Clay Blanchard: Unveiling The Art and Science of Revenue Optimization

Welcome to Go to Market, a podcast for RevOps, sales, and marketing leaders to dive deep into industry insights and best practices. Go to Market is sponsored by Fulcast, The Go-To-Market Cloud. My name is Dr. Amy Osman Cook. I am a co-founder and the CMO of Fulcast, and I am so excited to introduce to you today Clay Blanchard, a veteran in the RevOps industry. Clay, how are you doing?

Very good. Very good. Good to see you.

Great to see you too. And thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's such a pleasure. In our pre-session, it was just so much fun to talk with you about all of the amazing things that you've done in RevOps and how you have really helped shape this industry in a very real way. I'd love to just start with your background, like how did you get into this?

Yeah, and I would say actually, if I'm honest, it was really by happenstance because I had kind of multiple careers before I landed in ops. And I think that's maybe true for many of us, kind of journeymen. I started out my career in finance and did some consulting along the way, some entrepreneurial stuff, and finally landed in enterprise software through kind of a friend of a friend. And I was looking for my next gig and they were hiring over at Salesforce and they were building out their strategy and operations team there. And at the time, the way their team was structured was a team of mostly ex-consultants, former consultants. It was a small team, very focused on go-to-market strategy. And that was my entrée to RevOps. And I spent 6 years at Salesforce in the go-go years, then transitioned over to LinkedIn for 6 years and have done a couple of stints at younger companies since then. But I really found a niche that I like because it's a great mix, RevOps is a great mix of strategy and execution. Really, in our role, number one, you get to engage on a very broad variety of topics. And I love it because it's very strategic in nature, but you also get to translate ideas into reality. And so that execution piece is a really big piece of what we do.

I love that. And I, I think it's so important how you combine the strategy and the execution. It's one of my unpopular opinions, but that I hold with Frank Slootman, that strategy is a little portion of it, but really it's 90% execution. And I think that it's amazing that, you know, as you and your team really like went down this road of what RevOps really is, there is a very significant portion of both. Like you have to be strategic and you have to be operational. And so, I mean, it's an extremely important part of the business that doesn't always get the limelight like it should.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that is the, as we were talking about this earlier, the nature of our role is behind the scenes. And like a lot of, you know, like a lot of roles that are operational in that way, How do you know when things are going well? You know things are going well when there's no noise. Very often, and that's rare actually, especially in a young company, a growth company. When things are growing fast, there is almost always noise. And so when there's not noise or when there's minimal noise, you know you're doing something right on the ops side. And it's not the kind of function where you do something great and you're up on stage accepting awards boards. Like, that's not, that's not who we are. It's the, it's the sales team and the, and the, you know, kind of the line leaders are going to be playing that role and they're going to be engaged directly with customers. And for me and just my personality, I don't mind. I prefer being behind the scenes and engaged and involved deeply in what's happening in the business. And I, thankfully for me, I, I don't love being on stage.

Well, I think that you are so well spoken, that surprises me. But I think it's, I think it's awesome that you're there and and such a great support role. You did mention earlier also, kind of speaking of unsung heroes, one of the things that you mentioned that doesn't get a lot of attention but is really, really important is territory management. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Yeah, I mean, I think, and I think just even the term territory management sounds tactical in nature, and I think about it a little bit more broadly. I think about one of our core responsibilities in RevOps is the design and deployment of the coverage model. What do I mean by coverage model? I mean, how are we as a company deploying resources against the market opportunity? And so that starts with a deep understanding of your TAM. And so that's, that's a project in and of itself. It starts with great and robust data. Once you have a deep understanding of your TAM, then you get into, okay, what are the go-to-market roles that we're gonna use to go after this? And then how do we allocate those across segments, across verticals, across geographies? And so that is at the core of what we do in ops. And I think that it's where a lot of companies struggle for a host of reasons, not the least of which is, you know, this is, you know, these become kind of the territorial battles at all levels. And ops plays a key role leveraging that data, leveraging and orienting people around TAM helps us to take the emotion out of this process, have it be really objective, and build great alignment around, you know, how are we going to grow the business? And so that's a really critical role that we play as a function. And territory management is the, I would say, the kind of the tail end of that process. Now you've decided what are your segments, what are your verticals, what are your geographies? You start to say, okay, and now here's the leaders that we have over these businesses. And at the tail end of that, you're building all the way down to the lowest common denominator, which is a territory per rep. And you're crafting something that you think an individual rep will, it will give them an opportunity to hit their number and deliver what the company needs in terms of bookings and revenue. So that process kind of start to finish from the design all the way to having territories built deployed in your CRM. It's a lengthy process and it becomes the foundation for how you both drive the business and measure your progress against it.

Well, I, I can't even imagine saying it in a better way. Like, you covered the most important parts of your go-to-market strategy and how it aligns so well with the territories. Um, I wanted to dive into one thing that you said, which is it takes the emotion out of it. Can you tell me a little bit about what you mean by that?

Well, yeah, I mean, one of the things in our function we always have to be very sensitive to is that the decisions that we make and the way that we are doing our work to design the go-to-market strategy affects real people. So it affects your go-to-market leaders and particularly your sales and customer success leaders to the extent that you're you're kind of building their orgs, right? And so it very much affects their careers, their livelihoods. And so it's highly charged, highly sensitive. And they— it's a moment in time when they're looking around and comparing themselves to their peers. And so it can be fraught with emotion and ego if you let it be. And I think that's where we play a really important role in bringing data to bear in particular. And I think most RevOps people that you talk, they, they, that is our comfort zone is, hey, let's bring it back. First of all, let's make sure we have great data, that data robust and clean. That's its own topic. Once we have good data, this becomes a common factor and a shared language that we can all use as reasonable business people to come to decisions about where we're headed as a business. And then some of the tactical decisions about how much do you get and how much do you get and how much do you get, both at the leadership level and all the way down to the rep level. So very, very charged. And of course, at the rep level, you know, we're talking about people's livelihoods, right? Giving them, you're handing them a territory and you're handing them a quota in most cases. And that is gonna make or break their earnings, and it's also gonna make or break their potential to get promoted and progress. And so you have an incredible amount of responsibility, both for fairness and equity to make sure everybody has a fair shot at hitting their number, but that also people can understand. You come out of the end of this process, they don't feel like they've been handed something out of a black box. Explain the why. How did we build this? Why did we build it this way? Why do we think it's very reasonable that you can now go out and be successful this year?

Oh my gosh, I love what you said just now in about 10 different areas. One of the main reasons that I wanted to join this Fulcast team in its, you know, at the very beginning was because I have personally experienced so much go-to-market pain, right? With real people, with conflict, with numbers that aren't working right. And so much of it is exactly as you describe it. These are people's livelihoods, and it matters for people. And because I've experienced so much of that myself just over the years, like any person has, that is the foundation for why we exist, is to eliminate revenue pain. And by that, you know, eliminating that revenue pain, we're also eliminating emotional pain for people. We're also eliminating, you know, all kinds of like financial pain. And so when we connect it back to people, that's when it really gets exciting for me. Another thing that I love about Fulcast is that it allows us to very transparently understand segmentation. And be able to use AI to balance those territories. So when you have that conversation, you can say, you know, with the algorithm that we built, with the machine learning that we have, these were balanced, and they can be done in 30 minutes. And you can see, and you can cut it several different ways, and you can see it in all different sorts of slices. So you can prove to them, all for the reason of helping your team feel solid and secure, and that territories are equitable, and that everybody's got a fair shot. And so I think what you said just now was so important for that reason.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with your comment around transparency. Transparency is so critical. It's part of why, you know, I love Fulcast, you know, no secret there. And I've used it in my last couple of roles. But transparency is not just like, can you see it? What I love is actually really deeply engaging sales leadership in particular to participate in the process. So this is not, I think if it's done right, and look, no organization is identical. There's not a one-size-fits-all. However, there are themes that do apply kind of universally. If it's done right, it's not just ops built the territories and hands them out. I think if it's done right, the way it works is ops helps use data to provide a starting point and to kind of create some guardrails and some kind of zones where people understand like, okay, here's some rules of the road. But in an ideal world, sales leadership puts their hands on these territories before they're deployed. They are deeply engaged and part of shaping the territories. And by the time the process is done, again, if it's done well, sales leadership has their fingerprints all over these. So it's not just that they can see it, it's that they deeply understand and they've been a part of shaping it.

So that is such a great call out too. I was actually talking with a sales leader whose opinion was very strongly held that, that RevOps hands him a territory and it is a black box and he doesn't have the visibility and he doesn't have the trust and that RevOps doesn't care about them. And so what you've described is opposite of that where you are engaging with the team. It's almost like revenue therapy. Like, there's an idea for you for a podcast.

Yeah, right. Yeah, come lay on my couch. I have certainly been on the other end of, you know, kind of sales leaders who are asking for that kind of therapy for sure. But, you know, it is I will say, I'm, you know, maybe in describing this, I'm oversimplifying or making it sound too easy. It's not an easy task for RevOps in the sense that we end up, we are a custodian of the company ultimately. We are responsible for driving revenues responsibly. And so as we do that, and in that, function and role, it is our job to stretch the organization to get the optimal output again for shareholders, for the business overall. And so we are pushing sales leaders. And so it's this very fine balance where we are building a go-to-market strategy and we're building territories that will stretch people. They will have to— if you build a perfectly built territory, will not be, it won't be easy for the rep to hit their quota. The point is to create something that is achievable. Like it's within reason, it's achievable for them to hit their number, but you certainly don't want to make it such that it's easy. If you've done that, you've probably shortchanged the company. And if a rep overperforms, you know, if they 3x their quota, then you've done something wrong as a RevOps professional because that's very expensive for the company to, you know, because they go into accelerators and you're paying them all kinds of money.

Yeah, true.

That is not responsible business. And so it is our job to stretch the organization. And so it requires sensitive, a sensitive approach because you're pushing and stretching them, but you want to do it again, based on data and in a reasonable way. And that requires this dialogue, this dialogue with sales leadership. And you want to do it in such a way that it's not us and them, it's we are partners, but we are partners that are both here in service to the business objectives.

Do you have any strategies for working well with sales leaders to build that trust and collaboration?

Yeah, I mean, again, there's no formula and everyone, you know, you have to kind of, you have to be true to your own style and everybody's unique and different, but there probably are a few themes. I would say first and foremost, I err on the side of transparent and I err on the side of probably candid, overly candid, but I find that If there's a tough topic, if there's a hard decision or something that I think is going to be, that sales leaders may struggle with, it's best to just be out with it, come out with it, have an open conversation about it. I think where people get into trouble and where they lose trust is they are trying to either, trying to lessen the pain so that they have good intentions. They're trying to kind of, maybe spin it, position it. And I find that in the end, they're going to come to their own understanding of what it is, whatever the challenging problem is. You're better off just shining the light on it and being super straight and honest with them. And I think that's the basis for any trusted relationship. And this feeling like, hey, I may not always agree with Clay, but he's gonna give it to me straight. And then, you know, we can debate and argue about the merits of it, but at least he's, I don't feel like he's withholding things from me. I don't feel like he's, he's given it to me straight. And sometimes the news is not great news to deliver and sometimes it's, it's better news to deliver. But especially when you're delivering tough news, just give it to them straight. I think they appreciate that over time, even if in the moment it may feel bad. So that's my starting point. And then secondly is to always come back to the data. It is our, it's our shared language that we all use to understand the problem. And, or the opportunity. And so if we keep coming back to that shared language, it becomes a safe space. And that if you're kind of, if you're exemplifying that over time, then they start to build this, the trust is almost, it's almost less in you as a person, it's more that your methodology they observe that you're always coming back to hard evidence, to hard data. And again, it won't instantly win everyone over, but over time— and trust is just consistency over time, right? That's how you build trust. So if you keep doing that over time, they will start to build this confidence that, hey, no matter what I do, when I sit down with Clay, he's always going to be bringing data to the table and evidence, and our conversations that way can be, um, very, very productive and open and candid.

I love that, and I love the idea of data as the shared language, which, as you mentioned a little bit earlier, is its own topic, but it does bring to light a lot of, uh, the reason that there is some conflict and the within in the interpretation of data, right? So, and why data hygiene is so important and why believing the data is so important and why knowing the data is so important, because that is really the language through which you communicate and understand.

And it is. So, so any, any RevOps professionals listening to this podcast will appreciate that, you know, the data And if you're talking about CRM data in particular, very often the data is problematic. It's very challenging whether you're talking about account data, you know, you're getting your account data from, from D&B or ZoomInfo, what have you. And the data is almost always fraught with issues. And so that is, that's one of our biggest challenges in RevOps because it undermines this core foundation of what we do and how we're doing it. And so it's been an area of focus in many of my roles, and that's why it's this prerequisite to building that shared, you know, it's that common ground and it's that safe space for us to all discuss the business. And so when it's very, very flawed, it's a real challenge. And a lot of companies are facing this. In fact, I don't think I know any company that doesn't have data quality, data hygiene challenges. And my main point in saying this is that is a worthy area of investment for virtually any company because it's so foundational to everything else that, and it feels tactical, it feels very, very tactical. And I'll tell you, there's nothing, there's nothing that is less appealing as an area to try to solve and to grind through because data quality issues are just like a— it can be a quagmire. But it is worth fighting the good fight on data quality, even if you have to, you know, go hire— and a lot of companies are doing this now— you know, hire an offshore team to help get some less expensive arms and legs to grind through some of the data issues that you have and audits that you want to do. Anything that you can do that contributes to the veracity of your data will improve the quality of your conversations with the go-to-market leadership team.

Oh, I love that. That's so well said. Well, you're clearly, Clay, at the top of your RevOps game. So what do you do to stay there? It could be anything. It could be what's your favorite drink? What's your favorite book?

Yeah.

What do you do to keep your presence of mind and stay at the top?

I'll give two And I'll start with the internal, which is just, and this is not specific to RevOps, but I am a big believer in everybody finding what they need to do for their own wellness and balance and energy. So for me, that's a combination of exercise, meditation. You know, I, this, this role, this function, this job, These are not 9-to-5 jobs typically. They're, you know, we are working long hours under a lot of intense pressure. And if you wanna do that for a long period, I've been doing this for 15 years in enterprise software. If you want to last, you have to figure out a way to make it sustainable. So for me, that starts with, you know, diet, exercise, and some form of reflection There's no one-size-fits-all for reflection. I like to meditate, but journaling, whatever it is that gives you an opportunity to pause from your day-to-day and reflect on, ideally at least once a week, preferably even more frequently, it will give you a huge leg up. And managing your energy is gonna be critical in this role. So that's kind of on the internal side. And then on the external side, I would say, you know, RevOps, we talked about this earlier, RevOps is very broad. We have, you know, our teams are doing so many different things and it requires us to cross a lot of different disciplines. We need to know about systems, we need to know about data. We are involved in, we're very often involved in pricing. Initiatives, you know, comp, you name it. There's just so many different categories of that, that now have become, you know, a science. I mean, there are people who are, for example, compensation is its own whole topic and you could have a career dedicated to compensation, become a deep expert. In ops, we need to be experts in many of these different disciplines. And so it is a function that benefits greatly from sharing and collaborating and engaging with other ops professionals, particularly outside of your company. And I, I mean, I'm very fortunate to, I've been around a while and I know a lot of people in the ops world. And so, you know, when I, when there's something I haven't seen before, or even something I have seen before, but I want to get a fresh take on it, I have a lot of different people that I can kind of, I can ping and say, hey, like, you know, what are you seeing lately? Are things changing? You know, how is this evolving? And that is so, so important. I, you know, many years ago, and we've kind of dabbled with this on and off, but myself and some other ops leaders created this what we call Ops Council. It's just a handful of ops people and we created a Slack channel and we, from time to time, we get together and we'll talk, we'll pick a topic and we'll, you know, we'll get together and talk about that topic. So anything that you can do to build your network of other ops professionals, such that you can be frequently going outside of your company to hear what people are doing, to benchmark the things that you're doing internally in your role. It is just so, so critical. I don't think you can be great at ops without having that great network of perspectives. We just cover too much ground and you, you know, you can try to build your expertise in every discipline, but there's always going to be somebody who's more deeply knowledgeable than you. I'm, you know, I'll be the first one to raise my hand. There's like, there's a million people who are more deeply knowledgeable than me about, let's say, comp design. I've been around and seen a lot, but I still seek out— I actively seek out different perspectives and ideas when it comes to these areas of expertise. It's so, so important.

That's wonderful. Well, I love both the internal and the external advice. For me, you know, as you were thinking about it, I think, what do I do? I love to listen to music. Kind of helps make— gives my— puts my brain on pause and helps me think about something in a different way. The diet and the exercise is so important and good. And that culture of learning that RevOps has developed is really unparalleled in other organizations. I've seen that firsthand how people love to share with each other in an informal setting and, um, and how important that is. Uh, in some of the other podcasts I've done, that has been a, a very strong theme in it as well, that we all need to learn from each other. So, yeah, well, thank you so much. This has been so enlightening and fun and interesting. And, um, you know, next time I need some therapy done with, uh, someone on my team, I'm coming straight to you. So thank you again for participating on the podcast today.

Yeah, well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. And, you know, I love these type of forums. Again, I would categorize a podcast like this as exactly the type of resource and way that all RevOps folks should be trying to supplement whatever they're doing internally at their company, and you're going to be very busy in an ops role. You need to find some time to go outside and hear what other folks are doing. And this type of podcast is exactly the way, one of the ways that you can get that kind of drip feed of fresh ideas.

Well, thank you again. That was just absolutely wonderful. And I look forward to our next conversation.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Business, yes, that's business. Business, yes, that's business.