The Pipeline Council Blueprint
Marketing and sales alignment is crucial to hitting your pipeline targets. Learn how to build your own weekly sync that keeps everyone on the same page.
Hi, Sarah. Thanks so much for joining me today. How's your day going so far?
It's wonderful. I'm really, really excited to be here, Karyn.
Awesome. Thank you. Really excited to dive in today and go a little bit deeper
on how to run a pipeline
council. So, Sarah, first question. You're the director of growth marketing
over at OpenSesame.
Tell us a little bit about your background and what OpenSesame does.
Yeah, I'm excited too. So I've been here with OpenSesame for coming on four
months.
So right in the thick of it, right? A little after the first 90 days, but
getting into
moving and grooving with all the different pieces and growth marketing is one
of those roles.
It can be in a lot of different things similar to demand, Jen. But at OpenS
esame, my team is
really made up of two core teams. And that's all things marketing operations
and all things
performance marketing and marketing programs that the ADM campaigns, all things
that are really
driving revenue and growth. And those teams together are really what we're
focused on on
my side of the marketing house. And for the first four months here, so our
teams are really close to
obviously sales as well as partner will get into a little bit more with the
core goal of
really driving growth. We have some heavy growth goals, heavy revenue goals
that we're trying to
target. And that's really what we're focused on so far this year. Awesome. It's
great.
Talk to us about the GTM structure at OpenSesame. What is your marketing and
sales team look like?
And where do your BDRs, SDRs, report into? Yeah, I'll share a little bit more
about our
structure overall. So one of the things, and I'll take a step back, one of the
interesting
things with OpenSesame, if you're not familiar, OpenSesame is a learning
catalog platform. So I
really like to compare it to the books in the library, right? Where the catalog
, we have over 30,000
courses for learning and development all professionally. So if you think of
anything from compliance to
professional leadership development, all that in one place. And what's
interesting about this type
of model is that we are that marketplace. So we work heavily with partners and
close to half of
our revenue at times comes from partners. So between sales, marketing and
partners, there's a
really close alignment on how we're focusing on revenue, our pipeline targets.
And here is a
that I think there's a heavier emphasis on that partner piece. So traditionally
, I think a lot
of times when we think go to market, it's often marketing in sales, a little
bit of partners.
We almost align it to three stools or three legs of a stool. So marketing cells
and partners
for all three really, really close together. In terms of our BDRs or SDRs,
these actually are
rolling into sales, which I think oftentimes it's like a 50/50, maybe a 60/40
between if they go to
sales or marketing. Here they roll into sales, but we thankfully have a really
close relationship
with our sales team, which I know not all marketing teams get the luxury of
having that at times.
And we work really, really closely with that team. Awesome. So big emphasis on
partners.
What percentage split sales marketing and partners make up?
So it's really interesting. And I'll share some examples from my previous role
to send that somewhat
relevant to this conversation with pipeline council, but our outline is about
50 to 60ish
percent is sales and marketing. And these are really closely together. So when
we think when we
actually roll up to the board level reporting, we call that direct funnel and
that funnel,
that direct funnel is aligned. And that's my note there on marketing cells
being closely
together. That's one of the reasons our reporting structure is set up that way.
Partner takes about 40%. So we really kind of see those as they're broken out
into core pieces,
but then we dive in a little bit more when it comes to campaigns and channels
like that.
We'll make things between marketing and sales. Awesome. Great. So you're new to
the role. And
I know that one of the things you mentioned that you wanted to really get
underway immediately was
a weekly alignment meeting between sales and marketing really focused on PyGEN,
what you're
doing to kind of get to those goals. We call that pipeline council here
internally, our weekly
meeting where we get everyone together. Talk about all the things pipeline, how
are we pacing,
things like that. What does that look like it opens us to me and how are you
evolving that
meeting as it gets underway? Yeah. So I love the term pipeline council. And in
my previous role,
a full story, we also did a similar thing that was title the same pipeline
council. And I can
get into a little bit of the breakdown. When I came over here to open sesame,
we don't have,
we have it had a meeting yet that was termed pipeline council. However, we have
something
called golden path. And I think one of the things that's really unique when it
comes to
any type of marketing leader coming into an organization, it's really important
not to just
come in and say like, all right, I know the pipeline council works. I know
these times,
this is how this works for me in my previous role. We're going to copy and
paste it over here.
I've learned the hard way that it doesn't work like that in previous roles too.
So one of the
things I really was focused on my first 90 days is building an understanding
and a trust of what's
happening today and really try to dig into some of the reporting gaps. So we've
had something called
a golden path, which is where we actually look at what deals closed one and
closed loss and what is
the micro kind of almost think of it as a multi touch view, but understand like
, what are the
touch points that help drive that revenue or drive that loss and how can we
learn from that?
And have then since been like after the first month and a half or so have
started including some
forward looking metrics into that call. So we now also look at our not only
just up our top
of funnel, middle funnel pipeline, but also the revenue. And I think especially
for more like
founder led orgs and smaller organizations, as well as those that I would I
would bet to say
that have very structured meetings and established, you know, reporting outline
in place. It's really
important to understand the why behind how it's done now so that you can
position your recommendations
of a change in reporting structure or a change in what the metrics that we're
looking at so that
it just doesn't come from like an outside perspective in. Awesome. That's great
. What did you find some
of the biggest challenges were in getting a program like this stood up and
running?
We're I'm still in the middle of some of them, you know, just to be really
authentic and honest. I
think one of the biggest things I noticed is and not to play on the idea like e
-learning, but
to make sure you're all reading from the same book because in and maybe you've
experienced
this too, Karen, but sometimes when you have a lot of teams who are heavy into
data, you have
your rep sells marketing partners, ops, there are oftentimes different reports
in different places.
People copy and you know, tweak a report here and there and have different
sometimes even have
different expectations or different definitions for using the same metric. So
one thing that I've
been proactively trying to really tackle is how do you solve that? And two
things that I think are
really important is one, a reporting glossary. So working with teams to have
make sure there is
one source of truth with even a simple like what is an imp to well? What does
that mean? Right? Like
what is the sales qualified? Like what does that actually mean? So building out
that reporting
glossary, which we've been working on and have and that's actually helped
create a lot of clarity
across teams as well as process, right? Because I think it's we'll go into like
what a pipeline
council looks like. It's not just about the data that you're reporting, but it
's the why behind it.
So being able to have that reporting glossary so everyone understands the
terminology you're using
is critical. And another key piece of the thing is important and that I
established in our previous
role and we're doing here too that's helped is having a reporting hub because
you know, we have
reports that are out of our BI tool as well as Salesforce and we use tools like
Sixcent and
other places that there's sometimes it's nice to have another view or another
slice of data that
helps tell a story. But having those things in different sporadic places makes
it really difficult
and makes it difficult. People can often come to the same needing with
different data sources.
So we now have a reporting hub that outlines what's the link to the report? Who
's the owner of it?
What is this report supposed to mean? And when was the last time it was updated
? So having all
that in one place is really I think that helps kind of get over the challenge
of are people reading
from the same book and are we all looking at the same data and have the same
expectation of what it is?
I love that. I think that's a problem that probably like all go-to-market teams
encounter where reports are being duplicated and then values are maybe being
misused. So I
really like that idea of like a centralized reporting hub and a reporting gloss
ary. I might
have to implement that here at Qualside. Great. So now that we've talked about-
Everyone loves to complete the report. Exactly. Yes. And I mean I'm
sure that the team gets the questions on like how do I build this? How do I
report on it? Where
can I find X, Y, and Z? And we can just create like lock templates and say here
it is, do with it,
what you want, maintain those filters. So that's awesome. We might have to do
that.
Sarah, let's walk through some of the elements that you guys included in your
pipeline council
today. What does that look like from the content that you're covering on a
weekly basis?
Yeah. So I the way and it's constantly evolving where how I've done in the past
that was a truly a deeply established pipeline council is we had three core
sections which were
let's look at our pipeline metrics which we can get into a little bit but are
you know what are
for looking pipeline metrics? What are the programs that we're running right
now? And then what are
the asks across any of our go to market teams? So that may be events that are
coming up and we need
support with invitations or expected hey there's going to be you know some type
of you know new
campaign coming up and we need alignment with sales on. So that was previously
what I'm doing
now which kind of going back to the point of it's important to understand your
current org and
make sure you're shifting that it's you're not just kind of copy pacing some of
that. You can
always have the same foundation like the template we're going to like share but
I think there's a
flair to it to make sure it really hits on with your current word. So we have
three sections also
but they're a little bit different. The first is that golden path. So where and
I actually really
love this and I didn't have it before but I love being able to see like what
was the path of to
value and what are all the different touch points that helped with that. So we
use that to look at
our recent close one or close lost and understand like what's that micro level
analysis and how can
we carry that like what we learned from that into our current process. The two
sections that we've
added recently one is reviewing our current monthly and quarterly pacing. So
that's from top of funnel
in QL's all the way down to revenue and we have that broken out both by segment
so we can see that
between whether it's enterprise or SMB as well as those two core kind of like
funnel inputs which
are indirect our partner versus the direct which is like more marketing and
sales. What we also do
there and I think it's really important for any type of ops team to make sure
when they work with
go-to-market teams and leadership that they can anticipate what's the core
question that's going
to be asked and oftentimes it's where did this person come from or how did this
person get into
our system and we look at our funnel very differently from hand raisers so demo
requests, trial
versus those who aren't hand raisers so being able to see that difference there
. And then last
is it's still a little bit of an education mode but wow we're starting to dig
into the program
specific so like what was the source what was the campaign and digging into
like what's that hand
off anywhere where we're starting to see drops or outliers both positive and
negative across the
funnel what's the marketing to sales hand off in terms of velocity conversion
metrics all of that
to to understand like what we need to flag for about coming week. Awesome I
think we've got some
some overlap and some things in common you know we certainly cover off like an
executive overview
and we look at like how are things pacing across a few different metrics you
know we look at stage
one pipeline how are we doing on the quarter in the month stage two pipeline
how are we doing on
the quarter in the month we basically pace that out linearly throughout the
quarter so we always
have an idea of whether we're a header behind. I think the one thing that we
don't do is report
on revenue and ACV so do you guys report on close one deals within that order
or tell me a little
bit about the the ACV and revenue piece. Yeah we actually do so we report
heavily on that and that
part of that is because with doing of the loss the analysis across our funnel
we see that once
the lead gets to or once a an opportunity gets to a we had more of a I'll say
early stage it's not
the earliest but what we consider early stage usually within the quarter it
will close some
enterprise deals that's much different but usually within the quarter that will
close so we report
out on that revenue as well. Okay got it so you guys see a large amount of
creative close that's
like you know why the tie is kind of there on how you're performing for Pygens.
Okay love it.
Yeah and we know and I'll just add in there that what obviously just four
months in but one of the
things that I do want to carry over what we'll do is looking at you know we
just ended Q1 when
we get to Q2 we're gonna look back at those Q1 numbers again right so we can
like redefine like
okay anything that was later stage what happened and that will continue
throughout the year.
Okay great yeah like I said we've got some overlap we do a lot of that kind of
pacing on
different metrics we do go deeper and we look at like pipeline performance
based on like the
source where's it coming from the different business segments and we look for
insights there and then
we build a funnel for each of those segments as well so that we can understand
how that's
translating from first meeting all the way through kind of like revenue. I
think the closest thing
that we probably do to Golden Path is we ask the reps to highlight deals that
they've sourced
towards the end so that we can understand like what's working for them what's
not working.
So we typically highlight like five or so deals these could be deals that are
going to get
created and closed in that quarter or they could you know run our standard kind
of sales cycle
but we have the reps talk about like why the account got their attention how
they got the
prospects attention how they generated the opportunity what sequence did they
use how did the first
call go and we're doing a lot of that to kind of highlight early stage deal.
So yeah we've got a little bit of overlap there I do like the recording on ACV
and we should
probably do a little bit more reporting on our creating flows as well. Sarah
last question.
You know what if it's the end of a report on and I think it's just you know it
helps
it's least share a little bit more of like the business impact at the bottom
line.
Totally. Sarah last question if a peer came to you and wanted some advice they
just started
a new job and they wanted to get a pipeline council kind of implemented and
rolling inside
of their organization what tips and tricks would you give them?
Oh gosh your question. I'd say number one use this template that's going to be
shared
after the call that's definitely one I would say but I think really starting
off simple it
pipeline council especially for markers who are just starting I think it can
seem very scary
especially if there's not a great relationship yet but sells but if you're in a
role for any
amount of time simply think of what's the most common question that comes up.
It's starting
about middle funnel is it operation if it's closed and use that as your
starting source of
usually you hopefully already have a lot of the data but use that as the
starting source to create
some do like common interest in a meeting because you don't want it to be just
another meeting on
the calendar you wanted to drive some type of value and use whatever that
common question is to
at least start on one metric if you have to you know if you don't know where to
start at all just
start on one metric that can get a conversation going and start building it out
from there.
Awesome that's great. Well Sarah thank you so much for giving us a peek into
how OpenSesame
is aligning on pipeline targets everybody attending we actually have a
downloadable slide
template in Google Sheets template available for our attendees today and Sarah
's been kind
enough to give us clear step-by-step instructions and directions on how to
build pipeline council
her way so you'll be able to download that right from link below. Sarah thank
you so much for joining
us today and talking a little bit about how to build a pipeline council.