Michelle Torrey-Teunissen & Ian Faison 33 min

Why Telemarketing is Dead


On this episode, Michelle describes the importance of cross-functional teams for optimizing revenue. She explains which structures and cadences have worked best for her in her career, and how she’s found success in RevOps.



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[Music]

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Welcome to Rise of RevOps. I'm the new page on CEO of Caspin Studios.

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Rise of RevOps is always presented by the great people qualified.

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Go to qualified.com to learn more and I am joined by a special guest Michelle.

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How are you? I'm well. Thank you, Ann. Thanks for having me on the show.

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Yeah, excited to chat, excited to talk RevOps, excited to talk six clicks.

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So let's get into it. First role in RevOps? First role in a global revenue

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position, for sure.

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Pretty exciting time to come in, own revenue, and oh by the way, own RevOps,

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and we're going to get

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into all that stuff. Tell us a little bit about six clicks. Yeah, thanks. Six

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clicks as a company

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was founded in 2019, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. We are a GRC SaaS

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platform. GRC stands

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for Governance Risk and Compliance. So we help risk and compliance in

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information security

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practitioners, not only manage their cybersecurity programs, but also manage

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their regulatory obligations

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and manage risk for the organization, as well as be able to report up on their

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risk posture to

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their board and investors, clients, etc. And what types of customers do you

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have?

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The GRC space has been around for about 30 years, Ian. And so it's fairly

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mature, particularly in

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the US market. I think the UK is second in terms of reg tech maturity, and then

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Australia would be

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third, just in terms of embracing technology and getting off of spreadsheet to

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manage a GRC program.

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The types of clients that we have historically have always spent more regulated

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markets,

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but we're moving away from that. I think, you know, at this point, most

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organizations realize that

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they are potential to be under attack or be held by some sort of ransomware

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threat. They also have

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obligations to their board and their clients to instill confidence and trust.

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And so organizations

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are now moving away from a nice to have to a need to have so that they can

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really get their arms

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around not only managing the complexities of regulatory compliance, but also

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being able to

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report out an instill confidence. And I was going to suggest that you probably

2:15

haven't heard on your

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show. I'd be surprised if you had that risk practitioners or information

2:20

security practitioners

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have ever been involved in rev ops. But if they aren't, they should be because

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six clicks and GRC

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as a concept, as a methodology, has the ability to enable driving revenue. So

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it's a business

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enabler. So for an organization, it invests heavily in information security

2:41

best practices,

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as well as a certification like ISO 27001, for example, they actually then have

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the ability to,

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like I said, instill confidence in their business associates, their investors,

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their board,

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and their clients who want to know when they want the assurance that their data

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is secure if they

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give it to those companies. So without having the ability to manage that, I

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think it puts an

3:05

organization at risk for growing or getting to their next objective.

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And what is your definition of revenue operations? RevOps is really a cross-

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functional discipline

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that is designed to optimize revenue, both existing revenue in terms of

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protecting it,

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as well as growing your revenue stream. And when I say cross-functional, I mean

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it really touches

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every portion of the organization from the obvious sales and marketing, but

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also customer success.

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Back office oftentimes has to be involved in rev ops. And as I said, I think

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information

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security should play a role in that as well. Yeah, how do you think about rev

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ops in your company?

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Obviously, y'all are in a massive enterprise. So a lot of this stuff, you have

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to have your

3:45

hands a little bit more in as a CRO. Yeah, I think being able to make metrics-

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based decisions or

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database decisions is critical in any size organizations, particularly those

3:57

that are smaller,

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because you're running leaner with fewer people and not so deep pockets. So you

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have to be a lot

4:04

more thoughtful and a lot more better informed about the decisions that you're

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making. And I think

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rev ops is critical to being able to bring that empirical data to the

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conversation.

4:15

Yeah, I think about this all the time, where especially when you just don't

4:18

have as large a

4:19

data set, that there's just so much noise rather than signals, you're like, "Oh

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, is that

4:25

whatever 100 accounts versus 1000 versus whatever?" Or whatever the thing is,

4:30

just to have to take

4:31

sweeping generalizations from the data is perhaps a fool's errand.

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Not just generalizations, but also vanity metrics. So I think a lot of people

4:40

get caught up in only

4:42

portraying the metrics that reflect well on them, because they're protecting

4:45

their jobs or they're

4:47

trying to promote the organization to outsiders or investors, where I think the

4:52

metrics become

4:53

really critical and invaluable is if you're able to derive real findings from

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them,

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right, findings that can inform those decisions and help you pivot if you're

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not doing something

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properly, or if there's a market segment that isn't responding as well as you'd

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like it to,

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then those metrics give you the ability to make those decisions.

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So obviously you don't have like a huge rev ops team or anything like that. How

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do you think

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about staffing rev ops and making sure that you have a function that can exist?

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I think about it in terms of our tech stack that we use to a large degree,

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bringing in individuals

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that have the ability to run the applications that we rely on pretty heavily

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and manipulate

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those applications to meet our needs for reporting and information the way that

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we need that information

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depicted. So that experience, that skill set will drive the staffing of the rev

5:44

ops team.

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Yeah, do you feel like if you're a smaller company like y'all or like a startup

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or, you know,

5:51

whether it's series A startup or series B startup or someone like that, how do

5:55

you think about

5:55

like investments in rev ops and like when should you do stuff like that?

5:59

It's going to vary. I think organization by organization Ian, I was fortunate

6:03

when I joined

6:04

Just shy of two years ago that we already had a CRM in place when I came in. We

6:09

didn't have a lot

6:10

of historical data because the company is so young, but we had at least one

6:13

year's worth of data.

6:14

So we've since obviously built on that. We now have three years worth of data

6:18

that we can leverage,

6:19

but I think having a sales operations person is critical. We do have a customer

6:24

success team

6:24

and we track data like clients that are at risk of churn, clients that have

6:30

churned,

6:30

and we profile those accounts and those deals and those clients by quite a few

6:36

different data

6:37

metrics that we slice those. What type of account are they? Are they an advisor

6:40

? Are they a reseller?

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Are they an end user? What point did they churn? What are we hearing from the

6:45

account? There's just

6:46

a lot of metrics that we keep and we've got several dashboards that we publish

6:50

and project a variety

6:51

of different people in the organization. All right, let's get into our first

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segment, RevOps

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equals. We talk about the tough parts of RevOps. Yeah, what's the hardest Rev

7:00

Ops role you face in the

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US six months to a year? I think personally it was coming into an organization

7:06

that is headquartered

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outside of the US and trying to operate within the US. It's the first time I've

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operated in a global

7:15

role where the organization was outside of the US. Having to come in and use

7:20

Australian contracts

7:22

for other jurisdictions, whether it be the UK or the US, has presented some

7:27

challenges. I've had to

7:29

regionalize our contracts. I've had to really also come together with our legal

7:36

group and bring those

7:37

contracts into a more fair and balanced language model so that contract

7:42

negotiations don't drag on

7:44

and on and on for months and also meet the needs of the jurisdiction of the

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client that you're

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talking to or working with. Yeah, that's challenging. Is that something that,

7:53

something where you just

7:54

try to do a sprint, try to say like how do we fix this or is that sort of like

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an ongoing thing

7:59

that constantly needs tweaking or adjusting? I think over time you learn the

8:04

call outs that

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you're going to run into that become regular call outs, right? It almost as

8:09

though there are the FAQs

8:10

you can expect from every contract cycle. And so if you have enough of a

8:15

pattern that you've defined,

8:17

you can then take that to your legal group and say, "Okay, this situation comes

8:21

up in every single

8:22

negotiation that we're dealing with. Let's head that off at the pass and change

8:26

the language."

8:27

And I think ultimately it's about reducing the friction, right? Minimizing the

8:31

time to get a deal

8:32

closed by reducing friction and creating a more fair and balanced approach to

8:37

negotiating with

8:38

the legal team. Yeah, that was one of my questions is, is it just back office

8:43

paperwork type stuff

8:44

that holds things up or is it like real friction to getting deals done? Because

8:48

those two things

8:49

are coincide with each other. They can be like, "Yeah, you know, it's just kind

8:52

of a back off

8:53

from getting slow and out velocity." No, I think legitimate legal issues. The

8:57

things that we had

8:58

tended to run into before I started addressing this was limitation of liability

9:03

indemnification,

9:04

intellectual property, infringement, data privacy. Those were the key areas

9:09

that we would run into.

9:10

And then jurisdictionality or geographically related things such as the

9:15

limitation of liability,

9:17

cap, and insurance coverage translated to the currency that you're operating in

9:22

. Oh my god.

9:24

Yeah, so it was running into quite a bit of complexity. And I just sort of put

9:27

the kabosh on

9:28

that. I said, "There are ways that we can address this. This isn't rocket

9:31

science."

9:31

I love that. Talk about a rev-ops problem. That is definitely a rev-ops problem

9:36

. Really,

9:36

how come deals are slowing down? It's like, "Oh, the way that we're doing our

9:40

contracts with our

9:41

going through seven rounds of legal review because of the cost of the insurance

9:45

." So I've been through

9:46

all that stuff before signed up exactly how that goes. And that's absolutely

9:50

brutal.

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And that's the last thing you want when you've got a happy customer who you've

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been through a

9:55

full sales cycle with, which in and of itself may have taken some time. Last

9:59

thing you want to do

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is drag it through the legal mud. You could just say that for your entire life.

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The last thing you

10:05

want to do in any situation is drag anything through the legal mud. The lawyers

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always disagree

10:10

with me on that, where they're like, "No, they want to add more mud." But yeah,

10:13

that's a good rev

10:14

obstacle. How do you balance supporting sales marketing and customer success

10:18

with a smaller team?

10:19

Very long days. You can't do it. I'm also dealing with multiple time zones. I'm

10:25

not lying when I

10:26

say the days are long. I start quite early in the morning working with clients

10:29

in the UK and in some

10:31

cases India and then late into the evening working with Australia. But

10:35

generally speaking,

10:37

again, just like the contracts issue, it's not rocket science. It's structure,

10:41

bringing structure

10:42

to an organization and defining a cadence. So creating some regular meetings

10:48

and touch points

10:49

and setting expectations of all of the team members and making sure to give

10:54

accolades where

10:54

they're due. A lot of people thrive on getting credit as they should and it's

10:59

free and it doesn't

11:00

take much effort. I'm a firm believer in making sure to give credit where it's

11:04

due.

11:04

Yeah, I'm curious as a CRO who's thinking about go-to-market, getting in front

11:08

of folks,

11:09

closing deals and then figuring out that the customer success side. When you're

11:13

balancing

11:14

the rev ops goals, you mentioned like sales ops as a key part of that. Are you

11:18

thinking about

11:19

things like, hey, let's prioritize our go-to-market closing deals with whatever

11:27

70% of our rev ops

11:29

bandwidth and then 20% CS and then 10% with additional things or how do you

11:35

think about

11:36

prioritizing when you are a resource constrained younger startup?

11:41

I hate saying this as an answer, but it is heavily dependent on what your long-

11:44

term objective is.

11:46

If your goal is to have some sort of an exit as an organization, then driving

11:51

revenue is the number

11:52

one priority. But I think organizations should consider at what costs they

11:56

drive that revenue

11:57

and that helps dictate the priorities. So if your entire goal is you've got to

12:03

get every deal in

12:04

the door you possibly can and damn the churn, it doesn't matter, then you drive

12:08

hard at revenue.

12:09

But most organizations who have investors and have a responsibility to those

12:15

investors really

12:16

try to balance that and so that dictates the priority for how you spend your

12:20

time.

12:21

Any other thoughts on rev obstacles or maybe a rev ops moment or any rev ops

12:25

moments that you've

12:26

made? Yeah, I would say if I could turn the clock back and do something

12:30

differently, when I joined

12:32

six clicks, I got pretty hard for having a BDR telemarketing team, outbound,

12:39

dialing for dollars

12:40

sort of team. Because we didn't have a dedicated marketing team here in the

12:44

States, I thought

12:44

this would be a good way to get some leads. And I learned pretty quickly and we

12:49

pivoted quickly

12:50

as well. We failed quickly on this one. Just don't buy that way anymore. And so

12:54

that whole

12:54

telemarketing concept I think is dead. It's a thing of the past. Buyers now buy

13:00

pretty much self-servicing

13:01

through digital resource and education online. Most CISOs do not take cold

13:07

calls. They don't

13:08

want to be reached out to via email. Although I will say we do have some pretty

13:12

strong response

13:13

and click through rates on our email campaigns. But nevertheless, the whole BDR

13:17

model didn't work

13:18

well. Understanding how buyers buy today and the need to develop digital assets

13:23

that they'll

13:24

consume prior to even having a conversation with you, I think is important. I

13:28

love that. That's a

13:29

great shout because I feel the same way. It's things that we hear a lot of. And

13:34

a similar sort of

13:35

thing that you just said is you're seeing those click through rates or you're

13:38

seeing people clicking

13:39

on emails and looking at that stuff that speaks to the pain. I mean, clearly

13:42

there's a massive pain

13:44

in the GRC space. Clearly, this is something as you mentioned is going from

13:47

nice to have the

13:48

need to have. So if it's a need to have people need to have it, right? They

13:53

just don't want to

13:53

be called on their personal phone. They just don't want to be called while they

13:56

're at the gym.

13:57

They don't want to be called while they're in 5,000 meetings. And the thing is

14:00

like most executives

14:01

look at their calendar and it's literally their Google calendar is stacked from

14:06

a sun up to sundown

14:06

with meetings. So when would you even reach them? And what are they going to do

14:11

? Call you back? I

14:12

mean, it's a crazy notion. If you're selling to someone else who has a phone,

14:17

like a pizza place,

14:18

and I would be seeing the data there, but if you're selling to senior

14:21

executives, like no chance.

14:24

Yeah, I totally agree. Yes. So I'm curious then, with that sort of knowledge of

14:29

mine,

14:29

what did you shift toward? More digital asset and trying to support the buyer's

14:34

journey,

14:34

the various stages of the journey with a variety of resources. So we've got a G

14:40

RC buying guide that

14:41

we've put together that has active links in it, which gets them to even more

14:45

data like an ROI

14:46

calculator. We have started soliciting reviews from our clients so that buyers

14:51

can go online and

14:52

look at reviews of other users that have leveraged the platform. So we're

14:56

really investing heavily

14:57

in some of those areas. Interesting that a lot of those things would be

15:01

potentially like a

15:03

CMO function or a marketing function. Seems like you see revenue as a little

15:07

bit more fluid with sales

15:08

and marketing. Is there like a more joint go-to-market motion? Is that fair to

15:12

say? I mean, it seems that

15:13

way from the way you talk about it. It is today. It is. I think at some point

15:17

we're going to hit a

15:18

maturity milestone and that'll be decoupled. Our CEO is also actually quite

15:23

active in our

15:24

marketing, both from a campaign development standpoint, ad development, as well

15:30

as he himself

15:31

does quite a few interviews, podcasts, and contribution articles and things

15:36

like that.

15:36

Very cool. All right, let's get to our next segment, the tool shed. We're

15:41

talking tools, spreadsheets,

15:42

and metrics. Just like everyone's favorite tool, qualified. It'll be to be tool

15:46

shed. It's completely

15:47

qualified. Go to qualified.com right now and check them out, especially if you

15:54

're in rev-ups. You

15:55

got to have qualified. If you're using Salesforce, go to qualified.com. Okay,

15:59

Michelle, what's in

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your tool shed right now? The CRM that I inherited when I joined was HubSpot

16:06

and hadn't used it prior

16:07

to six clicks, but I've actually grown to really enjoy the platform. We used it

16:13

extensively for

16:14

not just tracking deals and managing forecast pipeline, but all of our ad

16:20

campaigns, event

16:21

campaigns, and so forth, run through HubSpot, as well as lots of reporting and

16:26

dashboarding

16:27

capability and collaboration. I think it's a great collaboration tool. That's

16:32

our CRM.

16:32

Sales Intel, we use Zoom info for Sales Intelligence, of course, Linked. And

16:38

then I've been

16:39

researching recently RFP response solutions. There are several of them there,

16:45

but we try to avoid

16:46

RFPs, but they're not entirely avoidable. And when you do have to respond to

16:50

one, they tend to be

16:52

really time consuming. So these tools will allow you to replicate previous

16:57

responses and give you

16:58

the ability to, I would say, shape 80% of the work off by repurposing some of

17:03

the responses you've

17:04

already delivered in previous RFP responses. That's cool. Yeah, so I'm really

17:08

looking forward to

17:09

moving forward with that. And then the last thing I use is actually, this is

17:13

for the interview process

17:15

of finding good salespeople, which is always a challenge for sales managers

17:19

looking to hire.

17:20

I use an online assessment tool, sales assessment tool, that takes into

17:25

consideration. It's not a

17:27

psychological analysis of any sort, but it does take into consideration how an

17:31

individual themselves

17:33

buy. So let's say you, Ian, you're making a decision on a large purchase,

17:38

whether it be a home or a car

17:40

or a piece of land or a vacation. How do you consider buying that large item?

17:45

Do you give it a long

17:46

time to think about it? Do you do a ton of research? Or do you just first thing

17:50

that comes along that

17:51

you really like, you jump in and make the decision? Based on how you buy, you

17:56

will also sell that

17:57

same way. So you'll either allow people very long time to consider, think it

18:02

over, look at

18:03

competitors, look at alternatives, wait for the sale to happen, the discount

18:10

versus you're going to

18:11

try to drive to closure because you use yourself operating that way. So those

18:16

are the types of things

18:17

that this sales assessment tool looks for. And then among other capabilities, I

18:22

look for several

18:22

attributes that are must-haves in sales candidate for me. That's a really

18:28

helpful tool.

18:29

What metrics matter to you? Well, as I mentioned, I do try to avoid the vanity

18:34

metrics. I think

18:35

using leading indicators is really critical. So things like number of meetings

18:39

per week,

18:40

number of deals created in a month, number of quotes going out the door,

18:43

probabilities,

18:45

excuse me, close ratios, deal velocity, those are the types of things that you

18:50

can use to get a fairly predictable picture of revenue, at least in the six

18:56

month term, I'd say.

18:58

We're about something that you wish you could measure, maybe a blind spot.

19:03

I wish that there's a way to get more data about losses. That's usually the

19:08

biggest area that any

19:09

organization struggles in. I don't think that we're unique in this, in that

19:13

respect. Knowing

19:14

competitors, you're up against what the competitive landscape looks like. You

19:17

can generally find out

19:18

some information about that, but if you lose, it's nearly impossible to get

19:23

that client back to the

19:25

table to explain what could have tipped the scale in your favor or why it didn

19:30

't go your way.

19:31

And that's really important information from a learning standpoint. So I'd say

19:36

that's the biggest

19:37

blind spot. That's more from traditional sales standpoint. I guess from a rev-

19:41

op standpoint,

19:42

if you don't have the proper leading indicators that I mentioned, that's it

19:47

makes it

19:48

near to impossible to make empirical decisions. And then you're just really

19:52

kind of relying on

19:53

gut instinct with some data. We just did a really cool episode that hasn't come

19:58

out yet about when

20:00

loss analysis is going to be very fun. We talked with the team, they closed and

20:06

they shared a bunch

20:07

of data about when loss and essentially whatever the rep puts in as the reason

20:11

why a loss is usually

20:12

not right. Yeah, I can believe that. Yeah, pretty funny. Anything cool that you

20:20

're doing with data?

20:21

I know obviously it's again a early stage company, so you don't exactly have an

20:25

entire data science

20:26

team. I'm guessing that you're back in call, but I went through an exercise

20:30

just literally a couple

20:31

weeks ago where I expanded our pipeline to include a couple more stages. I

20:36

think I added three new

20:37

stages because what I had this sort of effect, what I would call just the easy

20:42

bucket effect going on

20:44

with the sales reps where they were dropping pretty much every deal into a

20:48

specific category,

20:50

but it was very difficult for me to understand truly how closeable that deal

20:53

was or how winnable

20:54

it was in the month. I added more granularity and I'm also forcing them to

20:59

using HubSpot workflows

21:01

to answer specific questions before they can even move a deal into the next

21:05

stage.

21:06

So they have to stop and think about what they're doing and actually

21:10

acknowledge that they've gotten

21:12

that deal through the next gate as it were. And then the other thing I included

21:17

in that workflow was

21:19

this concept of tagging within HubSpot, which is really cool, and we're using

21:23

it to identify

21:24

three different indicators on deals. One of them is closing within 30 days, so

21:29

this is a way to

21:30

just look at the pipeline and easily visually see which deals are coming within

21:35

30 days.

21:36

We've got a tag defined as a strategic deal. These are ones that are over 100

21:41

grand.

21:41

And then the third tag is whether or not a deal is in trials, so they actually

21:46

have their hands

21:47

in the tool. Presales. Very cool. Can you share a little bit more about how

21:52

many stages you have

21:53

now? Total that I love. I could talk stages all day. I love stages. I think it

22:00

's like one of those

22:01

things that the RevOps leader and CRO and the sales office person, everybody

22:07

disagrees on what the

22:08

stages should be. So I love talking stages. That's fun. I've got nine stages

22:12

before closed one.

22:13

Cool. Okay. Can you share generally what they are? I'll share 100% what they

22:18

are. So prospect

22:20

suspect is the first one. Lead or registered deal. So our deals don't start

22:25

necessarily when a lead

22:26

comes in. Qualified discovery demo is the next stage. Decision maker bought in.

22:32

Proposal sent,

22:34

approved for purchase. Vendor onboarding, contracting procurement, and then

22:42

closed one.

22:42

Yeah, that's interesting. So you have so many post commitment there. Yeah.

22:48

Because of procurement

22:50

and all the stuff that goes into that. That's fascinating. So which ones did

22:53

you add?

22:54

So I added under onboarding and approved for purchase because generally

22:59

speaking, most of the deals

23:00

we're doing these days are all net new logos. So we're not in these accounts

23:05

already. And so

23:06

there is very much a vendor onboarding component. And that's one of the things

23:10

that wasn't being

23:10

accounted for previously that was creating delays. What I've seen with this is

23:15

that

23:15

get massive delays potentially. And the deal still usually almost always closes

23:21

, but it really

23:21

messes up your forecast. You obviously miss a month, miss a quarter, whatever.

23:26

Because of those

23:27

vendor onboarding pieces and the procurement. And I don't know if you feel this

23:32

way, but procurement

23:33

right now in the current market is under way different scrutiny than it was

23:38

obviously a year

23:39

or two years ago. So it's just an extra layer of procurement. There's times

23:44

where like that

23:44

can actually kill a deal now where I feel like years ago, like procurement's

23:48

probably not killing

23:49

most deals. They're going to ask for a discount, but they're not going to kill

23:51

it.

23:52

So true, Ian, I had a situation last month where we literally on a Friday were

23:58

told,

23:58

budgets there, it's been approved for going in for signature tonight and I'll

24:02

send you the signed

24:03

contract on Monday. Monday rolled around. They said, yeah, we went in for

24:07

signature and we

24:08

literally were told that it was reneged. So they lost budget.

24:12

We've seen the same thing. Everybody's in agreement, decision maker, senior

24:16

leader,

24:17

everybody all the way to the top. And then procurement pulls the plug. So I'm

24:22

going to finance it.

24:23

Nope. Yeah, there's so much contraction going on right now in the market. And I

24:26

think it's going to

24:28

be that way for some time. And we're heading into an election year that's

24:32

typically

24:33

cause for concern with organizations or it's paralyzing, I should say, in terms

24:39

of decision making.

24:40

Yeah, that's interesting. It's a really interesting piece because I think that

24:44

those final few stages,

24:46

I don't know if you have like percentage numbers associated with those final

24:49

few stages, but

24:50

it's got at least shave off a couple of percentage points for each of those

24:54

later stages.

24:55

We do. Yeah, we definitely advance a deal into a higher probability when they

25:00

're in those stages,

25:01

but they're still not done. It's not a foregone conclusion.

25:05

Yeah. And you had their thoughts on that stage stuff. Oh, you mentioned that

25:07

there was like

25:08

certain things that they have to answer when they go into those. Is that just

25:11

like something in the

25:12

CRM that they have to answer like a question or how does that work? Yeah. So if

25:16

a rep wants to advance

25:17

a deal into the vendor onboarding stage, the have to answer is a security

25:24

questionnaire necessary

25:26

because we ourselves are being assessed by customers for our security posture.

25:31

And then they have to

25:31

answer and turn to remember the other one, vendor onboarding forms, I believe

25:36

is the other question.

25:37

And it's really we're not soliciting specific data from them. It's just a

25:41

reminder that, hey,

25:42

you need to go make sure these things are happening before the steel gets

25:45

dropped into this category.

25:47

Is this like one of those things that I always wonder who should do what for

25:52

these things?

25:53

Because gosh, I think there's just more room for even more specialization with

25:59

this like

25:59

when does onboarding happen? Who's in charge of onboarding? When does the like

26:04

account manager

26:05

come in? Or if you keep it with an A or however they're structured to just like

26:09

knock out some

26:10

of these admin tasks? But it's like at the end of the day, like they ain't

26:13

closed until it's signed.

26:14

Every AE on earth knows that. So if you want this thing to get signed, seal,

26:18

deliver, you got to

26:18

make sure that stuff is done. Yeah, no question. One thing we talked about this

26:23

idea of cybersecurity.

26:25

Now that fits into RevOps. What do you think? Should RevOps people be thinking

26:29

about cybersecurity?

26:30

How should they be thinking about cybersecurity? I think RevOps people are

26:33

usually on the receiving

26:34

end of cybersecurity measures because they're employees in an organization

26:39

where they have to

26:40

read and attest to certain policies like an acceptable use policy or mobile

26:46

device policy

26:47

or those types of things. So generally speaking, RevOps people aren't exposed

26:52

beyond their security

26:54

training that they get at their new employee onboarding or once a year

26:59

thereafter, which is a

27:01

requirement of most regulations and most best practices. They say you have to

27:05

have security

27:06

awareness training for your employees. You also have to publish your policies

27:10

and the employees

27:11

have to attest that they've read them. But conversely, I think information

27:15

security practitioners should

27:17

be thinking about revenue and how to speak to the business about driving

27:21

revenue based on

27:23

their own information security program. One of the things that I've heard from

27:28

a couple different

27:29

CISOs is that they tend to wear a target on their back because when there's a

27:33

breach, not if,

27:34

when there's a breach, they're the first guy out the door. So one of the ways

27:39

to protect your

27:40

position and shore up the fact that you're valuable to the organization beyond

27:46

just protecting the

27:47

organization is to create this story of foundational trust. As an organization,

27:54

these are the things

27:54

that we have done to ensure that the data of our partners and the data of our

27:58

customers and the

27:59

data of our investors is safe and secure. And if you can affirmatively state

28:05

that, then companies can

28:07

take on new projects. They can release new products in the market. They can go

28:12

into a new

28:13

market segment that they've been considering for quite a while. They can make

28:16

investment

28:17

decisions, so on and so forth. So I think it's actually liberating to have that

28:23

awareness and

28:24

understanding of a strong risk posture, assuming that the CISO is managing you

28:29

to a strong

28:30

risk posture. One thing also too that RevOps people need to like out from a

28:34

security standpoint,

28:35

it's just obviously first-party data is so important now. And it'll be

28:41

interesting to see

28:42

how RevOps people are going to be able to leverage their data, leveraging third

28:48

-party data,

28:48

cookies and all that stuff. It'll be fascinating to see what we can and can do

28:53

going forward,

28:53

because I think it's going to be pretty different. Any other tool stuff you'd

28:57

mentioned, I like that,

28:59

the RFP stuff, after being in a couple of those this year, and you're right,

29:02

man, I wish I could

29:03

take 80% of my time back on those. We can go back retroactively and do it. Any

29:08

other things that

29:08

you want to invest in or things that you want to look at investing in, I know

29:11

it's when you're a

29:12

small company too, it's like, or when you're a growing startup, you're like,

29:15

there's so many

29:16

more things that you want and you need to figure out how to weave in there. So

29:20

there are areas that

29:21

you're looking at. There are a few other small applications that I've heard

29:24

about. We use an

29:26

application called Kiflo for our partner portal. It allows our partners to do

29:29

deal registrations.

29:31

And then we have another application that we use called Thinkific, which is for

29:36

our six-clicks

29:37

academy. So we do online self-based training courses for our customers and

29:41

partners. And then

29:42

there's some other things that I have my eye on, clay.com. It's essentially

29:46

gives you the ability to

29:47

create consistency around meetings, note-taking and what questions were asked

29:52

and so forth.

29:52

It's almost essentially like a note taker. It makes the reps better informed.

29:57

So that one's

29:58

actually quite interesting to me. I've got that on my radar. I haven't done

30:00

anything with it yet,

30:01

but keep it an eye on it. Cool. Very cool. All right, let's get into our final

30:06

segment. Quick hits.

30:07

Here's a quick question with quick hits. Quick hits. I shall learn you right

30:11

now. I'll try to me.

30:14

If you could make any animal any size, what animal would it be and what size?

30:18

You have absolutely stumped me on this one, Ian. I even asked my husband

30:24

earlier today,

30:25

how do I answer this question? And it was, we just had a good laugh about it. I

30:30

have a 16-pound dog,

30:32

so he might be offended if I supersized any other animal and brought them home

30:38

because he thinks

30:39

he's a big dog. How about your favorite book podcast TV show, something you're

30:46

checking out?

30:46

Ooh, that one, let's see. I read a sales book recently by the HubSpot Zero and

30:53

I can't remember

30:54

the title. Hold on, I can look at that for you. I got you. Was it the sales

30:59

acceleration formula?

31:01

Yes. That was a really fantastic book. What's the gist? Really collaborating

31:06

closely with your

31:07

marketing team, marketing department, and this particular CRO used to be an

31:13

engineer in a prior

31:14

life. And so he brought a lot of his measure twice cut once philosophy to sales

31:20

and nothing he did,

31:21

no decision he made, no hire he made, was done without a lot of analysis and a

31:27

lot of thought

31:28

and a lot of discussion about it with database decisions, data-driven decisions

31:33

, operating

31:35

in a vacuum without the collaboration of marketing or without the collaboration

31:39

of the other

31:40

business organizations really just makes you ineffective. So I'd say that that

31:45

was probably the

31:45

biggest takeaway for me and just the way that they went to market with the

31:50

digital assets and the

31:51

blog posts and volumes of content that isn't necessarily related to their

31:56

product. It's just

31:58

content that's enticing and that draws people in that's been hugely effective

32:03

for them.

32:05

You have a best piece of advice for someone who is a CRO trying to figure this

32:11

whole thing out.

32:12

Yes. I think instinct without context is futile. Instinct without data is

32:20

futile. So

32:21

while it's important to follow your gut, I think having data is critical. You

32:26

can't operate about it.

32:29

Show, it's been awesome having you on the show. Thanks so much for joining. For

32:33

our listeners,

32:34

if you need that go give an elbow to your CSO and say check out six clicks for

32:39

our GRC software.

32:40

Really cool. Any final thoughts? Anything to plug? Prioritize finding ways to

32:45

make improvements

32:45

in your organization that'll eliminate the need to discount. Couldn't agree

32:51

more, but it's so hard

32:52

and then procurement wants to discount. Everybody wants to discount. It's crazy

32:56

times. I don't know

32:56

what you do. Sell value. Sell value. Thanks Ian. It's been a pleasure.

33:08

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