May 22, 2023 • 50 mins
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Today we will be talking about the concept of a maturity model for Marketing Ops and the skills MOps pros need with Simon Daniels. Simon is currently Principal Analyst for Marketing Operations Strategies at Forrester where he does research and delivers guidance and advice to clients. Prior to joining Forrester, he has held several Marketing Operations leadership roles both in-house and as a consultant. He has also co-hosted another podcast called What’s MOps Got to do With it?
Tune in to hear:
- Simon's perspective on what is needed to build and upskill a MOPs team/department.
- Whether he thinks all the principles of the maturity model apply to companies of different sizes / stages.
- What he sees as the career paths for Marketing Ops leaders? Rev Ops? Chief of Staff? CMO?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:02):
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
MarketingOps.com, powered by theMO Pros.
Join today with my co-host, MikeRizzo.
Early for him.
Yeah,
Mike Rizzo (00:14):
early-ish.
Early-ish.
I mean, it's, it's 9:00 AM I'mawake.
My kids got me up at
Simon Daniels (00:20):
five 50.
Michael Hartmann (00:21):
There you go.
I think.
All right.
Well, and then on the other endof the spectrum, our guest today
who's gonna help us talk about.
Uh, the idea of a maturity modelfor marketing ops and the skills
for mo pros to have to kindabring that to life is Simon
Daniels joining us from the uk.
He is currently a principalanalyst for Marketing Operations
(00:43):
Strategies at Forrester, wherehe does research and delivers
guidance and advice to clients.
Prior to joining Forestry, heheld several marketing
operations, leadership roles,both in-house and as a
consultant.
He also has co-hosted anotherpodcast about marketing ops
called What's Mops Got to Dowith It.
Simon, thanks for joining us andwelcome, and thanks for staying.
(01:03):
Thank you so much.
Thanks for staying on late on aFriday.
Simon Daniels (01:06):
No problem at all.
Thanks so much for having me.
I've, I've got a cup of teagoing here, so it's, uh, it's
all good.
Uh, great to talk to you,Michael, and uh, again, Mike.
Uh, and, uh, sad.
No.
Naomi, I'll, uh, I'll have to,uh, I know look forward to, um,
just getting a chance to, uh, totalk to her one of these days in
the future.
Michael Hartmann (01:23):
Yeah.
Well, we, we are missing her.
Um, she's got some stuff goingon, so I, you know, she's, it's
tough for her to, to fit thisin.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yep.
Um, Well, good.
So Simon, uh, thanks.
I'm gonna, I feel like I'm gonnabe saying this on all of our
upcoming episodes because I'vebeen so swamped.
I have not done a good job ofgetting these scheduled, but
(01:44):
thank you for your patience ingetting this scheduled.
It's all, I know we've talkedabout it for a while.
Yeah.
But, um, I do wanna get into themajority model conversation.
Um, and so we can maybe likefigure out how we wanna do this,
but you know, when you thinkabout.
That, I'm assuming there's some,some skills that you're assuming
(02:04):
are needed for people to be in,uh, marketing ops and things
like that.
What do you like, what are someof those things that you see
that are needed for, you know, areally top-notch marketing ops
team or department or, uh,professional?
Simon Daniels (02:16):
Right.
Well, yeah, and the, thematurity model, um, in, in, in
some ways all that concepts, youknow, speaks to, to, to some of
the aspects of the, of theskills and so on, that, that go
into a mopro.
What we see though, as beingneeded for a, a marketing
operations function, uh, And,uh, and, and the individuals are
(02:37):
really, first of all, executiveslevel support.
Um, without that, you, you canhave a function or a team or, or
a role and, and people doingthose jobs, but if they don't
have the, the real air cover andbacking, then it's, it's really
tough.
To progress up that maturityscale to really be an effective
marketing operations function.
(02:58):
So that, that's certainly, uh,crucial.
And then with that is astrategic remit.
Again, this, this speaks to the,to the maturity concept that
which we can come onto, but it,it needs to be more than just,
um, you know, executing andbuilding and, and configuring.
Um, it needs to be very much atthe table involved in the
(03:21):
thinking.
The direction, where are thingsgoing?
Um, and, and that's what reallymakes for a, for a successful
marketing operations function.
Um, with that, uh, a conceptthat the roles within a
marketing operations functionare careers and not just jobs.
Um, you know, they've got a,they've got a path.
And, you know, we might evencome back to that in terms of
(03:41):
what the ultimate um, Endpointfor a, for a marketing
operations professional is.
Um, and then, oh, I come back tothat.
I'm super excited about thatone.
Yes, sure.
Absolutely.
Keep going.
Keep me too.
I like, I like that one as well.
Um, and then, I mean, it's, it'salmost a truism, but just
development opportunities.
(04:03):
Um, so.
You know, obvious things liketraining, um, continual, um,
opportunities for enhancing theskills a across, um, the, the
spectrum of marketing operationsactivities.
Um, But things like alsomemberships.
So, you know, signing up formarketing ops, uh, dot com.
(04:23):
Um, so that there's a sense of,of the, of support and that,
that, again, it's a professionand, um, you know, not, not
that, not that it isn't, but youknow, there should be a sense
that the marketing ops Slackchannel is, you know, work safe
and rather than, Somebodylooking over, uh, another
person's shoulder and saying,well, what are you doing in, in
(04:44):
that Slack channel?
What are you, you know, whyaren't you building the campaign
that's going out tomorrow?
It would be literally, oh,great, I see you are educating
yourself or checking in withother people in the community,
getting, getting other input andso on.
And it's that kind of supportthat is, you know, makes a
difference between, um, Is it,is it something that you are
just having to do by yourself oris it really supported and, and
(05:07):
understood by, you know, thewider organization?
Um, the time to experiment andtry things out again?
You know, they should, theyshould be time to, uh, just try,
try all the new stuff out, youknow, whether it's AI or, um,
looking at aspects of themetaverse or any of the other,
you know, Keywords and topicsand trends and so on.
(05:28):
Uh, it could be a complete wasteof time, but it's important to
be on top of that stuff and havean understanding for it, and
that that needs to beunderstood.
Um, and then, you know, the, thechance to do this kind of thing,
maybe if you are a, if you're amarketing operations
professional, um, doing apodcast, writing a blog for
somebody, um, should be.
Part and parcel of the, of therole and, and that that should
(05:48):
be, that should be seen andrecognized.
Um, and then I thinkcollaboration, you know, outside
of marketing operations and, andmarketing, um, is, is again
crucial.
Um, and, and that speaks to someof the other things that, that
perhaps will come onto.
Um, so, you know, in, in, insummary, a marketing operations
professional needs to be insightdriven, a design thinker and,
(06:10):
and tech savvy, and put all thattogether and, and, uh, I think
you've got a, a goodcombination.
Michael Hartmann (06:16):
I think it's, um, the first thing you talked
about was executive support.
I wanna come back to that in asecond.
But the, the, I wanna touch onthe, the point about having time
to experiment and learn, try newthings that maybe are not core,
I think is one of the thingsthat's really hard to fit, fit
into.
At the same time, I know that I,and like you've probably had
(06:37):
this too, like I get asked allthe time about those things from
other people in marketing andothers.
Yeah.
Because they're also hearingabout it.
Yeah.
So I think it's, it's valuablenot only to learn, but also just
to be able to have aperspective.
Yeah.
Or, or you know, an opinion, ifyou will.
Yeah.
On whether or not something likethat makes sense for where your
organization is.
Yeah.
I'm just one, one follow up onthe question, follow up question
(06:58):
on the executive support.
When you say executive support,Uh, I, I think my mind
immediately goes to, you know,whatever your title the top
marketer is at the organizationis, is that, but what about
beyond that, right.
Sales or.
Operat like coo, c e o level.
Yeah.
Simon Daniels (07:15):
Well, yeah, absolutely.
I think, I mean, yeah, you'reabsolutely right.
I, I kind of meant the c m o or,or the most senior marketing
decision maker or, or leader.
But yeah, the, the entireC-suite, it's important to, to
have, to have that support.
And, you know, that comes backto the collaboration piece
because, um, Marketingoperations should, should be,
(07:36):
you know, collaborating withsales operations.
And, you know, certainly whenI've been a, a practitioner,
almost the first thing I, I doin, in a, in a role is to look
for the head of sales ops and,and make that connection And,
um, that, that's great.
And, and to be encouraged.
At the same time, it shouldn'tbe just down to those
(07:56):
individuals to connect.
Uh, the c m O should be sayingto the head of marketing
operations, you know, hit, I amgoing to introduce you to the
head of sales ops and, and the Cs O or head of sales should,
should be, you know, doing thesame in, in reverse and, and uh,
creating that collaboration.
So, yeah, absolutely that needsto span across.
And, you know, thinking in termsof the wider.
(08:19):
Uh, uh, collaboration and thewidert set of stakeholders that,
that marketing operations haveacross finance and IT, and, and
so on.
Then those leaders should belooking to make those, those
connections and, um, relate,build those relationships in, in
just the same way that the, thatthe mops, uh, the MOPS pro is
Michael Hartmann (08:39):
as well.
Yeah.
No, I, I agree.
I I, there's a thread there thatI think we'll end up coming back
to later, so I don't want to gothere yet.
But, um, so let's, let's, youkind of laid some foundation
here.
Uh, let's get into this maturitymodel.
Cause I think there's, one ofthe things I know I've, in fact,
I had a, a, a call with a menteeyesterday about kind of thinking
(09:01):
about how do you think about howto, how to structure or think
about a marking ops.
When you're talking to yourexecutives or your oth, you
know, other teams or, or ifyou're managing a team trying to
build out here, here's the gapsthat we have.
So I'm assuming you're gonna getinto some of that.
So what is your maturity modelthought process on, on that?
(09:22):
Yeah, so
Simon Daniels (09:23):
we, we have what we call, um, the, the, the
Forester, um, revenue operationsor marketing operations.
If, if you like, range ofresponsibilities, model.
And essentially that spans.
A core set of elements ofmarketing operations, uh, we
(09:43):
call them priorities.
So planning, process, tech, datameasurement.
So the, the things that youwould think of.
Yeah, that's marketingoperations, and then, So that's
the sort of the span of it.
And then what you have is, uh, adimension within each of those,
essentially from tactical tostrategic, and that that's what
(10:07):
describes the maturity in eachof those, um, uh, e each of
those elements.
Um, so like, like I, I kind ofalluded to.
The, at the tactical level, it'sjust essentially doing, um, and
then you rise up to end atstrategic where it's much more
driving.
And I suppose, I don't wanna saydirecting, but working with the
(10:31):
rest of a marketing leadershipteam and, and, you know, the C M
O or, or marketing leader to, tobe figuring out, um, you know,
how is everything fittingtogether?
Not waiting to be told, but,but, you know, putting forward
suggestions for perhaps a newpiece of technology to address.
A problem that has been, uh,identified or obviously
(10:52):
proactively, uh, governing datato make sure that it's, it's fit
for purpose.
Looking, you know, building outmeasurement and looking for ways
to, to do that better so thatmarketing and the business
knows, um, the, the benefit thatmarketing is delivering and, and
the return on investmentultimately, that, that's, um,
that's coming to that.
So that, that, that'sessentially what, what describes
(11:13):
the, uh, the overall maturity,if you like.
That's super,
Mike Rizzo (11:18):
super interesting and, and very helpful to hear
from, from your perspective.
For sure.
Uh, one of the things we'reworking on, uh, with a group of
board members effectively, uh,so community members that we've
pulled in, uh, across sort of a,a range of, uh, backgrounds.
Um, is what does it really meanto be a certified marketing
(11:40):
operations professional?
And along so, you know, some ofthis is exactly, no, no
surprise, right?
Once you've been around a while,uh, certainly the things that
we're talking about as well, um,trying to figure out are there
levels of, of certification oris there some sort of like
overarching theme that you cansort of pull in?
(12:00):
And one of the things that cameout of that conversation at, at
our last meeting a couple weeksago, Um, that I sort of defined
as what I, what I would calllike a universal truth, uh, when
it comes to marketingoperations, is that all in my
mind?
All things in marketingoperations have a strategy
(12:22):
component.
So like there's very rarely a, atime where you're gonna just do
something without first thinkingabout the implications of what's
about to happen.
Simon Daniels (12:33):
I would hope so.
Yeah.
I, I just,
Mike Rizzo (12:35):
I just don't know.
So when we talk about like, someof these core principles of what
might be, you know, what mightgo into a certification program
or just even a maturity model,right?
You're talking about tactical tostrategic, um, the execution
work.
I mean, you can be told what todo.
Yes.
Like, here's the list.
(12:56):
Hit send, right?
Yeah.
Like that, that, that requiresnothing, uh, other than you're
now doing whatever someone toldyou to do.
Yeah.
But if you're being told to sendan email to the database, uh,
there is some level of strategythat should go through your
mind, even if it's like, how doI pull the list?
Right.
Yeah.
Make sure they're opted in andall
Simon Daniels (13:17):
these other things.
And so do, do
Michael Hartmann (13:18):
you, do you think it's a, do you think it's
strategy?
Because I, I, to me, thatthere's sort of an intermediate
level, which I would call justunderstanding the context.
Yeah.
Right.
So it's hard, like, I don't knowwhat a better word is for it.
No, I know.
I, I don't, I don't, I'm notlike arguing like, I think
strategy is an important piece,but I, the, one of the things I
know I've done with, I try to dowith all my teams is if, if
(13:41):
you're asked to do something,whether it's for me or somebody
else on the marketing team, andyou don't know the why behind
it, you should be asking why.
Yeah.
Because maybe what they'reasking you to do is not really
the best way to do it.
And I think that, I think that'swhat you're getting at.
Yeah.
So you could, we could choose adifferent word, but I strategy's
fine.
I just, I've, to me it feelslike it.
(14:02):
Reduces what strategy means.
Cuz I think that's a little
Simon Daniels (14:04):
more proactive.
That's, well, 1, 1, 1 person'sstrategy is another person's
tactic to, uh, to, to paraphrasethe old, the old expression.
So I, I guess you, you, youcould look at it however you
want to.
I think though you, you'reabsolutely right in the sense
that a, any, any action shouldbe considered and understood and
the context, um, properly scopedout.
(14:26):
And yeah, even if it is aquestion of.
I mean, yeah, I can't, I barelycan imagine this happening, but
here's a list.
Send an email.
It, you know, you could at leastbe saying, well what is this
list?
You know, is it, is itcompliant?
Is it actually the rightaudience for the email that
we're looking at?
Could, could we do a differentsegmentation?
Um, and you know, building outfrom that, obviously asking
(14:50):
those questions just in moredetail, how are we segmenting
this?
Are we doing anypersonalization?
Are we.
Creating different versions for,for different, uh, for different
audiences.
Um, where are we sourcing theprospects?
Uh, what is the, the approach ofthat?
And obviously that that's whattakes you up the maturity.
Um, Curve or, or whatever,however you want to express
(15:10):
that.
And, you know, ultimately getsyou to a point where, way ahead
of e of ever thinking of, ofsending an email or, um, setting
a paid digital campaign runningor what have you.
Um, you've, you've got all ofthat thinking.
Um, and it's all interlocking.
Um, certainly, you know, we, we,we guide clients on.
(15:30):
Campaign strategy and planningand interlocks and, and
frameworks and all those kindsof things, so that by the time
you actually get down to thetactic, which is the, the, the
lowest or end point ofexecution, um, it, it's, you
know, by no means a random actof marketing.
Um, it's a very specific thingthat, that's taking place backed
(15:52):
by, you know, considerablethinking that that goes behind
that.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mike Rizzo (15:57):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And I think, uh, you know, noone wants to diminish the, the
use of strategy or theopportunity to be seen as more
strategic by any stretch.
But, um, you know, there'sentering new markets strategy.
There's compliance and GDPRstrategy.
Like, there's all kinds ofthings around, uh, you know,
(16:17):
again, you, you said the oldadage, you know, one person's
strategy is another's tactic, etcetera, so Right.
But yeah, that, no, that clarityI think is super, super helpful.
So,
Michael Hartmann (16:27):
yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting.
And I, I, I like, I mean,without having seen the details
of that, um, the maturity model,if I understand it right, you've
got sort of five dimensions ofwhat's needed for, uh, marketing
ops, and then within each ofthose five, some sort of scale
of maturity.
(16:48):
So assume then you, you know,one could be.
Well into, towards strategic andone of those dimensions, but
maybe more tactical than anotherand so on.
Uh, I assume there's some, alittle, some, at least some
correlation, right?
If you're strategic in one ormore than one, you're gonna be
further along.
And the others, one of thequestions I always run into, and
I think it's interesting, um,This is where I, I would love to
(17:11):
have Naomi on as well, because Ithink Mike and I both have most
of our experiences at verydifferent size and stage of
companies, and Naomi's sort ofin between or a little different
as well.
Do you, how well do you thinkthat model applies across
different size and stage ofcompanies or industries, or B2B
versus b2c?
Simon Daniels (17:32):
Sure.
Well, you know, for, for atForrester, we, we certainly, uh,
tend to skew towards theenterprise level.
That's, that's just where ourclient base sits.
And, and, uh, and, and you know,we're at that, that kind of, um,
enterprise end of the scale, ifyou like.
That said, I don't see there'sany reason that it doesn't apply
(17:52):
across the board clearly as youcome down the scale, um, to, to
mid-market and, and through tomaybe scale up and start up and
so on, the complexitydiminishes.
And so some of the conceptsmaybe aren't so applicable, but
really, um, you know, if you'vegot two people working on
something together, you needcollaboration and, and so, um,
(18:13):
and coordination and, and sothat, that creates its
complexity and.
I've, I've, you know, when,when, when I was doing the
podcast, uh, that I wasco-hosting, you know, we spoke
to plenty of marketingoperations leaders of, of
mid-market businesses, um, thatwere not huge by, by any, um,
you know, any, any count.
But the complexity is, is notinconsiderable.
(18:34):
There's just so many movingparts.
Everybody's trying to do so manydifferent things.
And so I think the applicabilityin, in terms of.
You know, thinkingstrategically, uh, looking for
how to do that, making thatcontribution, um, as a, as a
marketing operationsprofessional or, or team, um,
you know, applies just, just asmuch.
And it's just a matter of maybenot overreaching, um, but
(18:58):
certainly trying to make surethat you're off that base level,
um, to, uh, to, to be on ajourney towards, uh, towards
that higher levels of maturity.
Michael Hartmann (19:09):
It's, yeah, I think so.
That makes sense.
Knowing what I know aboutForster and, and the types of
clients you typically have.
Um, okay.
So let's kind of turn this alittle bit into today.
You've got this model and, um,yeah, I assume you've done some
work with some clients andthings like that to assess or.
(19:30):
Help them to apply to theirbusiness.
Mm-hmm.
What, what are you seeing in thekind of current state?
Like where are people along thedifferent, uh, dimensions of
maturity and are there, are youseeing any trends related to
that coming out of it?
Simon Daniels (19:47):
Well, yeah, I mean, we, yeah, we see, we
certainly see all sorts ofdifferent levels and, um, you
know, e even with, you know, theclients that we work with and,
and like I say, at the largerend of the scale, there's,
there's, there's all sorts ofdifferent, um, levels and, um,
you know, as you say, indifferent areas, different,
different, um, achievements.
(20:09):
Across those, those differentaspects.
And you know, the, the reasonthat you would become a Forester
client is because you, you, youneed, um, support across those
things.
And, and that's, that's whatwe're there to do.
And, and that's, that's whatcreates the kind of variety.
Um, you know, I think what we,what we do see in terms of.
(20:30):
The, the businesses that we workwith and, and what's out there
are, are the two things that,um, I think, um, you know, you,
you guys talk about all the timeon the podcast.
Um, so the first is, you know,think thinking in terms of that
strategic element.
Yeah.
We certainly see marketingoperations becoming increasingly
strategic.
(20:51):
Um, you know, it's, it, it'sbecoming, you know, Much more
embedded.
Um, and, and going back to whatI was saying, executive support
and those kinds of things, youknow, we, we definitely see
that, um, in fact, in a, in asurvey from, uh, 2021, we, we
saw, uh, 72% of the businessesthat we surveyed have.
(21:14):
A chief of staff to the cmo,which as I say is a, is a topic
that, that you've discussed.
Did you, did I always
Michael Hartmann (21:20):
make sure I What?
Didn't mishear that 72%.
Yeah.
Simon Daniels (21:24):
Yeah.
Now, wow.
Don't get me wrong, that soundshigh.
And so that reflects our clientbase.
But, but nonetheless, at thatend of the scale, um, you know,
that, that is, that is, youknow, what we are seeing
interesting in terms.
The, the prevalence of thatrole.
And of those 85% of those chiefsof staff are the head of
marketing operations.
(21:45):
So that, you know, embracing of,of, of strategy and, um, if, if
you like, elevation of thatposition is, is, you know, real
and, and happening.
Um, and so that's definitely,uh, a, a direction of travel.
Um, and then the other piece of,of course is, is, um, revenue
operations and the, the growthof that.
(22:06):
Term and function and, um,Certainly at Forrester, we, uh,
are are heading in thatdirection as well.
Uh, we'll be announcing somechanges, uh, to our services
that that will much morereflect, um, that direction of
travel towards revenueoperations.
And the key thing there is notthat, that's it for marketing
operations.
(22:28):
Uh, we see plenty of, of, youknow, marketing operations, uh,
functions and uh, and positions.
In fact, again, across our.
Client base.
Um, we see something like 5% ofof our clients have got a, a
revenue type job title.
So there's, there's, you know,plenty of other sales and
marketing ops people, um, stillout there, but it's the
(22:50):
direction of travel.
Um, and it speaks to that, uh,you know, cross-functional, uh,
collaboration and creating a.
Revenue ecosystem across thebusiness, whether you've got a
single function or whether it'smultiple functions, it's the
totality that's, that'simportant, um, rather than,
(23:10):
rather than the organizationallayout if you like.
So yeah, tho those are certainlytwo, two ar you know, two, uh,
key areas that where we see the,the, the profession going.
That's
Mike Rizzo (23:22):
incredible.
I, um, I felt like, Likestrangely validated, like
through at least two or three ofthose right comments that you
were making this now, like Ifelt like we as a community,
Michael, Naomi, everybody, youknow we're here, we are, we're
talking like it feels like chiefof staff.
It feels like C M O ops.
It feels like we're coming upwith all these things and here
(23:43):
you are saying, you know, of thefolks that we're talking to.
A huge percentage of them areactually in a chief of staff
role, and the majority of thoseare from a, from a marketing
house background.
I was like, wow, that is, thatis incredibly, incredibly
validating.
Uh, on top of that.
You know, here we are folks.
Simon said he, he, that we talkabout things regularly on our
(24:05):
show, which means Simon'slistening.
So I feel, I feel prettyvalidated
Michael Hartmann (24:08):
by that too.
Indeed.
Which, which
is
Mike Rizzo (24:11):
pretty cool.
So anyway, I'm all like gushingover here.
Like, this is cool.
Um, so what, you know, I'mexcited about this rev ops stuff
that's happening.
I, I've been, I think I havemixed emotions about it in
general.
Um, part of it is that, youknow, so many of us have just
been seeing that it's justpredominantly just a sales
(24:34):
operations sort of discussion.
Um, And I, I'm hoping that thatstarts to, to change a little
bit.
But then, you know, so I, sosort of two parts, like one, do
you feel that that's whyForrester is going to try to
potentially take a differentstance on this and try to help
maybe correct, at least fromyour perspective, a little bit
(24:54):
of what they're seeing in themarket?
Mm-hmm.
Um, or just maybe if it's notForrester's opinion and it's
just yours, whichever, uh, andthen the other one is, Go to
market ops, like what's the dealthere?
Right, right.
What's your thought
Simon Daniels (25:08):
on that?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I, I should make clear my,my opinion and foresters are
indistinguishable.
Just, just for the record.
Okay.
Alright.
Well, just to be fair, um, yeah,we, we, yeah, I should, I should
say that n nothing that we, weput out is, is anything other
than, you know, kind of verydeeply thought through some,
sometimes, almost, almostcomically.
(25:29):
And, you know, we spent a lot oftime thinking about.
Should, should we, should we gowith this, should we call it
revenue operations?
You know, people are out therecalling it, you know, or calling
themselves revenue operations,but it's really just sales
operations.
But ul ultimately, we've comedown on.
No, it, it should be calledrevenue operations.
(25:50):
That's what it is.
Um, it, it is the operationspertaining to the revenue
ecosystem within the business.
So we we're gonna, you know, putour arms around that and not,
not that to the, not that evenwe're so, um, you know, uh, so.
Highly thinking of our own, ourown opinion to, to suggest that,
(26:11):
um, everyone's gonna say, oh,well now Forrester have said it.
That's, that's, we better get onboard with that.
Nonetheless, if, if we can steerthings in a certain direction
whereby we agree that yeah,revenue operations is the
totality of the revenueecosystem and, um, it, it
encompasses all of that and it,it's more than just one, one
aspect of that then, um, that,that.
(26:35):
You know, that sums that up.
And so I think that's, that'swhat we're trying to do with
that.
Um, and, and, and just, youknow, talk about it in, in those
wider terms.
Go ahead.
Pardon?
I,
Michael Hartmann (26:50):
oh, so sorry.
Go ahead.
Simon Daniels (26:51):
If you, well, I was just, I was just gonna speak
to the, the, to the go-to marketpiece, but I dunno whether you
Michael Hartmann (26:55):
wanna just No, no, go ahead.
No, no.
I, I have a separate question,so, right,
Simon Daniels (26:59):
go for it.
So ju yeah, just coming back onthe go to market operations, I,
I, I saw, I need to be supercareful here cuz I have a client
who literally is, is justadopted that term and it makes
perfect sense in actual factbecause.
What they're doing is saying,okay, we've got sales
operations, uh, and they'recontinuing to do the classic
sales operations stuff, butmeanwhile we, our marketing
(27:21):
operations, it feels like it'sactually a bit more than just
marketing.
Cuz I think what they're doingis, you know, incorporating a
little bit of the, of the, uh,sort of customer success aspect.
Um, maybe some, some elementsof, um, The market sizing and,
um, total addressable market,those, those bits.
So it's, it's a little bit morethan just marketing operations.
(27:44):
So that's where the go-to-marketaspect comes in, I think.
Um, so, you know, it, it's,again, it's a part of that wider
rev op ecosystem.
Um, and as long as there'salignment across the totality of
it within, within everyorganization, um, you know,
that's, that's fine.
Michael Hartmann (28:04):
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's interestingdistinction.
I like that.
I, um, the question I was gonnaget to, and this is getting back
to revenue operations, feelslike it tends to be driven more
out of sales and in fact, nodata to back this up.
Maybe you do Simon, but it feelslike what I keep hearing about
is.
Revenue operations includessales ops, marketing ops, maybe
(28:26):
customer success ops as well.
Yeah.
Tends to roll up from areporting structure to someone
who is either by background ortitle or role, more of a sales
leadership one as opposed tomarketing.
Hmm.
Or even a co whatever.
Do.
Do you all, do you have aperspective on.
(28:48):
What you think that, what makesthe most sense for that?
I know, like I personally don'tthink it should roll up to MO
sales or marketing leadership.
But Right.
I, well, I don't think mostplaces do that.
Simon Daniels (28:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, in, in terms of, ofactual stats, I must admit I
don't think we do.
And, and so that's interesting.
We, we should, uh, we should tryand make sure that we've got
some figures around that.
So I, I did an anecdotal studyprobably a couple of years ago
now where I just literallylooked at some job ads, some,
some heads of rev ops, job ads,like, you know, VP, director,
(29:20):
whatever.
And I think I found that, Six orseven out of 10.
It was really sales ops.
Um, so you know that, that wasmy super anecdotal, um, market
survey at the time.
I'm not sure that's changeddramatically.
The key thing from ourperspective at Forrester though,
is simply we're not saying itshould be a single function.
(29:41):
That's not what we're saying.
So in a sense, we, we have lessof a position on Yeah.
Should it roll up to, tomarketing or sales or, or
whoever.
I mean, may maybe, um, refutingwhat I said a minute ago.
Personally, I do like the ideaof rev ops rolling up to a, a
coo.
But it has to be a, a verysingular set of circumstances in
(30:04):
terms of the individuals and theorganization and and so on.
And that's really the widerpoint, is it, it comes down to
the nature of the organization.
So if you are.
A startup or a scale up, you'reprobably in a position where you
can build a true integrated revop function from day one.
Um, have that roll up, you know,wherever makes sense for, for
(30:28):
that business, and that's gonnawork fine.
If you are a more establishedbusiness and you've got sales op
and you've got marketing ops andso on, trying to put those
together and then figure outwho's it going to report to.
Is, is possibly going to workless well.
And you know, in the future itmight even be interesting to see
Will, will, we see rev opsfunctions get split back out as,
(30:51):
as an organization gets biggerand, and it's like, you know,
it, it no longer makes sense.
I, I suppose I would like tothink that wouldn't happen, but,
um, maybe we, we, we,
Michael Hartmann (31:00):
we've had a guest on who described that kind
of scenario going forward,right?
Separate functions comingtogether as rev ops across them,
and then getting bigger and thenhaving to break it out again
because of the nature of thebusiness, the large inter, in
this case, very largeinternational.
Companies.
Yeah.
Yeah,
Simon Daniels (31:19):
yeah.
Well, that, that would, I mean,that does seem a little bit like
a de-evolution, but at the sametime, that's where the, the
business possibly needed to goand, and the, you know, were
that to happen.
Or even if you were tocontemplate creating a unified
rev op function, uh, and thendecide not to the, the critical
(31:41):
point is just to make sure yourecognize the ecosystem, the
alignment that needs to go intothat.
Um, because, you know, if wethink about some of the problems
that that arise, it's salesdetermining their target account
list.
Meanwhile, marketing have comeup with a total addressable
market and they don't match.
Um, and, and obviously that'sridiculous.
(32:02):
Um, and, and so that's the kindof thing that just needs to not
happen so that everyone agreeswho are we trying to sell our
stuff to?
Michael Hartmann (32:10):
Yeah.
Mike, did you have anyadditional questions on the Rev
ops go to market Op?
Cuz I, I, I, I wanna kind of goback to the chief of staff stuff
for a second and the data thatSimon talked about, but if you
have more we can.
I can hold it.
No, no,
Mike Rizzo (32:23):
I think, I think I, no, I think your, what I hear
from you is A super helpful andthen B um, There's the answer
is, uh, it depends.
It's just like our favorite,it's our favorite thing to say
in marketing operations.
Like, yeah, can can I send thatemail?
Well, it depends.
(32:44):
Uh, you know, can I build a revop function?
It depends.
What's your organizationstructure look like?
And, um, and I, I think, I thinkthat's okay.
I, you know, it's frustratingthat organizations and
leadership, you know, we all, ashumans, we all want the like, S
you know, the, uh, whatever thesilver.
You know, solution, right?
(33:06):
Uh, to like, how do we, how dowe just, just tell me how to do
it?
Um, and the reality is, is nope,
Simon Daniels (33:12):
it depends.
So I, I, I actually, I, I alwaystry and avoid saying it depends
because it's almost a cliche.
And in actual fact, I, I havethis idea that no good question
has any answer other than.
It depends, because if theanswer isn't, it depends.
It's either a really obviousquestion or just a really boring
(33:34):
question maybe.
So you need to avoid saying, itdepends.
Cause it's like, yeah, yeah,yeah, I know.
It depends.
What does it depend on?
And then that's where it startsgetting interesting.
Yeah.
I appreciate that perspective.
Michael Hartmann (33:45):
Thank you.
Yeah, no, I, I, it's interestingyou say that, and I always think
what it is, it's, it's.
There's not always a right.
An there's not a, in thosereally interesting questions,
there's usually not a rightanswer.
Mm-hmm.
You know, they're points of viewand opinions.
Yeah.
And they're based on tradeoffs.
Right.
And that's, and to me, all thesereally big questions, it's about
(34:07):
trade offs and what do you,which means that every
organization.
We'll have different levels of,say, risk tolerance.
So, you know, I've been atorganizations before where, so,
you know, had the CEO come andsay, you know, we want to share
our customer list with thisfirm.
That's, you know, done us asolid and I was, I had to push
back and ultimately it, it, itwas a more of a risk reward or
(34:31):
risk decision.
Not, I mean, it was a compliancething, which means that if we
got in trouble right then, Thatwould be something we, that's
the risk we take on.
Are we willing to take on thatrisk and the potential downside?
We end up not doing it just forthe record, but uh, just,
Simon Daniels (34:47):
just in case the Yeah.
The data protection authoritiesare listening Well, and, but,
Michael Hartmann (34:52):
but my point is a lot of, a lot of things
come down to not absolutes andthat's, that's the thing that
makes it hard.
I actually, I actually have a, Idunno that I've.
Codified it in some sort oftheory, but I think that's part
of why revenue operations tendsto lean more towards sales ops
(35:13):
is, is kind of the, the leaderin that versus marketing ops,
because I, I, the sense I haveis sales is much more binary,
right?
There is, you know, either won adeal, you didn't win a deal, you
met your quota, you didn't meetyour quota.
Whereas marketing is a littleharder to put in that kind of,
Look, you look if you want to,wasn't a campaign effective?
(35:33):
Well, mm-hmm.
The answer is not astraightforward yes or no.
It's you're probably, if you'redoing it right, you should be
looking at sort of a basket ofmetrics and evaluating it in a
to in total, across that it'snot, it's not as
straightforward.
Yeah, and I think that, It'spart of why marketers have a mar
internal messaging problem in alot of places.
(35:53):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah,
Simon Daniels (35:54):
yeah, yeah.
Well, that's, yeah, for sure.
Um, you, you could, you couldgenerate a certain level of
demand that, you know, it mightnot have been everything you
wanted, but it, if it got close,then it's, it's not a, it's not
a failure.
Um, whereas if you came secondin the pitch, but you didn't get
it, it's like, yeah.
That, that, that wasn't winning.
Right.
(36:15):
Um, which, which as you say,creates a much more, um, binary
mindset, which, which Yeah.
Makes perfect sense.
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (36:24):
It is easier for most people to wrap their
heads around.
Mm-hmm.
Simon Daniels (36:28):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (36:28):
Yeah.
All right.
So I want, if we can, I wanna goback to the, the, the research.
You said 72% of your, you know,Obviously like lean leans
towards enterprise, I guess.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, research 72% have, uh, orthinking about a chief of staff
for the head of marketing.
Is that Yeah.
Is that number right?
(36:48):
Yeah.
Um, and then actually I wassurprised that only 80% or 80%
of those were the ha includedmarketing ops under that
function.
So that was a little bit 85, 85.
Still, I would've expected thatto be almost all.
So that Sure.
I'm cur, I'd be, I'd be, I'd becurious to know.
Where is that?
Like, is it just, is itseparately, directly reporting
(37:09):
to the head of marketing?
Well,
Simon Daniels (37:12):
yeah, I mean, what, what that's saying is that
you've got a chief of staff anda head of marketing operations
and we, yeah, we're, we'reworking on some research in this
area to, to try and, um, Outlinewhat these roles and functions
look like.
And one of the questions we'veasked ourselves is, wait, if
you've got a chief of staff,what are they doing?
(37:32):
Or maybe what are they not doingthat ahead of marketing
operations is doing?
If, if there is a separate aheadof marketing operations?
And you know, typically whatthat comes down to in broad
terms is our chief of staff willbe doing the planning, the
coordination, um, you know, aaspects of strategizing.
And, and bringing everythingtogether.
(37:53):
Budgets perhaps, whereas, youknow, ahead of marketing
operations will remain focusedon the tech data governance, um,
execution in, in some regardsand, and some, you know, um,
measurement and analytics at theactual, you know, a, a kind of
a, a slightly lowered.
Doing it kind of level.
(38:14):
Um, whereas the chief of staffwill be going across marketing
and the wider organization to,to, to get the inputs and the
stakeholder support and, andthat kind of thing.
Um, so that's kind of how thatbreaks out.
If, if in, in, you know, I've, Imean I'm working with at least
one client that I can think ofwhere, you know, there is a
chiefs of staff, um, and infact, I think.
(38:35):
Um, one or more of, of the, theheads of, of directors of
marketing operations reportsinto that chief of staff.
Um, so, you know, that's, youknow, it's a very large
international business and, andthat's the kind of complexity
that, that they have.
Michael Hartmann (38:51):
Okay.
So now I'm, that's helpful.
What, I think you've touched onthis a little bit.
Let's see if we can get it.
A little more specifically forthose chief of staff type roles.
So, and I'm thinking about thisfor people who are in our
audience who maybe have anaspiration to do, cuz one of the
struggles I think we all dealwith in marketing op is there's
(39:11):
not a necessarily a clear pathafter the director maybe even,
and there's not many VP levelroles, right.
Or marketing ops.
So chief of staff seems to me tobe a fairly natural one.
Yeah.
But I think includes, The needto have some amount of skills
and experience that aretypically outside of what
Marketing Ops does.
What, what do you see thosebeing, and if you have any
(39:33):
suggestions on how people couldstart to accumulate some of that
experience?
Simon Daniels (39:39):
Um, experience to, to, to move into a, uh, to a
chief of staff
Michael Hartmann (39:43):
Mo into a, from, from a, say, say, from a
head of mops to, I didn't touchthat staff,
Simon Daniels (39:50):
sir, sir, does that.
Thank you, Siri.
The, um, yeah, so I mean, yeah.
The point I should have made isthat, Um, where you've got that
chief of staff and, and head ofmarketing operations in, in one,
in one person.
What, what that means is thatthe, the head of marketing
operations is performing thatcoordination role across the
(40:13):
marketing function, so acrossthe marketing leadership team.
Um, and the critical thing is,Particularly around planning and
coordination and often budgetsand maybe even aspects of, of,
um, you know, personnel andstaffing and so on.
But crucially not doing thosethings.
So, so the head of marketingoperations or the chief of staff
will not come up with themarketing plan or the campaign
(40:36):
plan, but what they will do isgo to the head of Demand, gen,
digital, whoever else, and say,you know, What are your plans?
Uh, well, here is the strategy,here are the objectives.
Um, you know, please create aplan that rolls up to that and
then put it all together.
Um, so from, from the point,point of view of a, of a
marketing operation, you know,head of marketing operations,
(40:59):
uh, who is looking to, uh, Whewhether they ever go into a
Chief of Staff role with thatjob title or, uh, become, you
know, the chief of staff slashhead of marketing operations, or
whether they just become, youknow, a VP of marketing
operations.
It, it's that mindset.
Um, and, uh, again, this needsto come down somewhat from the
(41:21):
CMO as, as well as, um, workingup into it, but, Thinking in, in
those terms, you know,coordination, like I say, um,
alignment, bringing everythingtogether.
Um, that, that's the sort of themindset that, that you, that you
need to have, um, to, to be atthe absolute top of the game.
Michael Hartmann (41:42):
So if I said to some re that you, you need to
have, uh, experience or abilityto show strategic planning and
Yeah.
Uh, how to.
Strategic thinking almost.
Right.
And how do you and how to, howto coordinate with other senior
leaders in
Simon Daniels (41:59):
influencer.
Yeah.
And that's crucial, you know,it, it goes outside of marketing
for sure.
So again, this is where, youknow, those relationships with
sales ops, if that exists is, iscrucial.
And, you know, other it.
Executive leadership, um,because you need to be probably
coordinating, you know, budgetsand making sure that that's
(42:20):
aligned with, with finance.
Um, from a tech perspective,making sure that that, uh, the,
the revenue technology is, isaligned and, and fitting in
with, with the wider enterprise,um, environment.
Um, so ha having all of thoserelationships, uh, and thinking
in those terms.
Um, and, you know, the, thetrues chief of staff will be.
(42:41):
Filtering for the C M O or, orfor their boss.
And, uh, bringing, bringing tothe table those things that,
that, that they need to belooking at.
Um, and, you know, most likelycoordinating around, um,
executive leadership meetings,board meetings, contributing
board papers, that, that kind ofthing, compiling those, so, You
(43:02):
know, making sure that, that youare involved in, in that kind of
process.
So, um, you know, most likely,and, and I would certainly
expect this to be the case, um,if, um, if the C M O is going
to, um, you know, a, anexecutive leadership meeting or
a board meeting with a, with apack of, of, of.
Marketing results, then quitelikely marketing operations is
(43:23):
contributing to that.
Um, and so it's just a matter ofmaking sure that you are, and,
and trying to make sure that youare really involved in the final
product and not just some inputthat then gets manipulated into
something else.
You know, try and really be, um,creating the final slide or
whatever, whatever that, that'sgoing into that.
(43:44):
Um, in, into that set for, for,for the, for that audience.
Uh,
Mike Rizzo (43:51):
no.
All of this is, is reallyinteresting.
I know we're coming up, we'recoming up on time here, so, um,
I, I just wanted to try tosqueeze this in a little bit.
So, um, do you, like, there'sthis thing that I talk about
with folks all the time.
Um, it's, it's this.
(44:13):
Strange role that you have in,in marketing operations where,
um, maybe strange isn't theright word for it, opportunistic
role that you have in marketingops where, um, you just have a
purview of the landscape oftechnology and the data flowing
through all of it.
Um, yeah, it's, it's highlyunique, you know, it just
doesn't.
Really no one else has thatlens.
(44:35):
Um, and you're only a couplepieces of information away from
knowing really how the entirebusiness works.
Like mm-hmm.
You show me, you, you show methe payroll system and then a
couple other things.
And now I, I really have thisperspective of, of our
organization that's equivalentto that of, you know, your, your
executives.
Right.
Your ceo Yeah.
For that matter.
Yeah.
Um, And so the conversation inthe talk track is like, is like
(44:59):
what is the responsibility ofthe, the future like executive
and, and the, the CMO for thatmatter?
Like is it going to come fromlike we just talked about, chief
of staff?
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
That's great.
Uh, and I think.
I think maybe that is the chthe, the C-suite that we, that
we reach in this functionbecause it's the most optimal
(45:21):
for our particular skills and,and, and aligning all these
people processing technology.
Um, but today, like, I don'tknow who has the responsibility
of saying, Hey, I need to entera new market and here's my
business model.
Uh, what are the things that Ineed to have in place in order
to do that?
It, it's not a CTO's job.
It's not a CIO's job.
It's.
(45:41):
Barely a CMOs job, and the CEOcertainly doesn't have that
function.
Um, and so like the closest thatI can think of is like, it's the
CEO's responsibility to figureout who, who should just now go
figure out the rest.
Mm-hmm.
And so the question is like,what's, what's to become of this
like startup scale up?
You're moving into growthmarkets who.
(46:05):
You know, who's gonna tellpeople what to, well, maybe it's
Forrester Forrester's gonna tell'em what to do.
So at TGF, it's
Simon Daniels (46:11):
Forrester.
Yeah, absolutely.
There you go.
Nice, nice.
Easy answer.
Uh, um, yeah, I, I, I certainlyagree with you that, that
marketing operations is, is verywell if, if not uniquely
positioned with a perspectiveacross obviously marketing.
Um, in, in terms of what's goingon and what's happening and, um,
the, the, all the differentmoving parts and, and, you know,
(46:34):
beyond that as well, um, in, interms of, as I say, all those
other interconnects, uh, and,and interlocks and, and, and how
that's working.
So, you know, when a newinitiative comes along, Ideally,
marketing operations iscertainly a first port of call
and a, and a and a chief ofstaff.
Um, e even more so perhaps.
All that said, I wouldn't wannaoverstate it.
(46:55):
I wouldn't want, you know,marketing operations to
overreach.
Um, anything is a team effortand.
It, it's just that if, uh, anorganization is smart and
they've got a good marketingoperations or rev ops function
or, or, or a chief of staff inthat position, then you know
that person should be in thatconversation, um, because
(47:18):
they're going to have thatperspective across audiences
and.
The ability to execute and, uh,the, the other elements that,
that are, that are going to gointo something.
Um, and, and so that, that'swhere, again, that strategic
involvement comes in.
Um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't wannasuggest that only ahead of
(47:40):
marketing operations could dothat, but it's a, it's
definitely a, a, a, a hugecontribution to, to be made for
sure.
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (47:47):
Yeah.
No, definitely appreciate
Michael Hartmann (47:48):
your perspective, for sure.
Yeah.
Well, as Mike alluded to, We areprobably run, we're we're kind
of running out of time.
I wish we could continue.
Yeah, I, I think I, I think wecould carry on.
I feel like end every show,every episode is like, I think
we could carry on for anotherdefinitely 30 minutes or so.
Um, but we do to be respectful.
Yeah.
He, he's gonna, Simon mean, Ithink you're gonna switch from
(48:10):
tee to a pint maybe next to Idon't you.
You're
Simon Daniels (48:13):
not, you're not very far off the truth.
Michael Hartmann (48:17):
Well, thank you for staying late.
Um, this has been a, a funconversation.
If folks wanna come up with you,or likewise, what's gonna happen
at Forrester?
You know, what, uh, what, what'sthe way for them to do that?
Sure.
Simon Daniels (48:27):
Well, uh, you can, you can find me on Twitter.
I, I, I put out the odd thing ifI find something interesting.
So, uh, I'm, uh, marketing opsguy.
Um, but other than that, uh,certainly very happy to connect
with anybody on LinkedIn.
You should.
And what, what I also do onLinkedIn and, and this, this is
gonna.
(48:47):
Sound like a, a, a blatant, uh,forester plug.
I'm trying to position it as apublic service announcement.
I do this little monthly, I callit Simon's unofficial Forester
Marketing Operations Roundup.
Basically, I pull together, uh,all of our research that's been
published that month.
Uh, that's available to clients,but also all of our blog posts,
(49:09):
any webinars that we've done,uh, we have a podcast, uh, that,
that, um, frequently hasepisodes relevant, um, to, uh,
to marketing operations and, uh,and B2B marketing.
Um, so, uh, look, look out forthat.
And, um, if, you know, if you'reworking in this space, that that
could well be, uh, Usefulbecause I've gotta say, we don't
always make it as easy as Ithink we should to find some of
(49:31):
our stuff.
And there's, there's some goodstuff out there.
So, um, take a, take a look atthat, if that's of interest.
Uh,
Mike Rizzo (49:37):
I've, I've personally found those, uh,
quite helpful the last time Iwas doing some digging and some
things.
So we appreciate
Michael Hartmann (49:42):
it.
Good.
We'll take, we'll take it as aPSA for sure.
Thank you, Simon.
Thank you Simon.
Thank you so much.
Enjoyed it.
Uh, Mike, thank you as alwaysand yeah, thanks to all our
listeners and our audience and,uh, appreciate you sticking with
us and look forward to our nextepisode.
Bye everyone.
Simon Daniels (49:59):
Thanks very much.
Goodbye.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
MarketingOps.com, powered by theMO Pros.
Join today with my co-host, MikeRizzo.
Early for him.
Yeah,
Mike Rizzo (00:14):
early-ish.
Early-ish.
I mean, it's, it's 9:00 AM I'mawake.
My kids got me up at
Simon Daniels (00:20):
five 50.
Michael Hartmann (00:21):
There you go.
I think.
All right.
Well, and then on the other endof the spectrum, our guest today
who's gonna help us talk about.
Uh, the idea of a maturity modelfor marketing ops and the skills
for mo pros to have to kindabring that to life is Simon
Daniels joining us from the uk.
He is currently a principalanalyst for Marketing Operations
(00:43):
Strategies at Forrester, wherehe does research and delivers
guidance and advice to clients.
Prior to joining Forestry, heheld several marketing
operations, leadership roles,both in-house and as a
consultant.
He also has co-hosted anotherpodcast about marketing ops
called What's Mops Got to Dowith It.
Simon, thanks for joining us andwelcome, and thanks for staying.
(01:03):
Thank you so much.
Thanks for staying on late on aFriday.
Simon Daniels (01:06):
No problem at all.
Thanks so much for having me.
I've, I've got a cup of teagoing here, so it's, uh, it's
all good.
Uh, great to talk to you,Michael, and uh, again, Mike.
Uh, and, uh, sad.
No.
Naomi, I'll, uh, I'll have to,uh, I know look forward to, um,
just getting a chance to, uh, totalk to her one of these days in
the future.
Michael Hartmann (01:23):
Yeah.
Well, we, we are missing her.
Um, she's got some stuff goingon, so I, you know, she's, it's
tough for her to, to fit thisin.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yep.
Um, Well, good.
So Simon, uh, thanks.
I'm gonna, I feel like I'm gonnabe saying this on all of our
upcoming episodes because I'vebeen so swamped.
I have not done a good job ofgetting these scheduled, but
(01:44):
thank you for your patience ingetting this scheduled.
It's all, I know we've talkedabout it for a while.
Yeah.
But, um, I do wanna get into themajority model conversation.
Um, and so we can maybe likefigure out how we wanna do this,
but you know, when you thinkabout.
That, I'm assuming there's some,some skills that you're assuming
(02:04):
are needed for people to be in,uh, marketing ops and things
like that.
What do you like, what are someof those things that you see
that are needed for, you know, areally top-notch marketing ops
team or department or, uh,professional?
Simon Daniels (02:16):
Right.
Well, yeah, and the, thematurity model, um, in, in, in
some ways all that concepts, youknow, speaks to, to, to some of
the aspects of the, of theskills and so on, that, that go
into a mopro.
What we see though, as beingneeded for a, a marketing
operations function, uh, And,uh, and, and the individuals are
(02:37):
really, first of all, executiveslevel support.
Um, without that, you, you canhave a function or a team or, or
a role and, and people doingthose jobs, but if they don't
have the, the real air cover andbacking, then it's, it's really
tough.
To progress up that maturityscale to really be an effective
marketing operations function.
(02:58):
So that, that's certainly, uh,crucial.
And then with that is astrategic remit.
Again, this, this speaks to the,to the maturity concept that
which we can come onto, but it,it needs to be more than just,
um, you know, executing andbuilding and, and configuring.
Um, it needs to be very much atthe table involved in the
(03:21):
thinking.
The direction, where are thingsgoing?
Um, and, and that's what reallymakes for a, for a successful
marketing operations function.
Um, with that, uh, a conceptthat the roles within a
marketing operations functionare careers and not just jobs.
Um, you know, they've got a,they've got a path.
And, you know, we might evencome back to that in terms of
(03:41):
what the ultimate um, Endpointfor a, for a marketing
operations professional is.
Um, and then, oh, I come back tothat.
I'm super excited about thatone.
Yes, sure.
Absolutely.
Keep going.
Keep me too.
I like, I like that one as well.
Um, and then, I mean, it's, it'salmost a truism, but just
development opportunities.
(04:03):
Um, so.
You know, obvious things liketraining, um, continual, um,
opportunities for enhancing theskills a across, um, the, the
spectrum of marketing operationsactivities.
Um, But things like alsomemberships.
So, you know, signing up formarketing ops, uh, dot com.
(04:23):
Um, so that there's a sense of,of the, of support and that,
that, again, it's a professionand, um, you know, not, not
that, not that it isn't, but youknow, there should be a sense
that the marketing ops Slackchannel is, you know, work safe
and rather than, Somebodylooking over, uh, another
person's shoulder and saying,well, what are you doing in, in
(04:44):
that Slack channel?
What are you, you know, whyaren't you building the campaign
that's going out tomorrow?
It would be literally, oh,great, I see you are educating
yourself or checking in withother people in the community,
getting, getting other input andso on.
And it's that kind of supportthat is, you know, makes a
difference between, um, Is it,is it something that you are
just having to do by yourself oris it really supported and, and
(05:07):
understood by, you know, thewider organization?
Um, the time to experiment andtry things out again?
You know, they should, theyshould be time to, uh, just try,
try all the new stuff out, youknow, whether it's AI or, um,
looking at aspects of themetaverse or any of the other,
you know, Keywords and topicsand trends and so on.
(05:28):
Uh, it could be a complete wasteof time, but it's important to
be on top of that stuff and havean understanding for it, and
that that needs to beunderstood.
Um, and then, you know, the, thechance to do this kind of thing,
maybe if you are a, if you're amarketing operations
professional, um, doing apodcast, writing a blog for
somebody, um, should be.
Part and parcel of the, of therole and, and that that should
(05:48):
be, that should be seen andrecognized.
Um, and then I thinkcollaboration, you know, outside
of marketing operations and, andmarketing, um, is, is again
crucial.
Um, and, and that speaks to someof the other things that, that
perhaps will come onto.
Um, so, you know, in, in, insummary, a marketing operations
professional needs to be insightdriven, a design thinker and,
(06:10):
and tech savvy, and put all thattogether and, and, uh, I think
you've got a, a goodcombination.
Michael Hartmann (06:16):
I think it's, um, the first thing you talked
about was executive support.
I wanna come back to that in asecond.
But the, the, I wanna touch onthe, the point about having time
to experiment and learn, try newthings that maybe are not core,
I think is one of the thingsthat's really hard to fit, fit
into.
At the same time, I know that I,and like you've probably had
(06:37):
this too, like I get asked allthe time about those things from
other people in marketing andothers.
Yeah.
Because they're also hearingabout it.
Yeah.
So I think it's, it's valuablenot only to learn, but also just
to be able to have aperspective.
Yeah.
Or, or you know, an opinion, ifyou will.
Yeah.
On whether or not something likethat makes sense for where your
organization is.
Yeah.
I'm just one, one follow up onthe question, follow up question
(06:58):
on the executive support.
When you say executive support,Uh, I, I think my mind
immediately goes to, you know,whatever your title the top
marketer is at the organizationis, is that, but what about
beyond that, right.
Sales or.
Operat like coo, c e o level.
Yeah.
Simon Daniels (07:15):
Well, yeah, absolutely.
I think, I mean, yeah, you'reabsolutely right.
I, I kind of meant the c m o or,or the most senior marketing
decision maker or, or leader.
But yeah, the, the entireC-suite, it's important to, to
have, to have that support.
And, you know, that comes backto the collaboration piece
because, um, Marketingoperations should, should be,
(07:36):
you know, collaborating withsales operations.
And, you know, certainly whenI've been a, a practitioner,
almost the first thing I, I doin, in a, in a role is to look
for the head of sales ops and,and make that connection And,
um, that, that's great.
And, and to be encouraged.
At the same time, it shouldn'tbe just down to those
(07:56):
individuals to connect.
Uh, the c m O should be sayingto the head of marketing
operations, you know, hit, I amgoing to introduce you to the
head of sales ops and, and the Cs O or head of sales should,
should be, you know, doing thesame in, in reverse and, and uh,
creating that collaboration.
So, yeah, absolutely that needsto span across.
And, you know, thinking in termsof the wider.
(08:19):
Uh, uh, collaboration and thewidert set of stakeholders that,
that marketing operations haveacross finance and IT, and, and
so on.
Then those leaders should belooking to make those, those
connections and, um, relate,build those relationships in, in
just the same way that the, thatthe mops, uh, the MOPS pro is
Michael Hartmann (08:39):
as well.
Yeah.
No, I, I agree.
I I, there's a thread there thatI think we'll end up coming back
to later, so I don't want to gothere yet.
But, um, so let's, let's, youkind of laid some foundation
here.
Uh, let's get into this maturitymodel.
Cause I think there's, one ofthe things I know I've, in fact,
I had a, a, a call with a menteeyesterday about kind of thinking
(09:01):
about how do you think about howto, how to structure or think
about a marking ops.
When you're talking to yourexecutives or your oth, you
know, other teams or, or ifyou're managing a team trying to
build out here, here's the gapsthat we have.
So I'm assuming you're gonna getinto some of that.
So what is your maturity modelthought process on, on that?
(09:22):
Yeah, so
Simon Daniels (09:23):
we, we have what we call, um, the, the, the
Forester, um, revenue operationsor marketing operations.
If, if you like, range ofresponsibilities, model.
And essentially that spans.
A core set of elements ofmarketing operations, uh, we
(09:43):
call them priorities.
So planning, process, tech, datameasurement.
So the, the things that youwould think of.
Yeah, that's marketingoperations, and then, So that's
the sort of the span of it.
And then what you have is, uh, adimension within each of those,
essentially from tactical tostrategic, and that that's what
(10:07):
describes the maturity in eachof those, um, uh, e each of
those elements.
Um, so like, like I, I kind ofalluded to.
The, at the tactical level, it'sjust essentially doing, um, and
then you rise up to end atstrategic where it's much more
driving.
And I suppose, I don't wanna saydirecting, but working with the
(10:31):
rest of a marketing leadershipteam and, and, you know, the C M
O or, or marketing leader to, tobe figuring out, um, you know,
how is everything fittingtogether?
Not waiting to be told, but,but, you know, putting forward
suggestions for perhaps a newpiece of technology to address.
A problem that has been, uh,identified or obviously
(10:52):
proactively, uh, governing datato make sure that it's, it's fit
for purpose.
Looking, you know, building outmeasurement and looking for ways
to, to do that better so thatmarketing and the business
knows, um, the, the benefit thatmarketing is delivering and, and
the return on investmentultimately, that, that's, um,
that's coming to that.
So that, that, that'sessentially what, what describes
(11:13):
the, uh, the overall maturity,if you like.
That's super,
Mike Rizzo (11:18):
super interesting and, and very helpful to hear
from, from your perspective.
For sure.
Uh, one of the things we'reworking on, uh, with a group of
board members effectively, uh,so community members that we've
pulled in, uh, across sort of a,a range of, uh, backgrounds.
Um, is what does it really meanto be a certified marketing
(11:40):
operations professional?
And along so, you know, some ofthis is exactly, no, no
surprise, right?
Once you've been around a while,uh, certainly the things that
we're talking about as well, um,trying to figure out are there
levels of, of certification oris there some sort of like
overarching theme that you cansort of pull in?
(12:00):
And one of the things that cameout of that conversation at, at
our last meeting a couple weeksago, Um, that I sort of defined
as what I, what I would calllike a universal truth, uh, when
it comes to marketingoperations, is that all in my
mind?
All things in marketingoperations have a strategy
(12:22):
component.
So like there's very rarely a, atime where you're gonna just do
something without first thinkingabout the implications of what's
about to happen.
Simon Daniels (12:33):
I would hope so.
Yeah.
I, I just,
Mike Rizzo (12:35):
I just don't know.
So when we talk about like, someof these core principles of what
might be, you know, what mightgo into a certification program
or just even a maturity model,right?
You're talking about tactical tostrategic, um, the execution
work.
I mean, you can be told what todo.
Yes.
Like, here's the list.
(12:56):
Hit send, right?
Yeah.
Like that, that, that requiresnothing, uh, other than you're
now doing whatever someone toldyou to do.
Yeah.
But if you're being told to sendan email to the database, uh,
there is some level of strategythat should go through your
mind, even if it's like, how doI pull the list?
Right.
Yeah.
Make sure they're opted in andall
Simon Daniels (13:17):
these other things.
And so do, do
Michael Hartmann (13:18):
you, do you think it's a, do you think it's
strategy?
Because I, I, to me, thatthere's sort of an intermediate
level, which I would call justunderstanding the context.
Yeah.
Right.
So it's hard, like, I don't knowwhat a better word is for it.
No, I know.
I, I don't, I don't, I'm notlike arguing like, I think
strategy is an important piece,but I, the, one of the things I
know I've done with, I try to dowith all my teams is if, if
(13:41):
you're asked to do something,whether it's for me or somebody
else on the marketing team, andyou don't know the why behind
it, you should be asking why.
Yeah.
Because maybe what they'reasking you to do is not really
the best way to do it.
And I think that, I think that'swhat you're getting at.
Yeah.
So you could, we could choose adifferent word, but I strategy's
fine.
I just, I've, to me it feelslike it.
(14:02):
Reduces what strategy means.
Cuz I think that's a little
Simon Daniels (14:04):
more proactive.
That's, well, 1, 1, 1 person'sstrategy is another person's
tactic to, uh, to, to paraphrasethe old, the old expression.
So I, I guess you, you, youcould look at it however you
want to.
I think though you, you'reabsolutely right in the sense
that a, any, any action shouldbe considered and understood and
the context, um, properly scopedout.
(14:26):
And yeah, even if it is aquestion of.
I mean, yeah, I can't, I barelycan imagine this happening, but
here's a list.
Send an email.
It, you know, you could at leastbe saying, well what is this
list?
You know, is it, is itcompliant?
Is it actually the rightaudience for the email that
we're looking at?
Could, could we do a differentsegmentation?
Um, and you know, building outfrom that, obviously asking
(14:50):
those questions just in moredetail, how are we segmenting
this?
Are we doing anypersonalization?
Are we.
Creating different versions for,for different, uh, for different
audiences.
Um, where are we sourcing theprospects?
Uh, what is the, the approach ofthat?
And obviously that that's whattakes you up the maturity.
Um, Curve or, or whatever,however you want to express
(15:10):
that.
And, you know, ultimately getsyou to a point where, way ahead
of e of ever thinking of, ofsending an email or, um, setting
a paid digital campaign runningor what have you.
Um, you've, you've got all ofthat thinking.
Um, and it's all interlocking.
Um, certainly, you know, we, we,we guide clients on.
(15:30):
Campaign strategy and planningand interlocks and, and
frameworks and all those kindsof things, so that by the time
you actually get down to thetactic, which is the, the, the
lowest or end point ofexecution, um, it, it's, you
know, by no means a random actof marketing.
Um, it's a very specific thingthat, that's taking place backed
(15:52):
by, you know, considerablethinking that that goes behind
that.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mike Rizzo (15:57):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And I think, uh, you know, noone wants to diminish the, the
use of strategy or theopportunity to be seen as more
strategic by any stretch.
But, um, you know, there'sentering new markets strategy.
There's compliance and GDPRstrategy.
Like, there's all kinds ofthings around, uh, you know,
(16:17):
again, you, you said the oldadage, you know, one person's
strategy is another's tactic, etcetera, so Right.
But yeah, that, no, that clarityI think is super, super helpful.
So,
Michael Hartmann (16:27):
yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting.
And I, I, I like, I mean,without having seen the details
of that, um, the maturity model,if I understand it right, you've
got sort of five dimensions ofwhat's needed for, uh, marketing
ops, and then within each ofthose five, some sort of scale
of maturity.
(16:48):
So assume then you, you know,one could be.
Well into, towards strategic andone of those dimensions, but
maybe more tactical than anotherand so on.
Uh, I assume there's some, alittle, some, at least some
correlation, right?
If you're strategic in one ormore than one, you're gonna be
further along.
And the others, one of thequestions I always run into, and
I think it's interesting, um,This is where I, I would love to
(17:11):
have Naomi on as well, because Ithink Mike and I both have most
of our experiences at verydifferent size and stage of
companies, and Naomi's sort ofin between or a little different
as well.
Do you, how well do you thinkthat model applies across
different size and stage ofcompanies or industries, or B2B
versus b2c?
Simon Daniels (17:32):
Sure.
Well, you know, for, for atForrester, we, we certainly, uh,
tend to skew towards theenterprise level.
That's, that's just where ourclient base sits.
And, and, uh, and, and you know,we're at that, that kind of, um,
enterprise end of the scale, ifyou like.
That said, I don't see there'sany reason that it doesn't apply
(17:52):
across the board clearly as youcome down the scale, um, to, to
mid-market and, and through tomaybe scale up and start up and
so on, the complexitydiminishes.
And so some of the conceptsmaybe aren't so applicable, but
really, um, you know, if you'vegot two people working on
something together, you needcollaboration and, and so, um,
(18:13):
and coordination and, and sothat, that creates its
complexity and.
I've, I've, you know, when,when, when I was doing the
podcast, uh, that I wasco-hosting, you know, we spoke
to plenty of marketingoperations leaders of, of
mid-market businesses, um, thatwere not huge by, by any, um,
you know, any, any count.
But the complexity is, is notinconsiderable.
(18:34):
There's just so many movingparts.
Everybody's trying to do so manydifferent things.
And so I think the applicabilityin, in terms of.
You know, thinkingstrategically, uh, looking for
how to do that, making thatcontribution, um, as a, as a
marketing operationsprofessional or, or team, um,
you know, applies just, just asmuch.
And it's just a matter of maybenot overreaching, um, but
(18:58):
certainly trying to make surethat you're off that base level,
um, to, uh, to, to be on ajourney towards, uh, towards
that higher levels of maturity.
Michael Hartmann (19:09):
It's, yeah, I think so.
That makes sense.
Knowing what I know aboutForster and, and the types of
clients you typically have.
Um, okay.
So let's kind of turn this alittle bit into today.
You've got this model and, um,yeah, I assume you've done some
work with some clients andthings like that to assess or.
(19:30):
Help them to apply to theirbusiness.
Mm-hmm.
What, what are you seeing in thekind of current state?
Like where are people along thedifferent, uh, dimensions of
maturity and are there, are youseeing any trends related to
that coming out of it?
Simon Daniels (19:47):
Well, yeah, I mean, we, yeah, we see, we
certainly see all sorts ofdifferent levels and, um, you
know, e even with, you know, theclients that we work with and,
and like I say, at the largerend of the scale, there's,
there's, there's all sorts ofdifferent, um, levels and, um,
you know, as you say, indifferent areas, different,
different, um, achievements.
(20:09):
Across those, those differentaspects.
And you know, the, the reasonthat you would become a Forester
client is because you, you, youneed, um, support across those
things.
And, and that's, that's whatwe're there to do.
And, and that's, that's whatcreates the kind of variety.
Um, you know, I think what we,what we do see in terms of.
(20:30):
The, the businesses that we workwith and, and what's out there
are, are the two things that,um, I think, um, you know, you,
you guys talk about all the timeon the podcast.
Um, so the first is, you know,think thinking in terms of that
strategic element.
Yeah.
We certainly see marketingoperations becoming increasingly
strategic.
(20:51):
Um, you know, it's, it, it'sbecoming, you know, Much more
embedded.
Um, and, and going back to whatI was saying, executive support
and those kinds of things, youknow, we, we definitely see
that, um, in fact, in a, in asurvey from, uh, 2021, we, we
saw, uh, 72% of the businessesthat we surveyed have.
(21:14):
A chief of staff to the cmo,which as I say is a, is a topic
that, that you've discussed.
Did you, did I always
Michael Hartmann (21:20):
make sure I What?
Didn't mishear that 72%.
Yeah.
Simon Daniels (21:24):
Yeah.
Now, wow.
Don't get me wrong, that soundshigh.
And so that reflects our clientbase.
But, but nonetheless, at thatend of the scale, um, you know,
that, that is, that is, youknow, what we are seeing
interesting in terms.
The, the prevalence of thatrole.
And of those 85% of those chiefsof staff are the head of
marketing operations.
(21:45):
So that, you know, embracing of,of, of strategy and, um, if, if
you like, elevation of thatposition is, is, you know, real
and, and happening.
Um, and so that's definitely,uh, a, a direction of travel.
Um, and then the other piece of,of course is, is, um, revenue
operations and the, the growthof that.
(22:06):
Term and function and, um,Certainly at Forrester, we, uh,
are are heading in thatdirection as well.
Uh, we'll be announcing somechanges, uh, to our services
that that will much morereflect, um, that direction of
travel towards revenueoperations.
And the key thing there is notthat, that's it for marketing
operations.
(22:28):
Uh, we see plenty of, of, youknow, marketing operations, uh,
functions and uh, and positions.
In fact, again, across our.
Client base.
Um, we see something like 5% ofof our clients have got a, a
revenue type job title.
So there's, there's, you know,plenty of other sales and
marketing ops people, um, stillout there, but it's the
(22:50):
direction of travel.
Um, and it speaks to that, uh,you know, cross-functional, uh,
collaboration and creating a.
Revenue ecosystem across thebusiness, whether you've got a
single function or whether it'smultiple functions, it's the
totality that's, that'simportant, um, rather than,
(23:10):
rather than the organizationallayout if you like.
So yeah, tho those are certainlytwo, two ar you know, two, uh,
key areas that where we see the,the, the profession going.
That's
Mike Rizzo (23:22):
incredible.
I, um, I felt like, Likestrangely validated, like
through at least two or three ofthose right comments that you
were making this now, like Ifelt like we as a community,
Michael, Naomi, everybody, youknow we're here, we are, we're
talking like it feels like chiefof staff.
It feels like C M O ops.
It feels like we're coming upwith all these things and here
(23:43):
you are saying, you know, of thefolks that we're talking to.
A huge percentage of them areactually in a chief of staff
role, and the majority of thoseare from a, from a marketing
house background.
I was like, wow, that is, thatis incredibly, incredibly
validating.
Uh, on top of that.
You know, here we are folks.
Simon said he, he, that we talkabout things regularly on our
(24:05):
show, which means Simon'slistening.
So I feel, I feel prettyvalidated
Michael Hartmann (24:08):
by that too.
Indeed.
Which, which
is
Mike Rizzo (24:11):
pretty cool.
So anyway, I'm all like gushingover here.
Like, this is cool.
Um, so what, you know, I'mexcited about this rev ops stuff
that's happening.
I, I've been, I think I havemixed emotions about it in
general.
Um, part of it is that, youknow, so many of us have just
been seeing that it's justpredominantly just a sales
(24:34):
operations sort of discussion.
Um, And I, I'm hoping that thatstarts to, to change a little
bit.
But then, you know, so I, sosort of two parts, like one, do
you feel that that's whyForrester is going to try to
potentially take a differentstance on this and try to help
maybe correct, at least fromyour perspective, a little bit
(24:54):
of what they're seeing in themarket?
Mm-hmm.
Um, or just maybe if it's notForrester's opinion and it's
just yours, whichever, uh, andthen the other one is, Go to
market ops, like what's the dealthere?
Right, right.
What's your thought
Simon Daniels (25:08):
on that?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I, I should make clear my,my opinion and foresters are
indistinguishable.
Just, just for the record.
Okay.
Alright.
Well, just to be fair, um, yeah,we, we, yeah, I should, I should
say that n nothing that we, weput out is, is anything other
than, you know, kind of verydeeply thought through some,
sometimes, almost, almostcomically.
(25:29):
And, you know, we spent a lot oftime thinking about.
Should, should we, should we gowith this, should we call it
revenue operations?
You know, people are out therecalling it, you know, or calling
themselves revenue operations,but it's really just sales
operations.
But ul ultimately, we've comedown on.
No, it, it should be calledrevenue operations.
(25:50):
That's what it is.
Um, it, it is the operationspertaining to the revenue
ecosystem within the business.
So we we're gonna, you know, putour arms around that and not,
not that to the, not that evenwe're so, um, you know, uh, so.
Highly thinking of our own, ourown opinion to, to suggest that,
(26:11):
um, everyone's gonna say, oh,well now Forrester have said it.
That's, that's, we better get onboard with that.
Nonetheless, if, if we can steerthings in a certain direction
whereby we agree that yeah,revenue operations is the
totality of the revenueecosystem and, um, it, it
encompasses all of that and it,it's more than just one, one
aspect of that then, um, that,that.
(26:35):
You know, that sums that up.
And so I think that's, that'swhat we're trying to do with
that.
Um, and, and, and just, youknow, talk about it in, in those
wider terms.
Go ahead.
Pardon?
I,
Michael Hartmann (26:50):
oh, so sorry.
Go ahead.
Simon Daniels (26:51):
If you, well, I was just, I was just gonna speak
to the, the, to the go-to marketpiece, but I dunno whether you
Michael Hartmann (26:55):
wanna just No, no, go ahead.
No, no.
I, I have a separate question,so, right,
Simon Daniels (26:59):
go for it.
So ju yeah, just coming back onthe go to market operations, I,
I, I saw, I need to be supercareful here cuz I have a client
who literally is, is justadopted that term and it makes
perfect sense in actual factbecause.
What they're doing is saying,okay, we've got sales
operations, uh, and they'recontinuing to do the classic
sales operations stuff, butmeanwhile we, our marketing
(27:21):
operations, it feels like it'sactually a bit more than just
marketing.
Cuz I think what they're doingis, you know, incorporating a
little bit of the, of the, uh,sort of customer success aspect.
Um, maybe some, some elementsof, um, The market sizing and,
um, total addressable market,those, those bits.
So it's, it's a little bit morethan just marketing operations.
(27:44):
So that's where the go-to-marketaspect comes in, I think.
Um, so, you know, it, it's,again, it's a part of that wider
rev op ecosystem.
Um, and as long as there'salignment across the totality of
it within, within everyorganization, um, you know,
that's, that's fine.
Michael Hartmann (28:04):
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's interestingdistinction.
I like that.
I, um, the question I was gonnaget to, and this is getting back
to revenue operations, feelslike it tends to be driven more
out of sales and in fact, nodata to back this up.
Maybe you do Simon, but it feelslike what I keep hearing about
is.
Revenue operations includessales ops, marketing ops, maybe
(28:26):
customer success ops as well.
Yeah.
Tends to roll up from areporting structure to someone
who is either by background ortitle or role, more of a sales
leadership one as opposed tomarketing.
Hmm.
Or even a co whatever.
Do.
Do you all, do you have aperspective on.
(28:48):
What you think that, what makesthe most sense for that?
I know, like I personally don'tthink it should roll up to MO
sales or marketing leadership.
But Right.
I, well, I don't think mostplaces do that.
Simon Daniels (28:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, in, in terms of, ofactual stats, I must admit I
don't think we do.
And, and so that's interesting.
We, we should, uh, we should tryand make sure that we've got
some figures around that.
So I, I did an anecdotal studyprobably a couple of years ago
now where I just literallylooked at some job ads, some,
some heads of rev ops, job ads,like, you know, VP, director,
(29:20):
whatever.
And I think I found that, Six orseven out of 10.
It was really sales ops.
Um, so you know that, that wasmy super anecdotal, um, market
survey at the time.
I'm not sure that's changeddramatically.
The key thing from ourperspective at Forrester though,
is simply we're not saying itshould be a single function.
(29:41):
That's not what we're saying.
So in a sense, we, we have lessof a position on Yeah.
Should it roll up to, tomarketing or sales or, or
whoever.
I mean, may maybe, um, refutingwhat I said a minute ago.
Personally, I do like the ideaof rev ops rolling up to a, a
coo.
But it has to be a, a verysingular set of circumstances in
(30:04):
terms of the individuals and theorganization and and so on.
And that's really the widerpoint, is it, it comes down to
the nature of the organization.
So if you are.
A startup or a scale up, you'reprobably in a position where you
can build a true integrated revop function from day one.
Um, have that roll up, you know,wherever makes sense for, for
(30:28):
that business, and that's gonnawork fine.
If you are a more establishedbusiness and you've got sales op
and you've got marketing ops andso on, trying to put those
together and then figure outwho's it going to report to.
Is, is possibly going to workless well.
And you know, in the future itmight even be interesting to see
Will, will, we see rev opsfunctions get split back out as,
(30:51):
as an organization gets biggerand, and it's like, you know,
it, it no longer makes sense.
I, I suppose I would like tothink that wouldn't happen, but,
um, maybe we, we, we,
Michael Hartmann (31:00):
we've had a guest on who described that kind
of scenario going forward,right?
Separate functions comingtogether as rev ops across them,
and then getting bigger and thenhaving to break it out again
because of the nature of thebusiness, the large inter, in
this case, very largeinternational.
Companies.
Yeah.
Yeah,
Simon Daniels (31:19):
yeah.
Well, that, that would, I mean,that does seem a little bit like
a de-evolution, but at the sametime, that's where the, the
business possibly needed to goand, and the, you know, were
that to happen.
Or even if you were tocontemplate creating a unified
rev op function, uh, and thendecide not to the, the critical
(31:41):
point is just to make sure yourecognize the ecosystem, the
alignment that needs to go intothat.
Um, because, you know, if wethink about some of the problems
that that arise, it's salesdetermining their target account
list.
Meanwhile, marketing have comeup with a total addressable
market and they don't match.
Um, and, and obviously that'sridiculous.
(32:02):
Um, and, and so that's the kindof thing that just needs to not
happen so that everyone agreeswho are we trying to sell our
stuff to?
Michael Hartmann (32:10):
Yeah.
Mike, did you have anyadditional questions on the Rev
ops go to market Op?
Cuz I, I, I, I wanna kind of goback to the chief of staff stuff
for a second and the data thatSimon talked about, but if you
have more we can.
I can hold it.
No, no,
Mike Rizzo (32:23):
I think, I think I, no, I think your, what I hear
from you is A super helpful andthen B um, There's the answer
is, uh, it depends.
It's just like our favorite,it's our favorite thing to say
in marketing operations.
Like, yeah, can can I send thatemail?
Well, it depends.
(32:44):
Uh, you know, can I build a revop function?
It depends.
What's your organizationstructure look like?
And, um, and I, I think, I thinkthat's okay.
I, you know, it's frustratingthat organizations and
leadership, you know, we all, ashumans, we all want the like, S
you know, the, uh, whatever thesilver.
You know, solution, right?
(33:06):
Uh, to like, how do we, how dowe just, just tell me how to do
it?
Um, and the reality is, is nope,
Simon Daniels (33:12):
it depends.
So I, I, I actually, I, I alwaystry and avoid saying it depends
because it's almost a cliche.
And in actual fact, I, I havethis idea that no good question
has any answer other than.
It depends, because if theanswer isn't, it depends.
It's either a really obviousquestion or just a really boring
(33:34):
question maybe.
So you need to avoid saying, itdepends.
Cause it's like, yeah, yeah,yeah, I know.
It depends.
What does it depend on?
And then that's where it startsgetting interesting.
Yeah.
I appreciate that perspective.
Michael Hartmann (33:45):
Thank you.
Yeah, no, I, I, it's interestingyou say that, and I always think
what it is, it's, it's.
There's not always a right.
An there's not a, in thosereally interesting questions,
there's usually not a rightanswer.
Mm-hmm.
You know, they're points of viewand opinions.
Yeah.
And they're based on tradeoffs.
Right.
And that's, and to me, all thesereally big questions, it's about
(34:07):
trade offs and what do you,which means that every
organization.
We'll have different levels of,say, risk tolerance.
So, you know, I've been atorganizations before where, so,
you know, had the CEO come andsay, you know, we want to share
our customer list with thisfirm.
That's, you know, done us asolid and I was, I had to push
back and ultimately it, it, itwas a more of a risk reward or
(34:31):
risk decision.
Not, I mean, it was a compliancething, which means that if we
got in trouble right then, Thatwould be something we, that's
the risk we take on.
Are we willing to take on thatrisk and the potential downside?
We end up not doing it just forthe record, but uh, just,
Simon Daniels (34:47):
just in case the Yeah.
The data protection authoritiesare listening Well, and, but,
Michael Hartmann (34:52):
but my point is a lot of, a lot of things
come down to not absolutes andthat's, that's the thing that
makes it hard.
I actually, I actually have a, Idunno that I've.
Codified it in some sort oftheory, but I think that's part
of why revenue operations tendsto lean more towards sales ops
(35:13):
is, is kind of the, the leaderin that versus marketing ops,
because I, I, the sense I haveis sales is much more binary,
right?
There is, you know, either won adeal, you didn't win a deal, you
met your quota, you didn't meetyour quota.
Whereas marketing is a littleharder to put in that kind of,
Look, you look if you want to,wasn't a campaign effective?
(35:33):
Well, mm-hmm.
The answer is not astraightforward yes or no.
It's you're probably, if you'redoing it right, you should be
looking at sort of a basket ofmetrics and evaluating it in a
to in total, across that it'snot, it's not as
straightforward.
Yeah, and I think that, It'spart of why marketers have a mar
internal messaging problem in alot of places.
(35:53):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah,
Simon Daniels (35:54):
yeah, yeah.
Well, that's, yeah, for sure.
Um, you, you could, you couldgenerate a certain level of
demand that, you know, it mightnot have been everything you
wanted, but it, if it got close,then it's, it's not a, it's not
a failure.
Um, whereas if you came secondin the pitch, but you didn't get
it, it's like, yeah.
That, that, that wasn't winning.
Right.
(36:15):
Um, which, which as you say,creates a much more, um, binary
mindset, which, which Yeah.
Makes perfect sense.
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (36:24):
It is easier for most people to wrap their
heads around.
Mm-hmm.
Simon Daniels (36:28):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (36:28):
Yeah.
All right.
So I want, if we can, I wanna goback to the, the, the research.
You said 72% of your, you know,Obviously like lean leans
towards enterprise, I guess.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, research 72% have, uh, orthinking about a chief of staff
for the head of marketing.
Is that Yeah.
Is that number right?
(36:48):
Yeah.
Um, and then actually I wassurprised that only 80% or 80%
of those were the ha includedmarketing ops under that
function.
So that was a little bit 85, 85.
Still, I would've expected thatto be almost all.
So that Sure.
I'm cur, I'd be, I'd be, I'd becurious to know.
Where is that?
Like, is it just, is itseparately, directly reporting
(37:09):
to the head of marketing?
Well,
Simon Daniels (37:12):
yeah, I mean, what, what that's saying is that
you've got a chief of staff anda head of marketing operations
and we, yeah, we're, we'reworking on some research in this
area to, to try and, um, Outlinewhat these roles and functions
look like.
And one of the questions we'veasked ourselves is, wait, if
you've got a chief of staff,what are they doing?
(37:32):
Or maybe what are they not doingthat ahead of marketing
operations is doing?
If, if there is a separate aheadof marketing operations?
And you know, typically whatthat comes down to in broad
terms is our chief of staff willbe doing the planning, the
coordination, um, you know, aaspects of strategizing.
And, and bringing everythingtogether.
(37:53):
Budgets perhaps, whereas, youknow, ahead of marketing
operations will remain focusedon the tech data governance, um,
execution in, in some regardsand, and some, you know, um,
measurement and analytics at theactual, you know, a, a kind of
a, a slightly lowered.
Doing it kind of level.
(38:14):
Um, whereas the chief of staffwill be going across marketing
and the wider organization to,to, to get the inputs and the
stakeholder support and, andthat kind of thing.
Um, so that's kind of how thatbreaks out.
If, if in, in, you know, I've, Imean I'm working with at least
one client that I can think ofwhere, you know, there is a
chiefs of staff, um, and infact, I think.
(38:35):
Um, one or more of, of the, theheads of, of directors of
marketing operations reportsinto that chief of staff.
Um, so, you know, that's, youknow, it's a very large
international business and, andthat's the kind of complexity
that, that they have.
Michael Hartmann (38:51):
Okay.
So now I'm, that's helpful.
What, I think you've touched onthis a little bit.
Let's see if we can get it.
A little more specifically forthose chief of staff type roles.
So, and I'm thinking about thisfor people who are in our
audience who maybe have anaspiration to do, cuz one of the
struggles I think we all dealwith in marketing op is there's
(39:11):
not a necessarily a clear pathafter the director maybe even,
and there's not many VP levelroles, right.
Or marketing ops.
So chief of staff seems to me tobe a fairly natural one.
Yeah.
But I think includes, The needto have some amount of skills
and experience that aretypically outside of what
Marketing Ops does.
What, what do you see thosebeing, and if you have any
(39:33):
suggestions on how people couldstart to accumulate some of that
experience?
Simon Daniels (39:39):
Um, experience to, to, to move into a, uh, to a
chief of staff
Michael Hartmann (39:43):
Mo into a, from, from a, say, say, from a
head of mops to, I didn't touchthat staff,
Simon Daniels (39:50):
sir, sir, does that.
Thank you, Siri.
The, um, yeah, so I mean, yeah.
The point I should have made isthat, Um, where you've got that
chief of staff and, and head ofmarketing operations in, in one,
in one person.
What, what that means is thatthe, the head of marketing
operations is performing thatcoordination role across the
(40:13):
marketing function, so acrossthe marketing leadership team.
Um, and the critical thing is,Particularly around planning and
coordination and often budgetsand maybe even aspects of, of,
um, you know, personnel andstaffing and so on.
But crucially not doing thosethings.
So, so the head of marketingoperations or the chief of staff
will not come up with themarketing plan or the campaign
(40:36):
plan, but what they will do isgo to the head of Demand, gen,
digital, whoever else, and say,you know, What are your plans?
Uh, well, here is the strategy,here are the objectives.
Um, you know, please create aplan that rolls up to that and
then put it all together.
Um, so from, from the point,point of view of a, of a
marketing operation, you know,head of marketing operations,
(40:59):
uh, who is looking to, uh, Whewhether they ever go into a
Chief of Staff role with thatjob title or, uh, become, you
know, the chief of staff slashhead of marketing operations, or
whether they just become, youknow, a VP of marketing
operations.
It, it's that mindset.
Um, and, uh, again, this needsto come down somewhat from the
(41:21):
CMO as, as well as, um, workingup into it, but, Thinking in, in
those terms, you know,coordination, like I say, um,
alignment, bringing everythingtogether.
Um, that, that's the sort of themindset that, that you, that you
need to have, um, to, to be atthe absolute top of the game.
Michael Hartmann (41:42):
So if I said to some re that you, you need to
have, uh, experience or abilityto show strategic planning and
Yeah.
Uh, how to.
Strategic thinking almost.
Right.
And how do you and how to, howto coordinate with other senior
leaders in
Simon Daniels (41:59):
influencer.
Yeah.
And that's crucial, you know,it, it goes outside of marketing
for sure.
So again, this is where, youknow, those relationships with
sales ops, if that exists is, iscrucial.
And, you know, other it.
Executive leadership, um,because you need to be probably
coordinating, you know, budgetsand making sure that that's
(42:20):
aligned with, with finance.
Um, from a tech perspective,making sure that that, uh, the,
the revenue technology is, isaligned and, and fitting in
with, with the wider enterprise,um, environment.
Um, so ha having all of thoserelationships, uh, and thinking
in those terms.
Um, and, you know, the, thetrues chief of staff will be.
(42:41):
Filtering for the C M O or, orfor their boss.
And, uh, bringing, bringing tothe table those things that,
that, that they need to belooking at.
Um, and, you know, most likelycoordinating around, um,
executive leadership meetings,board meetings, contributing
board papers, that, that kind ofthing, compiling those, so, You
(43:02):
know, making sure that, that youare involved in, in that kind of
process.
So, um, you know, most likely,and, and I would certainly
expect this to be the case, um,if, um, if the C M O is going
to, um, you know, a, anexecutive leadership meeting or
a board meeting with a, with apack of, of, of.
Marketing results, then quitelikely marketing operations is
(43:23):
contributing to that.
Um, and so it's just a matter ofmaking sure that you are, and,
and trying to make sure that youare really involved in the final
product and not just some inputthat then gets manipulated into
something else.
You know, try and really be, um,creating the final slide or
whatever, whatever that, that'sgoing into that.
(43:44):
Um, in, into that set for, for,for the, for that audience.
Uh,
Mike Rizzo (43:51):
no.
All of this is, is reallyinteresting.
I know we're coming up, we'recoming up on time here, so, um,
I, I just wanted to try tosqueeze this in a little bit.
So, um, do you, like, there'sthis thing that I talk about
with folks all the time.
Um, it's, it's this.
(44:13):
Strange role that you have in,in marketing operations where,
um, maybe strange isn't theright word for it, opportunistic
role that you have in marketingops where, um, you just have a
purview of the landscape oftechnology and the data flowing
through all of it.
Um, yeah, it's, it's highlyunique, you know, it just
doesn't.
Really no one else has thatlens.
(44:35):
Um, and you're only a couplepieces of information away from
knowing really how the entirebusiness works.
Like mm-hmm.
You show me, you, you show methe payroll system and then a
couple other things.
And now I, I really have thisperspective of, of our
organization that's equivalentto that of, you know, your, your
executives.
Right.
Your ceo Yeah.
For that matter.
Yeah.
Um, And so the conversation inthe talk track is like, is like
(44:59):
what is the responsibility ofthe, the future like executive
and, and the, the CMO for thatmatter?
Like is it going to come fromlike we just talked about, chief
of staff?
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
That's great.
Uh, and I think.
I think maybe that is the chthe, the C-suite that we, that
we reach in this functionbecause it's the most optimal
(45:21):
for our particular skills and,and, and aligning all these
people processing technology.
Um, but today, like, I don'tknow who has the responsibility
of saying, Hey, I need to entera new market and here's my
business model.
Uh, what are the things that Ineed to have in place in order
to do that?
It, it's not a CTO's job.
It's not a CIO's job.
It's.
(45:41):
Barely a CMOs job, and the CEOcertainly doesn't have that
function.
Um, and so like the closest thatI can think of is like, it's the
CEO's responsibility to figureout who, who should just now go
figure out the rest.
Mm-hmm.
And so the question is like,what's, what's to become of this
like startup scale up?
You're moving into growthmarkets who.
(46:05):
You know, who's gonna tellpeople what to, well, maybe it's
Forrester Forrester's gonna tell'em what to do.
So at TGF, it's
Simon Daniels (46:11):
Forrester.
Yeah, absolutely.
There you go.
Nice, nice.
Easy answer.
Uh, um, yeah, I, I, I certainlyagree with you that, that
marketing operations is, is verywell if, if not uniquely
positioned with a perspectiveacross obviously marketing.
Um, in, in terms of what's goingon and what's happening and, um,
the, the, all the differentmoving parts and, and, you know,
(46:34):
beyond that as well, um, in, interms of, as I say, all those
other interconnects, uh, and,and interlocks and, and, and how
that's working.
So, you know, when a newinitiative comes along, Ideally,
marketing operations iscertainly a first port of call
and a, and a and a chief ofstaff.
Um, e even more so perhaps.
All that said, I wouldn't wannaoverstate it.
(46:55):
I wouldn't want, you know,marketing operations to
overreach.
Um, anything is a team effortand.
It, it's just that if, uh, anorganization is smart and
they've got a good marketingoperations or rev ops function
or, or, or a chief of staff inthat position, then you know
that person should be in thatconversation, um, because
(47:18):
they're going to have thatperspective across audiences
and.
The ability to execute and, uh,the, the other elements that,
that are, that are going to gointo something.
Um, and, and so that, that'swhere, again, that strategic
involvement comes in.
Um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't wannasuggest that only ahead of
(47:40):
marketing operations could dothat, but it's a, it's
definitely a, a, a, a hugecontribution to, to be made for
sure.
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (47:47):
Yeah.
No, definitely appreciate
Michael Hartmann (47:48):
your perspective, for sure.
Yeah.
Well, as Mike alluded to, We areprobably run, we're we're kind
of running out of time.
I wish we could continue.
Yeah, I, I think I, I think wecould carry on.
I feel like end every show,every episode is like, I think
we could carry on for anotherdefinitely 30 minutes or so.
Um, but we do to be respectful.
Yeah.
He, he's gonna, Simon mean, Ithink you're gonna switch from
(48:10):
tee to a pint maybe next to Idon't you.
You're
Simon Daniels (48:13):
not, you're not very far off the truth.
Michael Hartmann (48:17):
Well, thank you for staying late.
Um, this has been a, a funconversation.
If folks wanna come up with you,or likewise, what's gonna happen
at Forrester?
You know, what, uh, what, what'sthe way for them to do that?
Sure.
Simon Daniels (48:27):
Well, uh, you can, you can find me on Twitter.
I, I, I put out the odd thing ifI find something interesting.
So, uh, I'm, uh, marketing opsguy.
Um, but other than that, uh,certainly very happy to connect
with anybody on LinkedIn.
You should.
And what, what I also do onLinkedIn and, and this, this is
gonna.
(48:47):
Sound like a, a, a blatant, uh,forester plug.
I'm trying to position it as apublic service announcement.
I do this little monthly, I callit Simon's unofficial Forester
Marketing Operations Roundup.
Basically, I pull together, uh,all of our research that's been
published that month.
Uh, that's available to clients,but also all of our blog posts,
(49:09):
any webinars that we've done,uh, we have a podcast, uh, that,
that, um, frequently hasepisodes relevant, um, to, uh,
to marketing operations and, uh,and B2B marketing.
Um, so, uh, look, look out forthat.
And, um, if, you know, if you'reworking in this space, that that
could well be, uh, Usefulbecause I've gotta say, we don't
always make it as easy as Ithink we should to find some of
(49:31):
our stuff.
And there's, there's some goodstuff out there.
So, um, take a, take a look atthat, if that's of interest.
Uh,
Mike Rizzo (49:37):
I've, I've personally found those, uh,
quite helpful the last time Iwas doing some digging and some
things.
So we appreciate
Michael Hartmann (49:42):
it.
Good.
We'll take, we'll take it as aPSA for sure.
Thank you, Simon.
Thank you Simon.
Thank you so much.
Enjoyed it.
Uh, Mike, thank you as alwaysand yeah, thanks to all our
listeners and our audience and,uh, appreciate you sticking with
us and look forward to our nextepisode.
Bye everyone.
Simon Daniels (49:59):
Thanks very much.
Goodbye.
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.