February 9, 2024 • 31 mins
In this episode with I discuss the critical partnership between Rev Ops and Rev Enablement with Sandy Robinson, SVP of Revenue Operations and Enablement at Patra Corporation. Sandy shares her experiences and ways to unlock the synergies between these two teams regardless of where they report. Some of the topics we covered:
- How Rev Ops and Enablement ideally partner
- Successful change management
- Systems selection and deployment
- Metrics and reporting
Sandy brings over 20 years of experience in sales, leadership, training, enablement, and revenue operations to the industry. She has a proven track record of driving revenue growth and optimizing operations through data-driven insights and innovative solutions. She has led sales teams to exceed targets, developed go-to-market strategies, and implemented scalable processes to drive growth.
Sandy's mission is to enable teams through intense focus on the complete customer buying journey related to systems, tools, training, and processes. Sandy enjoys mentoring younger women, helping them to navigate their careers, and setting an example for other women in her field.
Please subscibe on Apple, Spotify or Google.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Revenue Enablement Society
Stories from the Trenches, whereenablement practitioners share
their real-world experiences.
Get the scoop on what'shappening inside revenue
enablement teams across theglobal RES community.
Each segment of stories fromthe trenches shares the good,
the bad and the ugly practicesof corporate revenue enablement
(00:23):
initiatives when not worked,what didn't work and how
obstacles were eliminated byenablement teams and
go-to-market leadership.
Sit back, grab a cold one andjoin host Paul Butterfield,
founder of Revenue FlywheelGroup, for casual conversations
about the wide and variedprofession of revenue enablement
, where there's never aone-size-fits-all solution.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode
of Stories from the Trenches theRevenue Enablement Society
podcast, where we bring togetherpractitioners from all over the
globe.
We talk about the work thatthey're doing, the innovative
ways they're finding of doing it, and sometimes things that
didn't go so well, becausethere's lessons to be learned
there as well.
So we've got another greatguest for you.
(01:07):
This time I'm excited tointroduce you to Sandy Robinson.
Welcome, sandy.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thank you, paul, appreciate you having me today.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm excited to have you here Now.
Sandy is currently the SVP ofRevenue Operations and
Enablement at Patra Corporation.
Sandy, I'll give you a minuteor two just to talk a little bit
about yourself and what you'reworking on, just so people can
get to know you.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Sounds great.
So I started at Patra in aboutmid-April in a role where there
previously wasn't a Rev Opsfunction.
This is a 17-year-old company,so I've really focused on
optimizing our HubSpot instancerevamping comp plans.
I mean, you name itconsultative training.
We're doing it all.
So pull together an onboardingprogram that we brought on 15
(01:49):
people this summer so, as I wasonboarding myself, created an
onboarding program.
I'm sure you get that.
So prior to that, my experiencehas been in SaaS, fintech.
I was in insurance for a longtime and roles in sales, sales
operations, leadership, rev Opsfor I don't know 20 or some 20,
(02:10):
some odd years I won't say theexact number, but yeah, so I'm
again World 21 Sandy, it doesn'tmatter.
Yes, I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
All right, all right.
So I am curious you hadmentioned that you just got back
from vacation.
You have a vacation home downin the Keys.
What was your favorite thingwhile you were there to do?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Oh, I love going to the beach.
I enjoy fishing, just kind ofrelaxing in the nice warm air.
Even though I live in Florida,I'm a total baby, so the warmer
the better for me.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So sweater weather means go south, got it.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I'm a Florida kid too Not anymore, but I
remember we would just be amazedthis time of year when people
from St Montreal would be headeddown to the beach in their
Speedos and were like, really,guys, it's not for people warm,
but I guess I heard in Montrealit was feeling really good to
them.
Okay, all right, so let's getinto the Jimmy Kimmel challenge.
(03:13):
So those of you who haven'theard it before, jimmy Kimmel
has decided to retire thiscoming year and because Sandy is
so well connected, she's beenoffered his show.
So, sandy, you can have anyoneyou want as your first guest on
the couch.
Who's going to be there and whydid you choose them?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I mean it has to be pink.
She is like a feminist icon.
I love her.
She's humble, she's an amazingartist, just a great mom, a
woman in general, and I actuallymet her once.
I was on vacation and actuallysipping Tequila with her and she
(03:51):
didn't know that, or she didn'tknow that I knew who she was
and I didn't indicate that.
So it was just really cool,like she's super down to earth.
You'd never know that she was acelebrity or star, if you just
like kind of meet her on theside.
So.
But I'd love to like officiallymeet her and interview her.
I think that'd be super awesome.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
That sounds really cool.
So you're able to have just ahuman connection.
There was no celebrity elementto it.
There was no.
That's cool, yeah it really wasAll right.
So let's get into what we'regoing to talk about today.
This is a topic that's probablya little overdue.
I've been doing this beforeyears in March this year and so
(04:30):
it's coming up pretty quick,actually at the time this airs.
Let's talk about enablement andrev ops and from your title,
clearly that's an area whereyou're spending time now, but
just from previous conversationswith you, and that's an area
where you've been doing a lot ofwork and you have a lot of
great experiences let's I wantto talk about that, thank you.
When we talk about, or peopletalk about, revops versus, or
(04:51):
RevOps and enablement, howshould those teams partner or
does it matter where they report?
Let's just kind of start therewith your experience, and then
we'll go deeper.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Sure, I mean, coming from a sales background early in
my career and through salesleadership, I think it was
always just ingrained in the waythat I looked at things, right.
So, becoming a sales manager,you have to learn how to coach
and train and all these things,hopefully and so now, but yeah,
exactly, you think so.
(05:24):
Flash forward, however, longlater again I won't mention any
years when you think aboutreporting structures, companies.
We have more and more silosthroughout organizations, right,
and the reporting structurescan be very different across
organizations and I thinkultimately we want those teams
to really work hand in hand andthey should follow the customer
(05:48):
journey.
I mean, that is truly what Ipassionately believe In.
My world, revops and enablementis under one umbrella and it
makes sense for what's happening, the size of our company.
As companies get larger, Ithink it makes sense to have
those functions have morespecificity and specific
(06:09):
leadership.
But ultimately there needs tobe a clear definition of roles
and responsibilities and howthey go hand in hand.
So, for example, if it's underthe CRO, then you would have, I
would guess, a little bit easierpath of coordinating that right
.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So, whether it's all called, In my experience at
least, it is pretty easy yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, it makes.
It makes it a lot, a lotsimpler as long as you're not
kind of siloed out too muchwithin your own organization,
which does happen.
But then when it falls out like, say, for example, there's a
chief marketing officer and achief revenue officer and then
within that they've got kind ofdifferent levels of enablement
(06:52):
and operations marketing, itstarts to get more complicated.
So ultimately, starting withthe customer journey much like
you would do anything else androles and responsibilities among
within the customer journey tosort out who's doing what and
how can you really partner.
But I think you have to beintentional about it,
particularly if the reportingstructure isn't under one
(07:13):
function.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, give it a little takes a little more
thought.
I mean, you're speaking to, youknow, a big family.
Talk customer journey,enablement, that is.
Yeah, that's how I love to lookat it too.
In fact, when I don't know if Itold you this, when I launched
my company about a year ago, Iwas excited to find out no one
had trademarked that, because Ihad been using that phrase.
I'm sure it wasn't original tome, but nobody had nobody had
(07:35):
had protected it.
So, since I was launching abrand, I was able to grab that,
because I look at it the sameway.
It's.
How are we enabling all of theteams that are interfacing one
way or another with with thosecustomers?
How are we trying to create?
How are we creating, should say, an elevated experience?
It's risky to try to compete onproduct features or price, and
(07:59):
it's got to be some other reasonthat people want to do business
with you.
This is and this is it.
So let's get into somespecifics.
So, taking what you just said,let's talk about an approach,
let's say rolling out a newprocess, or perhaps it's even a
full new sales methodology.
Walk us through what that lookslike with this, with a healthy
(08:20):
partnership with enablement andRebops.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Sure, I see this a lot and you know I've been a
part of companies where we'vehad challenges rolling out new
methodologies and particularlyif you're partnering with, like
a third party to try to rollsomething out.
But let's say you create a newsales methodology, right, you're
going to use Challenger, you'regoing to use Command of the
Message or whatever elementsthat you create in Bake, and I
(08:47):
don't side know, I don'tparticularly say you know, I'm
not married to one or the other.
I think you just have tocalibrate and use the best
pieces of each methodology andcalibrate within your own
company.
So that's probably a wholeother topic.
But in terms of you know themethodology, I see this all the
time where you roll somethingout and then you have the
(09:08):
forgetting curve.
People totally, you know, kindof drift off.
They go to this like whetherit's a webinar in person or
something.
Company spends a ton of moneyand then you fail to do, you
know, align the process and thesystems, and a lot of times
that's because one department istouting this one thing, getting
it rolled out, like hey, we'redoing this, and they haven't
(09:29):
really collaborated with theother departments.
So I really believe you have toconnect the methodology, to the
process and to the systems andmake sure it all works together.
If you don't have all three ofthose aligned, your initiative
will fail.
So mark my words you will fail.
And you know, we rolled outMedPick last summer.
(09:51):
So we had some training, we hadto train the trainer, actually
got certified, all this stuff,and so that's great.
That's kind of one piece of it.
And then we documented theprocess.
How does that work within thecustomer journey?
What do we have to do to alignthe stages in HubSpot?
We use HubSpot for our CRM, sowhat needs to happen there?
(10:12):
What are the stage requirements?
Putting together that playbook,and then we aligned Gong,
created a board in Gong, wecreated the functionality within
HubSpot and then train thepeople on the systems.
Then there's reporting andeverything.
So you have to have that kindof full picture and if you don't
have enablement and RevOpsworking together or whatever
(10:35):
that looks like in yourorganization, you're doomed to
fail.
So having all three of thosecomponents, I think is super
critical, and enablement isreally the glue that holds that
all together.
Because, as you know, if youget enablement involved and for
me it's like put on myenablement hat, because I'm kind
of doing both right now.
But if you get enablementinvolved early, they're going to
(11:00):
figure out okay, where do weneed to surface these documents
in the system, and they can workwith RevOps and figure out what
fields and how this workstogether and do we need training
?
And that training should be acombination of some sort of
maybe it's a video meeting,maybe it's an SOP doc, maybe
it's a social learning, achannel in Slack, whatever it is
(11:22):
, but it's kind of kind of allworked together.
And this even goes back to likefor anybody who has a training
background, like the old schoolad-y model right, is just really
tying all of those thingstogether, and you know.
But we can't forget to do it.
We can't just like throwsomething out there and expect
it to work.
(11:43):
You know, it's just to getagainst the wall.
We just kind of shove it outthere, we got the thing done, we
did it at our kickoff and thenthis thing just goes by the
wayside when people get back andthey get into their grind and
their email boxes and all thisother crap.
So obviously I get real excitedabout this stuff, but you have
to put it all together andpackage it or it doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It doesn't yet.
Yet so many companies stilltrying to do it that way I was
talking a couple months ago.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Oh sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, that was what I was going to say.
I was talking with aprospective client the other day
and this is a head of salesthat I've known for years.
In fact, I used to work withhim, respect him in many ways.
Yet when I talked to them aboutwhat they were doing with their
methodology, he's like oh, wehad everybody watch some
training, some med pic trainingvideos, so we're good to go.
And yeah, so again, right, thisis a guy very, very smart sales
(12:35):
leader, very successful inother ways.
But yeah, there's still work todo there.
Definitely is they're checkingthe box.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
No, yeah, I mean it's like you're checking the box
and I hate to say it, butsometimes the big kind of
monster training companies thatare out there they feed off of
that because they get you to nowsign up for their reinforcement
program and then sign up forthis and add more, add on this
and this, and they're lovingthat because you, as the leader
(13:05):
in your organization, failed toput together a sustainable
program and you didn't tie thosethree things together.
So I think it just goes back tothat core methodology, to
process, to systems, making surethat all works together, and
the offshoot of that is thereporting, the analytics and the
continuous improvement from it.
(13:26):
So you have to actually dosomething about it, monitor it
and make sure, and that's whereenablement and RevOps again can
come hand in hand very nicely.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
To do what you're just what you're talking about,
which, again, I couldn't agreemore.
You've got to have the rightsystems, and you've mentioned a
couple of times is there anymore to be said about how RevOps
and Navelet work together andeven evaluating and selecting
and deploying those systems?
So, in other words, I've comeinto companies and you probably
(13:57):
have two where, yes, we reallyneed a methodology, but we don't
have the infrastructure readyto roll out a methodology and
the way that you've describedand have it stick, and so you
have to even take a step backand evaluate that.
Can we talk about that for aminute?
What does that look like?
How do those two teams worktogether, or should they work
together?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, and that can be tough because they might have
their own budgets for tech,right, and then people want to
own the budget and they want to.
You know, this is my tool, thisis your tool and those kind of
things.
But so it starts to getchallenging.
But you know, if you thinkabout any tech selection, you
have to have the rightstakeholders involved.
So it even starts with who'susing the tool.
(14:37):
So like, for example, if youhave a prospecting tool, you
want to get an SDR, maybesomebody who is like a power
user and they're kind of youknow, into the system.
You can use them even later asan SME.
Get the sales leader, marketingleader, enablement all the
people involved early on in theselection process.
So I have a you know kind of away to go through like a rubric
(15:00):
for decision criteria and theneach person weighs in on the key
things that you know matter tothem, to their department and
then to the overall customerjourney.
So if you think of that, youhave to always have the right
stakeholders, and enablementshould have a seat at the table
early in the selection processif it impacts the you know in
their realm of responsibility.
(15:20):
So like, for let's just pretendit's, you know, marketing,
sales and customer success in aperfect world, and they have
that involvement and they'regoing to be able to think of
things critically, and then sodoes RevOps, because RevOps will
think of things like, forexample, marketing.
I've had this experience notthat long ago.
Marketing would create, youknow, okay, here's our
(15:43):
enablement tool that we decidedto use for the company.
We've set it up, we put all thecool stuff, whatever, whatever.
And then RevOps is like Dude,it doesn't work with the CRM,
there's no integration, so likethat's a situation that I'm
dealing with and because therewasn't a full suite of people in
(16:04):
the selection process, thatwould catch, you know, because
every let's side note.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That's a big miss, though.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Well, every company says every vendor, every great
salesperson, is going to tellyou their tool integrates to
whatever CRM you're using, andthat's not untrue, right?
Yeah, sure, Everybody's got anopen API.
But you know, come on, thereare a lot of limitations,
particularly when you're, youknow, depending on your CRM.
Obviously, salesforce has likea ton of options, and then the
(16:33):
scope narrows as you go downright.
So that's just an example.
Like not getting RevOpsinvolved and maybe enablements
doing that kind of thing, and,on the flip side, if RevOps
isn't getting enablementinvolved, how do you know how?
How are you going to set it up?
I mean, these are the folksthat are going to own the
content, own the materials, andthey need to be experts in the
(16:54):
system so they can train on thesystem.
So why not have them in early?
So you can't make the party toobig, though, because if you
have too many people involved,it starts getting really ugly
and messy.
So you have to have like a trueracy chart to determine what
your roles and responsibilitiesare in the selection process and
align on like an ultimatecriteria.
(17:17):
Like there's some deal breakers, like my deal breaker it always
is when I ran a Salesforce shopthere's got to be an app on the
App Exchange, right?
That's my deal breaker, becauseI don't want to.
I don't even want to mess withother integrations, I just don't
because it takes timedevelopment and there's plenty
of options out there.
You can narrow it down and thathelps narrow down your field.
(17:37):
So you have to like, have yourdeal breakers and whatever that
is, and everybody should weighin and agree on them.
So maybe there's five keypeople in the selection process
that you pick, or something.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
So I mean, that's in an ideal world.
So enough of a group to get,yeah, so you're getting enough
different perspectives, butyou're not getting bogged down
in, you know, over analysis bycommittee, I guess for lack of a
better phrase yeah, like if yousend a group email to 15 sales
managers like you're gonna,you're never gonna get anywhere.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
So you pick the one representative sales manager
that's going to speak for thegroup and their vote is the one
that matters, and you know, forthe various groups.
So that's the way I do it.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
I've heard this attributed to various people
over time, but I love theexpression that a fool with a
tool is still a fool, and itsounds like you would agree with
that.
So let's talk a little bitabout, you know, train the
trainer and adoption and makingthese things sticky.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
I mean you have to let them use it, try it out,
break it and give you feedback.
That's huge.
I'll just give you an example.
Last week we turned on a bunchof changes in HubSpot.
We put daily office hours onand a form to submit to say like
hey, first of all, if theyfound any bugs, but second of
(18:54):
all like just suggestions andthings and screenshots.
And you usually you have to getfeedback because at the end of
the day, if it's not set upwhere it's usable, they're not
going to use it.
Or they're going to make aspreadsheet and do it on their
own.
They're not going to do it inthe system.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Or their notebook.
I've had that one, it's all in.
Here You're waving a notebookat you.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yeah, it's in my Google Tasks or whatever, and
it's like you know it's so.
It's a responsibility I think,of RevOps and enablement to make
sure or the user experience,our internal user experience,
our customers are able to dowhat they need in a timely
manner, see what they need tosee, know what they need to get
(19:40):
accomplished.
The worst thing you can do isask for their feedback and not
do anything about it either.
The tools they don't justmagically work.
The sales leaders need to usethem.
In prior worlds, you know I hadthis one sales leader that I
would work with and you knowthis person just would never
(20:01):
actually show up for thetrainings, didn't know how to do
it themselves, and you know wewould chase around in the CRM to
update this person's stuff forthem and they couldn't train
their own team and it's themanager has to own it.
So not just the RevOps andenablement, revops, enablement
(20:23):
is to support the managers,train the trainers and they need
to own it and they need to holdtheir teams accountable to
using it and getting thefeedback.
So that's why I always saytrain the trainer.
It's like we've got to teachthe managers.
Get the managers buy in,because if the managers do it,
their team sure as hell is notgoing to do it, that's for sure.
(20:45):
So that's, that's the way Ilook at it.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I don't know.
Good for you, not for me.
Never works, never works.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Right, exactly.
Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You reminded me of someone I hadn't thought about
in a long time, when I won't saynames, but when I was at Vonage
we actually had a sales.
He was either VP or was he onelevel up from that.
He had two VPs reporting to him.
Now that I think of it, and itwas a point of pride for this
individual that he had neveropened up Salesforce.
So I mean, like, like, like,yeah, it was a point of pride.
(21:17):
It was like I don't need that.
Right, I know how to run asales territory.
I don't need, you know, blah,blah, blah, blah.
And so you can imagine thatcreated all sorts of compliance
issues within anybody thatreported to him, because they're
all like well, he's not usingit, so why should I put anything
in there?
Because he's not going to lookat it anyway.
And, yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Well, not to mention the rest of this person's
managers and RevOps, sales ops,whoever they're having to
probably build spreadsheets anddecks and stuff on the side for
this person because they refuseto actually look in the CRM,
which may have all theinformation right there.
So, yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah, doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, yeah, he was managed out eventually, so it
got better.
All right, so not by me, but bythe powers, that be All right.
So One of the other things whenyou and I were talking that are
so critical when you're rollingout Things together is also the
reporting.
(22:13):
How are you tracking thatadoption?
How do you know if it's evenmeeting the objectives?
Me you clear?
Well, hopefully you had clearoutcomes and problems that you
were trying to solve for whenyou selected this piece of tech,
this program, to bring it in.
But how do you start reportingand measuring to see if it was,
if it was the right choice, wassuccessful?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Talk to us a little bit about that I was like to
start with some sort of anobjective, like what you said.
What problem are you trying tosolve?
So, for example, with our hubspot we're calling it hub spot
two dot, oh, we're making, youknow, made a bunch changes and
it was kind of solving for anumber of Challenges that we are
having prior to me joiningcompany, and so the objectives
(22:59):
are to reduce a cancel rate Iwon't get into the exact numbers
but reduce, reduce ourcancellation and reduce our push
rates, because reps are pushingdeals consistently from like
the thirty to the fifteen, tothe thirty to fifteen, things
like that.
So those are like theobjectives, so they're pretty
simple to track right, becausethose are kind of out of the box
(23:21):
.
Hub spot report.
So I but we're getting down tothe rep level, seeing where the
behavior because it's usuallydriven by two, three, two, three
, four people that are, you know, really driving the number and
then that's where reallyenablement comes in, because
where now, what do you do aboutthat?
Right, you've got this datapoint, this information, and how
(23:42):
do you then go back and addressthose issues with particularly,
let's say, there's four peoplethat are pushing those bars way
over there?
You don't need to deploy newtraining for the whole team.
You just want to address thosepeople and find out why are
their deals pushing, what?
What's happening there?
So I think, but you have to lookat that frequently.
It's not good enough to just belike, oh, here's an objective,
(24:05):
will check it at the end of nextquarter, see how it, how it
went, like I want to be in frontof it, look like literally
every week, every month, and andhow can we get in front of
these things in real time?
I mean, it's so great, most ofthe data and and all these tools
available in real time, right.
So yeah, it's, you can adjustand iterate and but yeah, you
(24:26):
just have to make the reportingaligned with the key objectives.
You're pretty basic, but don'tover complicate it, because you
over complicated, it's gonnamake it Too much of a bear to
try to figure out and everything.
So, just what are those?
You know, kpis, it's, it's keyis a reason.
And what are?
What are the leading indicatorsfrom that?
(24:47):
Right, like, how do you detectthat ahead of time?
And just a line about narrowingthose down sandy.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
If anything, you're right.
There's so much data and somuch available in real time.
If anything, I can see peoplegetting bogged down in it rather
than not having enough.
So any advice for those peoplelistening on again, you could
measure a thousand things.
How do you pick the right?
As you say, the K is for key,what are the key actual keeper
(25:16):
for its indicators, etc.
What process do you follow toget to that?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I always think of my job is driving revenue.
So what is gonna have thebiggest impact to revenue now
this year?
And because revenue recognitionof you know if anyone's in SAS,
that's the key thing on yourmind.
You can sell all the ACV youwant, sign all the contracts if
you want, but if it doesn't golive, nothing matters.
(25:41):
Right, there's no revenue.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
you say clawback.
At least that's exactly that'swhat I think of all those years
in SAS sales clawback, yeahclawback exactly what that in
the goal?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Oh, yeah, yeah, writing a comp plan with that in
it right now.
So, anyway, if you go, youthink about that.
So what are the things that aregonna have the biggest impact?
Is it?
I mean, when I looked at ourorg, I mean I have, I have a
list like that goes a lot likethis list, it's like probably
three, four pages of All thechallenges that we have, but
what are the ones that are gonnamake a material impact and that
(26:15):
are gonna make a materialimpact sooner versus later?
So how can we impact this yearsplan number?
and then, translating that to asales person, how can we impact
your paycheck now, right, and soI think that's what you have to
narrow it down to, because youhave to sell, you have to sell
the stuff upwards to write, youhave to not just justify your
(26:36):
tech, but they want to know thatthis is Adopting, that this
initiative we've we put out isactually working.
So what do you?
Does this align with yourcompany blueprint or whatever
that is?
And and pick those impactfulones, which is why I picked
cancel rate and push rate,because those are two direct
(26:57):
impacts of go live, which isrevenue faster, which means more
revenue in year and anyway.
So that's just.
That's the way I always look atit.
You know, if you're in therevenue business is how do you?
What's the biggest impact ofrevenue?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
You're talking about pushes in Salesforce or CRM.
The longest, the oldest deal Ipersonally can remember ever
encountering when doing someaudit and cleanup was just under
1100 days, like a thousandeight nine days, and I just
wanted to pick up the phone andcall the rep and say so are you
(27:35):
thinking it's going to be day1190?
You know, is there somethingfundamentally?
Speaker 1 (27:41):
or should we just take this?
Speaker 2 (27:43):
out.
Yeah, it's amazing how thesedeals get life, develop a life
of their own sometimes.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Oh yeah, I mean I've.
We just did a major cleanupover the summer.
I mean there were some dealsthat were, like you know, 395
days, 460.
I think the average was like to218 or something.
It was crazy.
So we did a lot of cleanup, buta lot of that really went back
to.
That's why rolling outsomething like MedPick or
(28:12):
another qualification process isso important not to go down a
rabbit hole.
But you have to qualify dealsout of your pipeline too and,
for whatever reason, reps justwant to like hang on to it and
and it's like, well, they needthat 2.7x.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Whenever the boss looks, there's got to be 2.7x in
there, never mind if it's it'slike ghost opportunities, right,
but it looks good.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's.
I think back to my days as asales rep, and, if I was honest,
my main objective in a weeklypipeline review was just to you
know, keep the boss happy foranother week, right, keep your
(28:45):
job.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Well, this has been fun, but weare actually running up on time
, which is which is amazing,because it doesn't seem like it.
But, thank you.
I don't want to let you go,though, and without having you
drop one more piece of knowledgeor wisdom on us, and this may
or may not be related to whatwe've been talking about, but if
(29:08):
you were given the gift of timetravel, with the couple
limitations one, you can only goback and visit some younger
version of yourself, and, numbertwo, you can only coach
yourself in one area, what isthe number one thing you wish
you'd understood earlier in lifeor in your career?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I think it's being a great collaborator and coming
from sales as an individualcontributor, you're you're
hunting and running out to closethe next deal and everything,
and I think the the value inlater on in learning how to
apply my sales skills tointernal collaboration and
(29:47):
working with other leaders,managing up working with other
teams, working with peers andunderstanding how best to
communicate with them, but alsobe effective, right and get
results, because these thingsdon't work if you don't work
together across silos anddepartments, even within your
(30:07):
own team.
So I think that that would be.
That would be the advice and Ialways go back to.
Like Steve and Covey, I'm kindof an old school.
Seven habits of highly effectivepeople person learn that way
back in the day but seek firstto understand, then be
understood.
So that is huge when you'reworking with other people,
(30:29):
because, first of all, sometimesthey might view you as a threat
or a change in their world andthings like that.
But just really trying tounderstand their world, whether
it's the teams that you serve,your peers, other departments
within your organization it'salways great to you know to
really take that approach.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
All right, thank you.
Thank you for sharing that.
Thanks for spending your timeand have this conversation with
us.
I'm excited for this one todrop in the next month or so
Anything else before we go.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
No, I just I'm excited about this.
I really appreciate theconversations that we have and
this whole idea of RevOps andrevenue enablement just really
working together hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, me too.
It's the only way that it canwork, and I've been in both.
I've been in situations wherethe teams worked very well
together and situations wherethere was almost an adversary
relationship, and it's tough.
You make it work, but it's noteasy, so all right.
Well, thank you to everyonewho's spent the last half hour
with Sandy and I as well.
We appreciate your loyalty.
We appreciate you investingyour time with us, and we'll be
(31:38):
back in two weeks with anothergreat episode.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the
Trenches.
For more revenue enablementresources, be sure to join the
Revenue Enablement Society atresocietyglobal.
That's resocietyglobal.
Welcome to the Revenue Enablement Society
Stories from the Trenches, whereenablement practitioners share
their real-world experiences.
Get the scoop on what'shappening inside revenue
enablement teams across theglobal RES community.
Each segment of stories fromthe trenches shares the good,
the bad and the ugly practicesof corporate revenue enablement
(00:23):
initiatives when not worked,what didn't work and how
obstacles were eliminated byenablement teams and
go-to-market leadership.
Sit back, grab a cold one andjoin host Paul Butterfield,
founder of Revenue FlywheelGroup, for casual conversations
about the wide and variedprofession of revenue enablement
, where there's never aone-size-fits-all solution.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode
of Stories from the Trenches theRevenue Enablement Society
podcast, where we bring togetherpractitioners from all over the
globe.
We talk about the work thatthey're doing, the innovative
ways they're finding of doing it, and sometimes things that
didn't go so well, becausethere's lessons to be learned
there as well.
So we've got another greatguest for you.
(01:07):
This time I'm excited tointroduce you to Sandy Robinson.
Welcome, sandy.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thank you, paul, appreciate you having me today.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm excited to have you here Now.
Sandy is currently the SVP ofRevenue Operations and
Enablement at Patra Corporation.
Sandy, I'll give you a minuteor two just to talk a little bit
about yourself and what you'reworking on, just so people can
get to know you.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Sounds great.
So I started at Patra in aboutmid-April in a role where there
previously wasn't a Rev Opsfunction.
This is a 17-year-old company,so I've really focused on
optimizing our HubSpot instancerevamping comp plans.
I mean, you name itconsultative training.
We're doing it all.
So pull together an onboardingprogram that we brought on 15
(01:49):
people this summer so, as I wasonboarding myself, created an
onboarding program.
I'm sure you get that.
So prior to that, my experiencehas been in SaaS, fintech.
I was in insurance for a longtime and roles in sales, sales
operations, leadership, rev Opsfor I don't know 20 or some 20,
(02:10):
some odd years I won't say theexact number, but yeah, so I'm
again World 21 Sandy, it doesn'tmatter.
Yes, I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
All right, all right.
So I am curious you hadmentioned that you just got back
from vacation.
You have a vacation home downin the Keys.
What was your favorite thingwhile you were there to do?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Oh, I love going to the beach.
I enjoy fishing, just kind ofrelaxing in the nice warm air.
Even though I live in Florida,I'm a total baby, so the warmer
the better for me.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So sweater weather means go south, got it.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I'm a Florida kid too Not anymore, but I
remember we would just be amazedthis time of year when people
from St Montreal would be headeddown to the beach in their
Speedos and were like, really,guys, it's not for people warm,
but I guess I heard in Montrealit was feeling really good to
them.
Okay, all right, so let's getinto the Jimmy Kimmel challenge.
(03:13):
So those of you who haven'theard it before, jimmy Kimmel
has decided to retire thiscoming year and because Sandy is
so well connected, she's beenoffered his show.
So, sandy, you can have anyoneyou want as your first guest on
the couch.
Who's going to be there and whydid you choose them?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I mean it has to be pink.
She is like a feminist icon.
I love her.
She's humble, she's an amazingartist, just a great mom, a
woman in general, and I actuallymet her once.
I was on vacation and actuallysipping Tequila with her and she
(03:51):
didn't know that, or she didn'tknow that I knew who she was
and I didn't indicate that.
So it was just really cool,like she's super down to earth.
You'd never know that she was acelebrity or star, if you just
like kind of meet her on theside.
So.
But I'd love to like officiallymeet her and interview her.
I think that'd be super awesome.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
That sounds really cool.
So you're able to have just ahuman connection.
There was no celebrity elementto it.
There was no.
That's cool, yeah it really wasAll right.
So let's get into what we'regoing to talk about today.
This is a topic that's probablya little overdue.
I've been doing this beforeyears in March this year and so
(04:30):
it's coming up pretty quick,actually at the time this airs.
Let's talk about enablement andrev ops and from your title,
clearly that's an area whereyou're spending time now, but
just from previous conversationswith you, and that's an area
where you've been doing a lot ofwork and you have a lot of
great experiences let's I wantto talk about that, thank you.
When we talk about, or peopletalk about, revops versus, or
(04:51):
RevOps and enablement, howshould those teams partner or
does it matter where they report?
Let's just kind of start therewith your experience, and then
we'll go deeper.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Sure, I mean, coming from a sales background early in
my career and through salesleadership, I think it was
always just ingrained in the waythat I looked at things, right.
So, becoming a sales manager,you have to learn how to coach
and train and all these things,hopefully and so now, but yeah,
exactly, you think so.
(05:24):
Flash forward, however, longlater again I won't mention any
years when you think aboutreporting structures, companies.
We have more and more silosthroughout organizations, right,
and the reporting structurescan be very different across
organizations and I thinkultimately we want those teams
to really work hand in hand andthey should follow the customer
(05:48):
journey.
I mean, that is truly what Ipassionately believe In.
My world, revops and enablementis under one umbrella and it
makes sense for what's happening, the size of our company.
As companies get larger, Ithink it makes sense to have
those functions have morespecificity and specific
(06:09):
leadership.
But ultimately there needs tobe a clear definition of roles
and responsibilities and howthey go hand in hand.
So, for example, if it's underthe CRO, then you would have, I
would guess, a little bit easierpath of coordinating that right
.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So, whether it's all called, In my experience at
least, it is pretty easy yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, it makes.
It makes it a lot, a lotsimpler as long as you're not
kind of siloed out too muchwithin your own organization,
which does happen.
But then when it falls out like, say, for example, there's a
chief marketing officer and achief revenue officer and then
within that they've got kind ofdifferent levels of enablement
(06:52):
and operations marketing, itstarts to get more complicated.
So ultimately, starting withthe customer journey much like
you would do anything else androles and responsibilities among
within the customer journey tosort out who's doing what and
how can you really partner.
But I think you have to beintentional about it,
particularly if the reportingstructure isn't under one
(07:13):
function.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, give it a little takes a little more
thought.
I mean, you're speaking to, youknow, a big family.
Talk customer journey,enablement, that is.
Yeah, that's how I love to lookat it too.
In fact, when I don't know if Itold you this, when I launched
my company about a year ago, Iwas excited to find out no one
had trademarked that, because Ihad been using that phrase.
I'm sure it wasn't original tome, but nobody had nobody had
(07:35):
had protected it.
So, since I was launching abrand, I was able to grab that,
because I look at it the sameway.
It's.
How are we enabling all of theteams that are interfacing one
way or another with with thosecustomers?
How are we trying to create?
How are we creating, should say, an elevated experience?
It's risky to try to compete onproduct features or price, and
(07:59):
it's got to be some other reasonthat people want to do business
with you.
This is and this is it.
So let's get into somespecifics.
So, taking what you just said,let's talk about an approach,
let's say rolling out a newprocess, or perhaps it's even a
full new sales methodology.
Walk us through what that lookslike with this, with a healthy
(08:20):
partnership with enablement andRebops.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Sure, I see this a lot and you know I've been a
part of companies where we'vehad challenges rolling out new
methodologies and particularlyif you're partnering with, like
a third party to try to rollsomething out.
But let's say you create a newsales methodology, right, you're
going to use Challenger, you'regoing to use Command of the
Message or whatever elementsthat you create in Bake, and I
(08:47):
don't side know, I don'tparticularly say you know, I'm
not married to one or the other.
I think you just have tocalibrate and use the best
pieces of each methodology andcalibrate within your own
company.
So that's probably a wholeother topic.
But in terms of you know themethodology, I see this all the
time where you roll somethingout and then you have the
(09:08):
forgetting curve.
People totally, you know, kindof drift off.
They go to this like whetherit's a webinar in person or
something.
Company spends a ton of moneyand then you fail to do, you
know, align the process and thesystems, and a lot of times
that's because one department istouting this one thing, getting
it rolled out, like hey, we'redoing this, and they haven't
(09:29):
really collaborated with theother departments.
So I really believe you have toconnect the methodology, to the
process and to the systems andmake sure it all works together.
If you don't have all three ofthose aligned, your initiative
will fail.
So mark my words you will fail.
And you know, we rolled outMedPick last summer.
(09:51):
So we had some training, we hadto train the trainer, actually
got certified, all this stuff,and so that's great.
That's kind of one piece of it.
And then we documented theprocess.
How does that work within thecustomer journey?
What do we have to do to alignthe stages in HubSpot?
We use HubSpot for our CRM, sowhat needs to happen there?
(10:12):
What are the stage requirements?
Putting together that playbook,and then we aligned Gong,
created a board in Gong, wecreated the functionality within
HubSpot and then train thepeople on the systems.
Then there's reporting andeverything.
So you have to have that kindof full picture and if you don't
have enablement and RevOpsworking together or whatever
(10:35):
that looks like in yourorganization, you're doomed to
fail.
So having all three of thosecomponents, I think is super
critical, and enablement isreally the glue that holds that
all together.
Because, as you know, if youget enablement involved and for
me it's like put on myenablement hat, because I'm kind
of doing both right now.
But if you get enablementinvolved early, they're going to
(11:00):
figure out okay, where do weneed to surface these documents
in the system, and they can workwith RevOps and figure out what
fields and how this workstogether and do we need training
?
And that training should be acombination of some sort of
maybe it's a video meeting,maybe it's an SOP doc, maybe
it's a social learning, achannel in Slack, whatever it is
(11:22):
, but it's kind of kind of allworked together.
And this even goes back to likefor anybody who has a training
background, like the old schoolad-y model right, is just really
tying all of those thingstogether, and you know.
But we can't forget to do it.
We can't just like throwsomething out there and expect
it to work.
(11:43):
You know, it's just to getagainst the wall.
We just kind of shove it outthere, we got the thing done, we
did it at our kickoff and thenthis thing just goes by the
wayside when people get back andthey get into their grind and
their email boxes and all thisother crap.
So obviously I get real excitedabout this stuff, but you have
to put it all together andpackage it or it doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It doesn't yet.
Yet so many companies stilltrying to do it that way I was
talking a couple months ago.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Oh sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, that was what I was going to say.
I was talking with aprospective client the other day
and this is a head of salesthat I've known for years.
In fact, I used to work withhim, respect him in many ways.
Yet when I talked to them aboutwhat they were doing with their
methodology, he's like oh, wehad everybody watch some
training, some med pic trainingvideos, so we're good to go.
And yeah, so again, right, thisis a guy very, very smart sales
(12:35):
leader, very successful inother ways.
But yeah, there's still work todo there.
Definitely is they're checkingthe box.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
No, yeah, I mean it's like you're checking the box
and I hate to say it, butsometimes the big kind of
monster training companies thatare out there they feed off of
that because they get you to nowsign up for their reinforcement
program and then sign up forthis and add more, add on this
and this, and they're lovingthat because you, as the leader
(13:05):
in your organization, failed toput together a sustainable
program and you didn't tie thosethree things together.
So I think it just goes back tothat core methodology, to
process, to systems, making surethat all works together, and
the offshoot of that is thereporting, the analytics and the
continuous improvement from it.
(13:26):
So you have to actually dosomething about it, monitor it
and make sure, and that's whereenablement and RevOps again can
come hand in hand very nicely.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
To do what you're just what you're talking about,
which, again, I couldn't agreemore.
You've got to have the rightsystems, and you've mentioned a
couple of times is there anymore to be said about how RevOps
and Navelet work together andeven evaluating and selecting
and deploying those systems?
So, in other words, I've comeinto companies and you probably
(13:57):
have two where, yes, we reallyneed a methodology, but we don't
have the infrastructure readyto roll out a methodology and
the way that you've describedand have it stick, and so you
have to even take a step backand evaluate that.
Can we talk about that for aminute?
What does that look like?
How do those two teams worktogether, or should they work
together?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, and that can be tough because they might have
their own budgets for tech,right, and then people want to
own the budget and they want to.
You know, this is my tool, thisis your tool and those kind of
things.
But so it starts to getchallenging.
But you know, if you thinkabout any tech selection, you
have to have the rightstakeholders involved.
So it even starts with who'susing the tool.
(14:37):
So like, for example, if youhave a prospecting tool, you
want to get an SDR, maybesomebody who is like a power
user and they're kind of youknow, into the system.
You can use them even later asan SME.
Get the sales leader, marketingleader, enablement all the
people involved early on in theselection process.
So I have a you know kind of away to go through like a rubric
(15:00):
for decision criteria and theneach person weighs in on the key
things that you know matter tothem, to their department and
then to the overall customerjourney.
So if you think of that, youhave to always have the right
stakeholders, and enablementshould have a seat at the table
early in the selection processif it impacts the you know in
their realm of responsibility.
(15:20):
So like, for let's just pretendit's, you know, marketing,
sales and customer success in aperfect world, and they have
that involvement and they'regoing to be able to think of
things critically, and then sodoes RevOps, because RevOps will
think of things like, forexample, marketing.
I've had this experience notthat long ago.
Marketing would create, youknow, okay, here's our
(15:43):
enablement tool that we decidedto use for the company.
We've set it up, we put all thecool stuff, whatever, whatever.
And then RevOps is like Dude,it doesn't work with the CRM,
there's no integration, so likethat's a situation that I'm
dealing with and because therewasn't a full suite of people in
(16:04):
the selection process, thatwould catch, you know, because
every let's side note.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That's a big miss, though.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Well, every company says every vendor, every great
salesperson, is going to tellyou their tool integrates to
whatever CRM you're using, andthat's not untrue, right?
Yeah, sure, Everybody's got anopen API.
But you know, come on, thereare a lot of limitations,
particularly when you're, youknow, depending on your CRM.
Obviously, salesforce has likea ton of options, and then the
(16:33):
scope narrows as you go downright.
So that's just an example.
Like not getting RevOpsinvolved and maybe enablements
doing that kind of thing, and,on the flip side, if RevOps
isn't getting enablementinvolved, how do you know how?
How are you going to set it up?
I mean, these are the folksthat are going to own the
content, own the materials, andthey need to be experts in the
(16:54):
system so they can train on thesystem.
So why not have them in early?
So you can't make the party toobig, though, because if you
have too many people involved,it starts getting really ugly
and messy.
So you have to have like a trueracy chart to determine what
your roles and responsibilitiesare in the selection process and
align on like an ultimatecriteria.
(17:17):
Like there's some deal breakers, like my deal breaker it always
is when I ran a Salesforce shopthere's got to be an app on the
App Exchange, right?
That's my deal breaker, becauseI don't want to.
I don't even want to mess withother integrations, I just don't
because it takes timedevelopment and there's plenty
of options out there.
You can narrow it down and thathelps narrow down your field.
(17:37):
So you have to like, have yourdeal breakers and whatever that
is, and everybody should weighin and agree on them.
So maybe there's five keypeople in the selection process
that you pick, or something.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
So I mean, that's in an ideal world.
So enough of a group to get,yeah, so you're getting enough
different perspectives, butyou're not getting bogged down
in, you know, over analysis bycommittee, I guess for lack of a
better phrase yeah, like if yousend a group email to 15 sales
managers like you're gonna,you're never gonna get anywhere.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
So you pick the one representative sales manager
that's going to speak for thegroup and their vote is the one
that matters, and you know, forthe various groups.
So that's the way I do it.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
I've heard this attributed to various people
over time, but I love theexpression that a fool with a
tool is still a fool, and itsounds like you would agree with
that.
So let's talk a little bitabout, you know, train the
trainer and adoption and makingthese things sticky.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
I mean you have to let them use it, try it out,
break it and give you feedback.
That's huge.
I'll just give you an example.
Last week we turned on a bunchof changes in HubSpot.
We put daily office hours onand a form to submit to say like
hey, first of all, if theyfound any bugs, but second of
(18:54):
all like just suggestions andthings and screenshots.
And you usually you have to getfeedback because at the end of
the day, if it's not set upwhere it's usable, they're not
going to use it.
Or they're going to make aspreadsheet and do it on their
own.
They're not going to do it inthe system.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Or their notebook.
I've had that one, it's all in.
Here You're waving a notebookat you.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yeah, it's in my Google Tasks or whatever, and
it's like you know it's so.
It's a responsibility I think,of RevOps and enablement to make
sure or the user experience,our internal user experience,
our customers are able to dowhat they need in a timely
manner, see what they need tosee, know what they need to get
(19:40):
accomplished.
The worst thing you can do isask for their feedback and not
do anything about it either.
The tools they don't justmagically work.
The sales leaders need to usethem.
In prior worlds, you know I hadthis one sales leader that I
would work with and you knowthis person just would never
(20:01):
actually show up for thetrainings, didn't know how to do
it themselves, and you know wewould chase around in the CRM to
update this person's stuff forthem and they couldn't train
their own team and it's themanager has to own it.
So not just the RevOps andenablement, revops, enablement
(20:23):
is to support the managers,train the trainers and they need
to own it and they need to holdtheir teams accountable to
using it and getting thefeedback.
So that's why I always saytrain the trainer.
It's like we've got to teachthe managers.
Get the managers buy in,because if the managers do it,
their team sure as hell is notgoing to do it, that's for sure.
(20:45):
So that's, that's the way Ilook at it.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I don't know.
Good for you, not for me.
Never works, never works.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Right, exactly.
Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You reminded me of someone I hadn't thought about
in a long time, when I won't saynames, but when I was at Vonage
we actually had a sales.
He was either VP or was he onelevel up from that.
He had two VPs reporting to him.
Now that I think of it, and itwas a point of pride for this
individual that he had neveropened up Salesforce.
So I mean, like, like, like,yeah, it was a point of pride.
(21:17):
It was like I don't need that.
Right, I know how to run asales territory.
I don't need, you know, blah,blah, blah, blah.
And so you can imagine thatcreated all sorts of compliance
issues within anybody thatreported to him, because they're
all like well, he's not usingit, so why should I put anything
in there?
Because he's not going to lookat it anyway.
And, yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Well, not to mention the rest of this person's
managers and RevOps, sales ops,whoever they're having to
probably build spreadsheets anddecks and stuff on the side for
this person because they refuseto actually look in the CRM,
which may have all theinformation right there.
So, yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah, doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, yeah, he was managed out eventually, so it
got better.
All right, so not by me, but bythe powers, that be All right.
So One of the other things whenyou and I were talking that are
so critical when you're rollingout Things together is also the
reporting.
(22:13):
How are you tracking thatadoption?
How do you know if it's evenmeeting the objectives?
Me you clear?
Well, hopefully you had clearoutcomes and problems that you
were trying to solve for whenyou selected this piece of tech,
this program, to bring it in.
But how do you start reportingand measuring to see if it was,
if it was the right choice, wassuccessful?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Talk to us a little bit about that I was like to
start with some sort of anobjective, like what you said.
What problem are you trying tosolve?
So, for example, with our hubspot we're calling it hub spot
two dot, oh, we're making, youknow, made a bunch changes and
it was kind of solving for anumber of Challenges that we are
having prior to me joiningcompany, and so the objectives
(22:59):
are to reduce a cancel rate Iwon't get into the exact numbers
but reduce, reduce ourcancellation and reduce our push
rates, because reps are pushingdeals consistently from like
the thirty to the fifteen, tothe thirty to fifteen, things
like that.
So those are like theobjectives, so they're pretty
simple to track right, becausethose are kind of out of the box
(23:21):
.
Hub spot report.
So I but we're getting down tothe rep level, seeing where the
behavior because it's usuallydriven by two, three, two, three
, four people that are, you know, really driving the number and
then that's where reallyenablement comes in, because
where now, what do you do aboutthat?
Right, you've got this datapoint, this information, and how
(23:42):
do you then go back and addressthose issues with particularly,
let's say, there's four peoplethat are pushing those bars way
over there?
You don't need to deploy newtraining for the whole team.
You just want to address thosepeople and find out why are
their deals pushing, what?
What's happening there?
So I think, but you have to lookat that frequently.
It's not good enough to just belike, oh, here's an objective,
(24:05):
will check it at the end of nextquarter, see how it, how it
went, like I want to be in frontof it, look like literally
every week, every month, and andhow can we get in front of
these things in real time?
I mean, it's so great, most ofthe data and and all these tools
available in real time, right.
So yeah, it's, you can adjustand iterate and but yeah, you
(24:26):
just have to make the reportingaligned with the key objectives.
You're pretty basic, but don'tover complicate it, because you
over complicated, it's gonnamake it Too much of a bear to
try to figure out and everything.
So, just what are those?
You know, kpis, it's, it's keyis a reason.
And what are?
What are the leading indicatorsfrom that?
(24:47):
Right, like, how do you detectthat ahead of time?
And just a line about narrowingthose down sandy.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
If anything, you're right.
There's so much data and somuch available in real time.
If anything, I can see peoplegetting bogged down in it rather
than not having enough.
So any advice for those peoplelistening on again, you could
measure a thousand things.
How do you pick the right?
As you say, the K is for key,what are the key actual keeper
(25:16):
for its indicators, etc.
What process do you follow toget to that?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I always think of my job is driving revenue.
So what is gonna have thebiggest impact to revenue now
this year?
And because revenue recognitionof you know if anyone's in SAS,
that's the key thing on yourmind.
You can sell all the ACV youwant, sign all the contracts if
you want, but if it doesn't golive, nothing matters.
(25:41):
Right, there's no revenue.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
you say clawback.
At least that's exactly that'swhat I think of all those years
in SAS sales clawback, yeahclawback exactly what that in
the goal?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Oh, yeah, yeah, writing a comp plan with that in
it right now.
So, anyway, if you go, youthink about that.
So what are the things that aregonna have the biggest impact?
Is it?
I mean, when I looked at ourorg, I mean I have, I have a
list like that goes a lot likethis list, it's like probably
three, four pages of All thechallenges that we have, but
what are the ones that are gonnamake a material impact and that
(26:15):
are gonna make a materialimpact sooner versus later?
So how can we impact this yearsplan number?
and then, translating that to asales person, how can we impact
your paycheck now, right, and soI think that's what you have to
narrow it down to, because youhave to sell, you have to sell
the stuff upwards to write, youhave to not just justify your
(26:36):
tech, but they want to know thatthis is Adopting, that this
initiative we've we put out isactually working.
So what do you?
Does this align with yourcompany blueprint or whatever
that is?
And and pick those impactfulones, which is why I picked
cancel rate and push rate,because those are two direct
(26:57):
impacts of go live, which isrevenue faster, which means more
revenue in year and anyway.
So that's just.
That's the way I always look atit.
You know, if you're in therevenue business is how do you?
What's the biggest impact ofrevenue?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
You're talking about pushes in Salesforce or CRM.
The longest, the oldest deal Ipersonally can remember ever
encountering when doing someaudit and cleanup was just under
1100 days, like a thousandeight nine days, and I just
wanted to pick up the phone andcall the rep and say so are you
(27:35):
thinking it's going to be day1190?
You know, is there somethingfundamentally?
Speaker 1 (27:41):
or should we just take this?
Speaker 2 (27:43):
out.
Yeah, it's amazing how thesedeals get life, develop a life
of their own sometimes.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Oh yeah, I mean I've.
We just did a major cleanupover the summer.
I mean there were some dealsthat were, like you know, 395
days, 460.
I think the average was like to218 or something.
It was crazy.
So we did a lot of cleanup, buta lot of that really went back
to.
That's why rolling outsomething like MedPick or
(28:12):
another qualification process isso important not to go down a
rabbit hole.
But you have to qualify dealsout of your pipeline too and,
for whatever reason, reps justwant to like hang on to it and
and it's like, well, they needthat 2.7x.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Whenever the boss looks, there's got to be 2.7x in
there, never mind if it's it'slike ghost opportunities, right,
but it looks good.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's.
I think back to my days as asales rep, and, if I was honest,
my main objective in a weeklypipeline review was just to you
know, keep the boss happy foranother week, right, keep your
(28:45):
job.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Well, this has been fun, but weare actually running up on time
, which is which is amazing,because it doesn't seem like it.
But, thank you.
I don't want to let you go,though, and without having you
drop one more piece of knowledgeor wisdom on us, and this may
or may not be related to whatwe've been talking about, but if
(29:08):
you were given the gift of timetravel, with the couple
limitations one, you can only goback and visit some younger
version of yourself, and, numbertwo, you can only coach
yourself in one area, what isthe number one thing you wish
you'd understood earlier in lifeor in your career?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I think it's being a great collaborator and coming
from sales as an individualcontributor, you're you're
hunting and running out to closethe next deal and everything,
and I think the the value inlater on in learning how to
apply my sales skills tointernal collaboration and
(29:47):
working with other leaders,managing up working with other
teams, working with peers andunderstanding how best to
communicate with them, but alsobe effective, right and get
results, because these thingsdon't work if you don't work
together across silos anddepartments, even within your
(30:07):
own team.
So I think that that would be.
That would be the advice and Ialways go back to.
Like Steve and Covey, I'm kindof an old school.
Seven habits of highly effectivepeople person learn that way
back in the day but seek firstto understand, then be
understood.
So that is huge when you'reworking with other people,
(30:29):
because, first of all, sometimesthey might view you as a threat
or a change in their world andthings like that.
But just really trying tounderstand their world, whether
it's the teams that you serve,your peers, other departments
within your organization it'salways great to you know to
really take that approach.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
All right, thank you.
Thank you for sharing that.
Thanks for spending your timeand have this conversation with
us.
I'm excited for this one todrop in the next month or so
Anything else before we go.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
No, I just I'm excited about this.
I really appreciate theconversations that we have and
this whole idea of RevOps andrevenue enablement just really
working together hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, me too.
It's the only way that it canwork, and I've been in both.
I've been in situations wherethe teams worked very well
together and situations wherethere was almost an adversary
relationship, and it's tough.
You make it work, but it's noteasy, so all right.
Well, thank you to everyonewho's spent the last half hour
with Sandy and I as well.
We appreciate your loyalty.
We appreciate you investingyour time with us, and we'll be
(31:38):
back in two weeks with anothergreat episode.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the
Trenches.
For more revenue enablementresources, be sure to join the
Revenue Enablement Society atresocietyglobal.
That's resocietyglobal.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!