Winning Together: The Dynamic Partnership of Sales and RevOps

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, the go-to-market cloud. My name is Amy Cook, and I am so So excited to introduce Cody Gaiman, COO of Go-to-Market Operations at Workato, and Andrew Conley, a sales leader and advisor who has led sales for companies like Qualtrics and Workato. How you doing, guys?

Doing great.

I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. It's been fun as it's developed over the past few weeks. You know, first I met with Andrew, and Andrew's like, hey, I've got this really like great buddy, and we have this— we've developed this amazing way to work together between sales and RevOps. And so I've been really excited about this conversation.

Same here. This will be great.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's just start off to, um, like telling me like a little bit about your background. Does that sound good, Cody? Can you start? Give me a little about how you got into business and go-to-market.

Yeah, sounds great. I, I think I stumbled my way into it. I started in consulting early in my career. I realized that tech was having all the fun, so I wanted to jump into tech. I started a company called Vivint here in Utah, worked there for a few years, and got recruited by Qualtrics. I had a 6-year run at Qualtrics. It was phenomenal. And I've been at Workato now 2 years.

Oh, wow. You have really had a string of great successes. With, you know, Vivint and Qualtrics and Workato. That's amazing. Thanks. And I agree, tech is fun. I love working in tech. How about you, Andrew? Tell me a little about your background.

So yeah, I was actually a chemistry major that found my way into sales. And so I joined Qualtrics early on, around 100 employees, and kind of was there for that run-up to over a billion in sales. And so had a good run there, and that's actually where I met Cody. And then I went over to Workato. I was really interested in the iPaaS and the automation space. And I was there for almost 3 years. And now I'm currently advising.

Oh, wow. That is amazing. Well, also an incredible run. I love that we can talk about the amazing Qualtrics run. I remember when— I don't know who it was. Maybe it was you, Andrew. Somebody came into my office in Provo, Utah. And pitched me Qualtrics and it was when it was a little baby company and I'm like, oh, this is really cool. I wish I could afford it. And then because I was just barely starting my startup as well. And so, but ever, you know, it's been really fun to watch that technology develop and the business develop with it. And so how cool that we get to understand the inner workings of how you guys did it. This is incredible. So tell me, first of all, what were some of the challenges? Because just like sales and marketing, RevOps and sales and marketing, everybody's got their own part that they have to play, right? And when it goes smoothly, it's beautiful. And when it doesn't go smoothly, it can be super painful. So how was your relationship to begin with? Was it always easy or were there any challenges that, that were there in the beginning?

So in my opinion, I feel like it's not just the beginning. I think, I mean, Cody's a very likable guy, right? Like I like Cody, but I think when it comes down to sales and RevOps, there's always going to be some healthy friction in my opinion. And for me, what I've found is that, you know, working with Cody early on, the disputes were around, you know, accounts or territory and it was more kind of siloed to the role that I was in with my team and what we were trying to do. But as we've evolved over the years in our careers and also the challenges we've gone up against, there's always going to be challenges. And for me, what's really helped is that long-term thinking. I think sales is very focused on closing business right now, right? We got a quota that we have to hit for the quarter, for the year, and it's very focused on I need this deal now and it has to happen. Whereas I think RevOps is thinking, okay, they're thinking in scale, they're thinking in future repeatability, they're thinking in, you know, what's best for the long term and how you do this efficiently. And so there's going to be some natural tension between those two objectives. But for us, I think what's really helpful is that Cody and I have often honest conversation around, hey, here's where I'm at, where are you at? And we kind of see each other's point of view and try to think long-term together on what's going to be the best decision for the business long-term. So that's been super helpful. But I wouldn't say that just super early on and, you know, we can talk through some of those tension points. But for me, you know, it's not a matter of like, hey, we've nailed it and now everything just flows smoothly. I think it's constant. Constantly evolving as you have new challenges through different stages of growth.

I really like what you said there about, number one, the tension being healthy. Number two, that it's less about working out things in the beginning and more about developing that trust to work things out continuously. What about you, Cody? What was your experience like?

Yeah, no, I think the healthy tension is great. And if you have trust with each other, then I think that's the foundation you build upon to get to a great decision long term. I was fortunate enough, I met Andrew, I think on my first day when I started at Qualtrics coming from Vivint. We had a mutual friend and the mutual friend at Vivint told me, hey, go meet Andrew, he's great over there. And so I met him very early on as well as a few other sales leaders and some of his sales reps. And so they're the first people I knew coming into SaaS. Like I left Vivint, which is more of a hardware tech company, and coming into SaaS, I just wanted to learn and so listen to them. You know, obviously the pain points I think are crucial to listen to with any sales leader. But ultimately we just established a friendship and a trust. And I think for any company, you know, RevOps leaders and sales leaders, as long as the mutual interest is there for the long-term success of the company, you're going to come to the right conclusion. So, you know, Qualtrics, we are fortunate to be equity holders there, at Workato as well. And so I think when you have that build-first mindset, long-term perspective with the company, you know, even though, you know, it might be, you know, painful to have a smaller territory this year, if you see the bigger picture that, hey, we're growing, you know, twice as many sales reps and we're going to go grow 100% this year on the top line, it's going to be better for our equity long term. You can usually come to a good understanding. So yeah, Andrew and I had that very early and also had that at Workato too.

I love that. One of the things that I struggle with personally is I come at it from, you know, I've been a part of many startups. And in the last few years, I've been— I've helped companies go from Series A through acquisition for companies in the past several years, right? Just one after the other. Not big, not big exits like Qualtrics, but decent size, right? So started with Simplus and then PathologyWatch and then Onboard and then Stage Marketing. And so for me, I have this very short-term I gotta get the deals, I gotta kill what I eat mindset. And I've noticed that I sometimes devalue the long-term thinking, not the person, but the long-term thinking that is necessary to sustain a business up to $1 billion. So I— Andrew, I don't know if you've ever experienced that before. You probably don't have that weakness that I do. What would you say in terms of helping get shift into that mindset?

No, it's not easy. And I think everyone goes through it on the sales side. And going back to that, I mean, it's this constant balance of friction. And I think when you think about scale, it's always, what's the future look like? Yeah, territories have to get smaller. Hey, we may have to adjust comp. There's all kinds of painful things that may happen. But I think to Cody's point, the equity piece is helpful, right? So if you have equity in the business, which is common in tech, I think that's helpful. But I also think that you kind of have to trust the process because I think I've seen times where I didn't trust it and we went forward with the decision and I pushed back or, you know, whatever it might be. And then I realized, hey, actually this was painful, you know, and, you know, we actually needed to change territories because then success was consolidated to a single small group of individuals and there's a big group of individuals that didn't have the right territory and that's painful as well. And so I think, you know, I've learned through a lot of mistakes, you know, and so seeing those mistakes helps me kind of understand that while it may be painful in the moment, it's the right call long term. And so, you know, I still— I'm a slow learner, so I'm still making those mistakes. And I'm sure Cody would say I push back a lot. But I think that what's been helpful is like I've seen it play out multiple times to the point where like, okay, this is the right decision. And it gives me a lot more trust in what we're trying to do as far as the long-term decision.

Hmm. I love that. How do you, Cody, develop that trust with your sales leaders? How do you put yourself in their place and realize that they're going to make $0 this year unless you give them the right territories?

Well, I think, you know, it's a fun question. I think you got to start with data, right? I think you got to start with data. I think that was something that we started with at Qualtrics very well, is finding predictable models that worked well with creating territories, that there were statistics behind them, that there was math, we could really explain ourselves well as a RevOps team. You know, it starts with data, but I think it goes back to, you know, having that mutual trust and foundation to build upon because the first model we rolled out, stats model for creating territories, wasn't good. And, you know, we had to iterate on that thing 10 times and it was sales input that gave us the right variables to go test. In the model, right? So I think starting with data, you know, building that foundation of trust, I think is key. But then for me, it's, it's, it's— I've always felt like a salesperson. Like, all my friends are salespeople. Like, I've always felt very close to sales. I think I, I didn't go into sales just because of, uh, you— my upbringing was a little bit different. I was kind of on and off food stamps. I didn't love variability in pay, so I wanted the safer job that was like, you know, operations, pretty safe. I can budget my paycheck.

Mm-hmm.

But I always had that in the back of my mind of like, ah, but I feel like I'm a salesperson. So I think RevOps was perfect for me to be a partner with salespeople, help them make more money and all that good stuff. Um, see their success. I get a lot of joy and fulfillment in seeing others win. And so it was the right spot for me. But I've, I, I think that natural desire that I've always felt like a salesperson was a good starting point. It helps.

Yeah, that seems like that would help so much. So I think what I'm hearing you say is showing that salespeople, despite some people's beliefs, really lean into data, are very, very reasonable and want to just be shown your methodology, right?

Yes.

So what happened when you had that first model and you said that it wasn't good and you took salespeople's feedback? Like, tell me about that experience. How did it go?

Andrew, you want to kick that one off?

Yeah, that, that was rough. I, I remember that, um, I mean, I was on the weekend talking to my team, talking to Cody, um, we, we, we rolled out this idea of zip codes and it was real, really confined in terms of the parameters of the territory. And, um, what was nice is that like we went through the data, my team, all the, the reps, the managers, we're looking at it and trying to understand where does it make sense, where does it not work, so that we can have a data conversation with Cody because we knew he was reasonable if we had the data. If we just said, hey, this territory Torrey's the worst, this sucks, this isn't going to work. We knew that wouldn't get far. And so we were going account by account and categorizing it and showing, hey, these are the percentages and showing that we went through that. But it was a very painful process. But the nice thing was that SalesOps didn't say, sorry, this is what it is. It was very accommodating to say, okay, well, let's listen, let's hear what feedback you have. And this took weeks, maybe months to kind of go through and say, hey, how do we get this corrected? Um, so it was definitely not an easy process and it's, you know, still seared in my memory in terms of like the, the pain that we were kind of experiencing. Cause we're like, whoa, what's gonna happen next year? But what was nice is that I knew that Cody was gonna work to get it right.

Well, I love that too because like Cody seems like a very good listener, right? And, and for you even Cody to say our first iteration was not good is, is very like, I don't know, it's very humble and self-reflective and, and, and it also shows some confidence that you're like, hey, this is part of the process. We're going to get there. We're going to communicate. This is a natural process. And so I think that is something really, really important for me to learn as well, is that, you know, everything's iterative in business, right? And I come at it from a marketing leader where everything's iterative, right? You get bad open rates on one email and you do, you're like, what did, what did we do wrong here? And it could have been one of 10 things, right? So I love that you guys are, have approached it that way. When you develop a plan now, Cody, obviously you've done this so many times. And what are some of your ground rules? Like, are there things that you never do? Like, did you learn from this experience and say, I never approach things from zip codes? Or—

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, that was like, I think our first slide on the roadshow was just like, hey, zip code territories were a bad idea. Let's figure out another way. We don't do zip code territories for that. But yeah, I mean, I think over the years, right, it's been 10+ years since then that that happened. It's, it's a lot has changed, right? So I think, you know, RevOps is, is a job that changes every year, right? I think that that's pretty evident with, you know, in hypergrowth bull mode, you know, it's a whole different game than in a cost-conscious environment that we might be in today. It just, it's wildly different, right? Capacity planning is used to be just an easy math equation with reps, you know, on the ground that are going to do 90% of their quota on average and we're going to hit a number. And now it's more pipeline driven, right? There's always things to learn. So I think my fundamentals would just be to be curious. I think that's the key is like always be learning. It's not going to be the same annual turn every year. And, and my biggest thing is like, listen to Andrew, listen to sales reps, listen to sales leaders because they're on the front lines. They understand what's happening in the moment. And so they're going to know if there's momentum in a certain vertical or, or not. And what sales play or sales methodology is really landing, what messaging is landing in the market. But yeah, I think, you know, are there fundamentals? Probably just being curious. I think that's—

I love that. You know, there's that Ted Lasso, the way that they ended season 1 or 2, season 1, right?

The dart, the dartboard.

Yeah, he's throwing darts and he's like, be curious, not judgmental. That is like That's a mantra for me, and I love what you said there. As you were talking, it made me realize that you're using Andrew's and the sales team's feedback as a data point, as one of your data sources as you're pulling together this model. I think that's a really smart way to look at it as well.

Salespeople, there's no shortage of opinions. So we have—

but they're really good opinions, right? And I've learned as a marketing leader that is As long as I listen to our salespeople, everything's getting better, right? It's when we quit listening is when I think that those silos form, right? So I feel the same way. I feel like salespeople are incredible. I have so much respect. I feel like a salesperson too, Cody, even though I'm marketing. And maybe that's why we are good listeners when it comes to that.

But there's some wisdom that comes with listening too. I'll throw it out there. There's always certain cycles that's that where this healthy friction will come in that I just want to spot out because I do say that friction is important. So one would be, you know, I'm going through it right now, but Q4 forecasts will always look incredibly light for sales leaders because they want the next year's targets. When we're setting those things, be like, oh, it's going to be a bomb in Q4 because of the growth rate, 30-40% on that. Yeah, we're, you're, we're going to miss big time, right? And so, I mean, there's common areas of friction that you have to also be able to call out and be like, that's interesting.

So your BS detector goes up and you're like, you're sandbagging this.

I got it. Yeah, that's all part of the tension, right?

I love it. That is so funny. Well, so you guys are obviously at the top of your game. I could talk with you both for hours about this stuff. It's so interesting. But let me end, just out of respect to your time, with, um, what does each one of you do to stay on the top of your game as a sales leader and as a go-to-market leader? Cody, do you want to go first?

Sure.

I think that I read a ton. I would just say that I read articles every day. I love things that are posted about RevOps Community. I love things from our investors that get posted about the current market. You know, Insight Ventures does some great things that really keep us abreast of what's coming. Um, but I love to stay on top of what's new in tech. Where's the money flowing? Uh, why? Things like that. So I, I don't know, I read a lot. I'm trying to get into podcasts. Andrew's been getting me into some podcasts here recently that are maybe going to help as well.

But go-to-market, that's, that's going to be your favorite, right?

Absolutely. Table stakes here, but that would be for me.

Uh, yeah, that's awesome. What about you, Andrew? What do you do?

Yeah, for me, I think, you know, sales is constantly stressful. It's always, you know, what have you done for me recently? And for that end, I think for me to maintain kind of the top of my game, I have to find ways to de-stress. And for me, that's often exercising. You know, I like to get outside, I like to work out, I like to go to the gym. I found a hack and I know I'm going to sound like a tech bro saying this, but cold plunging is actually something that helps me de-stress a ton. It's 3 minutes. It's the most stressful thing you can do in 3 minutes, I think. But after that, I just feel this, you know, super release, and I just feel great. And so for me, you know, in the stressful end of quarters, that's been super helpful. Um, so that's what I enjoy doing.

That is awesome. You know, I've never done a cold plunge, but it sounds like having a baby.

I couldn't speak to that, but, uh, it's definitely not as rewarding, but it, uh, it's great.

That's amazing. I love it. Well, guys, thank you so much for your time. What a wonderful example both of you are for how how it works, what to do to make it work, and your success speaks for itself. And so thank you for coming on and giving us some really great insider tips about how to approach this psychologically, emotionally, and tactically.

Thanks, Amy Cook.

Thank you, guys. Business is that business.

Business is that business.