June 20, 2023 • 22 mins
EPISODE SUMMARY
Scaling is the equivalent of a dream come true for software founders, which is why they tend to invest in revenue operations. However, going with a blind process usually means hitting obstacles and potentially injuring the company's growth. This is where expert agencies like RevOps come into play.
In this week's episode of Scale Your SaaS, Iceberg RevOps Founder Taft Love expounds on the intricacies of revenue operations with Host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Matt Wolach. He also explains how RevOps can catapult your company to the top while you develop your in-house revenue operations team. Make sure to watch the video to win more revenues and level up your SaaS faster!
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach
Episode: Episode No. 270, "Why RevOps Might be Your Answer to Scaling - with Taft Love"
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Guest: Taft Love, Founder of Iceberg RevOps
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
- Know When to Choose Agency Versus In-house
- Always be Ready to Adapt
- Enlist the Aid of Experts
- Spend More Time Talking to Your Customers
- Keep Initial Operations Simple
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
- Operations Are Conjoined with Iterations
- Bigger Company Means More Siloes
- Careful Budgeting is Needed for 2023
TOP QUOTES
Taft Love
[4:41] "I think perfect is almost always the enemy of good."
[11:01] "I used to tell founders: Hey. Go ask your VP of Marketing, how many leads they created last month? Now go ask your VP of sales how many leads they got last month. And don't tell them that you just asked the other one. And if that number doesn't match, call me back."
[19:47] "Don't operationalize everything early. Not everything has to scale. It's okay to keep things simple."
Matt Wolach
[18:53] "Don't try and figure everything out on your own. You may eventually figure it out. But it can take you a long time. It will probably cost you a lot of money."
LEARN MORE
To learn more about RevOps, visit: https://icebergops.com/
You can also find Taft Love on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taft-love/
For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/
Get even more tips by following Matt elsewhere:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Wolach (00:00):
So what is RevOps revenue operations? What is it?
(00:14):
When do you need it? How shouldyou use it? How should you
employ it once you have it andwhat can it actually do for you?
Lots of questions that I knowmany people ask once you start
getting things working withinyour business once you start
getting leads, once you startgetting some things to be
closed, well Taff love he cameon, he shared all of the good
information about rev ops keyswith iceberg Reb ops, and he
(00:35):
explained exactly what you needto look for when you need to
start really thinking of havinga Reb ops person help you with
this and how to make sure youimplement it the right way.
Check this episode out. If youstart to get some traction,
start to get some thingsworking, you're absolutely going
to get value out of this.
Intro/ Outro (00:50):
Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that
gives you proven techniques andformulas for boosting your
revenue and achieving your dreamexit brought to you by a guy
who's done just that multipletimes. Here's your host, Matt
Wolach,
Matt Wolach (01:06):
and welcome to Scale Your SaaS. We're excited
to have you here. Thank you verymuch for being here. My name is
Matt and I am your host our goaltoday is to help you grow your
business. Let's find the newlead let's close and deal with
make sure you get where you gotto get really elated today to
have cash flow with you doing
Taft Love (01:26):
Hey man, I'm well thanks for having me man.
Conversation
Matt Wolach (01:37):
with an agency built for growing staff
companies and scaling theiroperation systems and processes,
understand how busy fastfounders are. That's why he's
built iceberg puts the burden ofdesigning and managing a revenue
tech staff place to focus onwhat really matters, the advisor
sales and marketing operationsat scale Venture Partners, as it
(02:00):
goes to market advisory revenueoperations, tap advises
companies on key strategicdecisions related to their
operations, marketingoperations, and more. So he when
it comes to growth, I'm superglad to be here. Thanks so much
for coming on the show.
Taft Love (02:17):
Hey, yeah, thanks for having me. This is awesome.
Matt Wolach (02:21):
I'm glad. Well tell us what are you up to lately,
and what's coming up for you?
Taft Love (02:26):
You know, it's interesting, I left this out of
the bio, but I'm actually livingtwo lives right now. So I
founded iceberg. I've spent fiveplus years growing it. Last
year, I hired a CEO to take itover for me, because it turns
out, I suck at being a CEO, I'mactually not good at that job.
And in the meantime, I actuallywas a VP of Sales for a company
(02:49):
called docs. And some of thefounders out there may have
heard of it that was acquired byDropbox. And now I'm running a
few sales teams for Dropbox. Andso really, in this interesting
place, where I'm straddling twoworlds and get to help companies
build their sales and marketingoperations, while running sales
programs at a big company. A lotof
Matt Wolach (03:18):
the company will want to take over that CEO role.
Taft Love (03:25):
A few things, there are some habits that I think
make you made me really goodearly on, and a pretty poor CEO
later as we hit a couplemillion, a few million in, in
revenue. And I think this wouldhave been true if I were a SASS
company, we're services eventhough it's recurring. What I
found out is that the bias toaction is really valuable. When
(03:49):
you're when you're nascent. Whenyou're just figuring things out,
we're trying lots of things andas we grew, and there's now a
lot more value and being a bitslower and a bit more thoughtful
and planning. And I'm stillmoving at 100 miles an hour, it
was actually helpful for me tobring in somebody who had that
sort of next level skill set,which is Hey guys, let's let's
press pause, let's think aboutwhat we're doing for the next
(04:12):
six months, the next year anddecide whether all of these
little ideas you're having Taffare aligned with this broader
vision that we've agreed upon.
And so having somebody come helpme exercise that discipline has
been just just world changing.
Matt Wolach (04:26):
Cool. I love that thought that you put it that way
is that really there's differentways that we need to behave or
different ways to ask differenttasks in the early days versus
once you start getting rolling.
And I've often asked thatquestion to the mentors and even
on Twitter, you know, which isbetter. There's not a perfect
answer. It's more of what'sbetter at that thing within your
(04:49):
growth cycle, right?
Taft Love (04:52):
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And some of
the irony here is one of ourvalues is that we're bias to
action because we were primarilywith small companies, we help
companies get from zero to oneeffectively in terms of building
an Operations Program. And sothe companies we work for are
where we were a couple yearsago, they're at 1,000,002
(05:13):
million, 3 million in revenue,sometimes as big as 10 or 15
million, but most of them are onthe on the smaller side of that
scale. And so they hire us tocome move quickly. And yeah,
fast is better than perfect inthose in those scenarios. But as
you grow that that balancestarts to shift, and I think
perfect is almost always theenemy of good. So I think
perfect is is not the ideal, butcertainly, certainly the speed
(05:38):
with which we act is ischanging. It was a gap I was
feeling so if you've heard ofthe company panda doc I was I
that was early in my salescareer, I was an account
executive there and eventuallytook over the the operations
function as well as some of thesales teams. And I had some
(05:59):
consultants come in to help usand it seemed like every
consultant was focused on USsystem. So we'd have a
Salesforce team come in and helpus and it would break things in
our HubSpot, and then we'd havea HubSpot team come in and help
us and it would break things andoutreach. And nobody, these
siloed operations firms werereally good at their little
corner of operations, andeverything else tended to break.
(06:21):
So I actually started justhelping companies on nights and
weekends before I had a kid anda wife and could work early
mornings, I was on the westcoast. So I'd work with East
Coast companies, I'd get upearly and help them and work on
weekends. And I essentially waswas trying to help people
connect before the word rev opswas really a thing, these
(06:44):
various functions in the sensethat like, let's talk about how
the sales teams project affectseveryone up and down funnel from
the sales team before we gobuild things. And so that was
the need that inspired me. Andreally what carries us through
today is this idea that we sortof bridge sales, marketing and
customer success operations.
Matt Wolach (07:06):
Know that there's some people wondering out there,
what is robot? Explain? Whatexactly is revenue operations?
Robot?
Taft Love (07:14):
Yeah, 100%. You know, what's funny is, it's not
exactly what we do. I named thecompany back when people were
still figuring out what the hellReb ops meant. So if you got in
a time machine and went backfive years, and you heard people
talking about Reb, ops, youwould say, oh, it's sales and
marketing systems. And that'srev ops. And that's more what we
(07:35):
do at iceberg and what today'sdefinition of DevOps is, now, it
is a much broader function thatin my mind, kind of has three
pillars, IT systems strategy,and enablement. And, of course,
each of those pillars is its ownbig discipline. And so another
(07:58):
another sort of core key elementof, of Reb. Ops is the idea that
Reb Ops is not, is not rollinginto any of its client orcs. So
it sort of gets rid of silos,and it gets rid of conflicts of
interest in the sense that theVP of sales, running sales
operations or runningoperations, creates some pretty
(08:18):
serious conflicts of interestsand and create some questionable
data for the the, the sale ofthe company's leaders to
actually steer the ship. Youcan't really trust your compass
at that point. And so Reb Ops isan answer to the silos, the
conflict of interest, and thenthis just explosion of tools
(08:39):
that now span lots of differentparts of the org, you know,
outreach, there are three, fouror five teams that use outreach
at one company. So the idea thatsales ops owns outreach is
another huge conflict ofinterest that Reb Ops is sort of
the answer to so it's, it's justthe newest version of operations
without the silos.
Matt Wolach (09:02):
If somebody says, Okay, well, we need this, what
would you say are the pros andcons of we're gonna hire
somebody in house to kind ofmake that happen? We're gonna go
with an agency, somebody whodoes this for a lot of people.
Taft Love (09:14):
So this is a really, this is a really important
question to ask yourself and,and almost every company we
talked to it, iceberg willsubmit a form, and we'll call
them and the first thing they'llsay is, look, we're hiring this
role. But you know, maybe youcan help us for a couple months,
and often we stay with them. Ouraverage is 14 months right now.
And so what happens is thesesmaller companies figure out
(09:38):
that qualified for DevOps isreally expensive at that size. I
talked to a CEO the other daywho said, I'm spending a million
dollars on a Reb ops team, andI'm actually a year and I'm
actually not sure they have thelevel of qualification we need
and so cost is huge. If youdon't have the if you don't have
(10:02):
the resources to actuallydevelop people, you have to hire
senior people and most companiesdon't, you know, smaller
companies especially don't havedon't have Reb ops in house now,
as you grow that switches, soonce you get your series B and
C, and you can afford a Reb opsteam, as soon as you can
actually afford them and keepthem busy, you should hire them
in house. So I built iceberg tobe a bridge, not a forever
(10:25):
solution. And again, we don'treally do Reb ops in the true
sense of the world. So. So RebOps is something that's that's
much bigger than any likesystems implementer can do for
you. And so as soon as you'reable to hire it, the pros
definitely outweigh the cons forowning it internally developing
that institutional knowledge,keeping it not having the risk
(10:47):
that is that comes with a vendoronce you're sort of out of that,
that growth stage.
Matt Wolach (10:53):
So what are some of the challenges that if a
business says, Okay, we want toimplement this one in front of
the talent? Is there that? Whatare some of the mistakes that
they might make? Yeah, so
Taft Love (11:02):
a lot of the challenges are just nothing
works. And I mean, that if youtalk to sales leaders, and
they'll say, like, I don't, Idon't even have the data, I need
to make decisions, and we don'treally have process. And so the
first time you hire rep ops,it's usually to address this
wild west thing where, you know,I know marketing is creating
(11:24):
leads, I don't know what salesis really doing with them. And,
and the the common thread acrossall these complaints is
visibility. I just can't run mybusiness by field anymore. We're
too big for that. But I don'tknow what's going on in my
business. I used to tellfounders, hey guys, your VP of
marketing, how many leads theycreated last month? Now go ask
(11:45):
your VP of sales, how many leadsthat got last month? And don't
tell them that you just askedthe other one. And if that
number doesn't match, call meback. And you know, it's kind of
a silly thing to say. But it'sit's a good proxy for like, Hey,
you, you don't have systems inplace that are actually going to
enable you to get to the nextlevel, make the most of your
(12:06):
inbound or build qualityoutbound pipeline and even know
when you have pipeline, have youdefined pipeline, those are a
lot of the like, questions thatpeople who hire iceberg are
thinking about. And then thereare as you grow bigger, it's
different challenges. There areother firms like your go
nibblies out there that are dowhat we do for small companies,
(12:29):
but for much larger companiesand a more fenced in project,
you know, we're, we'restruggling because our reps
can't create order forms quicklyand easily. And we need the
Salesforce to talk to ouraccounting system. So can
somebody spend the next sixmonths making CPQ work perfectly
for us? And so there's likeanother level above us that
helps with that. But we're,we're usually focused is yeah,
(12:51):
the sort of nascent companyscaling problems.
Matt Wolach (13:00):
Okay, well, we need to do is, I mean, one of the
things you brought up is thething that I want to get on with
each other. Dan pine rather, oneof the reasons.
(13:21):
Don't want that we want peopleworking independently. And how
many different numbers? What'sthe takeaway tell was, so it
was? Great. Working together? Isthat the way to do it?
Taft Love (13:36):
Yeah, I think that's a that's a big part of the
answer. And and so to sales,marketing, customer success,
sort of across your business,when you reach a point where you
realize a few things are true, Idon't trust my data, or my data
is incomplete or whatever yourdata is untrustworthy for some
(13:57):
reason. I don't know the path tofixing that quickly. And I need
somebody to own this. Like whenthose three things are true.
Because data is a good proxy fora lot of other things. If your
data is bad, that probably is agood indicator that you're
lacking process, that's probablya good indicator that there's an
(14:17):
enablement issue. And so yeah,reporting is is sort of a good
proxy for how everything else isworking. And as soon as you stop
trusting it, that's the time tostart thinking about having
someone own it, whether you callit DevOps or something else
having a single throat to choke,with the goal of getting you the
(14:37):
data you need to run yourbusiness is is like the point at
which you know, the point atwhich you decide that is the
case is probably when you shouldstart considering looking into
DevOps, either internally orthrough an agency
Matt Wolach (14:51):
or something that metrics in order to optimize
their revenue operations.
Taft Love (14:56):
Yeah, so we generally come in after board meetings.
Somebody has a rough boardmeeting where their board
doesn't trust the data orthey're not confident in it or
whatever. It's a bad boardmeeting. So some of the things
we're often brought in to answerare really simple. What is our
arr? Right now? What is ourannual recurring revenue right
(15:18):
this minute? What is our netchurn? And then some, some sort
of deeper level ones are whichof my sales reps aren't working
that hard? I don't think they'reall working that hard. But I
don't actually know the answerto that. How do we tie all these
systems together so that we cansurface an answer to who isn't?
isn't working hard? And doeshard work actually correlate?
(15:41):
Well, with success on my salesteam? I'm not actually sure that
it does, but I need some data towork with. Another one is, I
think we're spending a ton ofmoney on marketing. Where is it
going? I you know, what are theoutcomes of the spend? I think I
know, but I I'm not confidentenough to feel good writing
another $25,000 check to someagency next month, to go spend
(16:05):
it across five platforms withouthaving a really clear answer to
what's my Roelofs? What's myreturn on adspend? On every
dollar of this? Those are someof the data points where you
know, running your businessbecomes more and more impossible
if you if you don't havetrustworthy data.
Matt Wolach (16:22):
Yeah, I totally agree. That's something even as
smaller stages I've seen withinmy companies is, you have to
understand some of those metricsto be able to know are we doing
the right thing? Are we puttingour money in the right place, or
putting our focus in the rightplace? And without the brilliant
thought, oh, and I noticed thiswith my clients, I asked them,
Hey, what are you at this? Whatdo you make? In many cases, I
(16:42):
have no idea these, thesecompanies are, you know, small,
sometimes bigger, andoftentimes, they just have no
clue. Right?
Taft Love (16:51):
That's 100%, right.
And before six or eight monthsago, I think you could sort of
get away with a lot of that,because the money in the bank is
is not burning down too fast.
But as of 2023, the rules ofphysics apply, again, even if
you took around and have somemoney to spend. And so it is
(17:12):
even more critical than than ithas been the last few years to
have a pretty clearunderstanding of of the return
on on all of your spend.
Matt Wolach (17:26):
Your clients are able to sustain these
improvements that you've madewith the revenue operations.
They don't just kind of throwthem in a face.
Taft Love (17:36):
It's a really good question. So first, I want to
challenge the premise with theidea that rev ops and really all
of operations should be aniterative process, there is
nothing we're going to do todaythat will last through the next
five years. And we have toaccept that we have to
understand it. And we have tobuild for today's problems and
(17:58):
know that we're going to keepadjusting. The trick is to have
people who can help you thinkaround corners and make sure
that today that the today'ssolution doesn't fail tomorrow.
And so the first is bringingpeople to the table who have the
answers to the test. There'snothing more valuable than
bringing in somebody who cansay, Look, I've worked with 50
(18:18):
companies that look a lot likeyou, I know you're special in
these key ways. But I've donethis thing before you're asking
me what your ARR is, I knowexactly how to go do that. So
you need that person at thetable. Even if you're a
brilliant engineer who's builtan amazing product that's
changing the world. If you don'thave the answers that test the
time it takes you to figure itout. And sure you could you
(18:39):
could you could toil and figureit out and eventually get it
right. But that time is so soexpensive. So So yeah, that's
that's the first thing is like,bring in people and it can be in
house too. It doesn't have to bean agency but bring in someone
who knows the answers to thetest.
Matt Wolach (18:57):
All great piece of advice for somebody who's
running a company is findsomebody who knows the answers
has already been there, donethat you understand that that's
why a lot of people come to methat I've been through it and
they say, Hey, Matt, what aboutthis? How are we going to do
that. And it's cool that I'mable to share my experience and
experience that I've had withother clients so that they are
able to get through it. Samething when people come to you,
you've been through this manytimes. I think that's the key to
(19:19):
business is don't try and figureeverything out on your own, you
may eventually figure it out,but it's gonna take you a long
time, it probably cost you a lotof money. Much better this sort
of dance is a test and whatadvice would you have for now,
Taft Love (19:36):
well, if you're just starting out right now, I in
some ways in view, I think Ithink you're starting out at a
time when it's really hard to besuccessful and you've probably
gotten funding or hopefullyyou've you've got enough
traction that you're gonna makeit and so envious of the people
who are getting their start now,which sounds crazy, but my
(19:57):
advice would be first keep itsimple. I don't know how many
times I am gonna come at thisfrom an operational point of
view. Don't try to don'toperationalize everything early.
Not everything has to scale.
It's okay to keep things simple.
And beyond that, whether it'sagain in house or agency, and
(20:22):
across operations, and sales andmarketing, bring in the experts
you can afford. And focus,especially if you're a software
founder on giving yourself thetime back to talk to customers
and understand the market. Don'tspend your days toiling in
systems trying to figure out howall these things should connect.
Even if you're an engineer, andit's fun to solve problems.
(20:44):
Every minute you're spendingdoing that stuff or building a
playbook for your teams forgetoperations for a minute doing
things a sales leader should bedoing or a marketing leader
should be doing. Every minuteyou're spending doing those
things isn't you're not outtalking to customers,
understanding what they need,figuring out how to get your
business to the next level. Sooperations aside, bring in
experts, just as you said, whoknow the answers and give
(21:08):
yourself the time back to gobuild a great business not to
work in it.
Matt Wolach (21:16):
And I want to make sure that people get to know a
little bit more about you and Iheard what's the best way for
them to learn about you and
Taft Love (21:23):
well, iceberg ops.com Go check out our website.
There's a lot of information onus and how we work my LinkedIn
is there and write me I try torespond to everybody that
reaches out to me happy to I'malways happy to give somebody
half an hour and talk through aproblem you're having you don't
have to you don't have to pay usto just like get an answer to to
a quick question you have. Ilove talking to founders out
(21:46):
there so so reach out to medirectly if you'd like
Matt Wolach (21:49):
the show notes. So much for coming on and sharing
all your wisdom.
Taft Love (21:55):
Yeah, man. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate it.
Matt Wolach (22:00):
You don't want to miss on any other upcoming
leaders like we're looking forreviews. Definitely give a
review that would really help usperformance.
Intro/ Outro (22:18):
Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS for
more help on finding great leadsand closing more deals go to
Matt and wallach.com
So what is RevOps revenue operations? What is it?
(00:14):
When do you need it? How shouldyou use it? How should you
employ it once you have it andwhat can it actually do for you?
Lots of questions that I knowmany people ask once you start
getting things working withinyour business once you start
getting leads, once you startgetting some things to be
closed, well Taff love he cameon, he shared all of the good
information about rev ops keyswith iceberg Reb ops, and he
(00:35):
explained exactly what you needto look for when you need to
start really thinking of havinga Reb ops person help you with
this and how to make sure youimplement it the right way.
Check this episode out. If youstart to get some traction,
start to get some thingsworking, you're absolutely going
to get value out of this.
Intro/ Outro (00:50):
Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that
gives you proven techniques andformulas for boosting your
revenue and achieving your dreamexit brought to you by a guy
who's done just that multipletimes. Here's your host, Matt
Wolach,
Matt Wolach (01:06):
and welcome to Scale Your SaaS. We're excited
to have you here. Thank you verymuch for being here. My name is
Matt and I am your host our goaltoday is to help you grow your
business. Let's find the newlead let's close and deal with
make sure you get where you gotto get really elated today to
have cash flow with you doing
Taft Love (01:26):
Hey man, I'm well thanks for having me man.
Conversation
Matt Wolach (01:37):
with an agency built for growing staff
companies and scaling theiroperation systems and processes,
understand how busy fastfounders are. That's why he's
built iceberg puts the burden ofdesigning and managing a revenue
tech staff place to focus onwhat really matters, the advisor
sales and marketing operationsat scale Venture Partners, as it
(02:00):
goes to market advisory revenueoperations, tap advises
companies on key strategicdecisions related to their
operations, marketingoperations, and more. So he when
it comes to growth, I'm superglad to be here. Thanks so much
for coming on the show.
Taft Love (02:17):
Hey, yeah, thanks for having me. This is awesome.
Matt Wolach (02:21):
I'm glad. Well tell us what are you up to lately,
and what's coming up for you?
Taft Love (02:26):
You know, it's interesting, I left this out of
the bio, but I'm actually livingtwo lives right now. So I
founded iceberg. I've spent fiveplus years growing it. Last
year, I hired a CEO to take itover for me, because it turns
out, I suck at being a CEO, I'mactually not good at that job.
And in the meantime, I actuallywas a VP of Sales for a company
(02:49):
called docs. And some of thefounders out there may have
heard of it that was acquired byDropbox. And now I'm running a
few sales teams for Dropbox. Andso really, in this interesting
place, where I'm straddling twoworlds and get to help companies
build their sales and marketingoperations, while running sales
programs at a big company. A lotof
Matt Wolach (03:18):
the company will want to take over that CEO role.
Taft Love (03:25):
A few things, there are some habits that I think
make you made me really goodearly on, and a pretty poor CEO
later as we hit a couplemillion, a few million in, in
revenue. And I think this wouldhave been true if I were a SASS
company, we're services eventhough it's recurring. What I
found out is that the bias toaction is really valuable. When
(03:49):
you're when you're nascent. Whenyou're just figuring things out,
we're trying lots of things andas we grew, and there's now a
lot more value and being a bitslower and a bit more thoughtful
and planning. And I'm stillmoving at 100 miles an hour, it
was actually helpful for me tobring in somebody who had that
sort of next level skill set,which is Hey guys, let's let's
press pause, let's think aboutwhat we're doing for the next
(04:12):
six months, the next year anddecide whether all of these
little ideas you're having Taffare aligned with this broader
vision that we've agreed upon.
And so having somebody come helpme exercise that discipline has
been just just world changing.
Matt Wolach (04:26):
Cool. I love that thought that you put it that way
is that really there's differentways that we need to behave or
different ways to ask differenttasks in the early days versus
once you start getting rolling.
And I've often asked thatquestion to the mentors and even
on Twitter, you know, which isbetter. There's not a perfect
answer. It's more of what'sbetter at that thing within your
(04:49):
growth cycle, right?
Taft Love (04:52):
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And some of
the irony here is one of ourvalues is that we're bias to
action because we were primarilywith small companies, we help
companies get from zero to oneeffectively in terms of building
an Operations Program. And sothe companies we work for are
where we were a couple yearsago, they're at 1,000,002
(05:13):
million, 3 million in revenue,sometimes as big as 10 or 15
million, but most of them are onthe on the smaller side of that
scale. And so they hire us tocome move quickly. And yeah,
fast is better than perfect inthose in those scenarios. But as
you grow that that balancestarts to shift, and I think
perfect is almost always theenemy of good. So I think
perfect is is not the ideal, butcertainly, certainly the speed
(05:38):
with which we act is ischanging. It was a gap I was
feeling so if you've heard ofthe company panda doc I was I
that was early in my salescareer, I was an account
executive there and eventuallytook over the the operations
function as well as some of thesales teams. And I had some
(05:59):
consultants come in to help usand it seemed like every
consultant was focused on USsystem. So we'd have a
Salesforce team come in and helpus and it would break things in
our HubSpot, and then we'd havea HubSpot team come in and help
us and it would break things andoutreach. And nobody, these
siloed operations firms werereally good at their little
corner of operations, andeverything else tended to break.
(06:21):
So I actually started justhelping companies on nights and
weekends before I had a kid anda wife and could work early
mornings, I was on the westcoast. So I'd work with East
Coast companies, I'd get upearly and help them and work on
weekends. And I essentially waswas trying to help people
connect before the word rev opswas really a thing, these
(06:44):
various functions in the sensethat like, let's talk about how
the sales teams project affectseveryone up and down funnel from
the sales team before we gobuild things. And so that was
the need that inspired me. Andreally what carries us through
today is this idea that we sortof bridge sales, marketing and
customer success operations.
Matt Wolach (07:06):
Know that there's some people wondering out there,
what is robot? Explain? Whatexactly is revenue operations?
Robot?
Taft Love (07:14):
Yeah, 100%. You know, what's funny is, it's not
exactly what we do. I named thecompany back when people were
still figuring out what the hellReb ops meant. So if you got in
a time machine and went backfive years, and you heard people
talking about Reb, ops, youwould say, oh, it's sales and
marketing systems. And that'srev ops. And that's more what we
(07:35):
do at iceberg and what today'sdefinition of DevOps is, now, it
is a much broader function thatin my mind, kind of has three
pillars, IT systems strategy,and enablement. And, of course,
each of those pillars is its ownbig discipline. And so another
(07:58):
another sort of core key elementof, of Reb. Ops is the idea that
Reb Ops is not, is not rollinginto any of its client orcs. So
it sort of gets rid of silos,and it gets rid of conflicts of
interest in the sense that theVP of sales, running sales
operations or runningoperations, creates some pretty
(08:18):
serious conflicts of interestsand and create some questionable
data for the the, the sale ofthe company's leaders to
actually steer the ship. Youcan't really trust your compass
at that point. And so Reb Ops isan answer to the silos, the
conflict of interest, and thenthis just explosion of tools
(08:39):
that now span lots of differentparts of the org, you know,
outreach, there are three, fouror five teams that use outreach
at one company. So the idea thatsales ops owns outreach is
another huge conflict ofinterest that Reb Ops is sort of
the answer to so it's, it's justthe newest version of operations
without the silos.
Matt Wolach (09:02):
If somebody says, Okay, well, we need this, what
would you say are the pros andcons of we're gonna hire
somebody in house to kind ofmake that happen? We're gonna go
with an agency, somebody whodoes this for a lot of people.
Taft Love (09:14):
So this is a really, this is a really important
question to ask yourself and,and almost every company we
talked to it, iceberg willsubmit a form, and we'll call
them and the first thing they'llsay is, look, we're hiring this
role. But you know, maybe youcan help us for a couple months,
and often we stay with them. Ouraverage is 14 months right now.
And so what happens is thesesmaller companies figure out
(09:38):
that qualified for DevOps isreally expensive at that size. I
talked to a CEO the other daywho said, I'm spending a million
dollars on a Reb ops team, andI'm actually a year and I'm
actually not sure they have thelevel of qualification we need
and so cost is huge. If youdon't have the if you don't have
(10:02):
the resources to actuallydevelop people, you have to hire
senior people and most companiesdon't, you know, smaller
companies especially don't havedon't have Reb ops in house now,
as you grow that switches, soonce you get your series B and
C, and you can afford a Reb opsteam, as soon as you can
actually afford them and keepthem busy, you should hire them
in house. So I built iceberg tobe a bridge, not a forever
(10:25):
solution. And again, we don'treally do Reb ops in the true
sense of the world. So. So RebOps is something that's that's
much bigger than any likesystems implementer can do for
you. And so as soon as you'reable to hire it, the pros
definitely outweigh the cons forowning it internally developing
that institutional knowledge,keeping it not having the risk
(10:47):
that is that comes with a vendoronce you're sort of out of that,
that growth stage.
Matt Wolach (10:53):
So what are some of the challenges that if a
business says, Okay, we want toimplement this one in front of
the talent? Is there that? Whatare some of the mistakes that
they might make? Yeah, so
Taft Love (11:02):
a lot of the challenges are just nothing
works. And I mean, that if youtalk to sales leaders, and
they'll say, like, I don't, Idon't even have the data, I need
to make decisions, and we don'treally have process. And so the
first time you hire rep ops,it's usually to address this
wild west thing where, you know,I know marketing is creating
(11:24):
leads, I don't know what salesis really doing with them. And,
and the the common thread acrossall these complaints is
visibility. I just can't run mybusiness by field anymore. We're
too big for that. But I don'tknow what's going on in my
business. I used to tellfounders, hey guys, your VP of
marketing, how many leads theycreated last month? Now go ask
(11:45):
your VP of sales, how many leadsthat got last month? And don't
tell them that you just askedthe other one. And if that
number doesn't match, call meback. And you know, it's kind of
a silly thing to say. But it'sit's a good proxy for like, Hey,
you, you don't have systems inplace that are actually going to
enable you to get to the nextlevel, make the most of your
(12:06):
inbound or build qualityoutbound pipeline and even know
when you have pipeline, have youdefined pipeline, those are a
lot of the like, questions thatpeople who hire iceberg are
thinking about. And then thereare as you grow bigger, it's
different challenges. There areother firms like your go
nibblies out there that are dowhat we do for small companies,
(12:29):
but for much larger companiesand a more fenced in project,
you know, we're, we'restruggling because our reps
can't create order forms quicklyand easily. And we need the
Salesforce to talk to ouraccounting system. So can
somebody spend the next sixmonths making CPQ work perfectly
for us? And so there's likeanother level above us that
helps with that. But we're,we're usually focused is yeah,
(12:51):
the sort of nascent companyscaling problems.
Matt Wolach (13:00):
Okay, well, we need to do is, I mean, one of the
things you brought up is thething that I want to get on with
each other. Dan pine rather, oneof the reasons.
(13:21):
Don't want that we want peopleworking independently. And how
many different numbers? What'sthe takeaway tell was, so it
was? Great. Working together? Isthat the way to do it?
Taft Love (13:36):
Yeah, I think that's a that's a big part of the
answer. And and so to sales,marketing, customer success,
sort of across your business,when you reach a point where you
realize a few things are true, Idon't trust my data, or my data
is incomplete or whatever yourdata is untrustworthy for some
(13:57):
reason. I don't know the path tofixing that quickly. And I need
somebody to own this. Like whenthose three things are true.
Because data is a good proxy fora lot of other things. If your
data is bad, that probably is agood indicator that you're
lacking process, that's probablya good indicator that there's an
(14:17):
enablement issue. And so yeah,reporting is is sort of a good
proxy for how everything else isworking. And as soon as you stop
trusting it, that's the time tostart thinking about having
someone own it, whether you callit DevOps or something else
having a single throat to choke,with the goal of getting you the
(14:37):
data you need to run yourbusiness is is like the point at
which you know, the point atwhich you decide that is the
case is probably when you shouldstart considering looking into
DevOps, either internally orthrough an agency
Matt Wolach (14:51):
or something that metrics in order to optimize
their revenue operations.
Taft Love (14:56):
Yeah, so we generally come in after board meetings.
Somebody has a rough boardmeeting where their board
doesn't trust the data orthey're not confident in it or
whatever. It's a bad boardmeeting. So some of the things
we're often brought in to answerare really simple. What is our
arr? Right now? What is ourannual recurring revenue right
(15:18):
this minute? What is our netchurn? And then some, some sort
of deeper level ones are whichof my sales reps aren't working
that hard? I don't think they'reall working that hard. But I
don't actually know the answerto that. How do we tie all these
systems together so that we cansurface an answer to who isn't?
isn't working hard? And doeshard work actually correlate?
(15:41):
Well, with success on my salesteam? I'm not actually sure that
it does, but I need some data towork with. Another one is, I
think we're spending a ton ofmoney on marketing. Where is it
going? I you know, what are theoutcomes of the spend? I think I
know, but I I'm not confidentenough to feel good writing
another $25,000 check to someagency next month, to go spend
(16:05):
it across five platforms withouthaving a really clear answer to
what's my Roelofs? What's myreturn on adspend? On every
dollar of this? Those are someof the data points where you
know, running your businessbecomes more and more impossible
if you if you don't havetrustworthy data.
Matt Wolach (16:22):
Yeah, I totally agree. That's something even as
smaller stages I've seen withinmy companies is, you have to
understand some of those metricsto be able to know are we doing
the right thing? Are we puttingour money in the right place, or
putting our focus in the rightplace? And without the brilliant
thought, oh, and I noticed thiswith my clients, I asked them,
Hey, what are you at this? Whatdo you make? In many cases, I
(16:42):
have no idea these, thesecompanies are, you know, small,
sometimes bigger, andoftentimes, they just have no
clue. Right?
Taft Love (16:51):
That's 100%, right.
And before six or eight monthsago, I think you could sort of
get away with a lot of that,because the money in the bank is
is not burning down too fast.
But as of 2023, the rules ofphysics apply, again, even if
you took around and have somemoney to spend. And so it is
(17:12):
even more critical than than ithas been the last few years to
have a pretty clearunderstanding of of the return
on on all of your spend.
Matt Wolach (17:26):
Your clients are able to sustain these
improvements that you've madewith the revenue operations.
They don't just kind of throwthem in a face.
Taft Love (17:36):
It's a really good question. So first, I want to
challenge the premise with theidea that rev ops and really all
of operations should be aniterative process, there is
nothing we're going to do todaythat will last through the next
five years. And we have toaccept that we have to
understand it. And we have tobuild for today's problems and
(17:58):
know that we're going to keepadjusting. The trick is to have
people who can help you thinkaround corners and make sure
that today that the today'ssolution doesn't fail tomorrow.
And so the first is bringingpeople to the table who have the
answers to the test. There'snothing more valuable than
bringing in somebody who cansay, Look, I've worked with 50
(18:18):
companies that look a lot likeyou, I know you're special in
these key ways. But I've donethis thing before you're asking
me what your ARR is, I knowexactly how to go do that. So
you need that person at thetable. Even if you're a
brilliant engineer who's builtan amazing product that's
changing the world. If you don'thave the answers that test the
time it takes you to figure itout. And sure you could you
(18:39):
could you could toil and figureit out and eventually get it
right. But that time is so soexpensive. So So yeah, that's
that's the first thing is like,bring in people and it can be in
house too. It doesn't have to bean agency but bring in someone
who knows the answers to thetest.
Matt Wolach (18:57):
All great piece of advice for somebody who's
running a company is findsomebody who knows the answers
has already been there, donethat you understand that that's
why a lot of people come to methat I've been through it and
they say, Hey, Matt, what aboutthis? How are we going to do
that. And it's cool that I'mable to share my experience and
experience that I've had withother clients so that they are
able to get through it. Samething when people come to you,
you've been through this manytimes. I think that's the key to
(19:19):
business is don't try and figureeverything out on your own, you
may eventually figure it out,but it's gonna take you a long
time, it probably cost you a lotof money. Much better this sort
of dance is a test and whatadvice would you have for now,
Taft Love (19:36):
well, if you're just starting out right now, I in
some ways in view, I think Ithink you're starting out at a
time when it's really hard to besuccessful and you've probably
gotten funding or hopefullyyou've you've got enough
traction that you're gonna makeit and so envious of the people
who are getting their start now,which sounds crazy, but my
(19:57):
advice would be first keep itsimple. I don't know how many
times I am gonna come at thisfrom an operational point of
view. Don't try to don'toperationalize everything early.
Not everything has to scale.
It's okay to keep things simple.
And beyond that, whether it'sagain in house or agency, and
(20:22):
across operations, and sales andmarketing, bring in the experts
you can afford. And focus,especially if you're a software
founder on giving yourself thetime back to talk to customers
and understand the market. Don'tspend your days toiling in
systems trying to figure out howall these things should connect.
Even if you're an engineer, andit's fun to solve problems.
(20:44):
Every minute you're spendingdoing that stuff or building a
playbook for your teams forgetoperations for a minute doing
things a sales leader should bedoing or a marketing leader
should be doing. Every minuteyou're spending doing those
things isn't you're not outtalking to customers,
understanding what they need,figuring out how to get your
business to the next level. Sooperations aside, bring in
experts, just as you said, whoknow the answers and give
(21:08):
yourself the time back to gobuild a great business not to
work in it.
Matt Wolach (21:16):
And I want to make sure that people get to know a
little bit more about you and Iheard what's the best way for
them to learn about you and
Taft Love (21:23):
well, iceberg ops.com Go check out our website.
There's a lot of information onus and how we work my LinkedIn
is there and write me I try torespond to everybody that
reaches out to me happy to I'malways happy to give somebody
half an hour and talk through aproblem you're having you don't
have to you don't have to pay usto just like get an answer to to
a quick question you have. Ilove talking to founders out
(21:46):
there so so reach out to medirectly if you'd like
Matt Wolach (21:49):
the show notes. So much for coming on and sharing
all your wisdom.
Taft Love (21:55):
Yeah, man. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate it.
Matt Wolach (22:00):
You don't want to miss on any other upcoming
leaders like we're looking forreviews. Definitely give a
review that would really help usperformance.
Intro/ Outro (22:18):
Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS for
more help on finding great leadsand closing more deals go to
Matt and wallach.com
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