November 7, 2022 • 49 mins
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In this episode, we talk How to Elevate Marketing Ops from a CMO's Perspective with Kyle Lacy. Most recently, Kyle was the SVP of Marketing at Seismic after Seismic acquired Lessonly, where Kyle was the CMO. Kyle has held several marketing leadership roles at several different companies. In addition, Kyle is an advisor to several organizations, a speaker and author of three books [this is something I just learned]. And, I think it is safe to say that Kyle believes in the power of community to accelerate careers.
Tune in to hear:
- Kyle's experiences working with different Marketing Ops teams, whether there were there lots of similarities in structure/size, and how he viewed those teams from a marketing leadership perspective.
- How he thinks most Marketing Ops teams are perceived by their marketing leader (or executive team) and why?
- What advice would he give to Marketing Ops professionals to be more involved with marketing strategy and planning.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:00):
Hello everyone.
(00:00):
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
marketing ops.com, powered bythe MO Pros.
I am your host, MichaelHartmann.
Joined today by co-host MikeRizzo.
Mike, what's this year again?
Uh,
Mike Rizzo (00:12):
just to solidify it in the hearts and minds of all
of our listeners.
It is the year of the Mo Pro
Michael Hartmann (00:17):
the year, the Mopro, we are definitely gonna
have to come up with somethingelse next year.
Um, alright, well we're excitedto have joining us today, Kyle
Lacy.
had the, the, the fortune of, ofmeeting Kyle during the pandemic
and feel like, uh, he's one of agreat marketing leaders.
So most recently Kyle was theSVP of marketing at Seismic and
(00:37):
he joined Seismic after.
The company he was with,Lessonly, where he was a CMO,
was acquired by Seismic.
He has held several marketingleadership roles at several
different companies.
In addition, Kyle is an advisorto several organizations, a
speaker, author of three books.
We're gonna get into that and,uh, I think it's safe to say
Kyle believes in the power ofcommunity to accelerate careers.
(00:58):
So, Kyle, thanks for joining us.
Kyle Lacy (01:00):
Thank you for having me.
It's a.
Michael Hartmann (01:02):
All right.
Well, so I, I did, I mentionedthe, uh, well, let's get, we'll
go into some of this later, butreally, I know for, we're, we're
recording this in early November22.
Um, and you are currently onsort of a, I'll call it, I
guess, a sabbatical, but whydon't you like, maybe share with
our listeners, you know, uh, youknow, kinda what let you do
(01:23):
through your career, yourdecisions, and.
making the decision to take asabbatical.
Cause it sounds like you, youintent were very intentional
about this.
Kyle Lacy (01:32):
Yeah.
Is sabbatical the right word?
I've been calling it, it'ssabbatical.
Let's just call it, we shouldcall it a break.
It was just a break.
Michael Hartmann (01:39):
Yeah.
Kyle Lacy (01:40):
I think I've been, there's been a couple of my
coworkers from seismic have madefun of me cuz they're like,
Dude, this isn't a sabbatical.
You're just, you're taking abreak, you're gonna find
something new.
But um, so I think that, I thinkthat anyone who's in a high
gross software environment,right, that's venture backed or
PE owned, You've got growthgoals that are comparatively to
(02:05):
other businesses are prettyridiculous.
I believe it is very importantfor leaders and even individual
contributors to understand whenit's time to take a break, both
from a physical nature as wellas just mental health.
And for me, it had been four anda half years lessen.
The seismic acquisitionhappened.
I, I was very lucky andprivileged that I had the
(02:27):
opportunity to lead themarketing team at Seismic for a
year, but it's, you know, we allknow that different stages of
companies require differenttypes of people, right?
And seismic, you know, 10 xlarger than, less than we 1500
employees.
Um, I, I realized pretty quicklythat I am built for more of the
(02:48):
a, b, C round type company thanI.
The growth stage that seismic'sat.
So for me it was mostly just,Hey, if I, if I'm looking back
two years in the future, am Igonna be in a good place?
And I just didn't believe thatmentally I would be.
So I made the decision to say Iwas, and I'm very lucky that I
(03:09):
could make that decision.
Where it's a very privileged,the fact that you have a
question about sabbatical isjust a privileged thing anyway,
that I can actually do this.
Right?
So I just wanted to throw thatout there because I'm lucky that
I can make that decision.
But, you know, it was more forfor me to reset and to try to
figure out what my next, what mynext step is gonna.
Michael Hartmann (03:31):
Yeah, it's, it's interesting, uh, we talk
about like the, the sort ofreset on both physical, mental,
It's, it was really interesting.
I happened to have to take a redeye, uh, flight.
Like two weeks ago, coming backfrom the West coast to Dallas
and I've also been, was just,well let's say reading, I've
been listening to the audiobookof Essentialism.
(03:52):
I dunno if you're familiar
Kyle Lacy (03:53):
Mm-hmm.
Michael Hartmann (03:54):
And, and it literally, like around that same
time I was the, was the, thesection about how important
sleep was and, and how it'sactually like when you don't get
enough sleep, it can be like,Drunk.
Right.
Or you know, under theinfluence.
And I literally, that day afterI got home, I was trying to, I
felt so disoriented.
Right.
And I think that's the extreme,but if what you're talking
(04:14):
about, but.
Kyle Lacy (04:14):
but.
I, but it's, it's stress.
It's, I was waking up mostnights in the middle of the
night, couldn't go back to sleeplike it, just that, that type of
stuff.
When it's compou, like acompounding part of that is very
dangerous.
And so I, you know, I just hadto, I had to make that decision
for myself, and it was, it wasdiff, it was a difficult
decision for sure.
Michael Hartmann (04:35):
Yeah, I think it's, um, I think you're right.
It's a, it is a privilege.
At the same time, I wanted tohit on this a little bit because
we actually had somebody on, uh,an episode of about two months
ago who opened up about her own,like having to go into, you
know, into, uh, Yeah.
To a place for help with,basically she had a breakdown,
(04:56):
right?
And, um, I think it was reallyimportant to let people know
that it's, you know, you're notalone if you're feeling that
kind of level of stress.
So yeah, hopefully people willtake that for what it is and
not, Hey, look at, look at howgreat Kyle is.
And he, he gets the opportunity.
But like, I think it's good thatthe people are recognizing that
it's important to do that.
Kyle Lacy (05:16):
Yeah, and you usually, you, you will know when
it's time and usually your gut,I mean, we all make decisions
based off of gut instinct, butusually your gut's, right?
And the difference between meand somebody that powers through
is just, I made the decision to.
To think about my family andmyself and, and it it, and it
(05:39):
benefited me in the long run forsure.
Michael Hartmann (05:41):
That's great.
Well, let's, let's get into, youknow, what we wanted, I think
part of why I really wanted toget you on here is, is you
probably know Kyle, our, ourprimary audience and the
listeners is made up of opsfolks.
So primarily marketing ops,maybe revenue ops, sales ops,
and kind of the, the, the thingsthat are tangential to that.
(06:02):
So, I think what I wanted to getwas your perspective as a
marketing leader on marketingops and things like that, but
let maybe start with maybeexperiences you've had working
with different marketing opsteams and leaders.
You know, what, what were they,were there similarities to
those?
And then kinda what was yourperspective on the importance of
marketing ops and when did youfeel like you needed to, to
(06:25):
bring them in to differentconversations and things like
that?
Kyle Lacy (06:28):
Yeah, I, So vastly different experiences between
Leslie and Seismic.
Those are the most recent.
Um, we, we had marketing, we hada version of marketing ops,
living in the marketing teamthrough the a and b rounds.
And it was, it was somebody thatknew Marketo and then you also
(06:49):
had somebody that was kind oflike a glorified Salesforce
admin, like taught themselvesfrom the ground up, like they
thought Mar mar ops would be,marketing ops would be
interesting.
So they, they did that as, as wegot larger and we got more
sophisticated on forecasting andpipeline and, and you know, we.
(07:12):
Our CFO was brilliant at it, butwe, we would be within a couple
grand of forecasting thequarter, like we were that good
at it cuz we had so much
Michael Hartmann (07:19):
amazing.
Kyle Lacy (07:21):
Um, because it's half the deal's closing quarter, it
was a high velocity sale.
It didn't like the, the averagecontract value didn't, uh,
didn't really change thatdramatically unless we moved up
market.
Right.
But, I don't remember when ithappened, but Brian Mo Mini,
who's the cfo, had the ops team.
He had a sales ops person, andthen we hired a woman named
(07:45):
Carmen, see who became our VP ofRev Ops that lived on our
finance team, finance andoperations team.
And that's when I started seeingthe value of a true revenue
operations org because she wasrunning.
The forecasting and pipelinemeetings with all the quota
(08:05):
bearing managers in the meeting.
It was, you know, our data wasup to date all the time.
She was on, like, the team wasalways on the reps to keep the
data clean within Salesforce andall that stuff, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
Um, and then that happened andthen we were required like four,
three or four months later.
So we,
Michael Hartmann (08:26):
So I
Mike Rizzo (08:26):
the take, Wait, sorry.
The takeaway there.
No, I want you to keep going andHartmann clearly has a question,
but I feel like the punchlinethere was once you have solid
operations in place, you can getacquired.
There you go.
Michael Hartmann (08:38):
There you go.
Kyle Lacy (08:39):
Thanks, Gar,
Michael Hartmann (08:42):
no us.
Kyle Lacy (08:42):
And she, she's brilliant.
She's a brilliant rev obs.
Michael Hartmann (08:45):
So that, yeah.
It's interesting that you bringup revenue ops because there's,
there's sort of been an ongoingdiscussion in you online or
whatever about rev ops versusmarketing ops.
Is rev ops really just glor likeanother name for sales ops?
Forget.
Forget all that.
What I thought was reallyinteresting is that it reported
into, you said the CFO, right?
Kyle Lacy (09:06):
Yeah, but I mean the, At seismic, we had an op, our
operations leader was on theexec team.
And rev ops and bi andenablement sales enablement all
reported under his structure.
And I to Toby and I, I, Ithought that was the best model.
(09:26):
Honestly, I'm not a huge, andmaybe we could argue about this,
I'm not a huge fan of operationsteams living within the business
unit that it supports havingmarketing ops and marketing,
sales ops, and sales.
Customer success ops, that evenexists in customer success,
right?
I believe it should be acentralized org that is not
(09:48):
dependent on, and it should beon the exec team.
Um,
Michael Hartmann (09:53):
This is really interesting cuz we actually had,
I think, I can't remember who wehad on, we talked about there,
there needs to be o you know,whether you call it revenue ops
or whatever, but that it really,there should be more VPs of
revenue ops or you know, thatare at that, at that same table.
So I think it's interesting tohave your perspective on that as
Kyle Lacy (10:13):
Yeah.
And, and, and seismic.
We, we had Lauren and Greco is,is the marketing ops and
strategy leader at Seismic.
She had a team and she was, shewas dotted line to me, but she
reported to Toby Carrington the,um, EVP of operations, I think
is his title, but she was on myleadership team.
(10:34):
So it was, and we, and we kindof share, I think we shared the
budget.
I was given the budget, it waswithin my budget, but he was
kind of, so that's how thedotted line kind of worked.
But, uh, I thought that wasbrilliant, honestly, because she
was, uh, Lauren was invested inthe success of marketing, but
(10:56):
she was also a, um, uh, shecould play devil's advocate cuz
she reported into a differentbusiness.
Mike Rizzo (11:06):
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Lacy (11:08):
and I just, I'm, I'm I, the operations, living in
different business units justdoesn't make sense to me.
Honestly, I haven't experiencedthat, but that's just my initial
take.
Mike Rizzo (11:18):
You're very fortunate to not have
experienced that
Michael Hartmann (11:21):
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (11:21):
think, I think that's outside the norm, like
most of the time.
Uh, in my experience it's alwaysbeen centralized to
Kyle Lacy (11:31):
Centralized.
Okay, good.
Mike Rizzo (11:32):
Yeah.
Like, or, or sorry.
It's been decentralized in thesense that each one of the roles
live in the department.
Um, We, the, the lastorganization that had certainly
moved into their later series ofinvestments, um, that I was
working for.
Was working on creating acentralized BIS ops function
(11:54):
that sort of brought in a lot ofthat.
Um, but it still was so heavilyfocused on Rev, like sales ops
and deal desk and that kind ofstuff.
Um, that it wasn't truly a revops, you know, uh, bringing in
CS and marketing ops.
Those two particular rolesrolled up directly, uh, into, to
(12:14):
those departments.
Um, but
Kyle Lacy (12:16):
In Si seismic had,
Mike Rizzo (12:18):
over.
Kyle Lacy (12:19):
Yeah, Toby actually built it to where there's
marketing ops.
Sales ops, bi, he had it andenablement.
I, I, I think there's another,there's a couple other teams
that are there, but again, I, Ialso, I wanna be very clear to
the, the listeners that therestill needs to be somebody that
lives on the marketing team thatunderstands marketing
operations, because I don'tthink most CMOs actually
(12:41):
understand what it means.
Mike Rizzo (12:43):
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Lacy (12:44):
is marketing ops just somebody that's really good at
Marketo?
No,
Michael Hartmann (12:48):
I, I was just, I was just having this
Kyle Lacy (12:50):
but I, But I bet I would bet money.
That you do a survey, a bunch ofmarketing leaders, that's what's
gonna be their first thing islike, I need somebody that's a
Marketo genius and I'm gonna put'em in the marketing op org.
But where Lauren and Greco, shehad a bunch of marketing of
Marketo people, but her, whyshe's brilliant at her role is
that she's steeped in the data,
Mike Rizzo (13:12):
Yeah.
Kyle Lacy (13:12):
The back end and not, and not necessarily the fact
that you can build Marketosequences.
Michael Hartmann (13:19):
Yeah, it, I think it's interesting.
Um, I think the reality is whenthere becomes a rev function in
many companies where they bring,they still, it includes those
different disciplines or, orfunctional areas.
It still usually reports up tosomebody who's in a more of a
revenue role, right?
Whether it's a head of
Kyle Lacy (13:36):
But you don't, but you don't wanna rely on a
different business for yourproduction.
That's, that's my thing, is thatI don't.
If I need to build a bunch oflanding pages and, and really
break apart, um, uh, any type oflife cycle stuff, I do not want
to go to a marketing ops teamthat lives in biz ops to try to
get them to do it.
(13:58):
Does that make
Michael Hartmann (13:59):
yeah, so you, it's, it's more of a center,
I'll call it, center ofexcellence or it's like
Kyle Lacy (14:03):
so around bi business intelligence.
Michael Hartmann (14:05):
right.
Like a hub and spoke.
Right.
They are the ones who kinda helpset the framework and evolve it
and maybe support you on stuff,but on most sort of, I don't
know what the right word is.
Ordinary, like day to day kindof operational pieces, like
that's really you, you seek thatneeds to live on the
Kyle Lacy (14:22):
It's more of a life cycle marketer.
Right.
Honestly, I mean, and evenlifestyle marketing.
Sounds like I was early twothousands, but it's, it's kinda,
it's more life cycle orientedand campaign oriented than it is
the bi side of it, but, Sothere's, there's, there's two
options there.
There's production side of it,but there's also like, what the
(14:44):
hell are you dealing with allthe numbers and how do you make
sense of'em in a way that'smeaningful?
Michael Hartmann (14:49):
So it's, it's interesting the, you bring up
the numbers.
Uh, our listeners know that likeI'm a kind of a huge advocate
that we need to increase dataliteracy.
Right.
And, and kind of all acrossmarketing, but in ops for sure.
Cause it's, we are the onesprobably have the most access to
the data.
Kyle Lacy (15:07):
Mm.
Michael Hartmann (15:08):
I mean, how, like, is that something that you
think is, have you, is that beena normal thing where you've
seen, you've happened to belucky enough to have people in
an ops role that know the datareally well and can not only
just pull the data.
Tell you what it means or how tointerpret it, not h how not to
interpret it, stuff like that.
Or
Kyle Lacy (15:25):
Yeah.
Yeah, I've been, No, I've beenvery lucky.
Our CFO was brilliant at it.
Um, he actually, He saved my assa couple times with where I
wasn't reading the right data,honestly.
And then at seismic we, I meanour marketing ops team, if
Lauren listens to this, she'sgonna laugh because I'm gonna
(15:45):
get the number one, but I thinkwe had six or seven people and
then a bunch of contractors.
Like there was we, I've alwayshad pretty good support on the
data side, the for marketingops, which I'm lucky.
We, early on at Lessonly, wedidn't really.
But then when we started gettingto the point where, um, we had
to have a pipeline meetingbecause, you know, we needed to
(16:08):
go look at the big deals and weneeded to, everybody needed to
do their called shop for theweek.
It was important that that wasnot owned by a quota bearing
leader.
It was owned by Carmen, whocared about the overall revenue
number, but didn't care aboutcalling out my head of inbound
because he didn't hit his numberlast the week.
Michael Hartmann (16:30):
Right.
Kyle Lacy (16:32):
I think that's what's important about, uh, the
operations team in general.
And I, I like biz ops betterthan I do rev ops.
I think biz ops is moreencompassing.
Michael Hartmann (16:40):
Yeah.
Have it have it in with otheroperations functions across,
across the entire business.
Yeah.
No, I think, I think if I was,if, if, if I was to pick one, I
would probably pick a COO orhead of bi op, something like
that as the place for the samereasons.
Um, so you, you mentioned theteam at Lessley and the size,
like is, you know, in terms ofyour experience with different
(17:03):
stuff, like have you seen at dand maybe we can go all the way
back to like different stages,right?
You know, were there certain.
Well, I'm gonna, uh, uh, ask if,I guess another question did
were, how involved were you indefining what that those initial
early hires would be in thescope, size of the team?
Or was it something that, Justthat because of where it rolled
(17:25):
up, it was other people.
Kyle Lacy (17:27):
There's other people.
I never, I, I just cared thatthe reports I needed to do my
job, whether that was a Tableaudashboard or Salesforce
dashboard, were right and donein a timely manner.
So I didn't, it wasn't.
For me, Brian built out theoperations team in a as needed
basis, right?
(17:47):
Like as, as the teams grew.
As, you know, I had 70 ishpeople on the marketing team by
the time we were acquired, cuz Ihad all the BDRs, like we had a
marketing ops person that livedon Carmen's team.
Um, because the, the amount ofinformation that I needed and
the amount of work that we hadto do on some of the back end
(18:09):
stuff needed a full-time.
So I think Bri and I didn'treally help scope it.
I interviewed the person, but,um, and seismic, you know,
that's a very different org,right?
It's just a, it's a gross stage.
It's a big company.
Mike Rizzo (18:25):
Were you, someone coming to you asking, Do you
need this?
Were you just incessantly askingfor reports that
Kyle Lacy (18:33):
I was IESs, I was more incessantly asking.
Yeah.
Like there was, if I remembercorrectly, Lessonly.
It was more, it was acombination of Brian, Brian
knowing, being a very goodpeople manager, and knowing how
much he could get out of peoplein a way that's meaningful and
me just being aggressive and anasshole sometimes, but I,
Mike Rizzo (18:56):
I think the inner workings of that are important
for listeners to understandwhether you're moving into
leadership or you're on a, um,
Kyle Lacy (19:03):
Hm.
Mike Rizzo (19:04):
a role that's servicing some of these, some of
these functions, um, justunderstanding the nuance of
that, right?
Like you being incessant aboutyour requests, um, perpetuating
the need for someone to, on a,on a completely different.
Part of the org chart make adecision that I now have to
staff up to fulfill on Kyle'srequests.
(19:25):
Um, and you not backing downfrom that, I think is helpful to
understand so that whoever'slistening to this is, is, is
gotta say like, Hey, if these,you know, if these two things
are not happening, then yougotta overcompensate
Kyle Lacy (19:41):
Well, and we, and it made, and it, it made both teams
better, right?
Like we encourage, we pushpretty hard on making sure that
there was backlogs of requestsand what we needed done, and
Brian did a great job and thatthat operations team.
Did a great job managing thatappropriately, but it was, it
was us, us collectively pushingeach other to be better.
(20:04):
And, and I think that if you, I,I know cause I've experienced
it.
If you build, if you hire theright people and build the right
team like you, you'll, you'llunderstand when things are
needed, especially at, at thestage that we were at, it's, you
know, under, under 30 million inarr.
Right.
Mike Rizzo (20:23):
Hmm.
Kyle Lacy (20:23):
There isn't really a revenue stage either where you
need this.
I think it's mostly just whendoes backlog get too big and are
you prioritizing appropriatelyto hire the right people to
manage it?
Um, every book company'sdifferent.
Mike Rizzo (20:36):
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
I think every company isdifferent.
You also touched on, uh, animportant thing for every leader
or department lead or, ororganization in general to
consider is that like, look,when you're doing pipeline
reports and you're trying tounderstand the momentum of the
business, that can't be done bya quote caring individual.
Right?
Kyle Lacy (20:56):
should never like that.
That's a great, that's a greatpoint, Mike.
And as a cmo, I shouldn't bespending a couple hours trying
to figure out how to do areport.
Mike Rizzo (21:06):
Yeah, yeah.
Frankly, as
Kyle Lacy (21:08):
why I'm paid to do what I do.
Right?
Like
Mike Rizzo (21:12):
And even as a ceo, right?
Or COO like, like yes, you aresupposed to understand the
numbers and all those things inthe COO role, in the CMO role,
but it's not your responsibilityto sit there to try to figure
out, is this accurate?
How do I build it?
Kyle Lacy (21:26):
yeah, but that doesn't mean that you don't,
Like
Mike Rizzo (21:28):
It doesn't mean you
Kyle Lacy (21:29):
want, I don't want people to listen and not think
that I wasn't in Salesforce
Mike Rizzo (21:33):
Well, I was about to, I was about to ask you that
question.
I was like, Really?
At the end of the day, Kyle,like, I expect you probably know
how to do some of these
Kyle Lacy (21:42):
Yeah, a little.
Yeah, I do.
I do.
But
Mike Rizzo (21:44):
You know, but like,
Kyle Lacy (21:45):
pain and suffering of the marketing ops team, right?
It's like,
Mike Rizzo (21:49):
right.
Michael Hartmann (21:49):
even if you didn't right.
What you like.
This is one of the things I tryto teach people who work for me
is like, you know, if you askedfor a report, don't just do the
report.
Like if you look at the report,like you should spot, this is
where I'm gonna get questionsabout and be proactive about
having a reason why doing theextra research.
I suspect that's what you weredoing, right?
You saw some anomaly and.
Kyle Lacy (22:10):
Yeah.
And most of the time the reportsare wrong, but I I, I think that
the, I, I think that theimportant point is if you are,
if you are an aligned exec teamor you're an aligned leadership
team, you will understand whencertain hires need to be made in
operations because it's, It justas you hire more people and
(22:31):
quotas get larger and revenue,you're growing revenue and
you're raising more money, youjust need more support.
Um, and and see.
And leadership roles change,right?
Like Brian's role as CFO at theacquisition was very different
than when he joined at a millionor a million and half revenue or
whatever, right?
(22:52):
And my role changed prettydramatically.
And so you've gotta buildoperations teams to support that
in my.
Mike Rizzo (22:58):
Was there, you know, when you say you'll know.
Sorry, Hartmann, I know youwanted to ask your question
there.
Um,
Michael Hartmann (23:03):
right.
Mike Rizzo (23:05):
when you say that, you'll know when it's time for,
for those kinds of things.
I just wanted to ask, and maybeit's, maybe it's, uh, you know,
you don't know or you don't haveany experience in this regard,
but, um, did you ever find.
I, I don't know how early youwere at some of these companies.
Did you ever find that, Likeyou, people on the team were
(23:27):
like, Well, I can do that, I cando that, I can do that.
I can, I could do that.
You know, I know how to buildthat report, so I don't really
need to go budget for thisthing.
And then it never gets focusedon and eventually, like, you
finally make the decision.
Like
Kyle Lacy (23:41):
Um,
Mike Rizzo (23:42):
of what happened or.
it's just clear like, hey,because no one's sole
responsibility to is to makesure that this stuff is not
wrong.
Kyle Lacy (23:52):
yeah, that's a great question, man.
I don't.
I think initially early on atLessonly, we were for some re,
Well, I don't know why we wereokay with this in hindsight, but
we had, We had somebody thattaught himself Salesforce.
Salesforce admin really wantedto get into operations and he
was the run running reports andat some point, because Brian is
(24:16):
a very efficient CFO like mostCFOs are.
So he's not gonna justwillynilly build out an entire
operations team because the CMOslike, We need this, or our sales
leader saying we need it.
He was very, um, responsibleabout building it out.
Um, it wasn't, it wasn't thatthey could do it, it was that we
had somebody that was fillingthe need where we didn't need to
(24:38):
hire the head count.
But once the need grew pasttheir, Ability is when Brian
made the move and that, and, andthat's just, that's just good
people management.
But I, there wasn't a situationwhere it was like, we can just
do this.
I don't think, I don't everremember having those
conversations, um, because Idon't, I never liked building
(25:01):
reports.
Like I, I, it's, it's just not,it's not something that I love
doing.
It doesn't mean I didn't do it,but it, we needed the support as
we were.
As the company grows, you spendtimes on time on different
things.
Mike Rizzo (25:16):
Totally cool.
Michael Hartmann (25:17):
what what's really.
Fascinating to me right now inthis conversation is that, cuz I
think we've touched on what Iwould call campaign operations,
and I suspect that most, if wehad other marketing leaders on,
and we were talking aboutmarketing ops, it would all be
about how they supported our goto market activities, right?
Getting stuff out in themarketplace.
And not, I mean, yes, they dodata too.
(25:39):
It's really interesting to methat you were focusing so much
on the need for data insightsand, Well, and maybe that's
partially because you had BDRteam, but I don't know if it
would you have been the
Kyle Lacy (25:49):
Well, I,
Michael Hartmann (25:50):
that.
Kyle Lacy (25:51):
no, I think I'm more like that now because Lauren and
Esco at Seismic was the first.
Marketing operations leader thatI've worked with that was data
driven, like straight up data,and that, that was my first
experience with somebody thatreally understood how to do
marketing operations the rightway, in my opinion.
(26:12):
Um, you know, she, she was justgood at it.
So I think most of that is justmy experience over the past
year, but it's also.
I think it's marketers ingeneral.
We tend to just focus so much onproduction and campaigns and not
enough on how do you buildintelligent reporting and
(26:33):
operations to actually makedecisions the right way.
And I think a lot of times it'sthat because we're we're brought
up to be so reactive, like we'remarketing just tends to be a
reactive org when they should beleading with data in a right, in
the right ways, not justwilly-nilly.
And being proactive with theapproaches of campaigns and, and
(26:54):
the, uh, the creative work theywanna do.
But I think it's justcombination of a lot of things.
But for me, it's been workingwith Lauren Seic for sure.
Michael Hartmann (27:03):
It's really interesting.
So, uh, so I'm, I'm, I'm withyou that marketing in general is
reactive, which means.
Marketing ops has tended to beeven more reactive and try to
like, we
Kyle Lacy (27:13):
Yes,
Michael Hartmann (27:13):
go, go, go the extra yard to support something
cuz it had to get out in market.
Right.
Committed to something going outlive at a certain point.
What Um, so I know this is notwhere we were planning on going
this conversation, but I'm sofascinated by this.
I wanna keep going so littlebit.
So the, um, You mentioned likebeing data driven, but like, not
(27:36):
willy-nilly I think is what you,you said, but one of the things
I see is, um, some marketingpeople say they're data driven.
This what they, I think whatthey mean is I get lots and lots
of data, but I don't know thatthey necessarily.
A lot of changes or get a lot ofinsights be with that.
(27:57):
So it's like, I fear like, yes,data's important, but it's like
how do you know what the rightdata is?
And the other thing I've foundis you get a piece of data, it
begs another question.
It begs another question, right?
And so like, how do you knowwhen to stop?
Kyle Lacy (28:09):
Well, So I would, I would say I am not a very, I, I
think marketing teams should bedata driven.
I think that's why marketing opsis so important, and that's why
hiring somebody that reallyunderstands how to do it in the
right way, like a Lord and DressCo is so important to the
success of a marketing leader.
(28:31):
Like, Brian was so good at it,uh, Lessonly that I, I'd said
he, he saved my ass a coupletimes and that's because I was
reading, I was reading the datadifferently, like on an inbound
funnel and he found it anomalythat I had missed.
And because he found it, wecompletely rebuilt the website
and we com and we and ourinbound took off again.
(28:54):
So I just, I think that it's, Ithink that that's why.
Operations in general isimportant because a lot of
marketers, like you said, tendto just be more production
driven.
I don't know if I answered yourquestion.
I just agreed with you.
Michael Hartmann (29:11):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's just really
interesting to me that, So Iguess given all this, right, do
you think you are, like, you'rean outlier in having this
perspective about ops from amarketing leadership
Kyle Lacy (29:24):
No, it depends.
It depends on where you lean.
Like I, I lean brand andmessaging and positioning, so I
tend to be, I tend to, and Ilearn this through seismic cuz I
really had to trust but verify,right?
I tend to be more gut instinctand make decisions on an
emotional side.
Context, which is why I have tobalance myself with a growth and
(29:45):
demand leader that is more, uh,more numbers oriented.
Right.
And I, and I, I just think it's,it's, it's where do you lean as
a leader and how do you makesure that you're building a team
that can support where you'reinefficiencies are, right?
And, um, I think that I'm prettygood at the gut instinct, but
(30:06):
sometimes it hasn't, it hasn'tworked out.
So I've learned through theprocess, but that's why.
That's why operations is sofreaking important because you
cannot keep track of everythingas a marketing leader.
There's no way.
There's no way because it'sjust, it's, there's too much
data and you should be leadingthe team and the creativity and
(30:27):
the emo and, and you know,making sure the team's stoked to
get up every day and domarketing for these companies.
And I don't know, I can talkabout this all day long, but
it's.
Mike Rizzo (30:38):
I wanna go back to something you said, uh, a little
while ago, or, or one of ussaid, one of you, I don't know,
um, we were talking about.
Uh, the idea of, of sort ofbeing reactive, right?
And, um, how we, we, we don'treally take the time to, to plan
out things, but I would arguethat like, what's, what's super
(31:01):
interesting is I think amarketing operations person, uh,
and people that are oriented inthat, in that way.
Wants to plan.
In fact, they like, I wouldargue that many of them want to
build for scale I actually justsaw a post on LinkedIn the other
day from a, from a fellowcommunity member who, um, was
(31:23):
talking about building thingsand it was like, Literally the
two things were things thatscale versus things that fail.
Right?
And a marketing operationsperson who's really good builds
things that scale, not thingsthat fail.
And, and so all I'm saying, allof this, that's like, so why do
we still have this problem ifmarketing ops and people who do
(31:44):
sort of campaign operations andwe know that we need to, to lay
a foundation in order to scale?
Want to be planners.
And we've got, you know, manyleaders who want to build a
narrative, I hope.
Whether you're a product leaderwho's built a story arc around
why your product exists, a CEOfor the vision of the company,
or a CMO who wants to, uh,distribute that vision and that
(32:06):
story and a brand message.
There's a lot of planning thatwants to happen.
Let's just call it top and tail.
Executives down to operationalmembers, and somewhere in the
middle, not, not in a hierarchyor latter fashion, but somewhere
in the middle there's this likemishmash of we're not going fast
enough.
So someone launch a campaign
Kyle Lacy (32:27):
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (32:27):
and somehow like we lose planning.
Like what happens?
Like what's, what's, what's thedeal with
Kyle Lacy (32:32):
I think I've always experienced that the, that
random launch of a campaign likethat, that didn't change, uh,
that's never really changed forme.
That just, that's more of thereactive side of me.
But, um, I think that that's,again, I think that that's why
bi op should live on the execlevel and not in an org.
(32:53):
was, she was, she was on, shehelped me build all the board
decks.
She was involved in all of ourOKR and goal planning every
quarter.
She was the one making sure thatthe budgets and the tech stack
and all that stuff was in placein the right way.
Like she was literally my righthand when it came to all of the
(33:14):
data side of, of what we do asmarketing team.
And I think I, I, I think thereason why that doesn't exist is
because not a lot of people haveseen it done the right way.
And it, it's because it's, thisisn't like a, like how long is
marketing, like rev ops andmarketing ops been around, Like,
this is like what Gainsight didwith customer success and
(33:37):
Marketo did with marketingautomation like that.
It, it's a cat, Like thecategory is just so early.
Like I, I just don't thinkthere's enough people doing.
Mike Rizzo (33:46):
Yeah, it still is really early.
I mean, we're talking likeformally a role probably for a
decade, maybe,
Kyle Lacy (33:53):
Maybe,
Michael Hartmann (33:54):
That's a, That's about what I would put it
at.
Mike Rizzo (33:56):
Yeah,
Kyle Lacy (33:56):
Yeah, I can, I can name, I can name three people
that I know that I think if, ifyou were to ask me who are the
best marketing operationspeople, you know, I could
probably name three, maybe twofor sure.
But I, because it's just so,it's such a, um, it's kind of
like, like product marketing,but it's kind of the same type
(34:18):
of approach where you reallyhave to spend a lot of time in
the role to be good at it.
Mike Rizzo (34:23):
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Lacy (34:24):
and, and because of that, it makes it hard to hire
for like product marketing's thesame way, but we're not, this is
not a product marketing podcast,but it's, uh,
Mike Rizzo (34:33):
but it like, like there's a very large community
for product marketers out there,pma, Um, that exists very much
in the same manner that, thatthis community exists, and it's
for that exact reason.
It's super hard to hire.
It's super hard to learn, superhard to get the respect that you
deserve.
Uh, it's convoluted, like whatis product marketing?
(34:56):
Does it live under product?
Does
Kyle Lacy (34:57):
Yeah, exactly.
Yep.
It's very similar.
Mike Rizzo (35:00):
it's, it's very, very, very similar And, and,
yeah.
Marketing ops hasn't been aroundquite as long, uh, and so we're
tackling that challenge, uh, inaddition to those same similar
challenges.
But no, I appreciate youanswering the question.
It's weird.
It's weird that we all want toplan, but somehow, um, we always
try to put the cart before thehorse or something and
Kyle Lacy (35:23):
Yeah, and
Mike Rizzo (35:23):
and then someone goes, Why isn't this working?
Kyle Lacy (35:26):
Yeah, I, I, it is just hard.
It's the reactive thing.
Michael Hartmann (35:29):
well, and I, I, I, I, I, I would argue that
part of that is the, We don'tknow how to plan very well
either, though.
Like I think a lot of peopleeither don't wanna do enough
strategic thinking and planning,or they wanna do too much
detail.
And both of them sort of leadto.
Poor outcomes in most cases,unless you're just lucky.
think, you know, there's a,there's a happy medium in there
(35:51):
somewhere that works well whereyou, you have enough to, to go,
okay, you know, I'm going for,this is where we're trying to
get to.
We kind of know what we wanna goso we can start taking steps in
the direction.
And this is kind how I thinkabout evolving Tech Act even is
just like, or someone comes tome with, Hey, we wanna launch
this campaign, we wanna try thisnew creative idea.
We should go buy X, Y, or Z, Weneed to go spend a bunch of
(36:13):
money.
I was like, Well, can we getclose to that without doing
that?
Like let's experi, let's use itas an experiment first, and then
if it works and we think wewanna scale it and use it more,
and then we can evolve it, likethat's the way to approach it as
opposed to taking a bunch ofmoney in and a bunch of time and
then not actually getting thefruit of it for way longer.
Mike Rizzo (36:32):
Yeah,
Kyle Lacy (36:33):
Well it, Mike, you said it.
You said it, and I will, I'mgoing to say this to this entire
community, I did not fullyunderstand the benefit of, of
ops, marketing, ops, especially.
Until, and I, I think I've saidthis already, but I'm gonna say
it again, until I was involvedin somebody that really knew how
to do it the right way, Istarted seeing it with Carmen,
(36:56):
see at Lessley right before theacquisition.
And then when moved over, Carmenstayed on and Lauren at Seismic.
They were, they're just so goodat the job.
Now, every job I go to,marketing ops is going to.
One of the main roles that I'mgonna be looking at in an org
saying, Okay, where does thislive?
(37:16):
Who's doing it?
Because it's so important to theproductivity and the focus, like
you said, like I can't imaginesetting goals right now without
an ops person.
Mike Rizzo (37:28):
Yeah,
Kyle Lacy (37:29):
Like it seems crazy to me now, now that I've
experienced it done well,basically.
Mike Rizzo (37:33):
and I think, like, I think when you go to build,
I've, I've been in startups mycareer.
Uh, when you go to build aproduct, you have a hunch as a
product owner, like you have ahunch, you do market research.
You do some validation and thenyou try to build a feature, you
build an MVP and so on and soforth.
And it's fascinating to me thatsomehow in, even in the series A
(37:57):
through C's, we're not stilltaking that same approach.
Just like Hartmann was justsaying like, Hey, how do we not
go by the tool?
And we try to, you know, dosomething that's MVP to prove
out whether or not that's a goodinvestment.
It's fascinating that likesomehow that doesn't come down
the line.
And, And Kyle, you just said,you know, I would be hard
pressed to go create goals if Ididn't have a marketing ops
(38:19):
person.
I'd say, Well, I think youcould, you could come up with
some bets, right?
You could, you could and, andlike, you know, you probably do,
but where you're quickly gonnarun into a problem is how do I
measure it?
And then how do I, Okay, I knowhow to measure it, I know what I
need to track, but did Iimplement it the right way so
(38:40):
that I can keep tracking itafter we do this?
In other words, did I justcreate a duplicate field or
three other fields that alreadyexisted in my CRM and just
created Chaos?
Michael Hartmann (38:52):
just re reuse it another, a existing field in
a different way.
Mike Rizzo (38:55):
Yeah.
Oh wait, Lead source.
I'll just add a few more inhere.
Right?
Like
Kyle Lacy (38:59):
Or you
Mike Rizzo (39:00):
Those details
Kyle Lacy (39:01):
building, building the campaign reports and there's
no consistency.
I think that's what you'resaying, but
Mike Rizzo (39:07):
Yes, exactly.
Kyle Lacy (39:07):
I experienced that a Lessonly for
Mike Rizzo (39:09):
Those, those details matter And, and for leaders that
haven't had to go through thatexperience, it's like, well,
we'll figure it out.
Kyle Lacy (39:17):
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (39:17):
No, cuz the second that you say that, it's, it's
just, you're just throwingcaution to the
Kyle Lacy (39:23):
Well, Well, and I, and I've said this on plenty of
podcasts I have written aboutthis.
You have to, if you're growing acompany, hire operations sooner
than you think you need it,
Mike Rizzo (39:35):
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Lacy (39:37):
once the data just starts growing because you hire
more account executives, becauseyou have bigger teams, because
you're driving more customers,it is much hard.
To get anything done if youdon't have the foundation set up
initially.
I think Brian, great job withthat.
But you can't, You can't get to10 million revenue and then hire
(39:58):
an ops person.
I mean, the data's just gonna bea freaking mess, and you're
probably not making gooddecisions either anyway.
Mike Rizzo (40:04):
Yep.
Michael Hartmann (40:05):
So talking about, Okay, so I like that
you're saying higher earlier.
I, I think if I was to pull ouraudience or our listeners, they
would, you know, generally thinkthat the per their, the
perception of marketing Ops isnot as a strategic one for most
people, despite what you'resaying here.
So do you, you know, for ourlisteners, like is there
(40:28):
anything maybe from the peopleyou, you mentioned that you
worked with that you could say,these are the things, like this
is either knowledge that theyhad or a way that they.
We're proactive about somethingor whatever it might be.
That was a way that led them tosort of, Cuz it sounds like
that's not how you perceived himgoing in.
(40:49):
Right.
Your perception was notmarketing ops as a, as a sort of
a strategic function.
So how would we, how wouldthose, how would you suggest
those people start to changethat perception?
Kyle Lacy (40:59):
Be, uh, the, the number one thing is be proactive
with your counterpart.
So Lauren would bring up thingsin our one-on-ones that I wasn't
thinking about based off of thedata she was looking at.
She was proactively surfacingchallenges or things that we
should look at based off of thedata that she was managing and
(41:19):
monitoring.
Right.
When you're helpful like thatand you're proactive like that,
you become more strategicbecause the leadership team
relies on you to be that personthat's bringing the insights.
Right.
And when you're that person, youautomatically become more
strategic because you're beinghelpful.
Right.
In the past, I think we'vetalked, I think we've talked
(41:41):
about.
Quite a bit now, but in thepast, marketing ops has been a
production for me and an ordertaker and having a backlog and
those are all important things,but it was never a proactive
approach to, You might not haveseen this in the data you were
looking at Kyle, or do you needhelp?
Here's a slide for the boarddeck based off of the pipeline
(42:03):
numbers.
Let's talk about, let's talkabout the narrative of the board
meeting, Right?
Lauren was doing all that withme and.
I think that that's just whatmakes it more strategic is when
you're involved and when youcare.
It feels like you care moreabout the numbers than the
person you're supporting.
I mean, that's, that's reallywhat it comes down to in my
(42:25):
opinion.
Michael Hartmann (42:26):
So, yeah, I would argue that there's a gap
in understanding data acrosseven ops where we have access to
data.
Uh, and, and the storytellingpiece of it.
Like do you think, do you thinkit was, how important do you
think that was compared to justkind of knowing the numbers but
Kyle Lacy (42:45):
it was, that's, that's, that is like 80% of what
why is she's so good is thenarrative is how do you, how do
you tell a story with thenumbers, not just manage a
dashboard and say, Hey,something dropped or something
went up, or a conversion ratedrop.
Right.
She was, She was, I keep sayingshe was so, she's still doing
it.
She is really good at it.
(43:07):
Um, but, and, and I, I foundthat extremely helpful as an SVP
in a large org, that we wouldspend a lot of time looking at
the numbers, and then we wouldspend a lot of time building the
narrative around the numbers,because it's a, it's, it's
important that as the companygrows, you're all saying the
same thing, honestly, especiallyin.
Mike Rizzo (43:26):
I think, you know, beginning, beginning with the
end in mind for any, for anyactivity, whether it's campaign
planning, Or, um, phases of yourbusiness or both um, early stage
companies in in particular.
Right there, there's differentlevers that you can pull on to
(43:46):
go secure your next round offunding.
And if the narrative you'vebuilt is around, Hey, our
traction is really, reallystrong in the market because
we're seeing product usage, orwe're seeing free account
signups, or something like that.
Then build the architecture andthe framework to build a
narrative, uh, around thosethings.
If it's revenue is increasing orthe pipeline, close rates are
(44:10):
increasing a particular marketsegment, then build it to
support that.
But begin with the end in mindand know at the executive level
what narrative you want to tell,and then allow your ops team to
try to go build that pipelineto, to tell that story, right?
And then it allows the folks.
You know, you've worked with tocome up to a meeting and say,
(44:32):
Hey, based on what I understandfrom the business objectives, or
this department's objectives, orthe campaign objectives, here's
what I'm seeing from what youasked us to keep it keep track
of,
Kyle Lacy (44:44):
Yeah, and I, but I also think it's important to
note that it's not a, themarketing, the ops person
believe should be involved inthat exact level conversation.
Like it's not a.
Here's, here's what narrative wethink as an exec team.
Go make it happen.
It's, Hey, we want, this is whatwe think is happening in the
narrative.
We want you to either verify itor come back to us and let's
(45:06):
talk about what's actuallyhappening.
I mean, we had a situation,Lessonly, where we started
seeing a drop in.
Um, a average contract value andchurn rates were going up and we
didn't quite understand what washappening until, uh, Brian and
the ops team did a cohortanalysis on our personas, and we
realized that hr, sales andcustomer service was our use
(45:30):
cases.
Customer service and salecohorts were skyrocket.
Both average contract value aswell as retention and net dollar
retention and HR was tanking andwe, nobody had, we didn't have
any idea that that washappening.
It was just like, we don'tunderstand what's going on.
Let's look into it.
And, and because we had peoplethat were good at looking at the
(45:51):
data and thinking of anarrative, we made a decision to
cut HR out of the funnel and it,it exponentially changed the
business trajectory.
Right.
So, That's, if you don't havethe people in place to think
through that stuff and look atthat stuff, it would've just
been a bunch of first timeexecutives at the startup
pulling reports and trying tofigure out why average contract
(46:13):
value is dropping.
Right.
So that's just why it's soimportant, because you're not, I
think a lot of companies failfaster than they should because
they don't have people thinkingabout this.
And they haven't hired'em soonenough.
And if you're getting the 10million ARR and you don't have
an operations team together, youbetter get your ass in gear, in
my opinion.
Cause it's gonna come, it'sgonna, it's gonna come bite you
(46:36):
if you don't.
Mike Rizzo (46:37):
Higher yesterday.
Michael Hartmann (46:39):
Yeah.
Well, I like, I have so manymore questions I could probably
ask, but I wanna be respectfulof your time and I know that
this is a lot to ask.
So Kyle, thank you so much.
Um, any last thoughts before we,we wrap up?
Kyle Lacy (46:54):
No, I just, I, I want to give a big shout out to this
community, to the, to themarketing ops community as a
whole, honestly, because I thinkthat.
I think that that, that y'allare behind the scenes a lot for
some of these marketing teamsand you don't get the credit you
ultimately should get.
(47:15):
And um, I had to see thatfirsthand in order to fully
understand the importance ofthis and.
That's my shout out to thisgroup because it's, uh, it is
needed no matter what, like thisrole in this or the teams, no
matter how it's structured.
Uh, a, a productive and growthoriented marketing team needs
(47:36):
marketing ops no matter where itlives.
So shout out to this groupbecause, uh, you keep all of us
alive.
Mike Rizzo (47:45):
love that.
That's a great shout out.
Michael Hartmann (47:48):
Well, great.
So, Kyle, this has been a lot offun.
I always enjoy conversationswith you.
We always kind of go off indifferent directions, but, um,
if folks wanna keep up with youand what's, what's coming up
next for you or your, your nextbook or whatever it is you're
doing, what's the
Kyle Lacy (48:01):
I'm not doing a book.
Well, I, I wrote, I wroteTwitter marketing for dummy, so
I'm thinking like this wholeElon thing.
Maybe I should like bring outthe third edition cause.
Nobody has any idea what's goingon, but no, I, uh, LinkedIn or
Twitter.
LinkedIn, you can search for me.
Twitter is where I've usuallyLinkedIn and Twitter is where I
spend my time.
Michael Hartmann (48:21):
Awesome.
Kyle, again, thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Uh, Mike, thank you.
And we miss Naomi, but this wasa fun conversation.
Uh, thanks to all of ourlisteners for, for, uh,
continuing to support us,continue to give us ratings and
reviews.
And if you've got suggestionsfor other great guests like
Kyle, uh, or you wanna be aguest, just reach out to Mike,
Naomi, or me.
(48:41):
Until next time, thankseveryone.
Bye-bye.
Mike Rizzo (48:43):
Thanks everybody back.
Kyle Lacy (48:44):
Bye.
Hello everyone.
(00:00):
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
marketing ops.com, powered bythe MO Pros.
I am your host, MichaelHartmann.
Joined today by co-host MikeRizzo.
Mike, what's this year again?
Uh,
Mike Rizzo (00:12):
just to solidify it in the hearts and minds of all
of our listeners.
It is the year of the Mo Pro
Michael Hartmann (00:17):
the year, the Mopro, we are definitely gonna
have to come up with somethingelse next year.
Um, alright, well we're excitedto have joining us today, Kyle
Lacy.
had the, the, the fortune of, ofmeeting Kyle during the pandemic
and feel like, uh, he's one of agreat marketing leaders.
So most recently Kyle was theSVP of marketing at Seismic and
(00:37):
he joined Seismic after.
The company he was with,Lessonly, where he was a CMO,
was acquired by Seismic.
He has held several marketingleadership roles at several
different companies.
In addition, Kyle is an advisorto several organizations, a
speaker, author of three books.
We're gonna get into that and,uh, I think it's safe to say
Kyle believes in the power ofcommunity to accelerate careers.
(00:58):
So, Kyle, thanks for joining us.
Kyle Lacy (01:00):
Thank you for having me.
It's a.
Michael Hartmann (01:02):
All right.
Well, so I, I did, I mentionedthe, uh, well, let's get, we'll
go into some of this later, butreally, I know for, we're, we're
recording this in early November22.
Um, and you are currently onsort of a, I'll call it, I
guess, a sabbatical, but whydon't you like, maybe share with
our listeners, you know, uh, youknow, kinda what let you do
(01:23):
through your career, yourdecisions, and.
making the decision to take asabbatical.
Cause it sounds like you, youintent were very intentional
about this.
Kyle Lacy (01:32):
Yeah.
Is sabbatical the right word?
I've been calling it, it'ssabbatical.
Let's just call it, we shouldcall it a break.
It was just a break.
Michael Hartmann (01:39):
Yeah.
Kyle Lacy (01:40):
I think I've been, there's been a couple of my
coworkers from seismic have madefun of me cuz they're like,
Dude, this isn't a sabbatical.
You're just, you're taking abreak, you're gonna find
something new.
But um, so I think that, I thinkthat anyone who's in a high
gross software environment,right, that's venture backed or
PE owned, You've got growthgoals that are comparatively to
(02:05):
other businesses are prettyridiculous.
I believe it is very importantfor leaders and even individual
contributors to understand whenit's time to take a break, both
from a physical nature as wellas just mental health.
And for me, it had been four anda half years lessen.
The seismic acquisitionhappened.
I, I was very lucky andprivileged that I had the
(02:27):
opportunity to lead themarketing team at Seismic for a
year, but it's, you know, we allknow that different stages of
companies require differenttypes of people, right?
And seismic, you know, 10 xlarger than, less than we 1500
employees.
Um, I, I realized pretty quicklythat I am built for more of the
(02:48):
a, b, C round type company thanI.
The growth stage that seismic'sat.
So for me it was mostly just,Hey, if I, if I'm looking back
two years in the future, am Igonna be in a good place?
And I just didn't believe thatmentally I would be.
So I made the decision to say Iwas, and I'm very lucky that I
(03:09):
could make that decision.
Where it's a very privileged,the fact that you have a
question about sabbatical isjust a privileged thing anyway,
that I can actually do this.
Right?
So I just wanted to throw thatout there because I'm lucky that
I can make that decision.
But, you know, it was more forfor me to reset and to try to
figure out what my next, what mynext step is gonna.
Michael Hartmann (03:31):
Yeah, it's, it's interesting, uh, we talk
about like the, the sort ofreset on both physical, mental,
It's, it was really interesting.
I happened to have to take a redeye, uh, flight.
Like two weeks ago, coming backfrom the West coast to Dallas
and I've also been, was just,well let's say reading, I've
been listening to the audiobookof Essentialism.
(03:52):
I dunno if you're familiar
Kyle Lacy (03:53):
Mm-hmm.
Michael Hartmann (03:54):
And, and it literally, like around that same
time I was the, was the, thesection about how important
sleep was and, and how it'sactually like when you don't get
enough sleep, it can be like,Drunk.
Right.
Or you know, under theinfluence.
And I literally, that day afterI got home, I was trying to, I
felt so disoriented.
Right.
And I think that's the extreme,but if what you're talking
(04:14):
about, but.
Kyle Lacy (04:14):
but.
I, but it's, it's stress.
It's, I was waking up mostnights in the middle of the
night, couldn't go back to sleeplike it, just that, that type of
stuff.
When it's compou, like acompounding part of that is very
dangerous.
And so I, you know, I just hadto, I had to make that decision
for myself, and it was, it wasdiff, it was a difficult
decision for sure.
Michael Hartmann (04:35):
Yeah, I think it's, um, I think you're right.
It's a, it is a privilege.
At the same time, I wanted tohit on this a little bit because
we actually had somebody on, uh,an episode of about two months
ago who opened up about her own,like having to go into, you
know, into, uh, Yeah.
To a place for help with,basically she had a breakdown,
(04:56):
right?
And, um, I think it was reallyimportant to let people know
that it's, you know, you're notalone if you're feeling that
kind of level of stress.
So yeah, hopefully people willtake that for what it is and
not, Hey, look at, look at howgreat Kyle is.
And he, he gets the opportunity.
But like, I think it's good thatthe people are recognizing that
it's important to do that.
Kyle Lacy (05:16):
Yeah, and you usually, you, you will know when
it's time and usually your gut,I mean, we all make decisions
based off of gut instinct, butusually your gut's, right?
And the difference between meand somebody that powers through
is just, I made the decision to.
To think about my family andmyself and, and it it, and it
(05:39):
benefited me in the long run forsure.
Michael Hartmann (05:41):
That's great.
Well, let's, let's get into, youknow, what we wanted, I think
part of why I really wanted toget you on here is, is you
probably know Kyle, our, ourprimary audience and the
listeners is made up of opsfolks.
So primarily marketing ops,maybe revenue ops, sales ops,
and kind of the, the, the thingsthat are tangential to that.
(06:02):
So, I think what I wanted to getwas your perspective as a
marketing leader on marketingops and things like that, but
let maybe start with maybeexperiences you've had working
with different marketing opsteams and leaders.
You know, what, what were they,were there similarities to
those?
And then kinda what was yourperspective on the importance of
marketing ops and when did youfeel like you needed to, to
(06:25):
bring them in to differentconversations and things like
that?
Kyle Lacy (06:28):
Yeah, I, So vastly different experiences between
Leslie and Seismic.
Those are the most recent.
Um, we, we had marketing, we hada version of marketing ops,
living in the marketing teamthrough the a and b rounds.
And it was, it was somebody thatknew Marketo and then you also
(06:49):
had somebody that was kind oflike a glorified Salesforce
admin, like taught themselvesfrom the ground up, like they
thought Mar mar ops would be,marketing ops would be
interesting.
So they, they did that as, as wegot larger and we got more
sophisticated on forecasting andpipeline and, and you know, we.
(07:12):
Our CFO was brilliant at it, butwe, we would be within a couple
grand of forecasting thequarter, like we were that good
at it cuz we had so much
Michael Hartmann (07:19):
amazing.
Kyle Lacy (07:21):
Um, because it's half the deal's closing quarter, it
was a high velocity sale.
It didn't like the, the averagecontract value didn't, uh,
didn't really change thatdramatically unless we moved up
market.
Right.
But, I don't remember when ithappened, but Brian Mo Mini,
who's the cfo, had the ops team.
He had a sales ops person, andthen we hired a woman named
(07:45):
Carmen, see who became our VP ofRev Ops that lived on our
finance team, finance andoperations team.
And that's when I started seeingthe value of a true revenue
operations org because she wasrunning.
The forecasting and pipelinemeetings with all the quota
(08:05):
bearing managers in the meeting.
It was, you know, our data wasup to date all the time.
She was on, like, the team wasalways on the reps to keep the
data clean within Salesforce andall that stuff, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
Um, and then that happened andthen we were required like four,
three or four months later.
So we,
Michael Hartmann (08:26):
So I
Mike Rizzo (08:26):
the take, Wait, sorry.
The takeaway there.
No, I want you to keep going andHartmann clearly has a question,
but I feel like the punchlinethere was once you have solid
operations in place, you can getacquired.
There you go.
Michael Hartmann (08:38):
There you go.
Kyle Lacy (08:39):
Thanks, Gar,
Michael Hartmann (08:42):
no us.
Kyle Lacy (08:42):
And she, she's brilliant.
She's a brilliant rev obs.
Michael Hartmann (08:45):
So that, yeah.
It's interesting that you bringup revenue ops because there's,
there's sort of been an ongoingdiscussion in you online or
whatever about rev ops versusmarketing ops.
Is rev ops really just glor likeanother name for sales ops?
Forget.
Forget all that.
What I thought was reallyinteresting is that it reported
into, you said the CFO, right?
Kyle Lacy (09:06):
Yeah, but I mean the, At seismic, we had an op, our
operations leader was on theexec team.
And rev ops and bi andenablement sales enablement all
reported under his structure.
And I to Toby and I, I, Ithought that was the best model.
(09:26):
Honestly, I'm not a huge, andmaybe we could argue about this,
I'm not a huge fan of operationsteams living within the business
unit that it supports havingmarketing ops and marketing,
sales ops, and sales.
Customer success ops, that evenexists in customer success,
right?
I believe it should be acentralized org that is not
(09:48):
dependent on, and it should beon the exec team.
Um,
Michael Hartmann (09:53):
This is really interesting cuz we actually had,
I think, I can't remember who wehad on, we talked about there,
there needs to be o you know,whether you call it revenue ops
or whatever, but that it really,there should be more VPs of
revenue ops or you know, thatare at that, at that same table.
So I think it's interesting tohave your perspective on that as
Kyle Lacy (10:13):
Yeah.
And, and, and seismic.
We, we had Lauren and Greco is,is the marketing ops and
strategy leader at Seismic.
She had a team and she was, shewas dotted line to me, but she
reported to Toby Carrington the,um, EVP of operations, I think
is his title, but she was on myleadership team.
(10:34):
So it was, and we, and we kindof share, I think we shared the
budget.
I was given the budget, it waswithin my budget, but he was
kind of, so that's how thedotted line kind of worked.
But, uh, I thought that wasbrilliant, honestly, because she
was, uh, Lauren was invested inthe success of marketing, but
(10:56):
she was also a, um, uh, shecould play devil's advocate cuz
she reported into a differentbusiness.
Mike Rizzo (11:06):
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Lacy (11:08):
and I just, I'm, I'm I, the operations, living in
different business units justdoesn't make sense to me.
Honestly, I haven't experiencedthat, but that's just my initial
take.
Mike Rizzo (11:18):
You're very fortunate to not have
experienced that
Michael Hartmann (11:21):
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (11:21):
think, I think that's outside the norm, like
most of the time.
Uh, in my experience it's alwaysbeen centralized to
Kyle Lacy (11:31):
Centralized.
Okay, good.
Mike Rizzo (11:32):
Yeah.
Like, or, or sorry.
It's been decentralized in thesense that each one of the roles
live in the department.
Um, We, the, the lastorganization that had certainly
moved into their later series ofinvestments, um, that I was
working for.
Was working on creating acentralized BIS ops function
(11:54):
that sort of brought in a lot ofthat.
Um, but it still was so heavilyfocused on Rev, like sales ops
and deal desk and that kind ofstuff.
Um, that it wasn't truly a revops, you know, uh, bringing in
CS and marketing ops.
Those two particular rolesrolled up directly, uh, into, to
(12:14):
those departments.
Um, but
Kyle Lacy (12:16):
In Si seismic had,
Mike Rizzo (12:18):
over.
Kyle Lacy (12:19):
Yeah, Toby actually built it to where there's
marketing ops.
Sales ops, bi, he had it andenablement.
I, I, I think there's another,there's a couple other teams
that are there, but again, I, Ialso, I wanna be very clear to
the, the listeners that therestill needs to be somebody that
lives on the marketing team thatunderstands marketing
operations, because I don'tthink most CMOs actually
(12:41):
understand what it means.
Mike Rizzo (12:43):
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Lacy (12:44):
is marketing ops just somebody that's really good at
Marketo?
No,
Michael Hartmann (12:48):
I, I was just, I was just having this
Kyle Lacy (12:50):
but I, But I bet I would bet money.
That you do a survey, a bunch ofmarketing leaders, that's what's
gonna be their first thing islike, I need somebody that's a
Marketo genius and I'm gonna put'em in the marketing op org.
But where Lauren and Greco, shehad a bunch of marketing of
Marketo people, but her, whyshe's brilliant at her role is
that she's steeped in the data,
Mike Rizzo (13:12):
Yeah.
Kyle Lacy (13:12):
The back end and not, and not necessarily the fact
that you can build Marketosequences.
Michael Hartmann (13:19):
Yeah, it, I think it's interesting.
Um, I think the reality is whenthere becomes a rev function in
many companies where they bring,they still, it includes those
different disciplines or, orfunctional areas.
It still usually reports up tosomebody who's in a more of a
revenue role, right?
Whether it's a head of
Kyle Lacy (13:36):
But you don't, but you don't wanna rely on a
different business for yourproduction.
That's, that's my thing, is thatI don't.
If I need to build a bunch oflanding pages and, and really
break apart, um, uh, any type oflife cycle stuff, I do not want
to go to a marketing ops teamthat lives in biz ops to try to
get them to do it.
(13:58):
Does that make
Michael Hartmann (13:59):
yeah, so you, it's, it's more of a center,
I'll call it, center ofexcellence or it's like
Kyle Lacy (14:03):
so around bi business intelligence.
Michael Hartmann (14:05):
right.
Like a hub and spoke.
Right.
They are the ones who kinda helpset the framework and evolve it
and maybe support you on stuff,but on most sort of, I don't
know what the right word is.
Ordinary, like day to day kindof operational pieces, like
that's really you, you seek thatneeds to live on the
Kyle Lacy (14:22):
It's more of a life cycle marketer.
Right.
Honestly, I mean, and evenlifestyle marketing.
Sounds like I was early twothousands, but it's, it's kinda,
it's more life cycle orientedand campaign oriented than it is
the bi side of it, but, Sothere's, there's, there's two
options there.
There's production side of it,but there's also like, what the
(14:44):
hell are you dealing with allthe numbers and how do you make
sense of'em in a way that'smeaningful?
Michael Hartmann (14:49):
So it's, it's interesting the, you bring up
the numbers.
Uh, our listeners know that likeI'm a kind of a huge advocate
that we need to increase dataliteracy.
Right.
And, and kind of all acrossmarketing, but in ops for sure.
Cause it's, we are the onesprobably have the most access to
the data.
Kyle Lacy (15:07):
Mm.
Michael Hartmann (15:08):
I mean, how, like, is that something that you
think is, have you, is that beena normal thing where you've
seen, you've happened to belucky enough to have people in
an ops role that know the datareally well and can not only
just pull the data.
Tell you what it means or how tointerpret it, not h how not to
interpret it, stuff like that.
Or
Kyle Lacy (15:25):
Yeah.
Yeah, I've been, No, I've beenvery lucky.
Our CFO was brilliant at it.
Um, he actually, He saved my assa couple times with where I
wasn't reading the right data,honestly.
And then at seismic we, I meanour marketing ops team, if
Lauren listens to this, she'sgonna laugh because I'm gonna
(15:45):
get the number one, but I thinkwe had six or seven people and
then a bunch of contractors.
Like there was we, I've alwayshad pretty good support on the
data side, the for marketingops, which I'm lucky.
We, early on at Lessonly, wedidn't really.
But then when we started gettingto the point where, um, we had
to have a pipeline meetingbecause, you know, we needed to
(16:08):
go look at the big deals and weneeded to, everybody needed to
do their called shop for theweek.
It was important that that wasnot owned by a quota bearing
leader.
It was owned by Carmen, whocared about the overall revenue
number, but didn't care aboutcalling out my head of inbound
because he didn't hit his numberlast the week.
Michael Hartmann (16:30):
Right.
Kyle Lacy (16:32):
I think that's what's important about, uh, the
operations team in general.
And I, I like biz ops betterthan I do rev ops.
I think biz ops is moreencompassing.
Michael Hartmann (16:40):
Yeah.
Have it have it in with otheroperations functions across,
across the entire business.
Yeah.
No, I think, I think if I was,if, if, if I was to pick one, I
would probably pick a COO orhead of bi op, something like
that as the place for the samereasons.
Um, so you, you mentioned theteam at Lessley and the size,
like is, you know, in terms ofyour experience with different
(17:03):
stuff, like have you seen at dand maybe we can go all the way
back to like different stages,right?
You know, were there certain.
Well, I'm gonna, uh, uh, ask if,I guess another question did
were, how involved were you indefining what that those initial
early hires would be in thescope, size of the team?
Or was it something that, Justthat because of where it rolled
(17:25):
up, it was other people.
Kyle Lacy (17:27):
There's other people.
I never, I, I just cared thatthe reports I needed to do my
job, whether that was a Tableaudashboard or Salesforce
dashboard, were right and donein a timely manner.
So I didn't, it wasn't.
For me, Brian built out theoperations team in a as needed
basis, right?
(17:47):
Like as, as the teams grew.
As, you know, I had 70 ishpeople on the marketing team by
the time we were acquired, cuz Ihad all the BDRs, like we had a
marketing ops person that livedon Carmen's team.
Um, because the, the amount ofinformation that I needed and
the amount of work that we hadto do on some of the back end
(18:09):
stuff needed a full-time.
So I think Bri and I didn'treally help scope it.
I interviewed the person, but,um, and seismic, you know,
that's a very different org,right?
It's just a, it's a gross stage.
It's a big company.
Mike Rizzo (18:25):
Were you, someone coming to you asking, Do you
need this?
Were you just incessantly askingfor reports that
Kyle Lacy (18:33):
I was IESs, I was more incessantly asking.
Yeah.
Like there was, if I remembercorrectly, Lessonly.
It was more, it was acombination of Brian, Brian
knowing, being a very goodpeople manager, and knowing how
much he could get out of peoplein a way that's meaningful and
me just being aggressive and anasshole sometimes, but I,
Mike Rizzo (18:56):
I think the inner workings of that are important
for listeners to understandwhether you're moving into
leadership or you're on a, um,
Kyle Lacy (19:03):
Hm.
Mike Rizzo (19:04):
a role that's servicing some of these, some of
these functions, um, justunderstanding the nuance of
that, right?
Like you being incessant aboutyour requests, um, perpetuating
the need for someone to, on a,on a completely different.
Part of the org chart make adecision that I now have to
staff up to fulfill on Kyle'srequests.
(19:25):
Um, and you not backing downfrom that, I think is helpful to
understand so that whoever'slistening to this is, is, is
gotta say like, Hey, if these,you know, if these two things
are not happening, then yougotta overcompensate
Kyle Lacy (19:41):
Well, and we, and it made, and it, it made both teams
better, right?
Like we encourage, we pushpretty hard on making sure that
there was backlogs of requestsand what we needed done, and
Brian did a great job and thatthat operations team.
Did a great job managing thatappropriately, but it was, it
was us, us collectively pushingeach other to be better.
(20:04):
And, and I think that if you, I,I know cause I've experienced
it.
If you build, if you hire theright people and build the right
team like you, you'll, you'llunderstand when things are
needed, especially at, at thestage that we were at, it's, you
know, under, under 30 million inarr.
Right.
Mike Rizzo (20:23):
Hmm.
Kyle Lacy (20:23):
There isn't really a revenue stage either where you
need this.
I think it's mostly just whendoes backlog get too big and are
you prioritizing appropriatelyto hire the right people to
manage it?
Um, every book company'sdifferent.
Mike Rizzo (20:36):
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
I think every company isdifferent.
You also touched on, uh, animportant thing for every leader
or department lead or, ororganization in general to
consider is that like, look,when you're doing pipeline
reports and you're trying tounderstand the momentum of the
business, that can't be done bya quote caring individual.
Right?
Kyle Lacy (20:56):
should never like that.
That's a great, that's a greatpoint, Mike.
And as a cmo, I shouldn't bespending a couple hours trying
to figure out how to do areport.
Mike Rizzo (21:06):
Yeah, yeah.
Frankly, as
Kyle Lacy (21:08):
why I'm paid to do what I do.
Right?
Like
Mike Rizzo (21:12):
And even as a ceo, right?
Or COO like, like yes, you aresupposed to understand the
numbers and all those things inthe COO role, in the CMO role,
but it's not your responsibilityto sit there to try to figure
out, is this accurate?
How do I build it?
Kyle Lacy (21:26):
yeah, but that doesn't mean that you don't,
Like
Mike Rizzo (21:28):
It doesn't mean you
Kyle Lacy (21:29):
want, I don't want people to listen and not think
that I wasn't in Salesforce
Mike Rizzo (21:33):
Well, I was about to, I was about to ask you that
question.
I was like, Really?
At the end of the day, Kyle,like, I expect you probably know
how to do some of these
Kyle Lacy (21:42):
Yeah, a little.
Yeah, I do.
I do.
But
Mike Rizzo (21:44):
You know, but like,
Kyle Lacy (21:45):
pain and suffering of the marketing ops team, right?
It's like,
Mike Rizzo (21:49):
right.
Michael Hartmann (21:49):
even if you didn't right.
What you like.
This is one of the things I tryto teach people who work for me
is like, you know, if you askedfor a report, don't just do the
report.
Like if you look at the report,like you should spot, this is
where I'm gonna get questionsabout and be proactive about
having a reason why doing theextra research.
I suspect that's what you weredoing, right?
You saw some anomaly and.
Kyle Lacy (22:10):
Yeah.
And most of the time the reportsare wrong, but I I, I think that
the, I, I think that theimportant point is if you are,
if you are an aligned exec teamor you're an aligned leadership
team, you will understand whencertain hires need to be made in
operations because it's, It justas you hire more people and
(22:31):
quotas get larger and revenue,you're growing revenue and
you're raising more money, youjust need more support.
Um, and and see.
And leadership roles change,right?
Like Brian's role as CFO at theacquisition was very different
than when he joined at a millionor a million and half revenue or
whatever, right?
(22:52):
And my role changed prettydramatically.
And so you've gotta buildoperations teams to support that
in my.
Mike Rizzo (22:58):
Was there, you know, when you say you'll know.
Sorry, Hartmann, I know youwanted to ask your question
there.
Um,
Michael Hartmann (23:03):
right.
Mike Rizzo (23:05):
when you say that, you'll know when it's time for,
for those kinds of things.
I just wanted to ask, and maybeit's, maybe it's, uh, you know,
you don't know or you don't haveany experience in this regard,
but, um, did you ever find.
I, I don't know how early youwere at some of these companies.
Did you ever find that, Likeyou, people on the team were
(23:27):
like, Well, I can do that, I cando that, I can do that.
I can, I could do that.
You know, I know how to buildthat report, so I don't really
need to go budget for thisthing.
And then it never gets focusedon and eventually, like, you
finally make the decision.
Like
Kyle Lacy (23:41):
Um,
Mike Rizzo (23:42):
of what happened or.
it's just clear like, hey,because no one's sole
responsibility to is to makesure that this stuff is not
wrong.
Kyle Lacy (23:52):
yeah, that's a great question, man.
I don't.
I think initially early on atLessonly, we were for some re,
Well, I don't know why we wereokay with this in hindsight, but
we had, We had somebody thattaught himself Salesforce.
Salesforce admin really wantedto get into operations and he
was the run running reports andat some point, because Brian is
(24:16):
a very efficient CFO like mostCFOs are.
So he's not gonna justwillynilly build out an entire
operations team because the CMOslike, We need this, or our sales
leader saying we need it.
He was very, um, responsibleabout building it out.
Um, it wasn't, it wasn't thatthey could do it, it was that we
had somebody that was fillingthe need where we didn't need to
(24:38):
hire the head count.
But once the need grew pasttheir, Ability is when Brian
made the move and that, and, andthat's just, that's just good
people management.
But I, there wasn't a situationwhere it was like, we can just
do this.
I don't think, I don't everremember having those
conversations, um, because Idon't, I never liked building
(25:01):
reports.
Like I, I, it's, it's just not,it's not something that I love
doing.
It doesn't mean I didn't do it,but it, we needed the support as
we were.
As the company grows, you spendtimes on time on different
things.
Mike Rizzo (25:16):
Totally cool.
Michael Hartmann (25:17):
what what's really.
Fascinating to me right now inthis conversation is that, cuz I
think we've touched on what Iwould call campaign operations,
and I suspect that most, if wehad other marketing leaders on,
and we were talking aboutmarketing ops, it would all be
about how they supported our goto market activities, right?
Getting stuff out in themarketplace.
And not, I mean, yes, they dodata too.
(25:39):
It's really interesting to methat you were focusing so much
on the need for data insightsand, Well, and maybe that's
partially because you had BDRteam, but I don't know if it
would you have been the
Kyle Lacy (25:49):
Well, I,
Michael Hartmann (25:50):
that.
Kyle Lacy (25:51):
no, I think I'm more like that now because Lauren and
Esco at Seismic was the first.
Marketing operations leader thatI've worked with that was data
driven, like straight up data,and that, that was my first
experience with somebody thatreally understood how to do
marketing operations the rightway, in my opinion.
(26:12):
Um, you know, she, she was justgood at it.
So I think most of that is justmy experience over the past
year, but it's also.
I think it's marketers ingeneral.
We tend to just focus so much onproduction and campaigns and not
enough on how do you buildintelligent reporting and
(26:33):
operations to actually makedecisions the right way.
And I think a lot of times it'sthat because we're we're brought
up to be so reactive, like we'remarketing just tends to be a
reactive org when they should beleading with data in a right, in
the right ways, not justwilly-nilly.
And being proactive with theapproaches of campaigns and, and
(26:54):
the, uh, the creative work theywanna do.
But I think it's justcombination of a lot of things.
But for me, it's been workingwith Lauren Seic for sure.
Michael Hartmann (27:03):
It's really interesting.
So, uh, so I'm, I'm, I'm withyou that marketing in general is
reactive, which means.
Marketing ops has tended to beeven more reactive and try to
like, we
Kyle Lacy (27:13):
Yes,
Michael Hartmann (27:13):
go, go, go the extra yard to support something
cuz it had to get out in market.
Right.
Committed to something going outlive at a certain point.
What Um, so I know this is notwhere we were planning on going
this conversation, but I'm sofascinated by this.
I wanna keep going so littlebit.
So the, um, You mentioned likebeing data driven, but like, not
(27:36):
willy-nilly I think is what you,you said, but one of the things
I see is, um, some marketingpeople say they're data driven.
This what they, I think whatthey mean is I get lots and lots
of data, but I don't know thatthey necessarily.
A lot of changes or get a lot ofinsights be with that.
(27:57):
So it's like, I fear like, yes,data's important, but it's like
how do you know what the rightdata is?
And the other thing I've foundis you get a piece of data, it
begs another question.
It begs another question, right?
And so like, how do you knowwhen to stop?
Kyle Lacy (28:09):
Well, So I would, I would say I am not a very, I, I
think marketing teams should bedata driven.
I think that's why marketing opsis so important, and that's why
hiring somebody that reallyunderstands how to do it in the
right way, like a Lord and DressCo is so important to the
success of a marketing leader.
(28:31):
Like, Brian was so good at it,uh, Lessonly that I, I'd said
he, he saved my ass a coupletimes and that's because I was
reading, I was reading the datadifferently, like on an inbound
funnel and he found it anomalythat I had missed.
And because he found it, wecompletely rebuilt the website
and we com and we and ourinbound took off again.
(28:54):
So I just, I think that it's, Ithink that that's why.
Operations in general isimportant because a lot of
marketers, like you said, tendto just be more production
driven.
I don't know if I answered yourquestion.
I just agreed with you.
Michael Hartmann (29:11):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's just really
interesting to me that, So Iguess given all this, right, do
you think you are, like, you'rean outlier in having this
perspective about ops from amarketing leadership
Kyle Lacy (29:24):
No, it depends.
It depends on where you lean.
Like I, I lean brand andmessaging and positioning, so I
tend to be, I tend to, and Ilearn this through seismic cuz I
really had to trust but verify,right?
I tend to be more gut instinctand make decisions on an
emotional side.
Context, which is why I have tobalance myself with a growth and
(29:45):
demand leader that is more, uh,more numbers oriented.
Right.
And I, and I, I just think it's,it's, it's where do you lean as
a leader and how do you makesure that you're building a team
that can support where you'reinefficiencies are, right?
And, um, I think that I'm prettygood at the gut instinct, but
(30:06):
sometimes it hasn't, it hasn'tworked out.
So I've learned through theprocess, but that's why.
That's why operations is sofreaking important because you
cannot keep track of everythingas a marketing leader.
There's no way.
There's no way because it'sjust, it's, there's too much
data and you should be leadingthe team and the creativity and
(30:27):
the emo and, and you know,making sure the team's stoked to
get up every day and domarketing for these companies.
And I don't know, I can talkabout this all day long, but
it's.
Mike Rizzo (30:38):
I wanna go back to something you said, uh, a little
while ago, or, or one of ussaid, one of you, I don't know,
um, we were talking about.
Uh, the idea of, of sort ofbeing reactive, right?
And, um, how we, we, we don'treally take the time to, to plan
out things, but I would arguethat like, what's, what's super
(31:01):
interesting is I think amarketing operations person, uh,
and people that are oriented inthat, in that way.
Wants to plan.
In fact, they like, I wouldargue that many of them want to
build for scale I actually justsaw a post on LinkedIn the other
day from a, from a fellowcommunity member who, um, was
(31:23):
talking about building thingsand it was like, Literally the
two things were things thatscale versus things that fail.
Right?
And a marketing operationsperson who's really good builds
things that scale, not thingsthat fail.
And, and so all I'm saying, allof this, that's like, so why do
we still have this problem ifmarketing ops and people who do
(31:44):
sort of campaign operations andwe know that we need to, to lay
a foundation in order to scale?
Want to be planners.
And we've got, you know, manyleaders who want to build a
narrative, I hope.
Whether you're a product leaderwho's built a story arc around
why your product exists, a CEOfor the vision of the company,
or a CMO who wants to, uh,distribute that vision and that
(32:06):
story and a brand message.
There's a lot of planning thatwants to happen.
Let's just call it top and tail.
Executives down to operationalmembers, and somewhere in the
middle, not, not in a hierarchyor latter fashion, but somewhere
in the middle there's this likemishmash of we're not going fast
enough.
So someone launch a campaign
Kyle Lacy (32:27):
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (32:27):
and somehow like we lose planning.
Like what happens?
Like what's, what's, what's thedeal with
Kyle Lacy (32:32):
I think I've always experienced that the, that
random launch of a campaign likethat, that didn't change, uh,
that's never really changed forme.
That just, that's more of thereactive side of me.
But, um, I think that that's,again, I think that that's why
bi op should live on the execlevel and not in an org.
(32:53):
was, she was, she was on, shehelped me build all the board
decks.
She was involved in all of ourOKR and goal planning every
quarter.
She was the one making sure thatthe budgets and the tech stack
and all that stuff was in placein the right way.
Like she was literally my righthand when it came to all of the
(33:14):
data side of, of what we do asmarketing team.
And I think I, I, I think thereason why that doesn't exist is
because not a lot of people haveseen it done the right way.
And it, it's because it's, thisisn't like a, like how long is
marketing, like rev ops andmarketing ops been around, Like,
this is like what Gainsight didwith customer success and
(33:37):
Marketo did with marketingautomation like that.
It, it's a cat, Like thecategory is just so early.
Like I, I just don't thinkthere's enough people doing.
Mike Rizzo (33:46):
Yeah, it still is really early.
I mean, we're talking likeformally a role probably for a
decade, maybe,
Kyle Lacy (33:53):
Maybe,
Michael Hartmann (33:54):
That's a, That's about what I would put it
at.
Mike Rizzo (33:56):
Yeah,
Kyle Lacy (33:56):
Yeah, I can, I can name, I can name three people
that I know that I think if, ifyou were to ask me who are the
best marketing operationspeople, you know, I could
probably name three, maybe twofor sure.
But I, because it's just so,it's such a, um, it's kind of
like, like product marketing,but it's kind of the same type
(34:18):
of approach where you reallyhave to spend a lot of time in
the role to be good at it.
Mike Rizzo (34:23):
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Lacy (34:24):
and, and because of that, it makes it hard to hire
for like product marketing's thesame way, but we're not, this is
not a product marketing podcast,but it's, uh,
Mike Rizzo (34:33):
but it like, like there's a very large community
for product marketers out there,pma, Um, that exists very much
in the same manner that, thatthis community exists, and it's
for that exact reason.
It's super hard to hire.
It's super hard to learn, superhard to get the respect that you
deserve.
Uh, it's convoluted, like whatis product marketing?
(34:56):
Does it live under product?
Does
Kyle Lacy (34:57):
Yeah, exactly.
Yep.
It's very similar.
Mike Rizzo (35:00):
it's, it's very, very, very similar And, and,
yeah.
Marketing ops hasn't been aroundquite as long, uh, and so we're
tackling that challenge, uh, inaddition to those same similar
challenges.
But no, I appreciate youanswering the question.
It's weird.
It's weird that we all want toplan, but somehow, um, we always
try to put the cart before thehorse or something and
Kyle Lacy (35:23):
Yeah, and
Mike Rizzo (35:23):
and then someone goes, Why isn't this working?
Kyle Lacy (35:26):
Yeah, I, I, it is just hard.
It's the reactive thing.
Michael Hartmann (35:29):
well, and I, I, I, I, I, I would argue that
part of that is the, We don'tknow how to plan very well
either, though.
Like I think a lot of peopleeither don't wanna do enough
strategic thinking and planning,or they wanna do too much
detail.
And both of them sort of leadto.
Poor outcomes in most cases,unless you're just lucky.
think, you know, there's a,there's a happy medium in there
(35:51):
somewhere that works well whereyou, you have enough to, to go,
okay, you know, I'm going for,this is where we're trying to
get to.
We kind of know what we wanna goso we can start taking steps in
the direction.
And this is kind how I thinkabout evolving Tech Act even is
just like, or someone comes tome with, Hey, we wanna launch
this campaign, we wanna try thisnew creative idea.
We should go buy X, Y, or Z, Weneed to go spend a bunch of
(36:13):
money.
I was like, Well, can we getclose to that without doing
that?
Like let's experi, let's use itas an experiment first, and then
if it works and we think wewanna scale it and use it more,
and then we can evolve it, likethat's the way to approach it as
opposed to taking a bunch ofmoney in and a bunch of time and
then not actually getting thefruit of it for way longer.
Mike Rizzo (36:32):
Yeah,
Kyle Lacy (36:33):
Well it, Mike, you said it.
You said it, and I will, I'mgoing to say this to this entire
community, I did not fullyunderstand the benefit of, of
ops, marketing, ops, especially.
Until, and I, I think I've saidthis already, but I'm gonna say
it again, until I was involvedin somebody that really knew how
to do it the right way, Istarted seeing it with Carmen,
(36:56):
see at Lessley right before theacquisition.
And then when moved over, Carmenstayed on and Lauren at Seismic.
They were, they're just so goodat the job.
Now, every job I go to,marketing ops is going to.
One of the main roles that I'mgonna be looking at in an org
saying, Okay, where does thislive?
(37:16):
Who's doing it?
Because it's so important to theproductivity and the focus, like
you said, like I can't imaginesetting goals right now without
an ops person.
Mike Rizzo (37:28):
Yeah,
Kyle Lacy (37:29):
Like it seems crazy to me now, now that I've
experienced it done well,basically.
Mike Rizzo (37:33):
and I think, like, I think when you go to build,
I've, I've been in startups mycareer.
Uh, when you go to build aproduct, you have a hunch as a
product owner, like you have ahunch, you do market research.
You do some validation and thenyou try to build a feature, you
build an MVP and so on and soforth.
And it's fascinating to me thatsomehow in, even in the series A
(37:57):
through C's, we're not stilltaking that same approach.
Just like Hartmann was justsaying like, Hey, how do we not
go by the tool?
And we try to, you know, dosomething that's MVP to prove
out whether or not that's a goodinvestment.
It's fascinating that likesomehow that doesn't come down
the line.
And, And Kyle, you just said,you know, I would be hard
pressed to go create goals if Ididn't have a marketing ops
(38:19):
person.
I'd say, Well, I think youcould, you could come up with
some bets, right?
You could, you could and, andlike, you know, you probably do,
but where you're quickly gonnarun into a problem is how do I
measure it?
And then how do I, Okay, I knowhow to measure it, I know what I
need to track, but did Iimplement it the right way so
(38:40):
that I can keep tracking itafter we do this?
In other words, did I justcreate a duplicate field or
three other fields that alreadyexisted in my CRM and just
created Chaos?
Michael Hartmann (38:52):
just re reuse it another, a existing field in
a different way.
Mike Rizzo (38:55):
Yeah.
Oh wait, Lead source.
I'll just add a few more inhere.
Right?
Like
Kyle Lacy (38:59):
Or you
Mike Rizzo (39:00):
Those details
Kyle Lacy (39:01):
building, building the campaign reports and there's
no consistency.
I think that's what you'resaying, but
Mike Rizzo (39:07):
Yes, exactly.
Kyle Lacy (39:07):
I experienced that a Lessonly for
Mike Rizzo (39:09):
Those, those details matter And, and for leaders that
haven't had to go through thatexperience, it's like, well,
we'll figure it out.
Kyle Lacy (39:17):
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (39:17):
No, cuz the second that you say that, it's, it's
just, you're just throwingcaution to the
Kyle Lacy (39:23):
Well, Well, and I, and I've said this on plenty of
podcasts I have written aboutthis.
You have to, if you're growing acompany, hire operations sooner
than you think you need it,
Mike Rizzo (39:35):
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Lacy (39:37):
once the data just starts growing because you hire
more account executives, becauseyou have bigger teams, because
you're driving more customers,it is much hard.
To get anything done if youdon't have the foundation set up
initially.
I think Brian, great job withthat.
But you can't, You can't get to10 million revenue and then hire
(39:58):
an ops person.
I mean, the data's just gonna bea freaking mess, and you're
probably not making gooddecisions either anyway.
Mike Rizzo (40:04):
Yep.
Michael Hartmann (40:05):
So talking about, Okay, so I like that
you're saying higher earlier.
I, I think if I was to pull ouraudience or our listeners, they
would, you know, generally thinkthat the per their, the
perception of marketing Ops isnot as a strategic one for most
people, despite what you'resaying here.
So do you, you know, for ourlisteners, like is there
(40:28):
anything maybe from the peopleyou, you mentioned that you
worked with that you could say,these are the things, like this
is either knowledge that theyhad or a way that they.
We're proactive about somethingor whatever it might be.
That was a way that led them tosort of, Cuz it sounds like
that's not how you perceived himgoing in.
(40:49):
Right.
Your perception was notmarketing ops as a, as a sort of
a strategic function.
So how would we, how wouldthose, how would you suggest
those people start to changethat perception?
Kyle Lacy (40:59):
Be, uh, the, the number one thing is be proactive
with your counterpart.
So Lauren would bring up thingsin our one-on-ones that I wasn't
thinking about based off of thedata she was looking at.
She was proactively surfacingchallenges or things that we
should look at based off of thedata that she was managing and
(41:19):
monitoring.
Right.
When you're helpful like thatand you're proactive like that,
you become more strategicbecause the leadership team
relies on you to be that personthat's bringing the insights.
Right.
And when you're that person, youautomatically become more
strategic because you're beinghelpful.
Right.
In the past, I think we'vetalked, I think we've talked
(41:41):
about.
Quite a bit now, but in thepast, marketing ops has been a
production for me and an ordertaker and having a backlog and
those are all important things,but it was never a proactive
approach to, You might not haveseen this in the data you were
looking at Kyle, or do you needhelp?
Here's a slide for the boarddeck based off of the pipeline
(42:03):
numbers.
Let's talk about, let's talkabout the narrative of the board
meeting, Right?
Lauren was doing all that withme and.
I think that that's just whatmakes it more strategic is when
you're involved and when youcare.
It feels like you care moreabout the numbers than the
person you're supporting.
I mean, that's, that's reallywhat it comes down to in my
(42:25):
opinion.
Michael Hartmann (42:26):
So, yeah, I would argue that there's a gap
in understanding data acrosseven ops where we have access to
data.
Uh, and, and the storytellingpiece of it.
Like do you think, do you thinkit was, how important do you
think that was compared to justkind of knowing the numbers but
Kyle Lacy (42:45):
it was, that's, that's, that is like 80% of what
why is she's so good is thenarrative is how do you, how do
you tell a story with thenumbers, not just manage a
dashboard and say, Hey,something dropped or something
went up, or a conversion ratedrop.
Right.
She was, She was, I keep sayingshe was so, she's still doing
it.
She is really good at it.
(43:07):
Um, but, and, and I, I foundthat extremely helpful as an SVP
in a large org, that we wouldspend a lot of time looking at
the numbers, and then we wouldspend a lot of time building the
narrative around the numbers,because it's a, it's, it's
important that as the companygrows, you're all saying the
same thing, honestly, especiallyin.
Mike Rizzo (43:26):
I think, you know, beginning, beginning with the
end in mind for any, for anyactivity, whether it's campaign
planning, Or, um, phases of yourbusiness or both um, early stage
companies in in particular.
Right there, there's differentlevers that you can pull on to
(43:46):
go secure your next round offunding.
And if the narrative you'vebuilt is around, Hey, our
traction is really, reallystrong in the market because
we're seeing product usage, orwe're seeing free account
signups, or something like that.
Then build the architecture andthe framework to build a
narrative, uh, around thosethings.
If it's revenue is increasing orthe pipeline, close rates are
(44:10):
increasing a particular marketsegment, then build it to
support that.
But begin with the end in mindand know at the executive level
what narrative you want to tell,and then allow your ops team to
try to go build that pipelineto, to tell that story, right?
And then it allows the folks.
You know, you've worked with tocome up to a meeting and say,
(44:32):
Hey, based on what I understandfrom the business objectives, or
this department's objectives, orthe campaign objectives, here's
what I'm seeing from what youasked us to keep it keep track
of,
Kyle Lacy (44:44):
Yeah, and I, but I also think it's important to
note that it's not a, themarketing, the ops person
believe should be involved inthat exact level conversation.
Like it's not a.
Here's, here's what narrative wethink as an exec team.
Go make it happen.
It's, Hey, we want, this is whatwe think is happening in the
narrative.
We want you to either verify itor come back to us and let's
(45:06):
talk about what's actuallyhappening.
I mean, we had a situation,Lessonly, where we started
seeing a drop in.
Um, a average contract value andchurn rates were going up and we
didn't quite understand what washappening until, uh, Brian and
the ops team did a cohortanalysis on our personas, and we
realized that hr, sales andcustomer service was our use
(45:30):
cases.
Customer service and salecohorts were skyrocket.
Both average contract value aswell as retention and net dollar
retention and HR was tanking andwe, nobody had, we didn't have
any idea that that washappening.
It was just like, we don'tunderstand what's going on.
Let's look into it.
And, and because we had peoplethat were good at looking at the
(45:51):
data and thinking of anarrative, we made a decision to
cut HR out of the funnel and it,it exponentially changed the
business trajectory.
Right.
So, That's, if you don't havethe people in place to think
through that stuff and look atthat stuff, it would've just
been a bunch of first timeexecutives at the startup
pulling reports and trying tofigure out why average contract
(46:13):
value is dropping.
Right.
So that's just why it's soimportant, because you're not, I
think a lot of companies failfaster than they should because
they don't have people thinkingabout this.
And they haven't hired'em soonenough.
And if you're getting the 10million ARR and you don't have
an operations team together, youbetter get your ass in gear, in
my opinion.
Cause it's gonna come, it'sgonna, it's gonna come bite you
(46:36):
if you don't.
Mike Rizzo (46:37):
Higher yesterday.
Michael Hartmann (46:39):
Yeah.
Well, I like, I have so manymore questions I could probably
ask, but I wanna be respectfulof your time and I know that
this is a lot to ask.
So Kyle, thank you so much.
Um, any last thoughts before we,we wrap up?
Kyle Lacy (46:54):
No, I just, I, I want to give a big shout out to this
community, to the, to themarketing ops community as a
whole, honestly, because I thinkthat.
I think that that, that y'allare behind the scenes a lot for
some of these marketing teamsand you don't get the credit you
ultimately should get.
(47:15):
And um, I had to see thatfirsthand in order to fully
understand the importance ofthis and.
That's my shout out to thisgroup because it's, uh, it is
needed no matter what, like thisrole in this or the teams, no
matter how it's structured.
Uh, a, a productive and growthoriented marketing team needs
(47:36):
marketing ops no matter where itlives.
So shout out to this groupbecause, uh, you keep all of us
alive.
Mike Rizzo (47:45):
love that.
That's a great shout out.
Michael Hartmann (47:48):
Well, great.
So, Kyle, this has been a lot offun.
I always enjoy conversationswith you.
We always kind of go off indifferent directions, but, um,
if folks wanna keep up with youand what's, what's coming up
next for you or your, your nextbook or whatever it is you're
doing, what's the
Kyle Lacy (48:01):
I'm not doing a book.
Well, I, I wrote, I wroteTwitter marketing for dummy, so
I'm thinking like this wholeElon thing.
Maybe I should like bring outthe third edition cause.
Nobody has any idea what's goingon, but no, I, uh, LinkedIn or
Twitter.
LinkedIn, you can search for me.
Twitter is where I've usuallyLinkedIn and Twitter is where I
spend my time.
Michael Hartmann (48:21):
Awesome.
Kyle, again, thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Uh, Mike, thank you.
And we miss Naomi, but this wasa fun conversation.
Uh, thanks to all of ourlisteners for, for, uh,
continuing to support us,continue to give us ratings and
reviews.
And if you've got suggestionsfor other great guests like
Kyle, uh, or you wanna be aguest, just reach out to Mike,
Naomi, or me.
(48:41):
Until next time, thankseveryone.
Bye-bye.
Mike Rizzo (48:43):
Thanks everybody back.
Kyle Lacy (48:44):
Bye.
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