From Marine Biology to RevOps: Helena Aryafar's Blueprint for Smarter GTM

Business. Business. Business. 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 and Silicon Slopes. My name is Amy Cook, and I am so excited to introduce Helena Aryafar, SVP of Revenue Operations at Interos. Helena, how are you?

I'm doing well, thanks. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much. And before we move further, did I pronounce your name correctly?

Yes.

Okay, good, because I was going to rerecord if we didn't. So I'm very glad. Well, thank you so much for coming on. You know, we value you so much as a customer and also are so grateful to be working with you in particular as a person, and thank you for taking the time to come and join us on the podcast today. Of course. Awesome. So tell me a little bit about your background.

So my background is a little, I think, unusual for ops. I don't have a long history in go-to-market or business specifically. I came from fundamentally a science background, like I have a bachelor's in neurobiology. A master's in marine biology, and then I spent about near a decade as a fisheries biologist where I kind of split my, my time between being field and lab researcher and then doing data management and operations. And I then transitioned into tech. And, you know, it— on paper that looks like a really huge pivot, but functionally they're basically the same things. Like you're orchestrating workflows and data about fish, and now you kind of shift it over to people. And businesses, although I do have to say that fish complain a lot less. And so, like, the background isn't fundamentally go-to-market, but the skill set I have is all basically the same, and I take that with me. That, to me, is what brings me my edge, because I'm always kind of approaching a problem or questions not with, well, I've done this for the last 30 years. It's more, I know how to solve a problem, I know how to be resourceful, and I know how to think outside of the box in a very scientific but applicable way.

I love that. And it does not surprise me that that does give you an edge. I came from academics and so I have a, like a mixed methodology data background with like quantitative and qualitative analysis. And so, you know, when I got into RevOps, very similar, I was like, oh, I've done this before, just not with businesses. And you're right, the data complains a lot less. Yeah.

Yeah. It's really, I, I feel like pattern recognition is really key cuz you can immediately see the similarities and like, oh, this is analogous to something I have been faced with and now I'm able to, by being curious and resourceful, kind of pivot the way that I'm thinking about it to just adapt to the new nuance of the challenge. And that's really something I, I really look for when I'm hiring others as well. I care less about. The domain expertise in isolation. I care more about how do you go about solving a problem and think through step 1 through 10 of how you would start getting the information you needed to pivot and be able to actually address the issue.

Very interesting. Yeah, I think that when you have— you come with those frameworks already built in, in a way of critical thinking that is so applicable. That totally makes sense. I love that. Well, do you ever miss the marine biology aspect of it? Do you, or are you really enjoying business?

I do. I mean, I would go out to sea for weeks at a time and those experiences are really unique. I'd be on commercial fishing vessels or research vessels. They're really unique and I feel very fortunate that I was able to have that cuz that's just such a small portion of the population can say that they did those things. But I certainly feel very fortunate to now have what feels like a lot more room for me to apply all of that excitement I have around operational efficiency and like the things that really bring me joy and being able to do that in the framework of business. 'Cause there's just a lot more room for growth there. Science has some pretty, I don't wanna say strict guardrails around how and when you can really apply that, but it was a lot more challenging to do that. And I worked, within a federal framework, which was even more difficult. And then it had, you know, the overlay of like academic pieces to it. And it just becomes really difficult to get, shockingly, the government to want to do things more efficiently. And so, this is where I do feel like leaning into tech has been great. But yeah, I miss it sometimes.

Yeah, I understand that. It is a different speed too. And then you've got government and academics combined.

Yeah.

Which probably slows things down even a little bit more, right? When I transitioned from academics to business, it was such a huge difference. And it, and neither, both of them are normal and fine. It's just a different way of working. So as part of these, like these toolings that, that you're using, you know, whether it's on a boat out to sea for weeks at a time, which is crazy, amazing experience, or working here in RevOps at Anteros, what, what do you see as going well in go-to-market in terms of systems and tools? What do you see as challenging? Could you give us a perspective on that?

Yeah, I mean, tooling is always a really interesting area because the fundamental questions that ops is always faced with is build or buy. And depending on where you're at and what you need and how quickly you need it, that's that helps you determine where you build or buy. And I feel like that has certainly evolved over time. I mean, for, uh, fisheries research, there wasn't really a lot of option to buy. And so when I moved into tech, the fact that there were solutions that were ready off the shelf, the thing that became overwhelming was like, well, do I totally know what this does? And making sure I understood all the, the guts to it, but when I started, a lot of the solutions that were available, I feel like tooling has kind of evolved the way that almost cable TV has. Like a long time ago, you had very limited options. They were there, but it wasn't everything under the sun. And so you kind of just chose a package that was the best for you. It evolved to splitting out and becoming 5,000 streaming services, and you're like, well, I got like 50, you know, I need HBO Max, I need this, I need that. And then now we're seeing that even evolve further to going back to consolidation where It's, it's bundled. And so, as we watch that evolve, I certainly feel like I've witnessed our go-to-market tooling evolve the same way. It used to be that you didn't have that many options. Then suddenly there was just this explosion of a thousand different point solutions and the onus became around like, well, oh my God, which 40 do I pick? Because each of them does such an isolated thing and I only have this much budget. And then as you were starting to get your arms around that and cobble together what all you needed, the kind of landscape shifted now to we're seeing a lot more consolidation. And so now it is going back into being more thoughtful about, okay, well, these are grouped solutions, except the difficulty is they're not all grouped the same. So what ends up happening is you now have some redundancy where you don't need it, and then even when you kind of Frankenstein together a solution, you could still have gaps. And the worst part about that redundancy is that there's cost to it, and it's not just by way of budget, it's by way of clarity. Because when you originally went in to buy a new tool, you were thinking, I need to solve these problems. As you start assessing all the different tools you could have, there are so many feature functions on it. You slap AI on top of that, and suddenly they all feel very relevant. But what happens when you take one step back is you kind of realize that they're all addressing the symptoms and that's why they feel relevant, but they don't actually solve the underlying problems. And so, you end up having a go-to-market engine that's doing 17 things kind of halfway and none of the 3 things really well that you initially were trying to solve for. And so, I don't know, I always think about it as like it, it's It's all these refrigerators that end up adding all these bells and whistles. They've got Wi-Fi, a camera, like a touchscreen, and you're like, that's amazing. And then you suddenly realize it doesn't keep your food cold. It doesn't even make ice, but you can like flush your toilet from the kitchen. And that's kind of the problem you end up having with tooling is you can end up with a really bloated tech stack that actually only has like 3 vendors listed and you're like, oh my God, I can't do any of the things that I thought I was going to do. So, You still spend that much time, it's just in a totally different way than it used to be. And so it's very challenging, like having tooling with intent.

I totally agree. It, it's that way in marketing tech, you know, marketing ops, which is what I deal most, mostly with, but also sales ops, customer success ops. One of the things, have you ever encountered this where you're like, hey, I need this tool to do this. And then your boss is like, but didn't we already spend X amount of dollars to solve for this? And you're like, yeah, but it doesn't actually solve for it.

It used to be—

still need this other doohickey. Have you ever like encountered that?

A thousand times. And that's actually the thing when I'm asking for budget, I address head on because it, it doesn't have to be. And like, this is where I make sure that when we're buying new tools, The value add is something I totally understand about. It's solving this other problem, even if there's some redundancy that the tool can do against something we already have. We're just not going to use that. And even that aside, the thing I actually need this for, it's worth the dollars I'm about to spend. But that nuance is still really difficult when you're trying to, let's say, negotiate your contracting or your tooling budget within the total that you can spend, because as these consolidations happen, we're seeing the pricing and the packaging and all the platform costs all shift. You can't do as much modular buying. And so when you're trying to buy it, you're like, well, I'm not going to use this portion of it. Like, we don't— we have a dialer, we don't need the dialer. And they're like, well, it comes with it. Okay, but can you just not give it to me? Just drop the price. Like, I'm not going to use this and I can't justify the other piece I do need from you. I will just go buy a point solution. Exactly. That's tough.

You'll have to do like a modular, like, like you kind of hate to jimmy-rig the tools, but if they're not going to be flexible with you and drop pricing down for the things that you don't need them for, then it's really difficult to make that justification to buy the platform solution. I totally— Yeah.

And it doesn't make sense to anyone else either. And keep in mind, like, every time you're adding tools, especially when there's redundancy in what they could do, even if you don't intend to use them that way, You have to make sure that from an administrative burden, you are clear and concise about logical and feasible workflows and processes that the users are going to do. And there's like an interesting actual example of this here. We had HubSpot for a little bit, and we also had Salesforce, and HubSpot was really where they were doing a lot of the prospecting. Over time, we were like, we need to get rid of HubSpot, we need to redo our, our tooling stack. Well, we added Apollo onto it, and Apollo has a dialer. And, you know, I was expecting like the BDRs were going to continue using the dialer out of HubSpot. I started to pull reporting. I'm like, what is going on? And somewhere in there, because I didn't directly tell them, do not use the dialer in one place, use it only in the other, they had kind of like fragmented their workflows because they could. And from an administrative side, we were like, oh no, lesson learned. But It is something like, okay, I know it can do it, guys, just don't do it there. Like, don't do it there. Mm-hmm.

And, and when you have that redundancy, it's, it's difficult, right? Because you can't direct the team to use the workflows that you want. It's also— I have so much sympathy though for all of us. I include myself in RevOps because sometimes you want to like you have to have a solution, right? And then there's a budget freeze on licenses and yet you have another segment of the team that needs to have the license. And you're like, well, I guess, have you ever done, have you ever had a situation where you're like, well, we don't have any more licenses of ZoomInfo, but I do have a couple of Apollo ones over here. Maybe I can throw your way. And sometimes it's the only way you can get your stuff.

Oh, 1,000%. I mean, we were, we were absolutely doing that. Like, you know, we don't have enough of those licenses, but we still need to capture activities in a certain way. But it's not as important that they get like the call recording portion or what have you. And so you've got your sales team, you know, trying to explain to them, hey guys, your activity gets collected from here. CSMs, your activity gets collected from here. SCs, good luck. You know, that's kind of It's problematic because you really do still only have that small pool of money and you're trying to be resourceful, but not— you want to avoid as much Frankensteiny as possible. And this is the interesting part that I always, I admire about our CRO because he'll always sanity check me and keep me honest about it, which I'll never tell him to his face, but here we are. Where when I am proposing a workflow, because he's like, look, we need to solve this problem. Like, I agree. I come back with a proposed workflow and he's like, that's great that you were able to do that. That is an ops workflow. That's an ops workflow. You went to 15 different places and while you know and you're savvy enough to realize the most efficient and effective place to go get the info was in these like little niche corners of each of the tools that you've cobbled together, no person on our sales team will ever do that. And it takes me a minute to be like, ugh, no, he's totally right.

Is that right?

Yeah.

And, but it's hard though because that was your background, right? You built it yourself. You had to pull everything out and I totally, I came from that same background and so you're like, no, this totally works. But then you have to put in, you have to put in, uh, like at least I have to put on my glasses of like what part of my job is to make it as easy as possible for, for the, like the, the lowest common denominator. So it, it not be misunderstood, right?

Yeah. And their burden to use it shouldn't be the same as our burden to use it because it, yeah, it did come from your own little mind palace. And so you're like, of course it makes sense. Why wouldn't you know how to do this? And halfway through your 75-step process, you're like, yeah, all right, I got it. Note taken.

Yeah, I love that. Well, so just from, you know, from everything that you've done, what are a couple of best practices on, you know, for others like us who are trying to make budget decisions this year and trying to understand like this, this crazy landscape of all these different tools and, everyone that promises everything, like, how do you navigate it and what are some best practices?

Yeah, I have my team build basically a matrix. Like, the first step that we did was just an audit of what are all the area— the problematic areas that we have in our customer journey that we need to solve for, and setting priority on them based on their level of impact and level of effort, right? So that helps at least frame out like, yeah, we got problems all over the place. I got 99 problems and they're all over. All of them are customer journey issues. Okay. And so you can't be blinded by the sheer volume of things that you need to try and solve for. You need to actually prioritize what are needs, what are would be great to have, and then what are just absolutely like, yeah, you know, in dreamland, this is what you would get. Starting there and then anchoring every conversation and every tooling assessment around that is really important. And the other thing is making sure that you are also keeping track as you're looking at tools and it's starting to get distracting cuz you're getting excited about all the weird crap that they can tell you to do, that you're doing it in the context of like, where are the overlaps? And playing devil's advocate with yourself of like, well, why would we spend the extra for this one? What does it actually do that you need? Right now. And that's the important thing. You are always going to be confronted with a company trying to sell you a Ferrari when you just got your permit. So, yeah, maybe the Ford Pinto is that baby step and you need to have that to basically prove out that trying to address this problem is actually the underlying issue and not a symptom. So there, there are stepping stones to it and being realistic about what you need. Is really important too. There's like a ton of— you're going to get inundated with sales reps asking for tooling of like, I don't like the forecasting in here. Like, I want, I want a forecasting tool. I need this, this, and this. And, you know, it's super expensive and you're like, look, our deal volume is so low, I will personally put my hand on your hand on the mouse and forecast for you because it's cheaper to do that than to buy the tool that you're asking for. So just being realistic about do we need to solve for that or can that wait, will help anchor the conversation around what you actually need to focus on. And everything else is just like a nice to have. You have it kind of indexed on the backend, and when the time comes, you've done some of your research and you have a good starting off point.

I love that. Is there, do you have any perspective on the kind of like point solutions versus platforms and what you should look for and when to know which one to choose?

I think one of the key things that I've learned from some cobbling together of the various assortments, either platform to platform, point solution into platform into other point solution, is that you need to be very mindful of the administrative burden of what you're doing and that just checking the box that it can do the thing actually meets what you're trying to accomplish. And like, some of the point solutions, because they are very dedicated, probably in most cases actually do that thing the best. And so if that's the underlying problem, you're better off probably focusing on just addressing that with a point solution that kind of feels now in this world of consolidation, almost tacky, because they're like, you're buying a whole tool to do that one step. That one step is the critical piece and the crux of your productivity on the back end, and it has cascading impacts, especially— and you know this too— like, top of funnel, that cascades down. Like, you have impacts all the way through the rest of your customer journey if you have something broken at the top. Being thoughtful about that is really important. And that if you're getting a platform, they're like, oh yeah, we totally do whatever, conversation intelligence, we totally do this, we totally do that. And then when you're actually thinking about, is it— are these insights actionable in a way that in my normal business practice I can leverage and then do the thing with? Meaning, hey, yeah, they do it, but I can't do batch export, I can't run an analysis across all the calls, I can't, you know, integrate this with another platform so I can move it over, or I can't access any of the— like, those are things that feel nitpicky at the onset, but you have to be very clear about if they say yes, what am I actually going to do with this? And then ask those follow-up questions to ensure they didn't— you didn't just check your box, or you didn't check your box. It's actually actionable, because some of that really is just like, yeah, we can do it, but really, is this just a thing that's like a lipstick on a pig, or does it actually solve your problem?

Yes, I love it. And that theme of, you know, making sure that whatever tooling you buy doesn't just gloss over the symptoms, but it actually solves your problem. And being able to understand your customer journey from a process point of view and then selecting tools that meet your, your customer journey, that's so relevant and important. And it is so exciting to see what things can do, especially some of this new AI stuff where you're like, yeah, it knows me, you know, and I have, you know, I, I get distracted by shiny new things all the time. And so you have to kind of pull back and be like, yeah, that's, that is so cool. And next year when we focus on that, I'm going to buy that. But, but this year, yeah, on the basics.

Yeah. Well, and having a use for the cool, that's the other challenging part. And that's, that is the piece where like the AI component, particularly if as it pertains to platform versus point solution is really critical because there are point solutions that we were looking at and they're like, we have this AI component, except when you actually dig into the AI component, you're like, well, this is in a vacuum. I can't use this for anything down the chain of what I would action on from what you're giving me. And so who cares? Like, it's shiny for you, but be real, like, grow up. Who is this for? Because we're just not— well, I'm not sitting there, what do you want me to copy and paste this out of here? Get outta here. Like, this isn't going to be useful. And keeping that critical lens on so you don't get ex— like, it's okay to get excited and then take a step back and be like, oh my God, am I like drinking Kool-Aid here? What is going on? Like, yeah, this is not—

yeah, exactly. Well, Helena, thank you so much.

You—

it is so much fun to chat with you. Clearly I'm on top of your game. And what do you do? My last question is, what do you do to stay on top of your game?

Professionally, to stay on top of my game, I maintain that level of curiosity I had when I came in. It's just fundamental. I think you don't stay on top of your game because you know everything. Like, you stay on top of your game because you're not afraid to ask and admit when you don't know. And so I, I keep that as a primary structure of my team, that it's a safe space to always pressure test each other's ideas, my own ideas. Like, I don't want it to be the highest paid person in the room or the loudest voice being the one that dictates how things get done. Like, the structure and guidance I provide, but I want to play devil's advocate. I want us to pressure test so that the thing we execute on is legitimately the best and not because I'm just kind of blinded by my own excitement. And then on a personal level, and anyone who knows me, I mean, this is going to be terrible, but like, I love trolling people. I love like just fun jokes. I, they're all quiet. They're all for my own sake. I don't even like tell people about all of them, but I love having fun and kind of inserting that level of, of flair in myself just when I, when I want to. And so that keeps me motivated because look, we're, we're not saving lives. We are selling software and every time we can remember that is really important. and, you know, have fun in your day to day.

I think that is such an important win for all of us to remember that, you know, this— jobs can actually be fun and work can actually be fun. And a lot of it depends on, you know, being able to have that mindset. I remember a time when I was kind of like honestly depressed and in order for me to pull out of it, I was like, I'm gonna think of one thing that makes me laugh every day. And it's amazing the difference that you can have, hey, just from doing that. So I am so aligned with that. That and appreciate everything. Thank you so much for the insights and the advice that you've given, and I really appreciate your time.

Of course, thanks so much for having me.

Thank you. Business. Yes, that's business. Business. Yes, that's business.