Olga Traskova: Navigating the Dance of Evolving RevOps Leadership Skills

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 Cook, and I am so excited to welcome Olga Truskova, Head of RevOps at BirdEye. Olga, how are you today?

I'm doing wonderful, and thank you so much for having me here, Amy. Excited to chat with you now.

I am so excited to chat with you as well. It is such a pleasure. Um, we had the opportunity for all of our listeners to chat yesterday, and I was Absolutely. Just so excited to have this conversation about not only where RevOps has been, but where it's going. And Olga, what I'm so excited about is that you're at the forefront of all of this change and all of this exciting movement.

I am. I am at the forefront. And sometimes I feel like I'm in the trenches, in the crossfire.

Yes, I'm sure. Because one thing that I've learned from doing this podcast is that You guys in RevOps are truly the heroes behind the curtain making it all happen. And oftentimes, even though you are one part strategy, one part operations, and one part tactics, and you're involved in every aspect of the business, when things are going right and everything is smooth, I feel like like people don't really mention RevOps that much, right? It's when there's an issue and the house is on fire, or is that changing?

It is changing and it's great, right? So we are transitioning from being reactive. That has been the world for, for many years when RevOps has been established as a newer function, right? And we, in most companies, have been reacting to sort of solving different types of problems, putting together processes as a reaction to something that were not— some things that were not working, working well, or teams not performing. Now companies more and more realize the, of course, the strategic role that revenue operations is playing. And we want to be not reactive but proactive. And having that sit at the table when we're planning for the next year, when we are forecasting for the next year, when we're putting together board, Dex, etc. So the game is changing, but with this uncertainty in the markets and the very fast world out there, fast-paced world out there, I can— I mean, honestly, we are still in a very much reactive world. The goal is, of course, to get out of there. I don't think it's ever possible for the operations. It's in the name. We are operations. We need to be agile. We need to be flexible. You know, we need to be ready for any kind of uncertainty.

No, I love that. I love how you, how you said that there's always, there's always going to be operations, right? But as we can move from being reactive to proactive and even more strategic in terms of the way that RevOps is seen, I think it only benefits the business, right? And I think that it's so exciting that you are kind of at that nexus point between all the different departments. Right. And as things are changing, what do you think is essential to be successful these days? Have you seen the difference in, in people or processes or technology changing?

Absolutely. And that's what I love about revenue operations and operations in a, in a, in a broader sense. We are in the middle of it all. You have visibility into pretty much any process that's happening in the company. Sales or marketing or products or finance, capacity planning, resources allocations, risk mitigation, you're in the middle of it all, which is great, keeps you up on your toes. And we are transitioning, right? The broader sort of our scope becomes, the different sort of skill set is required for us to be valuable and to be resourceful and to be out there to help our organization. Operations. And what I'm noticing now is a complete shift, you know, and like a new type of an operations person emerging. We are shifting from— look at my background, right? I'm in RevOps, but my background is marketing and marketing operations. Marketing is always going to be in my heart. Leads, love them, top of the funnel, all of that good stuff. Right, marketing attribution. Then there would be folks that will come from being in enablement or BDR position, sales positions or sales ops positions into revenue operations, maybe some finance people, analysts. But what I'm seeing now, and this is sort of a demand from the organizations right now, is that we need to become more technical. And this is in the sense when we're becoming some sort of like business IT where we manage so many systems that famous infographic of the number of applications that we have in the ops world, right? And you look 10 years ago, there were maybe like 200 different tools. Now it's thousands, right? And we are sort of required to understand and know most of them because when your CMO, your chief sales officer is asking you, okay, how do we solve this problem? How other companies are solving this problem? Are there any tools that are solving this problem? You need to have this, you know, on top of your mind, right? So staying, staying on and up to with the trends and any solutions that are out there, right? That is, that is very much required. That's one thing, like being educated and understanding the market and the landscape of different technologies. And then say you buy it. The question is who's going to manage it, who's going to implement it, who's going to administrate it. And then from there, it's sort of a new, a new skill set emerges of you not just understanding the capabilities and starts with the problem. What are you trying to solve for? And then capabilities of different tools and then actually bringing those tools in and making them valuable, you know, right. And getting the ROI from those tools. So that's what's very, very interesting for me now. And I'm seeing that my team and myself, we need to become more technical than we were even a year ago.

Oh, so interesting. I have seen that just as a marketing leader, the importance of me educating myself about all of the tools as well. For example, like, I realized a few years ago when I was at Simplus that I was never going to make it in the position unless I got Salesforce certified myself. I knew exactly what I was doing. And then I had to go get HubSpot certified, and then I had to go, you know, and I'm not even in operations. But that the whole go-to-market team, I think, is becoming more technical because we have to be, right? Because there's so much with AI and systems. And I mean, I totally agree with what you're saying. And it is for people like me who are older. It is a, it's a leap of faith that learn, that taking the time to learn these things is going to pay off.

So, and this is so inspirational what you were saying, right? Getting to understand your systems and getting certified, which is amazing for me. I think it's also super important because it saves time in the future. You can very quickly realize how one of this, you know, one of these issues or processes can be addressed. And what needs to be done. So it's sort of like you're, you're fast-tracking your future solutioning essentially by understanding what systems can and cannot do, where to go and, and, and look for. So that is, that is absolutely inspiring. And I feel like for the ops person, that is, that is essential.

Oh, well, thank you for saying that. I will say it does, like you said, it does FastTrack solutioning really well because when we can, we can have conversations on different levels, right? Instead of, um, I was just talking with our RevOps person, um, yesterday about this. Instead of talking through like what should the lead sources be and why they weren't importing correctly, we could have them on a different level of like is the integration working properly in this, this way or that way. And so that is a lot of fun to be able to do. I will say also the immense pressure that you must feel as well as your team to have to know all these systems. Like, how do you even manage that? And I'll bring up an example. Again, yesterday I called up Megan, who is in charge of all of the marketing ops with me and does a lot with RevOps as a whole. And I was like, Megan, I need to know, like, how to do XYZ. And did you do XYZ? And she's like, first of all, Amy, like, I don't even have access to what you're talking about. And I just assumed that she had access to everything and knew everything. And that expectation for me to have for her was 100% unrealistic. And it's a good thing we're besties. But how do you manage that kind of a workload and that kind of a stress level?

The bar is high and expectations are high now more than ever. That is, that is for sure. And you said the A word, which is AI, that I'm personally very scared of because every company out there has something AI, everything's AI. We ourselves as a company also have everything, everything AI. So on top of your basic Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, ZoomInfo, you have to know AI, you know, that is, that, that is a personal challenge for me. I'm still trying to figure out how to fit in this AI into my daily life. You know, I have a gut feeling there's a lot of potential there. I'm very careful. I'm very careful with it. But back to your question, RevOps is a very practical role. Like, you cannot be an operational theorist. That's so true.

Very true.

You have to be in it. So trying out different tools, you know, talking to your vendors, just doing the demos. Learning from your vendors is one of the paths for me. I'm trying to stay close to, you know, the vendors that we have and asking them very practical questions of how your other customers are solving this. Your customer success manager is talking to, you know, dozens of companies, so they potentially would know, you know, workarounds, creative solutions. I'm very close with our Salesforce account manager. We want to see how Salesforce does it themselves, how other companies are doing it. And then also like all the content and the videos and the videos out there, staying on top of that. I do not respond to cold calls, but I do read the emails for you, Wender, and an email. So I then go and I, you know, I can obsess over some new, you know, tools or like looking through websites, looking through their content, sharing that with my team. So for the tools that I do have in my possession, that is absolutely, I go to, you know, my customer success or my account manager. On the other side, for the tools that I do not have, I would go and explore, you know, their websites. I would go and read through LinkedIn to search for solutions. And a lot of that is also networking and engagement within the communities. A lot of times, you know, every week I would have a question from my chief sales officer or CEO even, hey, how other companies are doing this? Have you talked to your peers at, you know, same size companies? How did they solve So through my connections on LinkedIn, I might throw up just a text to someone, hey, can we get on a call? I want to see how you guys are doing this. So this is also super, super important, you know, it's just networking, you know, getting to understand. Again, it's a very practical role. You need to, you need to see how other companies are solving it. And sometimes you don't need a tool. Sometimes you can use your existing, you can get creative, you know, you can use some flows and automations to get to the end goal.

Interesting. I love what you said there about just being able to collaborate, connect. The content's there for the taking and just very practically researching. So as we're trying to find how RevOps can be successful in this new age, Obviously you need to hire team members who can be successful with the requirements. Have you seen, you know, with the business IT group or like who are you searching for now when you need to hire someone?

So I believe in hybrids and hybrid roles, right? So RevOps was created, right, as a function, set up as a function to eliminate silos, to fight silos, to bring in alignment across the organization, all those good things. Then I realized that as we grow, we silo ourselves. We become siloed within revenue operations. Unfortunately, when marketing ops is working on top funnel, customer success ops is working on retention plays, they might step on each other's toes and they might not even realize what's going on on the other side of the, uh, of the, of the, of the process, right? So what I'm working on now within the team is to ensure that everyone is absolutely aware of the entire customer journey, understands all of the stages and the processes within the entire customer journey from, from lead to cash and then from extra cash from the upsells. Right. So they need to, they need to be aware and they need to be able to jump in and help and help their team, team members or, you know, other people within the, within the RevOps team. So we do look for business operations people. We do look for people who worked with the marketing ops but also have analytical experience, people that might have some bit of finance experience but also understand sales ops, right? Variety of different systems. They might have even engineering background because I'm, uh, my marketing ops leader right now comes from the engineering and this is the best, you know, choice that we've made because this person is able to very quickly grasp, you know, those technicalities of operations and train on and learn different systems, you know, and processes. So within the current org, we're looking for people to become hybrids. Every person still focuses on sort they're a part of the customer journey, right? But they need to be absolutely up to speed on what an MQL means and how this MQL can be from the existing customer and how do we route this MQL to an existing customer, what systems are involved and what the rules are behind that, right? What's the backend process for this? I want any executive, any sales leader, any marketing leader come to any person at a RevOps team and get the answers. They don't need to search who to ask this question, you know, they can come to anyone, they can come to a sales ops person, marketing ops person, CS person, analytics person, and ask any question, you know, related to processes, sales process, top of the funnel, whatever, campaign management, and get an answer. That's the eventual goal.

I love that.

That—

I think that the focus on hybrids is so important, and I find that for myself too. Even in, even in a marketing organization, I need to find people who are hybrids as well and who can talk across different functions. Um, well, you are clearly, Olga, at the very top of your RevOps game. Like, it is so fun to talk with you, and it's fun to see how you are changing not only how RevOps is perceived in your own company, but also in an industry that is so new. So how do you stay on top of your game? What do you do to recharge and refresh and stay there on top?

Well, personally, you of course need to have the balance, right? I feel like it's so obvious right now. There is no question about it. You have to get that balance. And we talked about the work-life balance, right? For me, it's more like work-life blending. Uh, so I, I, I do disconnect, but I am also, you know, very often, very often, uh, available. And it's all about like finding what makes you happy and what energizes you, right? Your hobbies. Um, for me, it's dancing. I love, I love dancing. I started during COVID And then becoming obsessed and went from like 2 times a week to 6 times a week. I love it. I mean, and it's just brings you so much energy. I even read the, I even read the, the research about how people who dance are way more happier at work. You know, really?

That sounds like something I need to do.

There is absolutely something about the body moving. And then also keeping those endorphins going, you know, and carrying you through the work day.

Oh, I love it. I used to dance when I was much younger, and then I went into running, and now my knees are not good enough to run, and so now I'm, I'm trying to do walking, but I think I may go back to dancing after hearing you say that. That's amazing.

And look, and hey, it's proven by science. There is— I'm going to find the study, I'm going to share that with you.

Yes, please, I would like that.

We'll put the link to— for our listeners as well. There is a study, it's confirmed, you guys dance, you're gonna be happy and successful.

Dance our way to success.

That's a, that's a great title for, for this podcast.

Well, Olga, thank you again so much for your time and for everything that you're doing for the industry and for everyone around you. So thanks again.

It's been a pleasure. Uh, thank you so much for coming. Business, yes, that's business. Business, yes, that's business.