Tessa Whittaker is the VP of Revenue Operations at ZoomInfo, where she leads a 70-person global team powering one of SaaS’s most efficient $1B+ revenue engines. Over the past decade, she’s helped architect the systems, cadence, and AI workflows that underpin how ZoomInfo operates at scale.
Tessa is known as one of the most thoughtful operators in tech, bringing structure, clarity, and rigor to how GTM organizations run. Her work sits at the intersection of data, process, and execution, proving that with the right operating cadence, even the most complex go-to-market systems can move in rhythm.
Discussed in this episode
- Building a personal operating system (Salesforce's V2MOM, Notion, weekly reviews) that maps vision → methods → measurable actions.
- “Operating rhythm” for GTM: the meetings, reviews, and enablement that create predictable execution.
- Color-coding calendars to align time with quarterly KPIs (and fixing misallocation).
- Counterintuitive up-market move: automate down-market so scarce humans focus on enterprise.
- AI intake & prioritization agent: compressing 10–15 hrs of RevOps scoping into one interaction.
- Democratizing creation: org-wide agent “hackathons,” usage leaderboards, and adoption lessons.
- Health OS during sprints: cut alcohol, protect sleep, simplify to sustain output.
- What to buy vs. build; auditing tech stacks; avoiding (and accepting some) agent sprawl.
Episode highlights
00:00 — Systems beat motivation; why cadence creates consistency.
01:36 — RevOps as connective tissue of SaaS; the “invest earlier” regret.
03:58 — From EA to SVP-level ops leader to VP RevOps: the long workback.
06:51 — Why operators obsess over simplifying complexity.
12:24 — Time as the scarcest resource: color-coding calendars to goals.
20:05 — The RevOps operating rhythm at ZoomInfo (and how AI slots in).
21:48 — Going upmarket? Automate downmarket first to free resources.
31:19 — Intake agent: collapsing 10–15 hours of back-and-forth into one interaction.
36:48 — Democratizing creation: internal agent hackathons and a usage leaderboard.
44:30 — The Alchemist and reframing growth: get uncomfortable to keep climbing.
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If you’re hiring for sales or marketing roles, reach out to Pursuit at pursuitsalessolutions.com/gtm or message a GTMfund team member.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Systems are so important because it's really
easy to wake up and doeverything you're supposed to do
when you're feeling reallymotivated, but you need those
systems in place when you're notmotivated.
I think it's really important tohave an operating cadence with
how you're running yourbusiness.
So we talk a lot about theoperating rhythm or the rhythm
of the business for thego-to-market.
(00:21):
You're creating kind ofstructure and rigor for how
they're operating as well.
SPEAKER_00 (00:24):
Every breakout company has a system behind it.
Not just a product, not just ateam.
A system that connectseverything data, process,
execution.
That is where RevOps comes in.
We talk to hundreds of operatorsthrough portfolio companies,
through our LP, through ourmedia brand.
And the number one consistentthing that they all say is their
(00:47):
biggest regret is not investingin RevOps earlier.
And on the flip side, it's alsothe thing that they credit their
growth to when it goes well.
In this episode, I sit down withTessa Whitaker, who leads
revenue operations at Zoom Info,the over a billion dollar global
revenue engine.
RevOps has become the connectivetissue at SAS, where data meets
execution and AI is redefininghow teams operate.
SPEAKER_01 (01:08):
And as Tessa puts it, AI has been a great
equalizer.
It allows you, even if youaren't the most technical
operator, to execute and createfaster than ever before.
SPEAKER_00 (01:19):
This conversation is a masterclass in systems
thinking.
All right, let's get into it.
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
Testa, welcome to the podcast.
It's such a a fun privilege tobe able to pick your brain
specifically for many reasons.
Um, but one is that, you know,we talk to hundreds of operators
through portfolio companies,through our LPs, through our
media brand.
(01:56):
And the number one consistentthing that they all say is their
biggest regret is not investingin RevOps earlier.
SPEAKER_00 (02:05):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (02:05):
And on the flip side, it's also the thing that
they credit their growth to whenit goes well.
You have gone and essentiallyscaled your career now to run
RevOps at one of the most iconiccompanies, Zoom Info.
But it's it's super fun to besitting down together and pick
your brain on this.
Like, how did you go first andforemost from a career
standpoint to running RevOps atZoom Info?
(02:26):
You know, it's funny becauseeven now, um now that I'm
sitting in this RevOps role,it's funny to be like, wow, I'm
like in the hottest job in techright now.
I really believe that.
Like I think it's so cool to seeRevOps front and center, and
especially in the age of AIright now, where RevOps is
really re-architecting how wethink about the go-to-market
(02:47):
through this AI first lens.
And so it's just a reallyexciting time to be in that
role.
But um, interesting enough, Istarted my career in tech as an
executive assistant.
Um, we've we've talked aboutthis before.
So I was, you know, right out ofcollege, moving into San
Francisco.
I thought I was gonna be alawyer, thought I was gonna go
(03:08):
to law school.
And I got a job right away as anassistant at this law firm.
And they, you know, paid me nomoney.
I think there were times where Iwas like pulling together
quarters to figure out how tolike take the bus to get down to
the law firm.
Yeah.
And um, I had a recruiter umreach out first to go to another
(03:31):
recruiting firm to be an EA.
And then within three months, Igot invited to essentially apply
for this executive assistantrole at uh Salesforce.
And so I started at Salesforcein 2014 as an executive
assistant.
I supported three sales leaders.
Um, and then over the period of,I guess, just under a decade, I
(03:54):
went from executive assistant tosenior director running strategy
and operations for the globalenterprise at Tableau.
So I had gone over as part ofthe acquisition.
And it was really the mostincredible journey.
Um, I've actually never talkedabout this before, but I think
it was about two years before Ileft Salesforce.
(04:15):
They had us do these IDPs,individual development plans.
And you would talk about yourstrengths and what you were
working on.
And you would say, you know,here is my vision of what I want
to do in three to five years.
And I actually put, I will leaveSalesforce when I get a VP of
RevOps job at a company under5,000 people.
(04:38):
I didn't even know what RevOpswas.
I this always decipher.
It was so specific.
And I laugh about that becauseone of my mentors, she's um head
of uh operations at Click House,and I were talking about this
recently.
And I had that conversation withher, and I remember her and I
talking about it, and I had noidea what RevOps really was, or
(05:00):
I think what I thought it was isdefinitely not what it is.
Um, so the power of I guessmanifestation.
Um, but yeah, I I duringDreamforce one year, I met the
COO of ZoomInfo at the time, andthey invited me to apply, and I
came over, and I had always beenmore on the sales operations or
(05:22):
pipeline operation side.
And this was the first time thatI had really gotten technical.
Yeah.
Um, and so all of a sudden I wasVP of RevOps at ZoomInfo.
I think my org was around 70 atthat time.
Half of it were thesego-to-market engineers, and I
had never led engineeringbefore.
That's a huge jump.
Yeah, it was, but what a wildthing that you wrote down that
(05:46):
specifically you would leavewhen you became a VP of RevOps,
even at a certain headcount ofcompany.
Yeah, and it's where it's a sooddly specific.
I think I thought RevOps meantsales.
I don't know.
I I think at that time no onereally knew what RevOps was.
Like now, when I say RevOps,people know what RevOps is.
(06:07):
It is this umbrella thatencompasses all different types
of operational teams.
So you have your traditionalsales ops, partner ops, you
know, uh operational teams thatare doing the territory planning
or the quota setting or thepipeline management or the
forecast.
And then you have the teams thatare maybe more of product
management or process andsystems.
(06:27):
So taking all the processesacross the business and
automating it into the systems,managing the revenue tech stack,
all the integrations.
Like when you talk about RevOpsnow, people know what it is.
Three years ago, no one reallyknew what RevOps was and
everyone had a different title.
It really has been this titlenow that that people are
rebranding under.
So why did you pick RevOps ofall things then?
(06:50):
What attracted you to manifestor or hope or guess that that
would be the path for you?
Yeah, I I think it goes back toeven when I was an EA.
I think about really goodoperators like to solve really
complex problems and they liketo take things that um are maybe
(07:11):
really complicated and simplifythem to operate as efficiently
as possible.
And I think back to like evenbeing an EA, and it was like you
had no choice but to just getshit done.
Like there was no, you know,challenge or problem that came
up that you had the ability notto solve.
(07:31):
Like your job was just to figureit out.
Right.
And I think with operators, youknow, you know that no matter
what, you have to execute.
And so I think it was just thisnatural progression for me that,
you know, taking the the coreskills that I had from an EA and
then naturally kind of somethingI was just naturally good at.
(07:52):
Yeah.
That's really interesting.
It almost goes to the power of Imean, manifestation, but also
setting a goal and hitting thatgoal.
And in order to do so, youusually have to actually run and
develop systems to hit thosegoals.
So assist a lot, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
(08:13):
What are your personal systemsbefore we even get into RevOps?
But to go from your EA positionto running RevOps at just an an
incredible company, what did youactually do to get there?
How do you focus on yourinternal systems?
I know that's a very loadedquestion, but how do you think
about that world of Tessa'soperating system?
(08:34):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think that it's it's a musclethat I've developed over time
that is deeply, I'd say, rootedin discipline.
Yeah.
But I I think that, you know,systems are so important because
it's really easy to wake up anddo everything you're supposed to
do when you're feeling reallymotivated.
(08:56):
But you need those systems inplace when you're not motivated.
So I've always been reallygoal-oriented, like even, you
know, like I said, going throughthat uh individual development
thing saying, like, I want to bethis.
But I've always thought, youknow, what are the things that I
want to accomplish long-term?
And then been really good at,you know, taking the long-term
(09:17):
goals or that long-term vision,or where do I see myself in
three to five years?
And then being able to translatethat vision back to the
tactical, which is funny becausethat's what I do at work as
well.
I'd say that's one of mysuperpowers is how do you take
where you want to go in that bigvision and be really excited
about it, but then break thatdown in a really simplified way
in tactical execution steps.
(09:39):
And so I do that with mypersonal life.
Um, actually, this year is thethe first year it got a lot
easier because I used um chat uhGPT to basically do it, which
was, you know, what are the, youknow, across the five different
areas of my life, what are thegoals that I want to set this
year?
And then breaking those out byquarter and then building them
(10:00):
into a notion system where Ithen am tracking myself against
those goals and then havingcheck-ins with myself weekly or
bi-weekly on how I'm trackingagainst all of those things to
hold myself accountable.
Um, and you know, we weretalking a little bit, we're both
training for marathon.
Yeah.
And um that's also been, I thinkit's actually helped me from
(10:23):
like my system thinking evenfurther because it's so rooted
in discipline and routine thatit's it's waking up and even
when you don't want to dosomething, you're holding
yourself accountable to doingsomething.
But I think again, just havingthat big vision, breaking down
the tactical, building it into asystem, like I said, notion, and
then having that operating, youknow, cadence, that rhythm of my
(10:46):
own personal business where I'mreflecting to see if I'm
actually on track has beenreally helpful to hold hold
myself accountable.
Yeah.
Super systemized.
Before we dive in, a quick wordon hiring.
SPEAKER_00 (11:01):
It's a weird market out there right now, but finding
top go-to-market talent is stillone of the biggest levers for
growth.
At GTM Fund, we've made over2,000 candidate intros and
placed hundreds of eightplayers.
One of our go-to recruitingpartners is Pursuit.
They specialize in sales andmarketing talent and they do it
without a retainer.
We work with them closely acrossmany roles.
If you're hiring, go to pursuitsalesolutions.com forward slash
(11:22):
GTM.
That'll be in the show notes.
Or ping someone from the GTMFund team.
We'll get you connected.
SPEAKER_01 (11:28):
And you said there were five things that you track.
What are those five things?
Um, so I would say um there'slike health, like physical
mental health, yeah, which isreally important.
Um there's uh uh finances.
So like how am I doingfinancially against my goals or
spending or what I want to besaving?
(11:48):
Um, there's relationships, bothfriends and family, um, how I'm
spending my time there.
Um there is now I'm gonna losetrack of my uh professionally.
So what am I doing from aprofessional standpoint, both in
my job and and creatively?
And then um it would be justlike growth.
(12:09):
So what am I doing from apersonal development or
professional development to makesure that I'm I'm continuing to
drive myself forward?
Very cool.
And how often do you reviewthose?
Uh so I probably I would saylike I try to do it weekly, but
it's mostly please put 30minutes on your calendar to to
see how you're tracking.
And um, you know, I think youthink about all the different
(12:33):
ways you want to spend your timeand all the different things you
want to accomplish, like youdon't have a just endless amount
of time.
And so if you think of it like,you know, like a pizza or a pie
chart, and if you're spending,you know, this much more time
maybe on your relationships oryou're spending this much more
time on fitness, like there'sother parts of your life where
that pie or that triangle isgonna get a lot smaller.
(12:55):
So even reflecting on, okay,this is how I'm tracking against
my goals.
Well, how did I spend my time?
Does my time actually match mygoals?
Um, it's something that Iactually started doing at work
is color coding my calendaragainst my um different goals
that I have professionally.
So you have, you know, I don'tknow, for me, I'm in way too
(13:16):
many meetings.
I've probably set in 10, 11hours of meetings a day.
Wow.
And I have four to five coregoals per quarter with KPIs that
I'm trying to hit, and thencolor coding all those meetings
against those goals and saying,okay, well, am I spending 80% of
my time against one of thosegoals and my other four goals,
I'm only spending 20% of mytime.
(13:37):
How do I either delegate orcancel meetings or consolidate
to ensure that I'm equallyspending my time against the
most important things to hit mygoals, which are ultimately a
reflection of what I need to doto move the business forward?
Mm-hmm.
So it sounds like you're almostdoing a time tracking exercise
to make sure that you'reallocating your most precious
(13:57):
finding resource time towardsthose five.
Yeah.
Super systematized about how Ispend my time because I think,
you know, it's so easy for us toget really locked in or focused
on one thing, which isn'tnecessarily a bad thing
sometimes.
Like right, you you have to beobsessed to hit big goals.
If anyone has talked to me inthe last month, the only thing I
(14:20):
talk about is running.
Um, but I think it's reallyimportant to check ourselves and
saying, are we spending our timein the right places to
ultimately hit our personal andprofessional strategic goals
that we that we're setting outto do?
Now, are you structuring itsimilar to an annual planning
exercise where you've got yourfive things and your notion
(14:41):
board and now we're reviewingthem weekly?
Do you have like quarterly KPIstoo?
Like what is the, I guess,weekly cadence?
What's the next level of cadencewhen you're actually kind of
restructuring it?
Yeah.
I anyone listening to monthlyand quarterly and absolute
psycho.
They're gonna be taking notes.
I'm like already taking notesand then mentally visualizing
(15:02):
doing this.
Um, you know, it's funny.
I always go back to this andit's yeah, it's cheesy, but like
I love the Salesforce B2 mom.
Okay.
Um so this, you know, I probablybecause that was the first
exposure I ever had to goalsetting and I was 23 years old.
Yeah.
Um, when I started workingthere.
And it's this idea that you havethis like high-level vision
(15:24):
statement.
And then underneath it, you havelike what are your like five
core values?
And then underneath that, whatare your methods and measures of
which you're going to basicallyachieve that vision?
And so, like your, you know, youhave your vision statement, here
are the values that I'm gonnafollow.
And then you have, here's my ummethod.
So I'm gonna do this, and thenyour measures underneath it are
(15:45):
going to be the specific actionsyou take that are like that you
can measure over, you know,days, weeks, months, quarters of
time.
And so you might say, okay, toink to accomplish this vision, I
need to do this thing this year.
Here's what I'm gonna do in Q1,Q2, Q3, and Q4 to accomplish
that.
Mm-hmm.
You do a work back.
Okay, Lori.
Love that.
I love that plan.
(16:06):
We love a work back plan.
Yeah.
The way and I've kind ofstructured my my planning to
date a little bit differently.
I think I'm gonna try and adoptyour model because I actually
love the systematized framing alot more.
Mine is similar to a bit of aburner analogy on a stovetop.
So everyone's kind of, you know,turning different elements on.
You can turn them up, you canturn them down.
(16:26):
So it's a similar kind of timeallocation.
But then similarly, it will bearound, you know, friends and
family, relationships,connection, professional um,
adventure and growth, financialand so forth.
And so you're you're constantlyoptimizing and adjusting your
burners every single quarter.
But when you commit to somethingon a quarterly basis, you know
(16:47):
exactly how much uh temperaturegauge you're gonna turn it up
and what that means for yourKPIs and kind of actions under
it.
But yeah, I wouldn't say I'mreviewing them weekly.
So I think I need to uh need tobe a little bit more diligent
about that because that truly ishow you make progress.
You don't track it, you can'tmake progress.
I think so.
And I mean, there's certainlythat we also have talked about
this before times where I am Ihave so much on my plate that
(17:11):
maybe like all right, we'regonna take a pause with that for
a couple weeks, and you're justliterally focused on going from
the next thing to the next thingbecause that's all that you have
capacity for.
And of course, there's tons likethat.
But being able to kind of fallback on those systems when you
are feeling burnt out or youhave so much going on can be
incredibly helpful to get backon track.
(17:31):
Absolutely.
And you do have a ton going onright now, especially at this
particular moment because you'rerunning a marathon in a mere few
weeks.
Yeah.
So you've got your systems foryour goal planning, you're
successfully hitting your goalsbased on that system.
But what are you doing evenright now?
When things get crazy busy inyour life, how are you actually
falling back on those systemsand maintaining your health
(17:53):
side?
What's the health operatingsystem?
Yeah, interesting.
So I think I take a much simplerapproach when it comes to
health.
Yeah.
Which is it's, you know, whenthings when when you're
overwhelmed or there's a lotgoing on, the two things I fall
back on are cut alcohol andsleep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so you know, you can be onthe circuit and you are going to
(18:14):
a lot of conferences or you'rethrowing a lot of events and
that all is really incrediblyexhausting.
And even if you have one or twodrinks while you're on the road
or doing those things, yeah, itcan make it so much more
exhausting.
SPEAKER_00 (18:26):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (18:26):
And so when I know that I'm going through a really
um, you know, uh when I'm goingthrough a certain sprint of work
or, you know, training oranything personally or
professionally, the first thingI'll cut is okay, I'm not even
gonna have one or two drinkssocially.
(18:47):
Cut that out and then make surethat I'm getting at least seven
hours of sleep.
Brilliant.
unknown (18:51):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (18:51):
Great.
Let's simplify it.
Yeah, simplify it.
Okay, brilliant, brilliant.
So we've got the test theoperating system around the goal
planning, the health side.
Are there other aspects underthe operating system that we
haven't touched on?
I mean, I, you know, I think umit's really important that you
have obviously your ownoperating system, but then also
(19:12):
facilitating and helping thepeople on your teams or the
leaders that you're working withto also have systems that they
can fall back on.
I think it's really important tohave an operating cadence with
how you're running yourbusiness.
So we talk a lot about theoperating rhythm or the rhythm
of the business for thego-to-market.
Yeah.
So what are the things thatwe're doing daily, weekly,
(19:34):
monthly, quarterly?
What are the different meetingsthat have to happen?
What are the data reviews thatwhat have to happen?
What are the different, youknow, enabl or trainings that
have to happen?
But I also think it's reallyimportant to have that for your
internal org to make sure thatthey have routine and
predictable meetings andcheckpoints.
So you're you're creating kindof structure and rigor for how
(19:56):
they're operating as well.
Yeah.
And so for RevOps, um at ZoomInfo, we have our RevOps
operating rhythm that we fallback on.
And then we have, of course,systems that support that as
well, which help us operate umas efficiently and productively
as possible.
Um, and now with AI, we've beenable to take a lot of all the,
(20:18):
you know, the manual tasks thatRevops did before and automate
and or leverage AI to give us alot of time back, um, which has
been possible because we were sostructured um and uh uh, you
know, already operating with therigor, you know, prior to that.
Yeah, you almost had the systemin place for AI to come in and
(20:39):
actually scale.
But you had to implement thatsystem first, which takes a lot
of discipline and rigor.
Yeah.
And if we think about RevOpsoverall, it is the system that
underlies growth, especially forventure scale companies.
Yeah, like you can't skip thatstep.
Right.
And so if you were, let's say,given, let's say hypothetically
(21:00):
a challenge or a request fromthe team and the objective is to
go up market, how do you thinkabout that from a systems rev
ops approach?
How do you break down any kindof gross goal to that
foundation?
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting whenpeople talk about going up
market, one of the firstconversations that will happen
(21:20):
is how are we going toreallocate resources to go up
market?
So what does that mean?
What does that mean from aseller perspective?
What does that mean from a salesdevelopment perspective?
What does that mean from asupports perspective?
And I remember having thisconversation with my leader and
and ZoomInfo has been veryfocused on going up market in
the enterprise the last coupleof years.
(21:41):
And I think the I think thequestion that he asked me
exactly was, how are you goingto think about the reallocation
of your resources to supportthis upmarket growth?
Yeah.
And it was funny because I said,Well, I'm in RevOps, I'm not
going to reallocate my resourcesupmarket.
I need to focus more downmarket.
And he said, Well, what do youmean?
I said, Well, if you're goingupmarket with your resources
(22:04):
predominantly, you need toautomate as much down market as
as you can because you'repulling resources off of it.
So, what were the things thatyou had people focused on
before?
What were the things that weremaybe manual before?
What are the things that you hadmore people focused on before?
And then how do you build outnew processes, new systems, now,
you know, AI workflows tosupport that down market so that
(22:27):
you can pull people off of itbecause it's gonna run itself.
Fascinating.
Okay.
So it's almost a littlecounterintuitive, I think, and
most people realize.
Right.
Yeah.
So you need to, you need to bethinking more um systematically
of how you do more with lessdown market, which is gonna take
more focus from RobOps, I think,initially.
(22:50):
And you mentioned AI as part ofthat and a huge, huge necessity
for an AI strategy and where wesee a lot of companies trying to
jump through is to actually havea data strategy and data
foundation in place.
How are you building your AIstrategy at Zoom Info?
Yeah.
Um, well, I could speak at leastto how we're thinking about it
from a RevOff's perspective.
(23:11):
I think um, you know, incrediblylucky to be at Zoom Info because
we have the data.
And and like you said, like youneed to have a data strategy in
order to have an AI strategy.
And you can't just build AIagents on top of your CRM.
Um, so your CRM data is likelyvery dirty.
It doesn't have your totaladdressable market in it.
(23:32):
And so to, so you know, to thinkof like, okay, I'm just gonna go
out and get an AI SDR and stickit on top of my CRM data, like
that's never going to uh workand uh it's not ever going to
scale.
And so, you know, beingincredibly fortunate to be in
this position where we had thisvirtual data layer, we have that
first party, third party data,is that from a RevOS
(23:54):
perspective, not only am Ithinking about how my team is
operating, but when I thinkabout innovating in the go to
market, there's so much that wecan do that's already readily
available to us to can reallytransform how we're executing in
the go-to-market by thinkingthrough where are there manual
stats or places that we'reasking sellers or sales
(24:14):
development to do things that wecan actually automate and then,
you know, pull in our data andsurface it to them at the
exactly the right time in orderfor them to execute and operate
and do their jobs as efficientlyas possible.
I was just, I guess one of themost critical parts, having
built out a scaled system,usually you run into a lot of
(24:38):
hiccups along the way.
And so everybody tries to learnfrom somebody 10 steps ahead,
and you are 10 steps ahead.
So what are the learnings fromscaling a revenue organization
that you've had?
That's like one area.
Yeah.
I think if we don't have to doit, it's just there.
It's just like, it's funnybecause like I haven't that, I
mean, this is the gap.
(24:58):
Like, I haven't scaled RevOps.
I mean, I came in when I cameinto Zoom Info, there was a lot
that we had to re-architect toscale.
SPEAKER_00 (25:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (25:08):
Um, I think, you know, you you think a lot about
how do you build things to scalefrom the start.
But at the same time, if you'rein a hypergrowth startup, you're
just building as fast as youcan.
Yeah.
Thinking about, you know, arethere ways that I'm going to
build this thing that's notgoing to just support five
sellers?
(25:28):
It's going to support 200sellers.
Like, I don't know if you'rethinking about that at that
stage.
No, think you're in survivalmode.
And it's interesting when wethink about what do RevOps teams
look like at a startup versuswhat do they look like at a
company like Zoom Info?
Yeah.
Is that at a startup, yourRevOps team is wearing 20
(25:49):
different hats.
So who's taking the requirementsor talking to the business or
making strategic strategicdecisions might be the same
person who's your Salesforceadmin.
And so, yes, it's incrediblyimportant to invest in RevOps
early on, but the people thatyou're investing in are wearing
15 different hats.
Yeah.
And so when I think about beingat a company that is, you know,
(26:10):
upmarket, we're selling into theenterprise, we're currently
re-architecting our revenueoperations, our processes and
our systems and our workflows tosupport a larger organization
that is going to be built toscale.
SPEAKER_00 (26:23):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (26:23):
You know, there's a lot that I'm redoing that I sit
there and I go, well, why did wedo it that way in the first
place?
But who am I to judge whenyou're growing like a rocket
ship, which Zoom Info did?
They were building as fast asthey could.
They can.
And so I think it is your jobwhen you come into a revenue
operations job at a company thatis the size of Zoom Info to say,
(26:47):
okay, you know, here is what ourtech stack looks like.
Here are all of our processesand our systems, and kind of
doing a complete audit of thatand saying, okay, yes, from our
tech stack, you know, where istheir duplication?
Where is their consolidationopportunities?
Where are their systems that wehave maybe they're not best in
(27:08):
class anymore?
And we need to look at thatrenewal and bring in someone new
and, you know, rip that out andreplace.
Like you go through all of thosemotions.
Um, but you know, giving adviceto someone who's in that
hypergrowth early stage of whatshould you be thinking about now
that you would want to thinkabout when you're where I am.
Like, I actually think that, youknow, it's like it's a
(27:31):
completely different mindset ofwhat you're building.
Um, but it's been really fun.
I mean, we're gonna be um at theend of this year, we'll have um
re-architected almost all of ourrevenue tech stack, which has
been really exciting.
We've done some reallyincredible um rip and replace of
some systems.
(27:51):
And we're now looking acrossevery single process that
supports the go to market.
And we've we've audited that.
And we said, okay, where ismanual processes?
Where are there automatedprocesses?
Where do we need to take manualprocesses and make them
automated?
And then where can we actuallybuild in these AI workflows?
Um, and so that that issomething that I think every
(28:13):
RevOps person is going throughright now at a larger company.
It's basically this audit andthen mapping of where we can
actually start with AI and whatwill be the most impactful of
use cases.
One quick thing.
If you like what you're hearinghere, you should check out the
product market fit show, hostedby Pablo Srugo of Nistral VC,
where top founders share exactlyhow they found Product Market
(28:35):
Fit.
It's one of the best podcastsfor early stage founders, going
from zero to one.
Just search the product marketfit show or check the show
notes.
And where are you thinking aboutit in RevOps?
Where has been the mostimpactful place to start?
Yeah.
Well, so what's interesting, andI talk about this uh actually in
my um talk at the pavilionconference.
(28:57):
Can't wait.
Um but I I talk about how I getquestions all the time from
different operators about likewhat were your top 10 use cases,
et cetera, or where where shouldI start?
My ELT is asking me.
Yeah.
And the very first thing that Idid was I turned it around to my
own team.
And I said, you know, obviouslywe're fielding inbound requests
(29:17):
from our leaders right now ondifferent AI workflows and and
we're supporting all of thosethings.
But I knew that the evolution ofhow of the speed of which we
were going to be expected towork was only going to continue
to increase.
And so it was going to be reallycritical that we were able to
work as quickly as possible.
(29:39):
So, how do I take a team thatsupports the go to market and
make them completely AI first?
Right.
And so, you know, how a typicalRevOps team might work is they
get a Slack or a call or a textmessage or 30 of those things
all at the same time from thebusiness asking for something to
make to make a change or tosupport this thing or pull this.
(30:00):
Report or change this workflowor whatever it is.
And before it was just all verymanual.
So you might get on a call withthe business and then you ask
them a bunch of questions andthey might not know those
questions.
And then you have three or fourmore calls.
And all of a sudden you'repulling people from the
business.
And then you're building outrequirements.
And then you're meeting, youknow, and grooming those
(30:20):
requirements with the technicalresources.
And then you might go back tothe business with questions.
And like this very manual thingthat all of a sudden one request
from the business might be 10 or15 hours of work.
And so we actually built out anagent that intakes now all the
requests from the business.
And so when someone comes to usand they need something from
(30:41):
anywhere in the business, theagent starts asking them a
series of questions.
And in a single interaction, weget the requirements, we
understand what they're tryingto achieve.
We actually ask them questionsthat then allow us to, or that
agent to assess where does itfall on a priority standpoint?
Like how would we evenprioritize this?
And at the end of it, you havefull requirements, the groom for
(31:03):
the technical team, ready to goand sprint with a prioritization
score where it should actuallyfall.
So that, you know, sounds sosimple.
Um, but if you have 30 RevOpspeople and they're all spending,
you know, five or 10 hours onsometimes one single intake,
yeah, talking about, you know,hundreds or thousands of hours
of work.
(31:24):
That that's not simple at all.
That's a ton of brick.
And you're also consolidatingall the requests that you get
into now one system.
Right.
And that's why everybody's goingdirectly to the agent now?
Yeah.
So we're sending them directlyto the agent.
And then I think prioritization,it sounds so simple, like
prioritization.
Why is that something that, youknow, RevOps people are
constantly asking about?
(31:44):
But like when I go out and talkto RevOps folks, yeah, besides
AI, the number one question Iget is how do you guys
prioritize your work?
Because it's such a problembecause I think historically you
work on the things that thepeople in the business are the
loudest about, or whoever isshouting the the loudest gets
their work done first, whichisn't necessarily the things
that are most important to movethe business forward.
(32:06):
And so that's really helped ussupport that.
Um and then in terms of wherewe're starting with the
business, it's where are thosereally manual tasks that we know
that sales or sales developmentwere doing?
And how do we make it reallysimple for them to execute and
do their jobs and spend as muchtime as possible with customers,
(32:28):
which we know is so importantwhen you're going up market and
in the enterprise relationshipsor everything.
What are the most manual thingsor the most time-consuming
things that your your sellersare doing and starting there and
making it easy for them tooperate is, I think, how we've
started to prioritize wherewe're leveraging AI.
Very cool.
(32:49):
I mean, that's that'sincredible.
You guys have done a phenomenaljob of not only shifting the
impact that you have on otherorganizations, AI forward.
I didn't even realize the extentto which you'd optimize
internally.
And yeah, with your outwardstrategy, one would assume that
you are doing it internally.
But it's so interesting to hearthe details that you're actually
building out in internally.
(33:10):
It's interesting.
I I think I made a lot ofmistakes when I was trying to
figure out how to make myorganization AI first.
I think six months ago it waslike, guys, if you don't start
thinking AI first, like, yeah,don't have jobs in a year, which
like the fear entire-lead withthe threat.
Yeah, like, and that certainlywasn't working.
And then I did things aroundlike, all right, we're gonna
(33:31):
have contests where like youtake courses or you do this
thing and you can like winprizes.
And that was like kind of cheesyand didn't really work either.
But I was sitting, you know, inthis situation where I just
wasn't seeing everyone acrossthe RebOps organization adopt AI
fast enough, or some people werereally scared about it or didn't
really know where to start.
(33:51):
And so it was really fortunate.
So ZI actually built an internalchat where at averse, like
similar, you would go to GBT,you go in and you can ask it
questions, but this was reallygreat because it was secure and
integrated with differentsystems internally and our data,
et cetera.
And then we got the ability tobuild out our own agents.
And so now anyone at Zoom Infocan build their own agent to
(34:15):
solve real go-to-marketchallenges.
And so we have like hundreds andhundreds of agents that anyone
from a sales developmentrepresentative and SER can build
to people on my team.
And so that was really greatbecause we just made it really
effortless to start gettinghands-on with AI.
And then two weeks ago, Iactually had an agent hackathon
with my team where every singleperson had to go through this
(34:38):
presentation where they builtout an agent to support a real
go-to-market challenge and thenpresented it.
And that was really the turningpoint where people saw how they
could really get creative withAI.
Yeah.
And I think the barrier to entrybefore was, you know, I can't,
how do I even begin to buildwith AI?
(35:00):
How do I even build an agent?
They couldn't start to getcreative.
And so one of the things thatZoomInfo has done such a good
job of is how do we allowoperators to get creative again
by taking away that barrier toentry of the more technical
elements or challenges thatmaybe they had before and
allowing them to just really bestrategic and create for the
(35:20):
first time.
And not only have we done thatobviously internally, like I'm
talking about with ZIC, butwe're doing that again with our
product and GoToMarket Studio isan example of that, being able
to actually just be creative andcreate and execute for the first
time without begging for atechnical resource to support.
Yeah, that's that is incredible.
(35:41):
And now you've got reps and andindividuals creating their own
agents within your ecosystem.
Well, not all are created equal,but I yeah, getting they're
getting hands-on.
But you could see the most usedagents and um and it is really
helping people.
There is the accountability interms of the guilt if they see
(36:02):
everybody else on theleaderboard.
Yeah, absolutely.
How do you avoid technical debtaround agents?
So let's say you've got an anentire organization that can
create their own agents.
How do you not end up withthousands of agents and then
only a handful are getting used?
That's a really great questionthat I don't have the answer to.
We might be too early.
No, I think right now, I thinkit's um, you know, how do we get
(36:26):
people hands-on?
How do we get them creating?
Yeah, let's see what's working,what's not working.
I think naturally you see by theadoption the ones that are
better built.
And I think, you know, drivingpeople to uh it's not driving
people to, but it's actuallyinstead it's looking at the ones
that are they're actually makingthe most impact and then taking
those and either building themout further or continuing to
(36:48):
iterate on those or actuallybuilding them into the standard
sales process is probably whatwe'll see happen first.
And so if there's three or fouror five or fifteen that are
being used all the time, how dowe actually make that a part of
the standard way that we'reoperating?
And so I think first is let'sget everyone hands-on, let's see
(37:10):
what people create, and thenlet's see what's working, and
then then let's pull that intothe standardized playbook and
make sure everyone is leveragingthat.
Um, but right now I think we'rejust in that really cool ideate,
move fast, execute, see what'smaking an impact.
And then from there we can buildthat into the sales playbook.
And you really systemized itaround that.
(37:30):
It's cool.
It almost feels like ademocratization of creation of
the system where we used to havemanagers that created the
systems and passed it along toteams.
And now it's almost made that sohorizontal where anyone can
create an experimental agent,gauge performance, and then bake
(37:51):
it into the process now.
So they're not mere suggestions,like you skipped the suggestion
step, suggestion step and justjumped right to execution,
right?
And enabled everyone to executewith your model.
Right.
Which is just which is reallyexciting.
Yeah, yeah, it's reallyexciting.
Um, you know, I think that whatone of the things that I love
about AI is I do believe that itis, and I like that word like
(38:16):
democratization, like it's this,it's this, it's it's allowing
anyone who is an operator,regardless of how technical they
are, yeah, to be able toexecute.
Um, whereas I think before, youknow, you were more reliant on
different technical teams ortechnical resources or in a
(38:37):
queue, maybe with engineering toget something done.
And now it allows you, even ifyou aren't the most technical
operator, to um to execute andcreate faster than ever before.
Um, and I I think what'sinteresting, you know, I grew up
at Salesforce, which is a verybig company.
(38:58):
I started with like, I don'tknow, 10,000 people.
And by the time I left, it was70,000 people.
And when I stepped into ZoomInfo and I was running a team
that was very technical, and Idid spend a lot of time um, you
know, really focusing on how doI uh up level myself and become
more technical and making surethat I am very hands-on.
(39:19):
I think the best operators areboth hands-on and really good
leaders.
I never wanted to just be aleader's leader.
And so always really pushedmyself and continue to push
myself every day to be reallyhands-on.
But there were certainly thingsthat I wasn't hands-on before or
different technical background Idid not have that maybe other
RevOps folks did or have that Ididn't.
(39:41):
And so I think that for me, AIhas been a great equalizer
because I leaned into that and Isaid I can know AI or execute
with AI or think AI first fasteror before anyone else.
And so that has become, youknow, my technical background.
Um, and even though I didn'tcome up as a Salesforce admin or
(40:03):
um, you know, some sort ofengineer, I feel like it's been
an equalizer for me to be trulytechnical and a RevOps leader,
um, innovating in my role.
It's really level set theplaying field for everybody.
I think so.
And I think we're we're thinkingabout Rebots now and what this
like concept of like the rise ofthe go-to-market architect.
(40:23):
And we're moving from this likereally reactive role that we had
before to being really proactiveand more strategic.
And I think AI has given us timeback in the sense that we're not
doing the manual things that wewere doing before, but it has
allowed us to look holisticallyat the go-to-market and say,
okay, what are the things thatwe want to innovate on or change
(40:43):
or move on faster than before?
And AI has allowed us to dothat.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Entirely, entirely changedeverything.
Changed everything.
Truly, truly.
I love it.
And how are you learning?
You know, we talked about youroperating system that you have
in part because it sounds likethat has been a huge part of
(41:03):
just the way you've builtoverall, but now out of
necessity, when you're superbusy, yeah.
How do you have time to learnabout AI and just overall keep
up to date with all the thechanges?
Yeah.
I you know, I think the twothings, maybe the three things
that help the most.
I think one is just community,which seems pretty simple, but I
(41:24):
surround myself with a ton ofRedbox people.
Yeah, I probably have three orfour uh WhatsApps or text
iMessage groups with uh my peersand we're talking all the time.
So what are you doing internallyfrom an innovation standpoint?
What demos have you takenlately?
Is there anything that you'readding to your tech stack?
Is there anything you'rereplacing in your tech stack?
(41:45):
You know, just reallyunderstanding what are the
things day to day that they'redoing or thinking about or
working on.
I think that's really important.
If you're a RevOps person andyou're not talking to other
operators, I would say um it's abig miss because I think I'm
ahead or I think I'm doingreally well.
And then I talk to one of mypeers and I'll go, oh my gosh,
(42:07):
you're doing that.
Like that's such a great idea.
That's awesome.
Like I'm gonna steal that.
I'm gonna do that too.
But it's always like pushing meto um continue to innovate or or
look ahead.
And I think your peers are agood benchmark for that.
Um, I think the second is justuh I take like demos and
actually seeing what people arebuilding.
(42:29):
And I think I'm so inspired whenI'm seeing the different things
that are coming up or AIsolutions.
And I think as a RevOps leader,you spend a time, a lot of time
thinking about is this somethingI'm gonna buy versus build?
And you're not gonna know whatyou're building unless you're at
least looking or exploring whatyou could buy.
And so making sure that you'respending time really
(42:51):
understanding what's beingbuilt.
And then I think the third isprobably just talking to your
customers when you understandwhat challenges they have and
you understand what they'retrying to solve for, it allows
you to think, okay, is thatsomething that I can solve or is
that something that I can build?
And I think that helps you alsoalso creatively as well.
Maybe there's four.
And then I think just gettinghands-on, like you have to like
(43:14):
me building my own agents, yeah,and um, you know, getting into
different systems and tinkeringas well.
I think you have to be hands-on.
And if you're not, then you'rejust gonna fall behind.
unknown (43:25):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (43:26):
Yeah, simply put, I think go to market.
I mean, tech modes havedeclined, right?
Go to market really is yourdifferentiator, and a huge part
of that is not only yourstrategy, but your execution.
And I think AI is such a coolmoment because it shines the
light on execution, right?
And it forces everyone to justcontinuously up-level it and do
that.
Yeah.
(43:46):
I love it.
And what about more on the bookside?
So less AI, but are there anyfavorite kind of books you've
had that have been reallyimpactful for your career?
Oh gosh.
Um so six months ago, um, RossRich, his CEO of Accord, sent me
a book.
Six months ago, it might havebeen for Christmas.
I don't know.
So he was lovely to get Zerat ofHoliday, maybe it was around the
(44:09):
holidays, but um, he set sent methe Alchemist.
Yeah, um, which I had never readbefore.
Yeah.
And I I don't think there's beena single book in my life that
has been more impactful.
I think about it every singleday.
Wow.
Every single day.
Yeah.
This idea that you're going onthis journey through your life.
You have this like life mission,or you're going on this
(44:32):
adventure.
Yeah.
And how, you know, if as youmove forward or as you progress
or as you go along this journey,there's times where you get
really incredibly comfortable.
And you're comfortable becausewhere you are in your life is
better than you ever imagined itcould be or um it's ever been
before.
And so you don't think aboutmaybe moving forward or making
(44:56):
more progress.
And I've always said, you know,if you're not uncomfortable,
you're not growing.
And so in this book, he hasthese moments where he thinks,
like, I have more than I couldhave ever wanted.
Like, why would I keep going?
Like, why don't I stay here?
But it's like, you can always goback.
Yeah, I can always go back.
And so I just love that book somuch because it's about always
(45:17):
making progress and being okaywith taking risks and being okay
with maybe leaving what youthought was really great behind.
Because you can always go back,but you still have to go on
this, this adventure, thisjourney.
SPEAKER_00 (45:30):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (45:30):
And um, I I probably talk about that book, I don't
know, several times a week withfolks.
If if you haven't, I have notread it.
So I am I'm going to and we'lldrop it in the show notice
forever.
And yeah, I read it on theplane, on a plane.
I I think I cried through halfof it, and then I gave it to
Layman on the Altitude.
Yeah, they found Altitude andthe.
I I gifted it to the guy sittingnext to me and I think it's
(45:52):
book.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Sorry for giving it away, Russ.
Yeah, yeah.
There we go.
We won't uh we won't sell him,but no that's very cool.
I think it's too often we thinkabout an end state, and often it
it is not an end state.
It's actually about the theevolution, the continuous growth
as opposed to reaching that endstate.
And it's the interestingrealization that a lot of people
(46:15):
have in tech too, once they'veusually built and sold a company
successfully, is to reflect backand realize, ah, there's no
actual mountaintop.
It's all just entire growth andand progression, or as some
people like to reference fromthe the book, and there's two
mountains and two peaks and soforth, and the other one's
always in the distance.
So I love that.
(46:36):
Yeah, I think it's good.
I I really try to reframe when Istart to feel yeah, comfortable
or anxious, or you know, thatfeeling that you get when you're
about to do something thatyou've never done before, like
this is good.
Like this is this, it's goodthat you're feeling this way
because it means that you'regrowing.
And so I really anchored inthat.
(46:56):
And so growth is one of yourfive in your notion board.
Or however people want toposition it if you want to
replicate 10 growth.
Growth you could kind of doacross all of them, but I think
okay growth I kind of almost putin a category on its own.
Yeah.
And is that mostly qualitativein nature then around you
self-reflecting and mappinggrowth progress?
(47:19):
Or how do you actually quantifyyour goals around growth based
on your learnings from thealchemists now?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Um You know, I think growth tome is just progress.
I think growth isn't just likeyou said, climbing a mountain.
Growth comes from really deepvalleys or making mistakes or um
(47:41):
things you try where you fail,or maybe you try and you're
successful.
So I think growth to me, when Ithink about setting goals about
growth, it's doing things thatmake me uncomfortable or maybe
that I've never done before, orthe things that, you know, I
don't necessarily want to do,but I know are important to to
push me forward and give meexperiences that I've never had
(48:02):
before.
Um interesting, I would say thatthe number one thing that's
shifted recently for me and inmy life um that I never felt
before, but it's been incrediblyliberating is I don't think I'm
afraid to fail anymore.
Like I think, well, I'm thinkingI spent so much of my life
(48:25):
trying to prove something tosomebody, and now all I want to
do is prove things to myself.
And I'm not competitive withanyone but myself, and I think
that's been um really motivatingfor me.
But then now just saying likeI'm never going to I'm never
(48:46):
going to be afraid if somethingdoesn't work out.
I'm never going to be afraid offailing.
What I'm most afraid about isnever trying.
Yeah.
And uh I think when you finallyget there, it's like the most
liberating thing in the world.
That is amazing and beautiful.
Thank you for sharing that.
I think those are words thatsurround the systems.
We've talked a lot about systemsnow, but it's like the bigger
(49:09):
why of why need to build thesystem.
And yeah, those are the yeah,exactly, the moments around it.
I think Pael Kadakia, I don'tknow if she was necessarily the
first one, but she definitelyspoke a lot to it around fear
and kind of failure.
It's just a data point.
And so it it's simply a datapoint.
If you're not hitting thatpoint, then you're not trying
hard enough.
(49:30):
And, you know, I spent a lot oftime in conversion optimization,
which was one of the mostvaluable lessons around failure,
because truly failure is good.
Like you want to fail and youwant to learn from it.
But it is a failure if you arehitting experiments and you're
optimizing, you're trying toimprove your revenue and your
funnel, but you're not learningfrom it.
So you're either documenting alearning or you are failing.
(49:54):
And that's the real failure.
Yeah.
It's not.
So your system to actuallydocument it is really valuable
and interesting for people.
Absolutely.
Yeah, love it.
Well, thank you.
This has been incredibly,incredibly valuable, Tessa.
You got the marathon coming up.
That's the first for you talkingabout your own.
And you're running a marathon aswell.
So I am.
However, I would say my systemsaren't as diligent as yours.
(50:15):
I'm running a couple times aweek, a little bit less than
yourself.
So I follow her and well, howare you so I will I will make
sure to send you notes.
There you go.
Send me bumps.
Not fast enough or anything.
It'll be a lot of fun.
I'm excited for you.
I'm excited to track your wholejourney throughout it.
Summel, thank you so much forhaving me.
(50:36):
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Systems are so important because it's really
easy to wake up and doeverything you're supposed to do
when you're feeling reallymotivated, but you need those
systems in place when you're notmotivated.
I think it's really important tohave an operating cadence with
how you're running yourbusiness.
So we talk a lot about theoperating rhythm or the rhythm
of the business for thego-to-market.
(00:21):
You're creating kind ofstructure and rigor for how
they're operating as well.
SPEAKER_00 (00:24):
Every breakout company has a system behind it.
Not just a product, not just ateam.
A system that connectseverything data, process,
execution.
That is where RevOps comes in.
We talk to hundreds of operatorsthrough portfolio companies,
through our LP, through ourmedia brand.
And the number one consistentthing that they all say is their
(00:47):
biggest regret is not investingin RevOps earlier.
And on the flip side, it's alsothe thing that they credit their
growth to when it goes well.
In this episode, I sit down withTessa Whitaker, who leads
revenue operations at Zoom Info,the over a billion dollar global
revenue engine.
RevOps has become the connectivetissue at SAS, where data meets
execution and AI is redefininghow teams operate.
SPEAKER_01 (01:08):
And as Tessa puts it, AI has been a great
equalizer.
It allows you, even if youaren't the most technical
operator, to execute and createfaster than ever before.
SPEAKER_00 (01:19):
This conversation is a masterclass in systems
thinking.
All right, let's get into it.
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
Testa, welcome to the podcast.
It's such a a fun privilege tobe able to pick your brain
specifically for many reasons.
Um, but one is that, you know,we talk to hundreds of operators
through portfolio companies,through our LPs, through our
media brand.
(01:56):
And the number one consistentthing that they all say is their
biggest regret is not investingin RevOps earlier.
SPEAKER_00 (02:05):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (02:05):
And on the flip side, it's also the thing that
they credit their growth to whenit goes well.
You have gone and essentiallyscaled your career now to run
RevOps at one of the most iconiccompanies, Zoom Info.
But it's it's super fun to besitting down together and pick
your brain on this.
Like, how did you go first andforemost from a career
standpoint to running RevOps atZoom Info?
(02:26):
You know, it's funny becauseeven now, um now that I'm
sitting in this RevOps role,it's funny to be like, wow, I'm
like in the hottest job in techright now.
I really believe that.
Like I think it's so cool to seeRevOps front and center, and
especially in the age of AIright now, where RevOps is
really re-architecting how wethink about the go-to-market
(02:47):
through this AI first lens.
And so it's just a reallyexciting time to be in that
role.
But um, interesting enough, Istarted my career in tech as an
executive assistant.
Um, we've we've talked aboutthis before.
So I was, you know, right out ofcollege, moving into San
Francisco.
I thought I was gonna be alawyer, thought I was gonna go
(03:08):
to law school.
And I got a job right away as anassistant at this law firm.
And they, you know, paid me nomoney.
I think there were times where Iwas like pulling together
quarters to figure out how tolike take the bus to get down to
the law firm.
Yeah.
And um, I had a recruiter umreach out first to go to another
(03:31):
recruiting firm to be an EA.
And then within three months, Igot invited to essentially apply
for this executive assistantrole at uh Salesforce.
And so I started at Salesforcein 2014 as an executive
assistant.
I supported three sales leaders.
Um, and then over the period of,I guess, just under a decade, I
(03:54):
went from executive assistant tosenior director running strategy
and operations for the globalenterprise at Tableau.
So I had gone over as part ofthe acquisition.
And it was really the mostincredible journey.
Um, I've actually never talkedabout this before, but I think
it was about two years before Ileft Salesforce.
(04:15):
They had us do these IDPs,individual development plans.
And you would talk about yourstrengths and what you were
working on.
And you would say, you know,here is my vision of what I want
to do in three to five years.
And I actually put, I will leaveSalesforce when I get a VP of
RevOps job at a company under5,000 people.
(04:38):
I didn't even know what RevOpswas.
I this always decipher.
It was so specific.
And I laugh about that becauseone of my mentors, she's um head
of uh operations at Click House,and I were talking about this
recently.
And I had that conversation withher, and I remember her and I
talking about it, and I had noidea what RevOps really was, or
(05:00):
I think what I thought it was isdefinitely not what it is.
Um, so the power of I guessmanifestation.
Um, but yeah, I I duringDreamforce one year, I met the
COO of ZoomInfo at the time, andthey invited me to apply, and I
came over, and I had always beenmore on the sales operations or
(05:22):
pipeline operation side.
And this was the first time thatI had really gotten technical.
Yeah.
Um, and so all of a sudden I wasVP of RevOps at ZoomInfo.
I think my org was around 70 atthat time.
Half of it were thesego-to-market engineers, and I
had never led engineeringbefore.
That's a huge jump.
Yeah, it was, but what a wildthing that you wrote down that
(05:46):
specifically you would leavewhen you became a VP of RevOps,
even at a certain headcount ofcompany.
Yeah, and it's where it's a sooddly specific.
I think I thought RevOps meantsales.
I don't know.
I I think at that time no onereally knew what RevOps was.
Like now, when I say RevOps,people know what RevOps is.
(06:07):
It is this umbrella thatencompasses all different types
of operational teams.
So you have your traditionalsales ops, partner ops, you
know, uh operational teams thatare doing the territory planning
or the quota setting or thepipeline management or the
forecast.
And then you have the teams thatare maybe more of product
management or process andsystems.
(06:27):
So taking all the processesacross the business and
automating it into the systems,managing the revenue tech stack,
all the integrations.
Like when you talk about RevOpsnow, people know what it is.
Three years ago, no one reallyknew what RevOps was and
everyone had a different title.
It really has been this titlenow that that people are
rebranding under.
So why did you pick RevOps ofall things then?
(06:50):
What attracted you to manifestor or hope or guess that that
would be the path for you?
Yeah, I I think it goes back toeven when I was an EA.
I think about really goodoperators like to solve really
complex problems and they liketo take things that um are maybe
(07:11):
really complicated and simplifythem to operate as efficiently
as possible.
And I think back to like evenbeing an EA, and it was like you
had no choice but to just getshit done.
Like there was no, you know,challenge or problem that came
up that you had the ability notto solve.
(07:31):
Like your job was just to figureit out.
Right.
And I think with operators, youknow, you know that no matter
what, you have to execute.
And so I think it was just thisnatural progression for me that,
you know, taking the the coreskills that I had from an EA and
then naturally kind of somethingI was just naturally good at.
(07:52):
Yeah.
That's really interesting.
It almost goes to the power of Imean, manifestation, but also
setting a goal and hitting thatgoal.
And in order to do so, youusually have to actually run and
develop systems to hit thosegoals.
So assist a lot, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
(08:13):
What are your personal systemsbefore we even get into RevOps?
But to go from your EA positionto running RevOps at just an an
incredible company, what did youactually do to get there?
How do you focus on yourinternal systems?
I know that's a very loadedquestion, but how do you think
about that world of Tessa'soperating system?
(08:34):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think that it's it's a musclethat I've developed over time
that is deeply, I'd say, rootedin discipline.
Yeah.
But I I think that, you know,systems are so important because
it's really easy to wake up anddo everything you're supposed to
do when you're feeling reallymotivated.
(08:56):
But you need those systems inplace when you're not motivated.
So I've always been reallygoal-oriented, like even, you
know, like I said, going throughthat uh individual development
thing saying, like, I want to bethis.
But I've always thought, youknow, what are the things that I
want to accomplish long-term?
And then been really good at,you know, taking the long-term
(09:17):
goals or that long-term vision,or where do I see myself in
three to five years?
And then being able to translatethat vision back to the
tactical, which is funny becausethat's what I do at work as
well.
I'd say that's one of mysuperpowers is how do you take
where you want to go in that bigvision and be really excited
about it, but then break thatdown in a really simplified way
in tactical execution steps.
(09:39):
And so I do that with mypersonal life.
Um, actually, this year is thethe first year it got a lot
easier because I used um chat uhGPT to basically do it, which
was, you know, what are the, youknow, across the five different
areas of my life, what are thegoals that I want to set this
year?
And then breaking those out byquarter and then building them
(10:00):
into a notion system where Ithen am tracking myself against
those goals and then havingcheck-ins with myself weekly or
bi-weekly on how I'm trackingagainst all of those things to
hold myself accountable.
Um, and you know, we weretalking a little bit, we're both
training for marathon.
Yeah.
And um that's also been, I thinkit's actually helped me from
(10:23):
like my system thinking evenfurther because it's so rooted
in discipline and routine thatit's it's waking up and even
when you don't want to dosomething, you're holding
yourself accountable to doingsomething.
But I think again, just havingthat big vision, breaking down
the tactical, building it into asystem, like I said, notion, and
then having that operating, youknow, cadence, that rhythm of my
(10:46):
own personal business where I'mreflecting to see if I'm
actually on track has beenreally helpful to hold hold
myself accountable.
Yeah.
Super systemized.
Before we dive in, a quick wordon hiring.
SPEAKER_00 (11:01):
It's a weird market out there right now, but finding
top go-to-market talent is stillone of the biggest levers for
growth.
At GTM Fund, we've made over2,000 candidate intros and
placed hundreds of eightplayers.
One of our go-to recruitingpartners is Pursuit.
They specialize in sales andmarketing talent and they do it
without a retainer.
We work with them closely acrossmany roles.
If you're hiring, go to pursuitsalesolutions.com forward slash
(11:22):
GTM.
That'll be in the show notes.
Or ping someone from the GTMFund team.
We'll get you connected.
SPEAKER_01 (11:28):
And you said there were five things that you track.
What are those five things?
Um, so I would say um there'slike health, like physical
mental health, yeah, which isreally important.
Um there's uh uh finances.
So like how am I doingfinancially against my goals or
spending or what I want to besaving?
(11:48):
Um, there's relationships, bothfriends and family, um, how I'm
spending my time there.
Um there is now I'm gonna losetrack of my uh professionally.
So what am I doing from aprofessional standpoint, both in
my job and and creatively?
And then um it would be justlike growth.
(12:09):
So what am I doing from apersonal development or
professional development to makesure that I'm I'm continuing to
drive myself forward?
Very cool.
And how often do you reviewthose?
Uh so I probably I would saylike I try to do it weekly, but
it's mostly please put 30minutes on your calendar to to
see how you're tracking.
And um, you know, I think youthink about all the different
(12:33):
ways you want to spend your timeand all the different things you
want to accomplish, like youdon't have a just endless amount
of time.
And so if you think of it like,you know, like a pizza or a pie
chart, and if you're spending,you know, this much more time
maybe on your relationships oryou're spending this much more
time on fitness, like there'sother parts of your life where
that pie or that triangle isgonna get a lot smaller.
(12:55):
So even reflecting on, okay,this is how I'm tracking against
my goals.
Well, how did I spend my time?
Does my time actually match mygoals?
Um, it's something that Iactually started doing at work
is color coding my calendaragainst my um different goals
that I have professionally.
So you have, you know, I don'tknow, for me, I'm in way too
(13:16):
many meetings.
I've probably set in 10, 11hours of meetings a day.
Wow.
And I have four to five coregoals per quarter with KPIs that
I'm trying to hit, and thencolor coding all those meetings
against those goals and saying,okay, well, am I spending 80% of
my time against one of thosegoals and my other four goals,
I'm only spending 20% of mytime.
(13:37):
How do I either delegate orcancel meetings or consolidate
to ensure that I'm equallyspending my time against the
most important things to hit mygoals, which are ultimately a
reflection of what I need to doto move the business forward?
Mm-hmm.
So it sounds like you're almostdoing a time tracking exercise
to make sure that you'reallocating your most precious
(13:57):
finding resource time towardsthose five.
Yeah.
Super systematized about how Ispend my time because I think,
you know, it's so easy for us toget really locked in or focused
on one thing, which isn'tnecessarily a bad thing
sometimes.
Like right, you you have to beobsessed to hit big goals.
If anyone has talked to me inthe last month, the only thing I
(14:20):
talk about is running.
Um, but I think it's reallyimportant to check ourselves and
saying, are we spending our timein the right places to
ultimately hit our personal andprofessional strategic goals
that we that we're setting outto do?
Now, are you structuring itsimilar to an annual planning
exercise where you've got yourfive things and your notion
(14:41):
board and now we're reviewingthem weekly?
Do you have like quarterly KPIstoo?
Like what is the, I guess,weekly cadence?
What's the next level of cadencewhen you're actually kind of
restructuring it?
Yeah.
I anyone listening to monthlyand quarterly and absolute
psycho.
They're gonna be taking notes.
I'm like already taking notesand then mentally visualizing
(15:02):
doing this.
Um, you know, it's funny.
I always go back to this andit's yeah, it's cheesy, but like
I love the Salesforce B2 mom.
Okay.
Um so this, you know, I probablybecause that was the first
exposure I ever had to goalsetting and I was 23 years old.
Yeah.
Um, when I started workingthere.
And it's this idea that you havethis like high-level vision
(15:24):
statement.
And then underneath it, you havelike what are your like five
core values?
And then underneath that, whatare your methods and measures of
which you're going to basicallyachieve that vision?
And so, like your, you know, youhave your vision statement, here
are the values that I'm gonnafollow.
And then you have, here's my ummethod.
So I'm gonna do this, and thenyour measures underneath it are
(15:45):
going to be the specific actionsyou take that are like that you
can measure over, you know,days, weeks, months, quarters of
time.
And so you might say, okay, toink to accomplish this vision, I
need to do this thing this year.
Here's what I'm gonna do in Q1,Q2, Q3, and Q4 to accomplish
that.
Mm-hmm.
You do a work back.
Okay, Lori.
Love that.
I love that plan.
(16:06):
We love a work back plan.
Yeah.
The way and I've kind ofstructured my my planning to
date a little bit differently.
I think I'm gonna try and adoptyour model because I actually
love the systematized framing alot more.
Mine is similar to a bit of aburner analogy on a stovetop.
So everyone's kind of, you know,turning different elements on.
You can turn them up, you canturn them down.
(16:26):
So it's a similar kind of timeallocation.
But then similarly, it will bearound, you know, friends and
family, relationships,connection, professional um,
adventure and growth, financialand so forth.
And so you're you're constantlyoptimizing and adjusting your
burners every single quarter.
But when you commit to somethingon a quarterly basis, you know
(16:47):
exactly how much uh temperaturegauge you're gonna turn it up
and what that means for yourKPIs and kind of actions under
it.
But yeah, I wouldn't say I'mreviewing them weekly.
So I think I need to uh need tobe a little bit more diligent
about that because that truly ishow you make progress.
You don't track it, you can'tmake progress.
I think so.
And I mean, there's certainlythat we also have talked about
this before times where I am Ihave so much on my plate that
(17:11):
maybe like all right, we'regonna take a pause with that for
a couple weeks, and you're justliterally focused on going from
the next thing to the next thingbecause that's all that you have
capacity for.
And of course, there's tons likethat.
But being able to kind of fallback on those systems when you
are feeling burnt out or youhave so much going on can be
incredibly helpful to get backon track.
(17:31):
Absolutely.
And you do have a ton going onright now, especially at this
particular moment because you'rerunning a marathon in a mere few
weeks.
Yeah.
So you've got your systems foryour goal planning, you're
successfully hitting your goalsbased on that system.
But what are you doing evenright now?
When things get crazy busy inyour life, how are you actually
falling back on those systemsand maintaining your health
(17:53):
side?
What's the health operatingsystem?
Yeah, interesting.
So I think I take a much simplerapproach when it comes to
health.
Yeah.
Which is it's, you know, whenthings when when you're
overwhelmed or there's a lotgoing on, the two things I fall
back on are cut alcohol andsleep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so you know, you can be onthe circuit and you are going to
(18:14):
a lot of conferences or you'rethrowing a lot of events and
that all is really incrediblyexhausting.
And even if you have one or twodrinks while you're on the road
or doing those things, yeah, itcan make it so much more
exhausting.
SPEAKER_00 (18:26):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (18:26):
And so when I know that I'm going through a really
um, you know, uh when I'm goingthrough a certain sprint of work
or, you know, training oranything personally or
professionally, the first thingI'll cut is okay, I'm not even
gonna have one or two drinkssocially.
(18:47):
Cut that out and then make surethat I'm getting at least seven
hours of sleep.
Brilliant.
unknown (18:51):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (18:51):
Great.
Let's simplify it.
Yeah, simplify it.
Okay, brilliant, brilliant.
So we've got the test theoperating system around the goal
planning, the health side.
Are there other aspects underthe operating system that we
haven't touched on?
I mean, I, you know, I think umit's really important that you
have obviously your ownoperating system, but then also
(19:12):
facilitating and helping thepeople on your teams or the
leaders that you're working withto also have systems that they
can fall back on.
I think it's really important tohave an operating cadence with
how you're running yourbusiness.
So we talk a lot about theoperating rhythm or the rhythm
of the business for thego-to-market.
Yeah.
So what are the things thatwe're doing daily, weekly,
(19:34):
monthly, quarterly?
What are the different meetingsthat have to happen?
What are the data reviews thatwhat have to happen?
What are the different, youknow, enabl or trainings that
have to happen?
But I also think it's reallyimportant to have that for your
internal org to make sure thatthey have routine and
predictable meetings andcheckpoints.
So you're you're creating kindof structure and rigor for how
(19:56):
they're operating as well.
Yeah.
And so for RevOps, um at ZoomInfo, we have our RevOps
operating rhythm that we fallback on.
And then we have, of course,systems that support that as
well, which help us operate umas efficiently and productively
as possible.
Um, and now with AI, we've beenable to take a lot of all the,
(20:18):
you know, the manual tasks thatRevops did before and automate
and or leverage AI to give us alot of time back, um, which has
been possible because we were sostructured um and uh uh, you
know, already operating with therigor, you know, prior to that.
Yeah, you almost had the systemin place for AI to come in and
(20:39):
actually scale.
But you had to implement thatsystem first, which takes a lot
of discipline and rigor.
Yeah.
And if we think about RevOpsoverall, it is the system that
underlies growth, especially forventure scale companies.
Yeah, like you can't skip thatstep.
Right.
And so if you were, let's say,given, let's say hypothetically
(21:00):
a challenge or a request fromthe team and the objective is to
go up market, how do you thinkabout that from a systems rev
ops approach?
How do you break down any kindof gross goal to that
foundation?
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting whenpeople talk about going up
market, one of the firstconversations that will happen
(21:20):
is how are we going toreallocate resources to go up
market?
So what does that mean?
What does that mean from aseller perspective?
What does that mean from a salesdevelopment perspective?
What does that mean from asupports perspective?
And I remember having thisconversation with my leader and
and ZoomInfo has been veryfocused on going up market in
the enterprise the last coupleof years.
(21:41):
And I think the I think thequestion that he asked me
exactly was, how are you goingto think about the reallocation
of your resources to supportthis upmarket growth?
Yeah.
And it was funny because I said,Well, I'm in RevOps, I'm not
going to reallocate my resourcesupmarket.
I need to focus more downmarket.
And he said, Well, what do youmean?
I said, Well, if you're goingupmarket with your resources
(22:04):
predominantly, you need toautomate as much down market as
as you can because you'repulling resources off of it.
So, what were the things thatyou had people focused on
before?
What were the things that weremaybe manual before?
What are the things that you hadmore people focused on before?
And then how do you build outnew processes, new systems, now,
you know, AI workflows tosupport that down market so that
(22:27):
you can pull people off of itbecause it's gonna run itself.
Fascinating.
Okay.
So it's almost a littlecounterintuitive, I think, and
most people realize.
Right.
Yeah.
So you need to, you need to bethinking more um systematically
of how you do more with lessdown market, which is gonna take
more focus from RobOps, I think,initially.
(22:50):
And you mentioned AI as part ofthat and a huge, huge necessity
for an AI strategy and where wesee a lot of companies trying to
jump through is to actually havea data strategy and data
foundation in place.
How are you building your AIstrategy at Zoom Info?
Yeah.
Um, well, I could speak at leastto how we're thinking about it
from a RevOff's perspective.
(23:11):
I think um, you know, incrediblylucky to be at Zoom Info because
we have the data.
And and like you said, like youneed to have a data strategy in
order to have an AI strategy.
And you can't just build AIagents on top of your CRM.
Um, so your CRM data is likelyvery dirty.
It doesn't have your totaladdressable market in it.
(23:32):
And so to, so you know, to thinkof like, okay, I'm just gonna go
out and get an AI SDR and stickit on top of my CRM data, like
that's never going to uh workand uh it's not ever going to
scale.
And so, you know, beingincredibly fortunate to be in
this position where we had thisvirtual data layer, we have that
first party, third party data,is that from a RevOS
(23:54):
perspective, not only am Ithinking about how my team is
operating, but when I thinkabout innovating in the go to
market, there's so much that wecan do that's already readily
available to us to can reallytransform how we're executing in
the go-to-market by thinkingthrough where are there manual
stats or places that we'reasking sellers or sales
(24:14):
development to do things that wecan actually automate and then,
you know, pull in our data andsurface it to them at the
exactly the right time in orderfor them to execute and operate
and do their jobs as efficientlyas possible.
I was just, I guess one of themost critical parts, having
built out a scaled system,usually you run into a lot of
(24:38):
hiccups along the way.
And so everybody tries to learnfrom somebody 10 steps ahead,
and you are 10 steps ahead.
So what are the learnings fromscaling a revenue organization
that you've had?
That's like one area.
Yeah.
I think if we don't have to doit, it's just there.
It's just like, it's funnybecause like I haven't that, I
mean, this is the gap.
(24:58):
Like, I haven't scaled RevOps.
I mean, I came in when I cameinto Zoom Info, there was a lot
that we had to re-architect toscale.
SPEAKER_00 (25:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (25:08):
Um, I think, you know, you you think a lot about
how do you build things to scalefrom the start.
But at the same time, if you'rein a hypergrowth startup, you're
just building as fast as youcan.
Yeah.
Thinking about, you know, arethere ways that I'm going to
build this thing that's notgoing to just support five
sellers?
(25:28):
It's going to support 200sellers.
Like, I don't know if you'rethinking about that at that
stage.
No, think you're in survivalmode.
And it's interesting when wethink about what do RevOps teams
look like at a startup versuswhat do they look like at a
company like Zoom Info?
Yeah.
Is that at a startup, yourRevOps team is wearing 20
(25:49):
different hats.
So who's taking the requirementsor talking to the business or
making strategic strategicdecisions might be the same
person who's your Salesforceadmin.
And so, yes, it's incrediblyimportant to invest in RevOps
early on, but the people thatyou're investing in are wearing
15 different hats.
Yeah.
And so when I think about beingat a company that is, you know,
(26:10):
upmarket, we're selling into theenterprise, we're currently
re-architecting our revenueoperations, our processes and
our systems and our workflows tosupport a larger organization
that is going to be built toscale.
SPEAKER_00 (26:23):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (26:23):
You know, there's a lot that I'm redoing that I sit
there and I go, well, why did wedo it that way in the first
place?
But who am I to judge whenyou're growing like a rocket
ship, which Zoom Info did?
They were building as fast asthey could.
They can.
And so I think it is your jobwhen you come into a revenue
operations job at a company thatis the size of Zoom Info to say,
(26:47):
okay, you know, here is what ourtech stack looks like.
Here are all of our processesand our systems, and kind of
doing a complete audit of thatand saying, okay, yes, from our
tech stack, you know, where istheir duplication?
Where is their consolidationopportunities?
Where are their systems that wehave maybe they're not best in
(27:08):
class anymore?
And we need to look at thatrenewal and bring in someone new
and, you know, rip that out andreplace.
Like you go through all of thosemotions.
Um, but you know, giving adviceto someone who's in that
hypergrowth early stage of whatshould you be thinking about now
that you would want to thinkabout when you're where I am.
Like, I actually think that, youknow, it's like it's a
(27:31):
completely different mindset ofwhat you're building.
Um, but it's been really fun.
I mean, we're gonna be um at theend of this year, we'll have um
re-architected almost all of ourrevenue tech stack, which has
been really exciting.
We've done some reallyincredible um rip and replace of
some systems.
(27:51):
And we're now looking acrossevery single process that
supports the go to market.
And we've we've audited that.
And we said, okay, where ismanual processes?
Where are there automatedprocesses?
Where do we need to take manualprocesses and make them
automated?
And then where can we actuallybuild in these AI workflows?
Um, and so that that issomething that I think every
(28:13):
RevOps person is going throughright now at a larger company.
It's basically this audit andthen mapping of where we can
actually start with AI and whatwill be the most impactful of
use cases.
One quick thing.
If you like what you're hearinghere, you should check out the
product market fit show, hostedby Pablo Srugo of Nistral VC,
where top founders share exactlyhow they found Product Market
(28:35):
Fit.
It's one of the best podcastsfor early stage founders, going
from zero to one.
Just search the product marketfit show or check the show
notes.
And where are you thinking aboutit in RevOps?
Where has been the mostimpactful place to start?
Yeah.
Well, so what's interesting, andI talk about this uh actually in
my um talk at the pavilionconference.
(28:57):
Can't wait.
Um but I I talk about how I getquestions all the time from
different operators about likewhat were your top 10 use cases,
et cetera, or where where shouldI start?
My ELT is asking me.
Yeah.
And the very first thing that Idid was I turned it around to my
own team.
And I said, you know, obviouslywe're fielding inbound requests
(29:17):
from our leaders right now ondifferent AI workflows and and
we're supporting all of thosethings.
But I knew that the evolution ofhow of the speed of which we
were going to be expected towork was only going to continue
to increase.
And so it was going to be reallycritical that we were able to
work as quickly as possible.
(29:39):
So, how do I take a team thatsupports the go to market and
make them completely AI first?
Right.
And so, you know, how a typicalRevOps team might work is they
get a Slack or a call or a textmessage or 30 of those things
all at the same time from thebusiness asking for something to
make to make a change or tosupport this thing or pull this.
(30:00):
Report or change this workflowor whatever it is.
And before it was just all verymanual.
So you might get on a call withthe business and then you ask
them a bunch of questions andthey might not know those
questions.
And then you have three or fourmore calls.
And all of a sudden you'repulling people from the
business.
And then you're building outrequirements.
And then you're meeting, youknow, and grooming those
(30:20):
requirements with the technicalresources.
And then you might go back tothe business with questions.
And like this very manual thingthat all of a sudden one request
from the business might be 10 or15 hours of work.
And so we actually built out anagent that intakes now all the
requests from the business.
And so when someone comes to usand they need something from
(30:41):
anywhere in the business, theagent starts asking them a
series of questions.
And in a single interaction, weget the requirements, we
understand what they're tryingto achieve.
We actually ask them questionsthat then allow us to, or that
agent to assess where does itfall on a priority standpoint?
Like how would we evenprioritize this?
And at the end of it, you havefull requirements, the groom for
(31:03):
the technical team, ready to goand sprint with a prioritization
score where it should actuallyfall.
So that, you know, sounds sosimple.
Um, but if you have 30 RevOpspeople and they're all spending,
you know, five or 10 hours onsometimes one single intake,
yeah, talking about, you know,hundreds or thousands of hours
of work.
(31:24):
That that's not simple at all.
That's a ton of brick.
And you're also consolidatingall the requests that you get
into now one system.
Right.
And that's why everybody's goingdirectly to the agent now?
Yeah.
So we're sending them directlyto the agent.
And then I think prioritization,it sounds so simple, like
prioritization.
Why is that something that, youknow, RevOps people are
constantly asking about?
(31:44):
But like when I go out and talkto RevOps folks, yeah, besides
AI, the number one question Iget is how do you guys
prioritize your work?
Because it's such a problembecause I think historically you
work on the things that thepeople in the business are the
loudest about, or whoever isshouting the the loudest gets
their work done first, whichisn't necessarily the things
that are most important to movethe business forward.
(32:06):
And so that's really helped ussupport that.
Um and then in terms of wherewe're starting with the
business, it's where are thosereally manual tasks that we know
that sales or sales developmentwere doing?
And how do we make it reallysimple for them to execute and
do their jobs and spend as muchtime as possible with customers,
(32:28):
which we know is so importantwhen you're going up market and
in the enterprise relationshipsor everything.
What are the most manual thingsor the most time-consuming
things that your your sellersare doing and starting there and
making it easy for them tooperate is, I think, how we've
started to prioritize wherewe're leveraging AI.
Very cool.
(32:49):
I mean, that's that'sincredible.
You guys have done a phenomenaljob of not only shifting the
impact that you have on otherorganizations, AI forward.
I didn't even realize the extentto which you'd optimize
internally.
And yeah, with your outwardstrategy, one would assume that
you are doing it internally.
But it's so interesting to hearthe details that you're actually
building out in internally.
(33:10):
It's interesting.
I I think I made a lot ofmistakes when I was trying to
figure out how to make myorganization AI first.
I think six months ago it waslike, guys, if you don't start
thinking AI first, like, yeah,don't have jobs in a year, which
like the fear entire-lead withthe threat.
Yeah, like, and that certainlywasn't working.
And then I did things aroundlike, all right, we're gonna
(33:31):
have contests where like youtake courses or you do this
thing and you can like winprizes.
And that was like kind of cheesyand didn't really work either.
But I was sitting, you know, inthis situation where I just
wasn't seeing everyone acrossthe RebOps organization adopt AI
fast enough, or some people werereally scared about it or didn't
really know where to start.
(33:51):
And so it was really fortunate.
So ZI actually built an internalchat where at averse, like
similar, you would go to GBT,you go in and you can ask it
questions, but this was reallygreat because it was secure and
integrated with differentsystems internally and our data,
et cetera.
And then we got the ability tobuild out our own agents.
And so now anyone at Zoom Infocan build their own agent to
(34:15):
solve real go-to-marketchallenges.
And so we have like hundreds andhundreds of agents that anyone
from a sales developmentrepresentative and SER can build
to people on my team.
And so that was really greatbecause we just made it really
effortless to start gettinghands-on with AI.
And then two weeks ago, Iactually had an agent hackathon
with my team where every singleperson had to go through this
(34:38):
presentation where they builtout an agent to support a real
go-to-market challenge and thenpresented it.
And that was really the turningpoint where people saw how they
could really get creative withAI.
Yeah.
And I think the barrier to entrybefore was, you know, I can't,
how do I even begin to buildwith AI?
(35:00):
How do I even build an agent?
They couldn't start to getcreative.
And so one of the things thatZoomInfo has done such a good
job of is how do we allowoperators to get creative again
by taking away that barrier toentry of the more technical
elements or challenges thatmaybe they had before and
allowing them to just really bestrategic and create for the
(35:20):
first time.
And not only have we done thatobviously internally, like I'm
talking about with ZIC, butwe're doing that again with our
product and GoToMarket Studio isan example of that, being able
to actually just be creative andcreate and execute for the first
time without begging for atechnical resource to support.
Yeah, that's that is incredible.
(35:41):
And now you've got reps and andindividuals creating their own
agents within your ecosystem.
Well, not all are created equal,but I yeah, getting they're
getting hands-on.
But you could see the most usedagents and um and it is really
helping people.
There is the accountability interms of the guilt if they see
(36:02):
everybody else on theleaderboard.
Yeah, absolutely.
How do you avoid technical debtaround agents?
So let's say you've got an anentire organization that can
create their own agents.
How do you not end up withthousands of agents and then
only a handful are getting used?
That's a really great questionthat I don't have the answer to.
We might be too early.
No, I think right now, I thinkit's um, you know, how do we get
(36:26):
people hands-on?
How do we get them creating?
Yeah, let's see what's working,what's not working.
I think naturally you see by theadoption the ones that are
better built.
And I think, you know, drivingpeople to uh it's not driving
people to, but it's actuallyinstead it's looking at the ones
that are they're actually makingthe most impact and then taking
those and either building themout further or continuing to
(36:48):
iterate on those or actuallybuilding them into the standard
sales process is probably whatwe'll see happen first.
And so if there's three or fouror five or fifteen that are
being used all the time, how dowe actually make that a part of
the standard way that we'reoperating?
And so I think first is let'sget everyone hands-on, let's see
(37:10):
what people create, and thenlet's see what's working, and
then then let's pull that intothe standardized playbook and
make sure everyone is leveragingthat.
Um, but right now I think we'rejust in that really cool ideate,
move fast, execute, see what'smaking an impact.
And then from there we can buildthat into the sales playbook.
And you really systemized itaround that.
(37:30):
It's cool.
It almost feels like ademocratization of creation of
the system where we used to havemanagers that created the
systems and passed it along toteams.
And now it's almost made that sohorizontal where anyone can
create an experimental agent,gauge performance, and then bake
(37:51):
it into the process now.
So they're not mere suggestions,like you skipped the suggestion
step, suggestion step and justjumped right to execution,
right?
And enabled everyone to executewith your model.
Right.
Which is just which is reallyexciting.
Yeah, yeah, it's reallyexciting.
Um, you know, I think that whatone of the things that I love
about AI is I do believe that itis, and I like that word like
(38:16):
democratization, like it's this,it's this, it's it's allowing
anyone who is an operator,regardless of how technical they
are, yeah, to be able toexecute.
Um, whereas I think before, youknow, you were more reliant on
different technical teams ortechnical resources or in a
(38:37):
queue, maybe with engineering toget something done.
And now it allows you, even ifyou aren't the most technical
operator, to um to execute andcreate faster than ever before.
Um, and I I think what'sinteresting, you know, I grew up
at Salesforce, which is a verybig company.
(38:58):
I started with like, I don'tknow, 10,000 people.
And by the time I left, it was70,000 people.
And when I stepped into ZoomInfo and I was running a team
that was very technical, and Idid spend a lot of time um, you
know, really focusing on how doI uh up level myself and become
more technical and making surethat I am very hands-on.
(39:19):
I think the best operators areboth hands-on and really good
leaders.
I never wanted to just be aleader's leader.
And so always really pushedmyself and continue to push
myself every day to be reallyhands-on.
But there were certainly thingsthat I wasn't hands-on before or
different technical background Idid not have that maybe other
RevOps folks did or have that Ididn't.
(39:41):
And so I think that for me, AIhas been a great equalizer
because I leaned into that and Isaid I can know AI or execute
with AI or think AI first fasteror before anyone else.
And so that has become, youknow, my technical background.
Um, and even though I didn'tcome up as a Salesforce admin or
(40:03):
um, you know, some sort ofengineer, I feel like it's been
an equalizer for me to be trulytechnical and a RevOps leader,
um, innovating in my role.
It's really level set theplaying field for everybody.
I think so.
And I think we're we're thinkingabout Rebots now and what this
like concept of like the rise ofthe go-to-market architect.
(40:23):
And we're moving from this likereally reactive role that we had
before to being really proactiveand more strategic.
And I think AI has given us timeback in the sense that we're not
doing the manual things that wewere doing before, but it has
allowed us to look holisticallyat the go-to-market and say,
okay, what are the things thatwe want to innovate on or change
(40:43):
or move on faster than before?
And AI has allowed us to dothat.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Entirely, entirely changedeverything.
Changed everything.
Truly, truly.
I love it.
And how are you learning?
You know, we talked about youroperating system that you have
in part because it sounds likethat has been a huge part of
(41:03):
just the way you've builtoverall, but now out of
necessity, when you're superbusy, yeah.
How do you have time to learnabout AI and just overall keep
up to date with all the thechanges?
Yeah.
I you know, I think the twothings, maybe the three things
that help the most.
I think one is just community,which seems pretty simple, but I
(41:24):
surround myself with a ton ofRedbox people.
Yeah, I probably have three orfour uh WhatsApps or text
iMessage groups with uh my peersand we're talking all the time.
So what are you doing internallyfrom an innovation standpoint?
What demos have you takenlately?
Is there anything that you'readding to your tech stack?
Is there anything you'rereplacing in your tech stack?
(41:45):
You know, just reallyunderstanding what are the
things day to day that they'redoing or thinking about or
working on.
I think that's really important.
If you're a RevOps person andyou're not talking to other
operators, I would say um it's abig miss because I think I'm
ahead or I think I'm doingreally well.
And then I talk to one of mypeers and I'll go, oh my gosh,
(42:07):
you're doing that.
Like that's such a great idea.
That's awesome.
Like I'm gonna steal that.
I'm gonna do that too.
But it's always like pushing meto um continue to innovate or or
look ahead.
And I think your peers are agood benchmark for that.
Um, I think the second is justuh I take like demos and
actually seeing what people arebuilding.
(42:29):
And I think I'm so inspired whenI'm seeing the different things
that are coming up or AIsolutions.
And I think as a RevOps leader,you spend a time, a lot of time
thinking about is this somethingI'm gonna buy versus build?
And you're not gonna know whatyou're building unless you're at
least looking or exploring whatyou could buy.
And so making sure that you'respending time really
(42:51):
understanding what's beingbuilt.
And then I think the third isprobably just talking to your
customers when you understandwhat challenges they have and
you understand what they'retrying to solve for, it allows
you to think, okay, is thatsomething that I can solve or is
that something that I can build?
And I think that helps you alsoalso creatively as well.
Maybe there's four.
And then I think just gettinghands-on, like you have to like
(43:14):
me building my own agents, yeah,and um, you know, getting into
different systems and tinkeringas well.
I think you have to be hands-on.
And if you're not, then you'rejust gonna fall behind.
unknown (43:25):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (43:26):
Yeah, simply put, I think go to market.
I mean, tech modes havedeclined, right?
Go to market really is yourdifferentiator, and a huge part
of that is not only yourstrategy, but your execution.
And I think AI is such a coolmoment because it shines the
light on execution, right?
And it forces everyone to justcontinuously up-level it and do
that.
Yeah.
(43:46):
I love it.
And what about more on the bookside?
So less AI, but are there anyfavorite kind of books you've
had that have been reallyimpactful for your career?
Oh gosh.
Um so six months ago, um, RossRich, his CEO of Accord, sent me
a book.
Six months ago, it might havebeen for Christmas.
I don't know.
So he was lovely to get Zerat ofHoliday, maybe it was around the
(44:09):
holidays, but um, he set sent methe Alchemist.
Yeah, um, which I had never readbefore.
Yeah.
And I I don't think there's beena single book in my life that
has been more impactful.
I think about it every singleday.
Wow.
Every single day.
Yeah.
This idea that you're going onthis journey through your life.
You have this like life mission,or you're going on this
(44:32):
adventure.
Yeah.
And how, you know, if as youmove forward or as you progress
or as you go along this journey,there's times where you get
really incredibly comfortable.
And you're comfortable becausewhere you are in your life is
better than you ever imagined itcould be or um it's ever been
before.
And so you don't think aboutmaybe moving forward or making
(44:56):
more progress.
And I've always said, you know,if you're not uncomfortable,
you're not growing.
And so in this book, he hasthese moments where he thinks,
like, I have more than I couldhave ever wanted.
Like, why would I keep going?
Like, why don't I stay here?
But it's like, you can always goback.
Yeah, I can always go back.
And so I just love that book somuch because it's about always
(45:17):
making progress and being okaywith taking risks and being okay
with maybe leaving what youthought was really great behind.
Because you can always go back,but you still have to go on
this, this adventure, thisjourney.
SPEAKER_00 (45:30):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (45:30):
And um, I I probably talk about that book, I don't
know, several times a week withfolks.
If if you haven't, I have notread it.
So I am I'm going to and we'lldrop it in the show notice
forever.
And yeah, I read it on theplane, on a plane.
I I think I cried through halfof it, and then I gave it to
Layman on the Altitude.
Yeah, they found Altitude andthe.
I I gifted it to the guy sittingnext to me and I think it's
(45:52):
book.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Sorry for giving it away, Russ.
Yeah, yeah.
There we go.
We won't uh we won't sell him,but no that's very cool.
I think it's too often we thinkabout an end state, and often it
it is not an end state.
It's actually about the theevolution, the continuous growth
as opposed to reaching that endstate.
And it's the interestingrealization that a lot of people
(46:15):
have in tech too, once they'veusually built and sold a company
successfully, is to reflect backand realize, ah, there's no
actual mountaintop.
It's all just entire growth andand progression, or as some
people like to reference fromthe the book, and there's two
mountains and two peaks and soforth, and the other one's
always in the distance.
So I love that.
(46:36):
Yeah, I think it's good.
I I really try to reframe when Istart to feel yeah, comfortable
or anxious, or you know, thatfeeling that you get when you're
about to do something thatyou've never done before, like
this is good.
Like this is this, it's goodthat you're feeling this way
because it means that you'regrowing.
And so I really anchored inthat.
(46:56):
And so growth is one of yourfive in your notion board.
Or however people want toposition it if you want to
replicate 10 growth.
Growth you could kind of doacross all of them, but I think
okay growth I kind of almost putin a category on its own.
Yeah.
And is that mostly qualitativein nature then around you
self-reflecting and mappinggrowth progress?
(47:19):
Or how do you actually quantifyyour goals around growth based
on your learnings from thealchemists now?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Um You know, I think growth tome is just progress.
I think growth isn't just likeyou said, climbing a mountain.
Growth comes from really deepvalleys or making mistakes or um
(47:41):
things you try where you fail,or maybe you try and you're
successful.
So I think growth to me, when Ithink about setting goals about
growth, it's doing things thatmake me uncomfortable or maybe
that I've never done before, orthe things that, you know, I
don't necessarily want to do,but I know are important to to
push me forward and give meexperiences that I've never had
(48:02):
before.
Um interesting, I would say thatthe number one thing that's
shifted recently for me and inmy life um that I never felt
before, but it's been incrediblyliberating is I don't think I'm
afraid to fail anymore.
Like I think, well, I'm thinkingI spent so much of my life
(48:25):
trying to prove something tosomebody, and now all I want to
do is prove things to myself.
And I'm not competitive withanyone but myself, and I think
that's been um really motivatingfor me.
But then now just saying likeI'm never going to I'm never
(48:46):
going to be afraid if somethingdoesn't work out.
I'm never going to be afraid offailing.
What I'm most afraid about isnever trying.
Yeah.
And uh I think when you finallyget there, it's like the most
liberating thing in the world.
That is amazing and beautiful.
Thank you for sharing that.
I think those are words thatsurround the systems.
We've talked a lot about systemsnow, but it's like the bigger
(49:09):
why of why need to build thesystem.
And yeah, those are the yeah,exactly, the moments around it.
I think Pael Kadakia, I don'tknow if she was necessarily the
first one, but she definitelyspoke a lot to it around fear
and kind of failure.
It's just a data point.
And so it it's simply a datapoint.
If you're not hitting thatpoint, then you're not trying
hard enough.
(49:30):
And, you know, I spent a lot oftime in conversion optimization,
which was one of the mostvaluable lessons around failure,
because truly failure is good.
Like you want to fail and youwant to learn from it.
But it is a failure if you arehitting experiments and you're
optimizing, you're trying toimprove your revenue and your
funnel, but you're not learningfrom it.
So you're either documenting alearning or you are failing.
(49:54):
And that's the real failure.
Yeah.
It's not.
So your system to actuallydocument it is really valuable
and interesting for people.
Absolutely.
Yeah, love it.
Well, thank you.
This has been incredibly,incredibly valuable, Tessa.
You got the marathon coming up.
That's the first for you talkingabout your own.
And you're running a marathon aswell.
So I am.
However, I would say my systemsaren't as diligent as yours.
(50:15):
I'm running a couple times aweek, a little bit less than
yourself.
So I follow her and well, howare you so I will I will make
sure to send you notes.
There you go.
Send me bumps.
Not fast enough or anything.
It'll be a lot of fun.
I'm excited for you.
I'm excited to track your wholejourney throughout it.
Summel, thank you so much forhaving me.
(50:36):
Absolutely.
Thank you.
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