug into, how the traffic changed over the last, couple of months and what we did see. That, the, the really high value traffic you're direct and branded search and these kind of things they're tanked over summer.
[00:16:19] Duh, I mean, basically demand basically was down. Mark team's team still had their KL targets and they were kind of solid. They were playing, playing around a little bit with those definitions also, you know, typical, typical thing. But, basically what happened is they saw demand tanking, which is a total, you know, normal thing.
[00:16:37] And then, you know, they're basically pumped it up with, paid.
[00:16:41] Mikkel: social. Mm
[00:16:42] Toni: Hmm. Yeah. And ran, demo requests through paid social and they got to the MQL number. They got to the demo request number, but obviously the demo requests you get through paid social. if you are like that, that aggressive about it, they will not have the same value as your other demand that comes direct or branded search.
[00:17:00] And basically the, the reason for the curl. Conversion rate dropping was really, you know, was identified on the traffic side. and obviously the VP marketing in that session was fairly eager and quick to say like, Hey, it's sales without actually saying, Hey, wait a minute. it was actually our fault. So yeah, and if you go out of a meeting like this, having the wrong root cause analysis.
[00:17:26] You basically set yourself up for, for missing a quarter right there, right. Revenue operations will be helping you turn cover something like that.
[00:17:32] Mikkel: I think this is where it's powerful. It's not necessarily something you discover in a quarterly review because if you're doing a monthly and you have the team set up for it, you'll catch it early on in order to actually counteract that.
[00:17:43] Right. and, and so I totally get into to the value here
[00:17:47] Toni: and then really, you know, once you're, once you're past that. This is like a fluffy, fluffy thing. Now we sometimes call it late stage. Sorry. Late scale. I think. I think what happens more and more at that point is that, you will, or your, your executive team will be looking at what's called inorganic growth, basically buying other companies.
[00:18:12] That's the fancy term for that? You buy other companies M&A, mergers and acquisitions. You know, all the startup people get to play investment banking.
[00:18:21] What you then do here is you buy a company that usually isn't, performing in a stellar way. Something is wrong with them. Maybe they're great product, but they're not growing so you can buy them rather cheaply.
[00:18:33] And what you really wanna make sure in those transactions is. So what exactly is wrong with the revenue engine? Because I can tell you that the selling CEO will not tell you what exactly is wrong. And sometimes simply because he or she just doesn't know it. Right. And I think it's a mistake to only deploy your finance team to run the deal, because that's usually how this works out.
[00:18:56] Obviously. you should, for your commercial due diligence instead of just checking customer contracts and you know, these kind of things that are happening there, you should actually deploy your revenue, operations team or parts of that to figure out how does the engine look like what's wrong with it.
[00:19:14] What's right with it. How's it going to integrate to our engine? Sure. There are some tooling questions around that as. But much more. How does the buyer journey look? How can we cross pollinate those different pipelines? How can we cross sell and upsell? and you know, what can we maybe add to this revenue engine to take away the flaws that maybe have been keeping them from growing previously?
[00:19:34] And I'm sorry, someone in finance will not figure this out for you.
[00:19:37] Mikkel: Mm. I mean, you've been involved in a couple of M&As, this has been the process you've pretty much followed.
[00:19:44] Toni: Yeah. And so when, whenever I was part of. and, you know, I've been part of the, you know, an investment bank is called the buy side.
[00:19:54] very cool. And I've also been part of the sales side. So the sales side for us was basically in exit, once decision and then for the other company to zero, and the buy side, we, bought a couple of smaller players, in the social media space. Right. And basically my job then was really to try and figure out, Hey, what.
[00:20:14] You know, tell me, tell me, what's the process. How does, how does someone land at your website? and then, you know, churn and, then you know, back in this by data, trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong. and sometimes came to the conclusion. None of this is really actually working here.
[00:20:29] So really we, you know, quote unquote only gonna buy the customer base on the tech. And, and that's it. And some other cases, they were like, Hey, this could be a cool addition to our revenue engine. and basically kind of, building it there. Right. And, and one of the things that was really powerful, I think was, we did an acquisition in, in India and Bangalore, and basically a couple of really fantastic people there, that, that can help us.
[00:20:56] Many different commercial functions. It's not an offshoring kind of topic. It's really about, you know, figuring out how they can actually help, you know, supplement our revenue engine through a couple of things. Right. And maybe that's a, that's another episode at some other time, but we've found some really cool ways of how to use that talent to, to keep building our international presence.
[00:21:17] Mikkel: So why is, at this stage, why is M and a actually something you start to consider?
[00:21:22] Toni: Well, you. Being asked to double and triple, and that gets harder and harder and adding. So there are a couple of, okay, stepping, stepping back here a little bit. So there are a couple of reasons. Number one, if it's a hat on competitor, it's really cool to take a piece of the chessboard.
[00:21:42] It's very helpful, helps the whole market to increase conversion rates, you know, and so forth. another thing is if the product is adjacent, you basically. Make it a strategic product acquisition might instead of trying to develop yourself, you kind of get this in, this is obviously tricky for many reasons, but none of them, I really fully understand because I'm not a product guy.
[00:22:03] And then the, the last reason usually is, a different segment or market that you wanna grow into. Right. Hey, you know, the us, we are weak there. This player is great. Let's buy them to have the, as our entry ticket to the us or enterprise and so forth. and then obviously, and this is at the end of the day, what drives the deal value?
[00:22:21] And the, and the greed is, oh, wow. In one fell swoop, we just grew 5 million years. And then it's like, okay, yeah, we need to do this deal now because you know, we miss Q2 Q3, isn't looking great. We just need to figure out how to melt those numbers into our organic growth and make it look better. But that's usually then the, the reason why to go forward with this,
[00:22:46] Mikkel: that was kind of all the stages.
[00:22:48] Toni: Yeah.
[00:22:54] Toni: So those, those are really the reasons, you know, why and when to add revenue operations. And some of you might already have revenue operations present right now in your organization. And maybe you're wondering if you're still listening. It's like, okay, that was boring.
[00:23:08] I knew all of that, but maybe you're wondering, how can you get more out of that revenue operations? Yeah. And we actually started to develop some kind of a maturity or evolution framework around revenue operations, because it's obviously helpful for us, to understand, but, turned out super interesting also for everyone on revenue operations.
[00:23:29] and really the, the, the frame, the steps are pretty simple and straightforward. And just kind of talking through this, it starts with. System administration and, you know, very people, really want to hear it and everyone wants to get out of it. And no, we are not just system admins and totally get it, but that's usually how it starts.
[00:23:46] That's also usually how your career as a rev op person starts. It's, you know, either or someone needs to own Salesforce or, or someone else now needs to own Salesforce. Yeah. So this is usually how it starts. That's how you grow into this thing. And, and basically that's a great filter for more technical, logical analytical people, because.
[00:24:08] Other people just wouldn't go down that track because of that, I think. Right. But really then the next stage is, and that goes sometimes hand in hand also with your, your company evolution. You need someone doing a little bit of sales operations. Yeah. And this is really departmentalized operations, but in that case, usually it's sales operations where it starts and typical tasks are, commission calculation, ad hoc reporting.
[00:24:33] and you know, some other. Recurring non awesome stuff. Usually helping the VP sales to make sure that he or she is managing the people in the right way. There might be performance management in there, et cetera. And. Really the, the point now where we only start talking about revenue operations is when you move from single department operations to full funnel operations, some people call it, go to market operations, more and more people call it revenue operations.
[00:25:04] And that's really where you have a team that does, that looks after marketing. That looks after sales and that looks after, customer success. Right? That's really the full breadth. That's when you have revenue operations. And if you have something like that already in your organization. Fantastic. I wanna tell you now how you can get more of your revenue operations team right here, and also you as a revenue op professional, you know, where does that ladder go next?
[00:25:32] Because that's kind of sometimes the question and, we see it as actually the next step is being. revenue management or, you know, revenue execution actually. And this really is a, as a straightforward effort to build consensus and alignment around your go to market about the whole revenue stream.
[00:25:53] And how do you do that while you do that with monthly and business reporting, I kid you not. That is the entry ticket to this thing. first of all, you will need to align the different metrics across the funnel. Really align them because you will need to pressure test them with people that are very, you know, emotional about them.
[00:26:10] and then have those sessions with your VP sales, VP marketing. So basically with your commercial leadership team very quickly, the CEO and CFO, if will knock on the door and be like, can I see this deck? Can I be, can I be part of this meeting? Or can you maybe, you know, and you know, now you're basically creating or owning the scorecard of.
[00:26:28] The revenue engine, you know, right there and very quickly in order to keep it interesting. You will start instead of, Hey, you know, heavy sales, you missed your target. It's like, duh, thanks. I know that. but very quickly, we'll start talking about what are the things for next quarter. We need to get done.
[00:26:47] In order to not miss that time. Yeah, really interesting conversation. Now the, the VP of sales will be much more interested and so forth. and, and this is now kind of the next evolution step. So once you are starting to talk a little bit about the future, be proactive, be forward looking and so forth. very quickly someone will ask you what about the next six months?
[00:27:06] What about the next year? Hey, Michael, we have planning coming. You know, we want to hit for this revenue number with this amount of cash we have. What do you think about it? and suddenly, and this is, you know, the next step, really, you go into revenue planning. What are, what are the things that need to happen on the commercial side for next year in order to hit that number?
[00:27:27] you might actually end up in a situation where you help the VP of sales to negotiate the target up or down, or, you know, the tech that he is available to hit that target up or down, which is a very, very. Central position in an organization. So I can really recommend, trying to own some of that.
[00:27:44] and then, you know, basically being the go-to person for a CFO CEO, sometimes even the board to be like, you know, what are, are we gonna, are we gonna be able to do this, Michael? Right. And once you're talking to those people, you know, you, your title just can't be a revenue operations manager. Yeah,
[00:28:00] Mikkel: It's a marketing thing. You need, you need proper seniority
[00:28:03] Toni: Yeah. You know, you need to level match and stuff. so now you're at revenue planning. and I think maybe, and this is the last point here. I think, you know, where, where do you go from there? Right? Your VP of revenue operations. We just heard this, this term tripled or something like that in the last year.
[00:28:20] So where do you go from there? I think the jump to COO is pretty straightforward. A lot of people have done that. I think much better jump to CRO chief revenue officer. You go from VP of revenue operations to chief revenue officer. I've done something like that. And I actually think that going from revs to CRO is a much better jump than going from VP sales to CRO.
[00:28:50] and maybe I'll pause for a second and let you talk.
[00:28:54] Mikkel: Yeah. I mean, because it basically means you understand the entire funnel. How it works, how it performs. And, I think what I challenge you a bit on is while you've worked in revenue operations, just managing that team, all of a sudden, you will need to manage an entirely different department. And that's quite a leap to take as a professional.
[00:29:15] I'm actually curious because you've taken that leap. How, how do you do that and how, how do you actually make sure that, that succeeds?
[00:29:23] Toni: So revenue operations sometimes ends up being the team for all the stray teams.
[00:29:29] Mikkel: Mm.
[00:29:31] Toni: And so this is, so the reason why it's funny, it's a little bit true, actually.
[00:29:36] So when we talk to rev ops people, Very quickly. It's like, oh no, you know, I also have this outbound team and this performance management, this performance marketing team as well. And you know, the enablement guys actually they're sitting with CS, but I kind of own them as, so it's usually, you know, when you get to that level, you're being trusted with some of the problem children.
[00:29:57] That are hanging in organizations. Yeah. And that's, I think where you will start honing some of your leadership skills, and where you're starting to manage more than your five to 10. And this is a lot 10 people, revenue, operations, a lot kind of teams. and basically, you know, in my case, I was put in charge of, outbound.
[00:30:16] Because at that point, no one believed in that. then you, you and I, Mikkel performance marketing
[00:30:22] Toni: One of the stray started. One of the stray children started to work together a little bit and the, the rationale was here. Well, you know, where do we wanna invest the next dollar of C? Is it outbound?
[00:30:32] Is it inbound? Right. Great conversations we had over the years there. and then really, you know, I was also through revenue operations in charge of setting quotas for the sales reps and all of that stuff work extremely closely with the account executive team Marie together and the VP of sales there.
[00:30:48] So that step was kind of natural. and then the last piece that was kind of missing was, was CS actually in this. And, and, and in my case, that was a, I mean, I wouldn't say smooth, but it was a sensible transition. I think you're right. That if you are managing a team of five to 10 specialists, In revenue operations, you run this in scrum, you are the trusted advisor.
[00:31:12] Sure. But can you actually manage a VP of sales? Can you manage a VP of marketing? and that is, that is sometimes a tall order to jump over. And I think, I think, you know, yes, sure. There's a transition issue here. Sure. but is a VP of sales, really? A better CRO. That's really the question you to be asking.
[00:31:34] Mikkel: Yeah. I feel like that's an entirely. Different episode. Yeah. Right. Tony probably.