Building Collaboration in Revenue Operations with Rosalyn Santa Elena

Ever wondered what it takes to transition from a corporate giant to a nimble startup? Join us as we sit down with Rosalyn Santa Elena, the visionary founder and Chief Revenue Operations Officer of The RevOps Collective, who shares her compelling journey from finance and product marketing into the dynamic field of revenue operations. Rosalyn unveils the motivations and challenges of leaving a stable role in a large enterprise to build something innovative from scratch. Learn about the learning curves she tackled, the risks she embraced, and the immense satisfaction she found in creating new processes and systems from the ground up.

Rosalyn's story doesn’t stop at career transitions. She dives into her rewarding experience as an advisor and coach, helping businesses scale and optimize their revenue operations. Discover how she shifted from equity-based advising to solopreneurship and the joy she finds in one-on-one coaching with ops professionals. Rosalyn opens up about balancing a demanding career with motherhood, sharing personal anecdotes and drawing parallels between professional leadership and parenting. Her insights aim to inspire those navigating similar challenges, offering a candid look at the struggles and triumphs of being a working mother.

In an era of remote work and heightened workplace empathy, Rosalyn emphasizes the importance of human connections and transparency. She discusses breaking down communication silos and fostering collaboration among marketing, sales, and customer success operations. Through her experiences, Rosalyn highlights the critical need for understanding the entire business landscape and how RevOps professionals can elevate their impact by integrating their efforts across departments. Tune in to gain invaluable advice on building cross-functional relationships, managing career and family life, and discovering the evolving roles within sales and marketing operations.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by the MoPros. I'm your host, michael Hartman, flying solo today. Mike and Naomi, I'm sure will join again soon, but joining me today to talk about lessons learned building a revenue operations career is the one and only Rosalind Santa Elena. Rosalind is the founder and chief revenue operations officer of the RevOps Collective. Prior to founding the RevOps Collective, she held several leadership roles and consulting roles in revenue operations. In addition, she has worked in and led business operations and started a career in finance. Yay, rosalind is an advisor to several companies and hosts a podcast of her own called the Revenue Engine Podcast, so go check that out after this. Rosalind, thanks for joining me today, on the eve of Independence Day here in the US.

Speaker 2: 1:15

Yeah, no. Thanks for having me, michael, excited to be here, excited to chat with you.

Speaker 1: 1:19

I'm glad we made this work. It's been a process, right? Yes, aligning things with lives we were talking about, with three kids each. It makes things interesting, all right. So this was a long time coming and I'm glad our audience gets to learn from you. I know you're pretty active on LinkedIn and other places. Why don't we like let's start there, though, like I did a about a two second very brief coverage of your career? But if I think, I think it would be really interesting for our audience to hear a little more of the detail about your career, and I personally like to hear about pivotal moments, right where there are pivotal people that were part of the journey, where, like, if you look back, like if I had gone down this other path, like you know, things would have looked a lot different. So if you could do that, that would be great.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Yeah, yeah, happy to share a little bit. You know, as you said, I kind of started out super early in my career in finance. A lot of folks don't know, but I actually did some product marketing before I started finance. So that's a little tidbit for you Product marketing.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Yeah, but did a lot of time in finance, kind of quote to cash and such, and then moved over to I always tell people I moved over to the dark side of sales and revenue back in, start to transition but really operations to support really that end to end customer lifecycle if you will, and supporting revenue. As you mentioned, been in large companies, small companies but, as you know, small startups been a team of one, managed teams of you know, 20, 25 plus. So I've kind of seen, I tell people, I've seen the good and the bad and some of the ugly, I think of operations in just a number of different sizes and stages of companies. You know, I think about some of those things, kind of the key moments, maybe pivotal changes in my career. One thing that was six to me is sort of top of mind is I started my career and working primarily in larger enterprise level, public companies, right, really 2,000 to maybe 50,000 employees and kind of the billions of dollars in revenue, and then went to my first startup, so team of one, I think we had like less than a hundred people in the entire company, which was really interesting because you could literally know everybody, which was very different.

Speaker 2: 3:49

I went from my, the largest company that I've ever worked with, to the very smallest company, and I think that you know a lot of times you think about that. It's like, hmm, you know it's kind of risky to go to a startup. You're in a company where you know you're managing a large team, there's jobs you know as much job security, I guess, as there can be, but having a lot of resources available to you versus going to a startup where you're team of one scrappy building. And I think that for me, it was a decision that I want I made because, you know, I really wanted to go and build something from scratch, right, wanted to take my experience and go do things that either I hadn't done for many years or maybe I'd never done because I had a team to help with that. And so, literally, I tell people it's like when I joined, my first startup was definitely eyeopening and very, very eyeopening for sure.

Speaker 1: 4:43

And you learn very quickly. Sorry to interrupt, but what, what, what did you? You said that you wanted to do something like build something from scratch. Like what drove that urge?

Speaker 2: 4:56

Yeah, you know, I think I was at that point in my career where I just I wanted to take my experience and go do something different, right, and go build something from scratch. I mean, I live in the Bay Area so constantly I've seen all the startups come and go and it's always risky right when you go to a smaller company.

Speaker 2: 5:15

But I was finally at that point where I'm like, okay, I think I'm ready to kind of take that risk and make that jump. And from the outside, you know, friends, family, of course, everyone's like why would you want to do that? Are you sure? Is this company even going to be around, you know? Are they going to be here six months from now? And so, you know, may not have been sort of the decision that a lot of people would take in their career, but for me, I wanted to go build something. I want to go learn something new, you know, and kind of build from there. And I mean I'm talking like Bill from scratch, like first week I was there was like, hey, we got to get a quote out to a client and or to a customer. And I'm, you know, I'm looking around in the office and say, hey, does somebody have a, you know, have a quote template?

Speaker 2: 5:56

You know we have one and literally in true startup mode, it was like, oh yeah, go check with you know so, and so I think he might have something on his you know Google Drive.

Speaker 2: 6:04

That was a big shift too, by the way, that whole episode too, going from you know the tools side.

Speaker 2: 6:16

But I just learned to be scrappy right, learned how to just roll up your sleeves and just build and be iterative. Things that were, you know, in a larger company, that would take you know months to roll out a system right or roll out some new technology or process with tons of people involved, was literally like, okay, I just make this decision on my own, tell everybody, just let them know, and next day we're using it right. It's a very different approach, and so I think that you know, although it may not have made sense from the outside in terms of from a career perspective, and also I took a big pay cut you know there's all kinds of stuff involved in that, right, and but I think that you know might not have made sense from the outside, but for me I look back and think that that's one of the best decisions I made, because I was able to learn things that you know I hadn't really kind of pushed myself out of that. You know that uncomfortable sort of zone right.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Getting out of your comfort zone to learn, and I felt like I was able to learn and grow still right, even having been, you know, working in this kind of space for some time, which has led me to be, you know, at multiple kind of startups. Definitely, startup life is not for everyone, as we know, not for the faint of heart, for sure, but it's led me down a path where I was able to really not only add to my own toolbox and toolkit but also build relationships with, you know, new folks and new companies, and has opened, you know, up the opportunity for me to be able to go do so much more, which has been really really rewarding. You know, had I not done that, maybe I'd be retired right now, you know, with a real stock that's traded on the public market, right, but you know I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Speaker 1: 7:56

It's interesting. I was just realizing when you said you went from the largest company to the smallest company, I realized that's actually what I did too, because I went from. I was working for a global telecom company. It was up a hundred thousand people ish and I went to. I would think I was person 20 at a consulting startup and my first client was another telecom client. But I I'm with you right that you would just sort of it was a leap of faith. In fact, my one of my kids the other night at dinner was asking me what did it? Was it good? And I was like well, it depends on how you measure that. I think we got acquired sooner than we thought. So the equity piece didn't turn out to be what I had hoped for, but I don't know.

Speaker 1: 8:40

It was a great time to learn, Since it was consulting. I was thrown into an account that I had no connections with and we weren't subcontracting. But there was another big four, big six firm there that was doing the overall program management. They were always looking to undermine us and get us kicked out. I had to fight tooth and nail just to stay there. I actually grew it because I built really good relationships with the client. No one taught me that stuff that you just see. I didn't know one to taught me that, to figure that out.

Speaker 2: 9:13

Exactly, exactly I think that's. I think that's the key to sort of.

Speaker 2: 9:16

You know, sometimes you, you got to get out of your comfort zone, right, I know it's kind of cliche, people talk about that, but getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is something that I've really taken to heart over the last I would say maybe eight or nine years, and so I've been doing a lot of things that 10 years ago or 20 years ago you asked me I would never do, that I could never see myself doing, but now I do it regularly on a day-to-day basis To me.

Speaker 1: 9:42

I'd be curious to get your perspective because I think I have this mindset anyway. I feel like I would have when I got into leadership roles. For sure, but, like I see a lot of people having worked at bigger companies or my career, or at least mid-sized to larger companies, is there some frustrations that get a twofold right. One about, like, just getting things done right. When you get like you add people into the mix and people want to be able to veto, like it's just hard to get things done.

Speaker 1: 10:09

The other that drives me bananas is just like the wasteful energy and spending that happens sometimes, because it's like it's a rounding error to spend $10,000 on something right or $20,000 on something if it doesn't work out like and I like, I just like that, like make, like I'm actually like having physical, like reactions, even saying that out loud, like did you, like, were you kind of? Was that part of the motivation too? Was like, just like being able to move faster, like you saw that what needed to be done at this big company and you couldn't do it um, actually I didn't have that experience.

Speaker 2: 11:45

I think that that for me it was really about trying something different and seeing like, okay, could I kind of put myself to the test to go do that. I actually liked pros and cons, right, I think, like anything else there were a lot of pros for me in working for larger companies. There were many days when I worked for smaller companies where I was like to your point about budget right, fighting for, like you know, $300 a person kind of thing versus, you know, at a larger company we would spend millions on certain things.

Speaker 2: 12:17

Right, I remember at my first startup like we were planning SKO, right, and here I am you know, I'm VP of of rev ops, but I'm here negotiating the coffee, I'm booking hotel rooms, I'm booking golf rounds and spa treatments for people, for presidents, you were head of events too. You didn't know that yeah and so, but it was a lot of fun. Right, it was really a lot of fun, but there was definitely days where I'm like, oh gosh, you know it'd be nice to have you know these, you know a resource to do this or a resource to do that.

Speaker 2: 12:47

But at the same time it's there's a you know pros and cons. I think there's definitely some fun in kind of getting your hands in there and doing.

Speaker 1: 12:54

No, I mean, I tell people all the time, like the world is not, there's very few things in life that are right or wrong. Or you know A or B, it's usually tradeoffs Right, right or wrong. Or you know a or b, it's usually trade-offs right. And it's like your personal sort of, say, risk tolerance or something like that is is a part of that um and so like. To me, like I think it's it matters, like that matters, right.

Speaker 1: 13:17

Some people just they're comfortable in the big company and they like they thrive in that um, and then there's like I sit or sitting on the fence, like I don't really like the big big companies I've been in the. And then there's like I sit or sit on the fence, like I don't really like the big big companies. I've been in the startup life or really small companies and not really it says I like sort of all the places I've liked the best were in that, say, 1,000 to a couple thousand people. Right, revenues have never been a great indicator for me about how a company operates. Yep, because you have a chance to really meet a lot of people, interact with a lot of stuff. You tend to have as much bureaucracy, right, yeah, so yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:53

Yeah, I think the level of that size sort of company you have that level of influence right and be able to impact quickly, um, but then you also have some of that stability right, a little bit more of the foundational stability that you might not have in an earlier stage.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Yeah, so so your most recent move, though, was to start uh, make sure I get it right, Is it the RevOps Collective Did?

Speaker 2: 14:15

I get it right.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Yep, you got it Talk to me about that.

Speaker 2: 14:19

Yeah, yeah. So I started um, so I've been kind of advising companies, you know, more of an equity based working with the founders and such, for a number of years now, but really wanted to go do more of that. So I've almost I guess it's been almost two years now I've been kind of running my own as a solopreneur kind of, you know, doing consulting for businesses. So really spending time helping businesses really kind of build and scale and grow their revenue operations. A lot of times it's fixing, you know, as you can imagine, but it's really coming in and helping them sort of right the ship and really understand, hey, what you know, do a current assessment, understand what's kind of working, what's not, and kind of help them build a blueprint going forward for somebody else to sort of execute, whether they have a RevOps leader and somebody that I can kind of work with and partner with, or they don't have an ops leader and just need someone to kind of set up what does that function look like? Who do we need to hire, you know, and kind of help them build a team and then hand it off.

Speaker 2: 15:17

And then the other piece that I'm doing, a lot of which selfishly, I love and I'm just it's so incredibly rewarding because I actually do one-on-one coaching with ops professionals, right, and so there's just something about seeing a person win that is just incredibly, you know, it's just incredibly impactful and rewarding.

Speaker 2: 15:37

Of course you would love to see businesses win too, right, of course you do, but seeing a person win is just, it's a whole nother level. And so I've been very fortunate to be able to work with, you know, manager, director, senior director, vp level, kind of all levels, across sort of different operational roles, whether it's finance ops or it's marketing ops or, it's true, kind of rev ops or sales ops, but being able to work with different folks to hopefully, you know, share some of my experience and some of my mistakes made, so that they can hopefully do a little less trial and error, they can skip some steps not only to help their businesses but help themselves, really accelerate their career. So it's been that part has been really, really fun and really, really rewarding. Like I said, that's great.

Speaker 1: 16:19

You know I, I actually am doing some of the same thing. I think mostly I would say mostly with the managers or people who aspire to be managers, and so, for kind of first time people leaders, yeah and um and then and and then some directors, in both like marketing ops and rev ops, and I'm I echo what you say I get like it's, it's. It is a lot of fun to see people succeed and, like you, like I know I no one told me like expectations are completely changing and what the skills you need to be a people manager are not the ones that you needed to do stuff on your own.

Speaker 1: 16:53

Right yeah, and like helping people get through that is. It's very rewarding. It's a lot of fun. I totally get it.

Speaker 2: 17:00

Yeah, and you know, with our roles, right, michael, as you know, kind of operations it's so broad, right, there's all these tactical and technical things, but there's strategic things and, like you said, the leadership side of you know, the soft skills around change management and influencing without authority and being able to kind of drive alignment.

Speaker 2: 17:21

All those things it's like it takes a lot of. You know, there's a lot of trial and error in that if you don't have sort of a trusted advisor or guide or somebody that kind of can lead you down the path to not only validate that hey, you're thinking about this the right way, but also here's two or three things to be thinking about. And here's two or three maybe practical things you should go and go do to move things in the right direction. And I also find that the coaching is really helpful for people just to sometimes you just need that advocate too, right, that champion, to say no, give you the confidence and the tools to go do it and then kind of push you out of that comfort zone, right? So like, okay, now go do it and hold you accountable to kind of do those things. So, yeah, it's been.

Speaker 1: 17:59

I'm with you and I think a lot of people, especially if they're new to it, also have blind spots, right. So having someone you know is going to tell you like, hey, you're not thinking about this thing over here, based on what you're telling me, this person may react this way Exactly. How are you planning on approaching it? So it's really it is. It's a lot of fun, I get a lot out of it.

Speaker 1: 18:22

So one of the things I wanted to talk to you about because I admire that you really talk about maybe it's somewhat related, right is that you talk about what it's like to be a parent of three children and be a professional and have a lot of responsibility. Um, in a lot of ways, I think, like managing people, like adult humans in job places is not that much different than parenting, especially parenting young kids, if it's like but, but you talk a lot about it. I think, especially, I think I, I think I would guess that a lot of people who are listening or familiar with you would say, like your inspiration to working mothers in particular is like what, what kind of prompted you over the years to start speaking about that, being comfortable talking about the challenges there?

Speaker 2: 19:06

Yeah, yeah, I think that's kind of similar. I guess maybe in a similar vein of coaching right, that we've been talking about is again kind of sharing those experiences and helping people understand that hey, you know they're not alone, you know they're not crazy.

Speaker 2: 19:20

The things that they're facing are real. And other people you know experience the same. And just helping to kind of normalize that, I think a little bit you know, when my children were small, helping to kind of normalize that, I think a little bit you know, when my children were small, nobody really talked about working and juggling, right.

Speaker 2: 19:39

I mean, I don't know if your experience was similar, but for me I remember when I was, when I first became a people leader, my, my two boys I have three, like you said, but my two oldest I think one was three years old and one was just like a baby, you know like literally like six months old or so, and then I got this opportunity to become sort of get promoted into a leadership role and I remember thinking like, okay, you know, kind of doing that, balancing and sort of the pros and cons in my head about, hey, am I ready to go do this while I have, you know, this toddler and an infant in tow right and try to balance that. But I remember when I you know, and maybe that's a good leap of faith too, that's a good pivotal moment too.

Speaker 2: 20:18

And my career is doing that Um, but doing that um, I just remember like never really talking about home, like never talking about kids in the workplace, um, and this, of course, was a very different time right than it is now, where it's been very normalized. I think it's still struggling, but I think it's a lot more normalized and there's a lot more resources to support working parents. Today, but back then, like we didn't talk about it and it was almost like I would intentionally not talk about it because I never wanted to be perceived as if I was less than or I couldn't do as much or give anybody a reason to think that I had other priorities that would take away from my ability to do my job well.

Speaker 2: 21:00

So I didn't really talk about it at all and I think that as the kids started getting older, I really found that a lot of working parents were struggling with this right and everybody's kind of struggling with this and maybe feeling potentially feeling the same way that it was like, oh, I shouldn't talk about it because I don't want anyone to think you know, that it's anything that might hinder my ability to perform well in my career, and so I really wanted to share, I think, my experience with others to really help them know again like, hey, you're not alone, this is completely normal, and if there are any tips or advice that I might be able to share that could help even one person out there, um, I really wanted to go do that Right, and so that's kind of where I started. And also, I think the other thing is that I'm I'm super. I mean, if people ask me, I go what's your greatest, you know, achievement or accomplishment in life? It's my kids, right, it's being, you know, being a mom, and, you know, successfully raising two adults.

Speaker 2: 22:04

I got a teenager still, as we were talking about earlier. So we'll see how that goes. Give me a couple of years and I'll let you know if I get through this period of my life. But, um, but I think that's the greatest achievement, so I'm super proud of it and I want to talk about that Right, and I also want to let other people know that, hey, you can have career and be successful, and you can have a family and be successful there too. Is it hard? Yes, but it's possible.

Speaker 1: 22:26

Yeah, I mean again, to me it comes down to trade-offs, but what I, what I really am glad about, what has changed over the years? I agree with you, even for men, I think it was unusual to talk about. Like there was this perceived like boundary, there's this work and work kind of topics and business topics and they didn't really mix, yeah, and the assumption was like you, like you could really like, just you, you know, you step into your office and you don't think about stuff at home, which I've realized is absolutely untrue. Yeah, I think it's especially untrue like we went through some difficult times with our youngest, who had some real severe medical issues when he was an infant and toddler and we never really talked about it, I think, because it was around that time and and over the course of, uh, us having three kids, we also had miscarriages, right, which I think is another topic that I honestly like, as, as I, I can't even imagine what it's like being the mother who's going through that, right, but it was hard enough for me and I had, like there was no outlet for it, and so, when I've had the opportunity, I, I, we had somebody I worked with at one point she didn't, we were more of peers and she had gone through one.

Speaker 1: 23:34

I found out she was pregnant and I knew what she was probably going to be going through mentally and just said if you ever want to talk right, I think and it wasn't something I made a big deal out of, it was just one-on-one and but I, I, I wish more of that kind of stuff was openly discussed, not like not broadcast necessarily, but like people would feel comfortable talking about that stuff, maybe with their managers. Yeah, I see some of that, but I still don't see a lot of it. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:02

I would agree. I definitely think the last couple of years with you know the remote work and you know the global pandemic and all of those things that I think have accelerated sort of that empathy and kind of that, you know, recognition that there needs to be more open dialogue and transparency, but also, I think, gave people a glimpse into, hey, these folks actually have a life outside of work that they're trying to juggle.

Speaker 2: 24:28

Right and being able to see some of that, um, I think it's been, you know, it's unfortunate that it had to take, you know, an event like that to bring that transparency to the table, but I think it's, you know, from a positive perspective at least it's, I think, made people more aware yeah, which I mean this.

Speaker 1: 24:47

I going back to the coaching bit a little bit. That's one of the first things I tell people who are new managers. You have to get comfortable with uncomfortable conversations and sometimes it's stuff about personal life that you have to keep it confidential and it's like you have to have integrity to do that. And it's not always easy because you'll get pressure from other people Like tell us what's going on with John and, um, like, I told John I wouldn't say anything about it. So, like and stand your ground. It's not done it multiple times and it's not easy and I'm always glad I did. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, um, well, good, I, I'm glad you're doing that. I hope you continue, I know you will. Um, um, well, good, I, I'm glad you're doing that. I hope you continue, I know you will. Um.

Speaker 1: 25:36

So let's get into a little bit of the revenue operations world and what's going on there and marketing operations. So you, you spent much of your career in sales operations and then in revenue operations, right, I think you had preview for the broader operations under the, the go-to-market activity. So I'm sure you've had. Yeah, I think you kind of alluded right activity. So I'm sure you've had. Yeah, I think you kind of alluded right Some that worked well, some that didn't, um, but so what? Most of our listeners are in marketing ops. You know, what would you, what advice would you give them in terms of building mutually beneficial relationships with sales ops or customer success ops, um, whether they're part of a revenue operations sort of overall structure or not?

Speaker 2: 26:10

Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, that's a great question. So so let's see. So I've, I've kind of worked in both models, right, where operations includes marketing and where marketing ops is sort of an adjacent, you know team, and so, you know, I think the key, like anything else, right, it's less about org design and who people report into and much more about collaboration. Right, and that alignment that we talk about a lot probably the most overused word that I have is alignment, right, but I think that it truly is, because even when marketing ops didn't report through my organization, we are side by side right, working in the trenches together, and I think that's really important, because I've seen where it doesn't work that way.

Speaker 2: 26:59

One of the organizations that I joined was really to kind of bring those teams together. Right, they had marketing ops and sales ops and CS ops and sort of the systems kind of team, but they hadn't worked in a model where everybody was under one org. And when I came in for me, it was less about, okay, I got to move everybody under the org chart, right, but more about let's break down some of the communication silos and just drive some of that transparency, because there was a lot of. I've never seen a company like this before, where the marketing ops and sales ops folks literally did not talk to each other I could see not having great conversation or maybe not collaborating optimally, but just literally avoiding each other. And so there was a lot of kind of work to be done there around helping them understand why, hey, you don't have to like each other or be best friends or go out places, but hey, we are going to work together collaboratively for the benefit of the company, right, and for the team and the customer.

Speaker 2: 27:59

So I think, you know, being able to see each other as partners and building advocacy across those teams, I think is going to be really really key Again, regardless of where things sit, is having inviting the teams to the same conversations, right. Having people just being transparent, like opening up and saying, hey, this is what we're working on, because what will happen is you'll all of a sudden see like, oh, there's all these synergies, there's lots of opportunity. Or you see like, oh, what I'm doing here, this is how it affects something down funnel, and for sales ops to really understand, hey, this is what's happening. You know, marketing is not doing all these things to break, you know, break all of our break Salesforce.

Speaker 2: 28:42

Yeah, they're actually trying to achieve the similar outcomes, right, and then when, if you're not aligned on the outcomes, that's a great opportunity to talk through that and not only that, you're building an ad You're. You know, I think ops people in general we all sort of have a ops mindset, right. We like to lean into the chaos, we like to make sense of the chaos, right, and we like to enable and support the team. So that natural, just tendency of mindset makes ops people wherever they sit across the funnel. Just tendency of mindset makes ops people, wherever they sit across the funnel, great partners, right. You can, you know I talk about ops therapy a lot because it's very therapeutic, right, when ops people talk to other ops people, and so I think they'll be surprised if they just have those conversations on how much you can have an advocate and champion in your corner and ops can kind of work together instead of against each other and work to just better support the business.

Speaker 2: 29:34

I think the other thing about the different teams is I think there's misconceptions sometimes if you've only done marketing ops and you haven't worked in a sales ops environment or vice versa. When I talk to sales ops folks and some of my coaching clients they say, oh, I could do marketing ops, it's, it's like it's just, and they think it's just email, can't you know email marketing, automation campaigns, and I'm like the marketing ops is so much more than just campaign ops, right? Um, there is a lot more to do with you know, just, yeah, so we can go into that for sure, right, and the same thing with marketing ops. A lot of times I've talked to marketing ops folks who say, oh, I could do sales ops, that's just forecasting and opportunity management and managing the CRM Right, but there's so much more.

Speaker 2: 30:18

A down funnel Right, that needs to happen. So I think you know, kind of getting rid of some of those misconceptions, understanding that one is not better than the other and one is not harder than the other, but if they work together you can just unlock so much potential and opportunity for the company and for yourself because you can start learning and growing in your career. In the event that you want to go down funnel more, go up funnel or you know, and then poor post sales is even worse for them, right, right, yeah, for the CS ops or renewals operations or partner operations that have been kind of under my purview for them, right, for the CS ops or renewals operations or partner operations that have been kind of under my purview for them they're even even farther down the alignment path, and so bringing those folks kind of into the fold is really important too.

Speaker 1: 31:02

Yeah, Do you remember any particular methods or tools that you use to try to develop that? I don't want to use empathy is not the right word but that like understanding of what it's like to be in that other person's shoes.

Speaker 2: 31:18

Yep, yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:19

So I mean just an example of the company that I worked at, where these folks that like just never talked to each other.

Speaker 2: 31:25

Um, you know, getting just I remember bringing the team together and one of the first things we did was just a get to know each other conversation, so not talking anything about work per se, but just getting to know people as humans, and so I had everybody do like just a one slide of you know how long they've been with the company, what their role is, what do they do, right, kind of in a very short text in terms of what do you do for the business?

Speaker 2: 31:51

And then learning about three things that you know, you want them to know about you, and you know it could be that they have a dog or they have a family of three kids, right, there could be all these different things, but I, or hobbies that they have, or things that they really enjoy, and we spent like like literally two days because we had there's, I think there was about 20 or so people on the team, and so we literally spent two full days of going through this kind of conversation and getting to know each other as people, right, and and afterwards was a lot of conversation around hey, what did you learn that surprised you about? You know different people, and so people are oh, I never knew. So-and-so you know, really, whatever enjoyed this hobby and I do that too, right?

Speaker 2: 32:31

Or they'd never realized, like, oh, I'm a cat lover too or you know different things, where they like to cook or they like to. You know, just seeing people I think it's humans first and then also getting a glimpse into, like what do they actually do for the company. And then the next step was really kind of going that deeper into like what do they actually do for the business and then starting to, you know, kind of connect those thoughts so they understood that, hey, what I'm doing here actually has an effect here, and and then opening up those conversations, and then sort of the next step to that was inviting people into some of these meetings, Right, and I was you know, as the RevOps leader, it's kind of your job, right, and kind of one of the things that you want to do is be like hey, you know, I'm working with so-and-so on this on the sales side.

Speaker 2: 33:14

Oh, you know, and tagging the marketing ops leader too, hey, this is something you probably want to know about. No action, but come and join and then start those conversations so they start to get that full funnel visibility and understanding how their role in their team plays into the bigger picture.

Speaker 1: 33:35

That and understanding how their role in their team plays into the bigger picture, that's great. I mean, I think a lot of people skip over that, like getting to know people as a human. I think that's an easy thing to do when you're asked to be moving quickly and I would suspect that, like a lot of places might frown on investing that much time to do that, but my guess is you would say it ended up saving time in the long run 100%.

Speaker 2: 33:55

Because while doing that and having that human connection, I was actually kind of going on my roadshow as a new leader, meeting with everybody one-on-one, getting to know them as people, helping me understand who does what as well as kind of what's working and what's not, and helping them get an opportunity to learn about me and get to know me.

Speaker 2: 34:16

And so through those conversations was also, you know, kind of giving a little bit of the selling, right. There's a little bit of that selling and teaching on how RevOps actually works when it does really well, right. So there's a bit of that. You know what is RevOps, why do you need it, why now, and kind of what does it mean to them? So those, you know kind of all those moving parts working in conjunction with each other lends, you know it just drives momentum. You just start to get people moving in the right direction. But yeah, the human part is a big thing because I think as soon as people start seeing others as, oh, they're just another person and we have some commonalities, then it's immediately like fences start to come down.

Speaker 2: 34:55

Some of that. You know that those blockers start to come down.

Speaker 1: 34:59

That's great. All right, so you know you. You talked a little bit about the benefit of like I don't know. Maybe you were kind of alluding to the benefit of the cross-learning and things like that between teams. But again, kind of think about the majority of our audience being marketing ops folks. If they were interested in moving into revenue ops or another part of revenue ops right sales ops or CS ops or something like that and or leadership role, what are some of the skills from your experience that marketing ops folks don't typically have that would be beneficial if they wanted to kind of slide over.

Speaker 2: 35:36

Yeah, yeah. So definitely I think um, overall, kind of at a high level, definitely learning the rest of the business, right. If you think about um Kind of that point where I was saying that marketing ops thinks kind of sales ops is this and sales ops thinks marketing ops is that and unless they've actually kind of been in each other's shoes or have at least opened their mind to learning and been intentional about it, they wouldn't know any better. That lead management kind of handoff is usually that point between marketing ops and sales ops. But really learning about the business on that, what actually happens post-handoff. So I think that there's spending time on both.

Speaker 2: 36:19

There's a strategic side of it and then there's a tactical side of it, right. So from a strategic perspective, obviously, understanding the business, learn more about what are the sales and post-sales sort of goals, their strategy, right. Understanding the more of the high level kind of the planning process. You know what are those, you know the insights and sort of the metrics that matter to the business, the operating cadence right. Getting to know the goals and sort of those metrics and such, and learning how to be a really strong business partner for not just the sales and post-sales team but that cross-functional team Because on the sales side and similar to the marketing side you're working with everybody in the business right.

Speaker 2: 36:58

Whether it's finance, it's legal, it's IT if you have one, if you're like an IT team, right.

Speaker 2: 37:04

But you're working with HR. I mean, she's working with all the different teams, product right, even engineering and the earlier organizations. So really understanding how that business works is important. And then, from a tactical perspective, I think you know spending time with your not just your ops leaders or ops team, but also the sales leaders and the actual reps, right. And then there's those kind of big blocks from a tactical perspective.

Speaker 2: 37:29

Right, yes, there's the CRM side of it and all the ancillary systems, but there's also about learning sales methodologies and you know rules of engagement and forecasting and comp and you know headcount planning and you know pricing and you know kind of quoting and deals. There's so much on that side. But just trying to really learn different blocks of those from a tactical perspective and really understanding what it means. And then, of course, the post-sale side as well, especially in SaaS. But if you have a partner motion, you have a channel motion. Maybe you have big renewals or expansion business or customer success or customer enablement and things like that. But just starting to immerse yourself in that, I think, is a great way to just learn the business and not only to grow your knowledge and your own career if you want to move into a broader role, but also just to have a better understanding around that alignment piece to do your job better today. I think there's a lot of value in that.

Speaker 1: 38:31

I worked at a company who had a really large sales team but marketing was really sort of. The idea of marketing being involved with the whole funnel process at all was actually a brand new thing. This wasn't that long ago and a lot of people were getting frustrated that the sales team was not doing what they expected. Right, the way they manage opportunities and stuff, and and I it was interesting to me like I didn't, like I just spent time when I had. I also had an inbound, small inbound team, so, and I was, I didn't have to, I didn't have anybody, so it was me doing like lead qualification or routing. So I had opportunities to talk to a lot of salespeople in the process while I was doing that, which was hugely valuable for me just to understand like, what are they like, how they work, how's, how should leads be routed and things like that.

Speaker 1: 39:19

But the other one that was really helpful for me one time I finally asked somebody I think by that time he had moved out of sales was in like a sales op, sales enablement role. I said, like how are the salespeople compensated? Because I I was like you know my experience that's going to drive like how they're measured and how they're compensated is going to drive behavior, and I found out, to my astonishment, that they were base plus bonus. They were not, you know, on a traditional you know, eat what you kill kind of plan, and I assumed that it had been. So I like I had been going like I need to figure out ways to incent them, like, but there was like very little that I could do to incent them through that and I so I had to figure out other ways to try to get them to support what we needed to do, which meant mostly I had to figure out ways that I could make it easier for them exactly so what?

Speaker 2: 40:11

So what's in it for them? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:15

So it's interesting and just knowing that alone was so helpful. But it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't well, two built relationships, but three been comfortable just asking the question Exactly.

Speaker 2: 40:28

Yeah, and I think sometimes just asking the question could just, like you said, unlock so many different things. Right, there's opportunities to not only improve and educate yourself and just go ahead and grow your own knowledge, but also building those relationships. Right, because the fact that you're asking and you care enough to know and understand just starts to break some of those barriers down and starts to build build stronger relationships.

Speaker 1: 40:52

So yeah, so I I'll tell people and I happened to be in sales for a short period of time in my career when in that small consulting company I started, joined and it gave me a very like. So when I got into marketing, my perspective on that as a from a marketing standpoint was very it's probably still very different than a lot of marketers. And so I tell people all the time like you do not know what it's like if you've not been in sales to do cold calling to be hung up on to be yelled at that.

Speaker 1: 41:21

All is real stuff. That happens and it's hard, yeah for sure, and it sucks.

Speaker 2: 41:27

For sure.

Speaker 1: 41:28

And I think that's definitely another.

Speaker 2: 41:30

That's a good piece of advice too, right, not just for marketing but for marketing ops folks is to go and shadow right.

Speaker 2: 41:36

Go and sit in a day in life, right Is really kind of watch a sales rep work or, you know, watch a sales ops person work and really understand that, cause you'll see so many places like you're like, oh I didn't, I didn't know that before. Or you may have really good guidance, like, hey, why are you guys doing it this way? Maybe you should be doing it this way because this is what happens top of funnel. You know kind of what's happening and regardless, I think you're going to find, almost inevitably you're going to find, a couple of ways, of things that you can do immediately to improve the process Absolutely, yeah, yeah, love it, or you'll find out why it takes them so long to do something.

Speaker 1: 42:12

You think should be straight, because it's straightforward, because you didn't realize actually the system doesn't do what they have to do. They do these three exports. There's all this manipulation. It's just like unfortunately that's real stuff and it's like, unless you know that and people don't what? Most people that I want to work with generally don't say anything about it. They just sort of deal with it.

Speaker 2: 42:36

Yeah, and I think that's a big mistake, right? I think that asking the why is it taking so long, or what can I do, you know, it's not so much like hey, why is it taking you so long to respond or do something with the leads, but it's more about how can I help you know, drive better leads right To the sales team faster and get it to, you know, get them, get you the right ones, cause that's like the old, you know the old conversation that everyone's heard right about marketing.

Speaker 2: 42:56

Like you know, marketing always thinks sales doesn't respond to the leads fast enough. Sales thinks marketing gives them bad leads. But it's like right, okay, well, let's go fix that, yeah Right.

Speaker 1: 43:05

Like, stop complaining Like I it's been. I've been on like pounding that drum lately recently. It's like, hey, marketers and marketing ops, folks, stop complaining about sales and sales ops. Like, go figure out how you can communicate with them better.

Speaker 2: 43:18

Yeah, and the same thing with sales ops, right? I talked to a lot of sales ops folks and you know, and they just you know, it's the same thing, right? They think marketing ops just does list cleanups and list uploads and scans badges and things like that they do.

Speaker 1: 43:35

Website visit reports Nobody cares about it, Right, yeah? So yeah, I mean I think there's there's there's things that could be well, so we only we don't have a whole lot more time I did want to get into a little bit of um, a little more on career path stuff, a little more on career path stuff. So I think, in general, I think most marketing ops folks would tell you like the career path seems to end at the director, senior director level. There are a handful of VP roles. So how do you think, do you see similar stuff in, say, sales ops and CS ops? And then is revenue ops like a future for that, like next step for some people and maybe even steps towards COO, CRO, whatever, yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:19

Yeah, I do see very few VP of marketing operations roles, right To your point. Kind of senior director is kind of where I see it cap out on the sales ops side A lot of times also see directors, senior director. But I think we do see a lot more VP of sales operations roles. I mean I've had kind of the VP of field ops and sales ops kind of roles and even actually it's interesting because sometimes I've had a title of sales ops but I've really had go to market. I have marketing ops rolled up through the organization as well, but the title was still kind of generic sales ops which is interesting and same thing.

Speaker 2: 44:55

But I think we see a lot of VP of revenue operations and I think part of that is because of the just sort of the purview and the expectation right of that role. Because I think when you see a VP of rev ops, you're expecting that business partner, kind of strategic leader, thought partner to the business, and so maybe in the marketing ops world because a lot of folks still kind of view marketing ops, as you know, like oh, they're just campaigns or automation or you know, and they provide reporting and dashboards and stuff. But they actually do so much more and I think it's about that communication, of trying to up-level your value and your impact to the business but also talk about it this is something I always talk about in coaching too, and I'm sure you do too is we don't do a good job of sharing and kind of tooting our own horn right Ops.

Speaker 2: 45:49

People tend to be like, hey, heads down, do your job and think that your efforts are going to show.

Speaker 1: 45:53

I'm just doing what I'm expected to do, right.

Speaker 2: 45:55

Yeah, and people are going to recognize my efforts right, but the reality is that, hey, you've got in this market especially right, and in any market, I think you need to be able to demonstrate the value that you're bringing to the business.

Speaker 2: 46:07

So give people permission right To toot your own horn and talk about your achievements and celebrate your wins.

Speaker 2: 46:15

And I think that the more that we do that, the more it elevates the role and organizations will realize like, oh, I do need a senior leader to run marketing operations, right, or I do need that you know sort of strategic partner to grow into that. Because if you're really doing marketing ops well, you're informing the strategy right, you're working with the CMO and really helping them understand, hey, what's working, what's not, where we need to lean in, what we should be doing differently and providing those insights sooner. But then also being an advocate for your CMO across these other teams, right, across sales and post sales and finance all the other teams that we've been talking about. They really should be driving budget conversations right, driving longer term strategy conversations. And you know, yes, there's the tactical things of running the day to day, but, just like sales ops, there's the day to day stuff. The real value is that leading and guiding and, you know, kind of shining a light on those blind spots that we talk about. That's where we want to be and be that trusted advisor.

Speaker 1: 47:22

I agree. The only thing I think I would add, and maybe you just didn't say it out loud, but I think it's really important to start changing what you talk about. Even if you're talking about the same thing, you need to do it in a way that connects with your audience 100%.

Speaker 1: 47:40

Like marketers right. So I think that's part of the mistake a lot of people make is they think, oh, people are just going to get this report right, or they're just going to get this, like, hey, we did this thing in Marketo and Salesforce and yeah, yeah, team, but there's no connection to like how it's going to be valuable to you know, making things faster or more accurate or whatever it is that you were trying to accomplish. I think that's the important thing is thinking about what's the business outcome that the people you're telling about give a shit about.

Speaker 2: 48:14

Exactly, exactly, and it is that right. It's tying back everything that you're doing. Tying that back to sort of the overall go-to-market revenue goals, right, and objectives, and, yes, it could be like two or three layers away from it, but it has to be tied back. Whether it's driving that new revenue, driving efficiencies, reducing churn, right, whatever those um, those high level goals are everything you should be doing. You should be able to tie back to you know one of those key um, key objectives.

Speaker 2: 48:44

And if you're not, then you know you probably should reconsider some of the things that you're working on and are they really priorities or are they just firefighting? Right? Yes, and to your point, it is the way that you present those and have those conversations right, instead of saying, oh yeah, I built this report to show you know what, what the you know how well this campaign performed. Instead of that, it's more hey, I'm seeing these campaigns perform well in these segments or against these type of personas, but what's not performing well here? Here's what we should be doing differently, right, and having those more recommendations with pros and cons, and then be able to have that conversation, and then, of course, we're going to swivel chair and be the ones to execute on it as well, but being able to provide those insights. And, to your point point, how does it tie back to business outcomes?

Speaker 1: 49:32

yeah, I that's another one of the drums I'm beating these days is just like marketers, you should be way better at like knowing your audience, including your internal audience. So if you're not communicating to them in a way that they get it, shame on you. It's your own fault if you're not getting, if you feel like you're not getting respected. It's just the way it goes. Yeah, yeah, rosalyn, I wish we could keep going. This has been a this has been a fun conversation. I really appreciate you doing this. If folks want to keep up with what you're doing with online, what you're sharing there, what you're doing with your, your consulting or coaching, what's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 2: 50:13

Yeah, definitely go follow and connect with me on LinkedIn For sure. I spend most of my time there, but then also on my website you can go to the RevOps Collective. Feel free to learn more about services. Book some time with me if there's ever a time that I can be helpful. There's also some things on the website just around resources and such, and so definitely go and check things out there as well.

Speaker 1: 50:37

Fantastic. Well, thank you again. Thanks to our audience for continuing to support us and give us ideas and suggestions for guests and topics, and if you have a suggestion, feel free to reach out to me or Mike or Naomi through LinkedIn or marketingopscom or Slack channel. Until next time, bye everyone, thank you.