Keith Lutz: Why Relationships Are the Real Engine Behind RevOps Success

Business. Business.

Business.

Business.

Ah, that sounds all right.

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 Amy Cook, and I'm so excited to introduce today Keith Lutz, CIO at Druva. Keith, how are you today?

I'm doing great, Amy. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me on your show.

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited, and I've been excited for months since we first talked for you to come on. We've been talking so much about revenue operations leaders and how people come from sales and marketing and getting into RevOps. What we've never talked about is how the relationship evolves between a CIO like you and a RevOps leader and how that's interconnected. So first of all, can you just tell us a little bit about your background?

Absolutely. I have been in IT for, I can't even tell you how long, over 25 years. I started as an engineer on the, on the service desk and just worked my way up. And the past 15 years or so, I've been involved in transformational change within organizations. Many different roles over infrastructure automation. And now, as you mentioned before, the CIO, I've been involved in a lot of different industries, aerospace, healthcare, hospitality, retail, SaaS, which I'm involved now, social media, back in the days when I actually worked at MySpace, when people knew what that was.

So I, I'm part of that generation.

Awesome.

Awesome.

So yeah, I've had an opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different industries, a lot of different companies. Throughout my career, and it's been very rewarding, but it's also been a time in which a lot has changed over the last couple of decades as we look into the landscape of technology, IT, business alignment, business relationships within the workplace. And so it's been an adventure to say the least.

Oh, I can only imagine. And how awesome that you have the perspective of so many different industries and how they're all kind of related and how IT does them differently. So that's just a fascinating career trajectory. What's your favorite industry? Do you have to say SaaS right now? Cause that's where you—

No, I'll be honest with you. Okay. It's my favorite and my least favorite, which is retail. Retail is extremely difficult. Basically, you don't ever have a holiday. Retail, for the exception of Christmas and Thanksgiving Day, and even on Thanksgiving, those are the days in which a lot of times retail's closed, but not for IT because those are upgrade days. So, or those are prepping for your big shopping days. So, The rewarding part is how fast-paced it is and just like how on your toes you have to be. Those systems are mission critical. You can just imagine when I worked at Mattress Firm with 3,600 stores and we could be losing $10 million an hour if a system was down.

Yes.

So it was all hands on deck. And you might say I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie just because it's like, it's scary, but exciting at the same time. And you have such a big responsibility keeping those up, but it's hard. Right? You're in the grind, you're in the trenches. And so it's my least, but it's also my favorite industry. And I've, I learned so, so much, uh, being in the retail industry. And, and it's really the first, I would say I always was customer focused in the back of my mind, but it was really the first industry where I understood how important the customer is in the workplace and just in your business model and how you go to market. It gave me an entirely different perspective and changed my approach and how I work in any organization. And it's really the time in which I truly learned the value of partnering with other stakeholders within the organization to truly drive success.

Hmm, that's super interesting. And I totally hear you on the retail side. Like my very favorite place to shop, and it's like where I shop 90% of the time is Ann Taylor. And I love that place, but there are hardly any stores anymore. And so I always have to shop online. And I've been tracking from a marketing perspective, because that's my background, how often they send their emails, what they say, how on top of it they are, how the deal offerings are moving and changing each time. And if there is ever something that's not down, or if the website doesn't like click on for me within like 2 seconds, I'm like, oh, something's wrong, and I don't go there. So I think about like when you were talking about mattress firm, you could be losing 10— what did you say? $10,000 million an hour. $10 million an hour on a busy—

on one of our busiest days.

You are an adrenaline junkie.

That is—

wow, that is crazy. So, but I think about that and I'm like, IT could not be more important right now where everybody is shopping online. So that's really, really interesting. You mentioned— this is a great segue to our RevOps conversation, but you mentioned that that's where you really learned the value of working with other stakeholders in different departments. That's fascinating to me. And I'm particularly interested in how you view revenue operations from a CIO's perspective and how you work directly with them to try to go to market.

Yes, I'll step back a little bit to answer that question, to kind of answer it in a way of why do I put the effort in to working with revenue operations, or in this case, revenue operations. Long gone are the days where. The CIO would simply dictate the technology roadmap for the entire organization because they were the technologist experts within any given organization. And so therefore the organization really leaned upon them to be able to make the best decision. And it was very gated in a way, in the fact that it's like, what's the CIO's enterprise roadmap? How are they going to decide to really deliver value to the organization? And it was in a lot of ways really siloed in that effort. And so, but as SaaS has come out, as just-in-time software deployments have come out, and we now have a generation of people that are in the workforce who are very tech savvy. They understand their business processes. They understand the markets. They understand their customers. They are technologists. In their own right. So you could take someone from RevOps who's just getting into this industry or has been in this industry for a decade or so, and they're very tech savvy. They know their space very well. And I'd say better than I do, as they should. And because of that, and because of just the evolution of technology over the past couple of decades, and in a lot of this product-led growth motion that these SaaS companies are providing, they come armed with the solutions in, in, in tool sets in which they believe are going to drive value for their organization. And if I was a CIO that just simply came in and said, you know, that's great, we're going to do my things, I would never have alignment and never have partnership. And at the end of the day, that's a losing battle nowadays. My reasoning for partnering with my stakeholders is first to acknowledge that I'm not the smartest person in the room when it comes to, comes to SaaS platforms or comes to technology throughout the organization. I have a responsibility to govern. Govern technology across the organization and help enable people to understand how technology comes together to cross-functionally enable the organization. And I take on that responsibility, but I also have to understand that as I'm aligning myself with RevOps personnel and, and executives within that industry, they many times have a better solution that I could come up with. And my job is to align with them and to partner them and figure out how I can better enable what the skills, technologies, processes, and everything that they want to bring to the table. How can I better enable them leveraging all our other types of platforms and technologies we have in the organization? Because I do have an understanding of what the upstream process is and what the downstream process is. And I can bring that to the table, right? I can bring that to the table and help incorporate their ideas. And then they're part of the solution. They're part of how RevOps eventually evolves. And what that does, that brings in ownership. No longer is it, this is what IT did, and they're pointing the fingers if something goes wrong. It becomes more of a collaborative effort, a more collaborative relationship with the RevOps organization and an opportunity to have more conversations about how do we continually over and over and over increase our capabilities, increase our enablement throughout the organization to ultimately drive greater revenue within the organization. And it becomes a true partnership and not this finger-pointing scenario that can happen when you try to gate technology or try to silo it or keep it in your own wheelhouse and, and not kind of share it in a way.

You know, I think that Dhruva is so lucky to have you because I have worked with people who are CIOs who have that very siloed approach where they consider themselves the roadmap creator and the execution specialist, right? And so I've been a consultant with some very, very large companies where their machine is just kind of broken because of that old way of thinking. What I love about you is that you're the master architect, but you also recognize the very, the very skilled assets that you have on your team. And instead of trying to tell them to stay away, you're bringing them in and it's a collaborative motion and it's an integrated motion. And so I can only imagine that good things happen with that.

We try, we try. But I would say for the, for the most part, It has developed a really good relationship, especially here at Druva. I would say out of all my past experiences that I've had, I would say that we have the strongest and tightest relationship with RevOps than any other organization in the entire company. So any other department within the entire company, we understand each other's roles, but we understand that there isn't this chain of command type hierarchy where it's like, yeah, we understand our roles and we only work within this chain of command. No, it's, it's collaborative and it's open and everyone is welcome to contribute to whatever the conversation is that we might be having. And so it's been a fantastic ride. We're still on it. We continue to improve each and every day, but it has been very rewarding in, in having this type of partnership within Druba.

Yeah, I think that's really amazing. Since you have a very tight partnership with RevOps, could you explain a little bit more, like, give me a scenario in which you guys are trying to buy software together. Like, I'm going to be self-interested here. You're trying to buy some software and you're trying to figure out who needs to sign off on things, who needs to bring things to it, who are the decision makers? How would you interact in that kind of situation? What's their job and what's your job?

Great question. There's a need within the organization, and this can go for any type of software that we're looking at. We just happen to be looking at territory planning this coming, upcoming fiscal year. And there is a real need because the current territory planning software isn't delivering what is needed, or it's very complex, is very kludgy. And so they've identified a need. What they do is when they identify that need is they typically will start collecting as much information as they can about what's out in the market, and they do their homework. They do that because a series of, um, as we sit down and meet with each other, a series of collaboration events will happen, and I'll, and I myself or someone on my team will ask a series of questions. Why is this a need? What is it not delivering? And the most important question is what is ultimately your goal or what is the result that you want to get out of this? We always look at the end first and then we back into it. So with the end in mind, what are we ultimately trying to achieve? That really helps in the selection process because at least you understand where you're headed to. I've been in projects before where it's like, this is the immediate need, but we didn't have the vision. We just didn't have the thought to think further out of what else could we do or What direction is our company heading and, and can this support that? And then we find ourselves in a bind. And so we always try to look at what is the end in mind, but we look at it from a 2 to 3 year perspective. And then we tie that into what is the current need of the organization. That starts the conversation of what we need to be looking for. We do a typical, for our larger deployments in software that we have strategy around, we use a typical RFI, RFP process that many are involved in. This is where my team really gets involved, right? Is during this process, because when you have these cross-functional partnerships, they do their homework and they're pretty savvy in what is working well for other organizations. But a lot of times what they'll do is they'll end up just saying, okay, I found the one I want. What we really want to do from a cross-functional relationship is saying, that is fantastic. You know, just to do our due diligence, we want to make sure that we evaluate another 2 or 3. As an example, and the reason why we're doing that is a couple of reasons. One is a lot of organizations require it as part of your, your procurement process, right? And just want to make sure you're getting the best price and overall you've done your due diligence to make sure that we're not being short-sighted in what we're investing in. The second part of it is this is an opportunity for other departments who may get involved, maybe an upstream or downstream department that's involved in this process that may not as directly involved. but is going to inherit whatever the output of this platform is. And so it gives an opportunity to get them involved and to have them ask the questions to make sure that we've properly vetted through everything. But also ultimately it gives IT in enterprise development the opportunity to look at our entire enterprise architecture and to make sure that this has a fit in that architecture. It can be from a security perspective. It can be from an AI perspective. There's so many different facets to software nowadays that need to be evaluated against what the policies and governance of the organization are. Then not only that, it really opens up the collaborative discussion. And this is where this cross-functional alignment begins. And this is where people start getting excited. This is where they get their buy-in because if you're looking at a RevOps tool and you think it's just going to sit in my operations component and no one upstream or no one downstream is going to be impacted by this, that's a very short-sighted view of it. Most RevOps, and I would say most software at our enterprise level that's utilized across the organization, will have some impact cross-functionally one way or another. And so you, it's really, really important you start building that buy-in and you buy it early. If I partner with RevOps. And IT and RevOps goes and implements this thing, and then it had impact on revenue recognition, or it had impact on commissions, or it has impact on our go-to-market strategy and how data's coming into our platform, and we didn't include them, and we just told them about it at the time we're testing and getting ready to launch it. You've lost half of your audience in which you really need that critical buy-in to really support this and to really pitch us the story that we're all on board, we're all on the boat and we're all rowing the same direction. And so that element of it is extremely important. That's why this vetting process we have, and we can move very quickly. I think a lot of people look at it and go, oh, process, it's slow. It can be slow if you're just very step-by-step, you got to do this, you got to do that. And you turn it into more of a step-by-step process instead of more of a collaborative discussion. It's the collaboration and the discussions you have in that working room, in those working sessions that start to create the buy-in. And the buy-in is so important to be successful in the organization and to really truly get the most value for the investment you've put into the software.

I love that. I think that advice is absolutely fundamental to how modern organizations need to work together on that process. So what would you say, what advice would you give a revenue operations leader who really wants to put something in there for them, no matter what it is, or maybe they're trying to get a marketing tool in, or maybe they're trying to get something, a sales engagement platform in, and they need your buy-in. What advice would you give them?

Yeah, it's a great question. I'm not going to pretend there's not office dynamics in organizations. And so I think it also, it can be a little political sometimes depending on how your company operates. And so you need to understand How prior successful technology or software has been implemented in the organization and how did they go about doing that, right? And so for me, from the day I started at Druva, I went out to all of my executive stakeholders. I had one-on-one conversations with them and I told them, I'm an open door. You have an idea, come to me, right? So I opened the door for them to be able to do that and just have that initial conversation. If you have that type of relationship with your CIO or your CIO has opened the door for that conversation, start there. Have a conversation. I wouldn't recommend going in there and saying, we found a piece of software. Now we need your help to install it. You're going a little bit further down. Like if this is brand new to the CIO, to the VP of IT, or, or whoever your most senior technology leaders within the organization, I would just sit down and have a casual conversation and say, hey, here's a problem we have. Here's a dilemma we have. And I have a few ideas I want to run by you and start getting buy-in that way. There's other ways in which organizations and some organizations that more of the, I would say like the chain of command type organizations where they really like you to follow chain of command and maybe procurement's part of that, right? And you have to go through procurement. I would really figure out who the influencers are within every organization has influencers. And a lot of the leaders look to these type of individuals because a lot of times they've been super successful. They're already leaders of their own within their organizations and within the company. And so when you have more of this chain of command philosophy, or you have this procurement philosophy, again, casual conversations, start having casual conversations with these influencers that have the ear of the CIO or the ear of the VP and start getting their feedback. A lot of times these influencers, especially if they sit within IT or engineering or, or whatever avenue you have to go through to try to get buy-in. They already have the trust of the senior leaders within that organization. And if you can help get their buy-in, then it's just going to help you as you make your pitch to the executive level to be able to say, hey, this is something we ought to do. But really, I would just start with a casual conversation and let them know your problem and allow them to help be part of the solution. People love it when they feel useful. Yes. And when they can feel useful and feel like they're part of the solution, just like me as a CIO, when I'm trying to do something with RevOps and I think there's a need there, I want them to be part of the solution. You get their buy-in, you get their trust, and ultimately you're going to get a successful delivery of what you're trying to accomplish within that company.

I love this. I need this advice personally. Sometimes I get very tactical because, you know, we're all busy and we all have a lot to do. And so sometimes I'll throw something over the wall and say, because I do a lot of RevOps at Fulcast, and then I'm also a consultant for other people. And sometimes I'll just throw something over the wall to the CIO saying, hey, please approve this. And what I should be doing, and I'm literally going to call our head of IT after this and be like, listen to what I learned. He's going to be, he's going to be so excited. But what I need to do is say, hey, I am having this challenge. I think that this is something that will solve my challenge, and let's work on this together and see if this is the right fit. And luckily our head of IT is an absolutely fantastic person and we have a great relationship. But I see that if I would approach things a little differently, I could get greater buy-in, I could move forward more quickly, and I needed that personal advice today for myself. So thank you so much, Keith. I really appreciate it. That's wonderful. So obviously you were at the top of your game. You're doing amazing work. How do you stay on top? This is the question that I ask all of our guests. How do you stay on top? What do you do that gives you that edge and allows you to stay in the grind day after day and continue to thrive?

Uh, sometimes I don't feel like I'm on top. I'll just, I'll just throw it out there. No, you know what? That's a really great question. In fact, I had a team one time. This is that mattress firm. It was a new team I staged up. We were introducing automation into the organization and we had a lofty goal. We ended up doing an analysis on the amount of tickets that were coming into the service desk. And it was 5,000 actions were being done monthly because our workforce was 11,000 retail employees. Retail retention is a lot higher than normal organizations. And so there's a lot of coming and going when it comes to, when it comes to retail. And so we created this task force, we called it. And they worked their butts off for like 5 months and they come to me and it's like, we're not doing anything. I don't feel like we're moving the needle at all. And that was eye-opening to me because I'm kind of, I'm on the outside, right? I'm not in the trenches with them. I have a leader who is in the trenches with them and I'm on the outside and I'm seeing a ton of the great work that's being accomplished. And so we sat down and we took a break for like a couple days. And we analyzed everything that had been done. And by the time we were done with this project, we had taken 5,000 manual tasks that were being done on a— it could be done on a daily basis. It could be done in a couple of days or a week. We were taking these 5,000 tasks that were being done and we automated all of them. And so if you imagine, mattress firm grew from $1 billion to $4 billion, and all we did was add 4 service desk people. Because of the automation. And the reason I tell you this story is because I apply it to my own life now. I think a lot of times we get in the trenches and we feel like we're not on top and we're falling behind and we're not continuing to climb to greater heights within our organization. And it taught me to say, take a timeout. And so that's what I started doing. This has been about a decade now since this happened. And I find myself taking time out and analyzing the work that has been accomplished. And I find the negatives. There are negatives. We're not perfect. I make mistakes here and there. I find the negatives and I learn from them and I figure out, okay, how can I adjust that in the future? I find the positives. How can I continue to build upon the positives? And a lot of it is a mental game to stay on top of your game. And it, and for me, it's, at least for me, it is, it's very mental. I would say I'm probably my worst critic. I'm hardest on myself and I take that opportunity to just put myself in a mental space and figure out where are the gaps and where I can do better. Now, outside of that, and that just helps mentally, right? It helps me see, am I delivering? Am I not delivering? We live in a world right now where I just say it since COVID it seems like anxiety is through the roof and it doesn't matter. Totally, right? It's through the roof. Doesn't matter where we're at. And since then, I've really had to up my mental game. And it just, it just, I don't, I don't know the whole reason why and, and, and what it is, but it has put a mental toll. And I think nowadays, how do we stay on top of our game? We have to mentally be healthy and mentally, just mentally be prepared for the things that are coming. Secondarily, it's stuff like this. It's continuing to peer and to partner with people that I respect within my industry, outside of my industry, just within my field. And not only that, I partner with people outside of my field, like RevOps people. I partner with, with channel people. And really understanding how their landscape is changing. As a CIO, it'd be a lot to ask for me to expect to be up to par on everyone's responsibilities, everyone's landscape changing. And I know that's like, well, that's your job. You're the CIO, go figure it out. And it's like, well, I can't do that by myself. And so the way I do that is I do that by partnering with people in different areas and just taking them to lunch, talking on Slack channels, whatever the reason may be. I take those opportunities and I think people sometimes think it might be a waste of time. I'm just too busy to do this. I promise you, this is not a waste of your time and it will add tremendous value to your career. Really understanding how their landscapes are changing and how it's impacting them. Remember, it's always about the individuals. It's not necessarily about always the process or about the system, and all of these things are important, but how do you impact the individual and understanding how their world is changing? Makes me a more effective CIO.

Oh, well, we better just end there because that could not have been better said than that. Thank you so much for, for sharing all of these insights. And I've personally been impacted a lot by this conversation today. I'm dealing with some things that are very relevant for me in real time in this moment. And so thank you so much, Keith. I really, really appreciate your time.

Thank you, Amy Cook. Thank you for inviting me. And I'm Glad to be a part of this.

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