RevTech and Silos - How to Manage the Tech Stack Morass with Sandy Robinson

Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, founder and CEO.

Of the CRO Collective and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of Chief Revenue Officers.

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Now let's go mix it up. Welcome to this episode of the Sierra Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zenna. I'm the founder of the Sierra Collective and thanks again for tuning in. I'm getting a lot more people writing me very nice notes about the episodes, so that's encouraging. You know, every time I produce one of these things, I never know if it's going to be any good or not. You know, I think that was stupid. But you know, it's not them. It's always, it's always me, you know. So anyway, I appreciate it and it's great. I got some really great guests lined up and one of them is here today. Really happy to have Sandy Robinson. The Revenue alliance produced a really great series of revenue focused events and one of them is the Sierra Summit, which many of you know I speak at. And Sandy and I spoke there together and she's great. She's a really great perspective that I so resonated with and I thought we definitely should talk. She's a great speaker, really smart. More specifically, what you're talking about is the revenue stack, or what she calls the rev stack and rev tech, which I think is just a really smart way of looking at the world. So, Sandy, welcome and thanks for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm just very excited. I felt the same way when, when we were kind of sharing the stage and watching your intro about everything centering around the customer. It just really resonated with me and I was like, man, this guy, this guy. We've got to connect and we've got to do stuff and I got to talk to you more. It just, it was just really exciting to kind of hear your perspective as well. But I'm senior vice president of revenue operations and enablement at Patra. We're a tech enabled insurance company. We provide insurance outsourcing from a, you know, we have a tech and a people side of our business. I've been in revenue operations, sales for I Don't want to count how many years, but yeah, it's okay.

You can do it. I'm older than you, so it's all good. You're a young kid.

Enough, enough to. Where I started out selling yellow pages advertising, so that'll tell you.

So did I. So did I.

Did you? No.

Yeah, yeah, I did.

Really? That's awesome.

Everybody and any salesperson at some point got sucked into that one. Because it was such a huge business at the time. They always needed people anyway.

Oh, it was so fun though. Like I.

Those are good days, right? The dial up phone, you know when you're hammering.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We had those phones at our desk and it was like, you know, you're kind of dialing for dollars and then when the other guy gets hung up on you kind of make fun of them and you get really good at cold calling because you don't want to look like an idiot, you know?

Yep, yep. Best way to train, right? Full cycle salespeople. You don't have, they don't have many more. Those are an old dying breed.

I know, I know.

So let's talk a bit about Revtech and the notion of it. I'd love just if you could explain a bit your general perspective or philosophical perspective on this idea and how you got to it and you know, why it is that you're on the speaking circuit talking about this and how it relates to not only your job but, you know, other things you're trying to accomplish.

Yes, it's. It's a lot. Right. So I, I realize that in, in doing the job that I do over the years, you know, technology has obviously evolved and folks get different tools, they have their budgets and they go out and kind of buy a tool because they want to solve a problem. And what I found is that tools tend to one, create kind of this attachment to your almost like your self worth. Like I have this tool, it's set up well, you know, I'm. And then inevitably these tools don't always work with each other or marketing team will have one tool, a sales team will have another and it just kind of gets out of control. So the whole idea of Revtech is it's revenue technology and I've kind of defined it as any system that directly or indirectly influences the customer buying journey at any stage of the life cycle. And so, you know, as a rev ops leader, a sales ops leader, marketing, a CRO, you have different tools, you know, primarily CRM, but there's a ton of them out there to, you know, function and to drive revenue. Like ultimately that's what they're supposed to do. But a lot of times they end up causing people pain or they cause data silos, they cause friction. And as a rev Ops leader, it's almost like a means to an end. Right. Like, I've got to have the tech dialed in and set up, but I don't want that to be my core job. So I try to talk to folks to say, like, in your organization, if you can sell this idea of rev tech, that it's really about the customer, it's not about the CRO owning something in their organization, and it's going to help your customer journey and focus on the customer life cycle. It kind of breaks down some of those barriers, in my opinion, and, and helps to really do more of an alignment in an organization, not just from a budgeting perspective, but from a like, should we do it? Perspective.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Of course. I know we were very aligned on this particular topic. I think the interested to hear your perspective on the challenges that come with this. Right. Most of my clients just had a client conversation yesterday where, you know, most of them are just sort of making very, let's say, impulsive, uninformed decisions about the way in which they structure their businesses. I think there's this sort of, I don't know, hidden blueprint somewhere, like a bible for companies, and they all just look at it and they just all build their companies the same way. The reason why a lot of these companies look the same is some of it makes sense, some of it's been proven to be work, that it works, and so they're repeating models that work. But other. A lot of it is just stuff that got. People got lucky. You know, it's. It doesn't mean it necessarily was because that structure worked. It was because there's a lot of other factors that went into why that worked. And people are just looking at reverse engineering a company structure and saying, I'll just do what they did. And then it doesn't work. And it's like, well, I don't get it. I did what they did and say, well, no, you didn't. There's a lot of other things you're probably not looking at. And technology tends to be a boiling, you know, pit for this because, you know, technologies are insidious. You know, once you pick one, you're sort of stuck with it. It's very difficult to unplug, you know, rip out the cords of a technology, especially the type you and I are talking about they become, you know, they seep into every or of the business. So, you know, if. Sure, I'm sure. If you had the luxury of working with companies early enough, you can just give them a whole roadmap and say, this is how you should do this. But it doesn't happen that way. The time, I suspect, introduced to an organization, they've already got legacy problems. How do you undo that? What's the way that a company can a first get the stakeholders to recognize that this is something that they should do about. Just be frank. I don't think you'd probably have a problem getting people to agree with you. I think they all make think you're making sense, but that doesn't mean they take any action on it. So, so let's say they agree with your point of view, but then they're like, yeah, and I agree with it, but I'm really not going to do anything about it, even though I agree with you. What's the way that you would get somebody to be willing to invest not only the money, but all the pain that goes with revamping.

Right.

Their technology?

Yeah, it's, it's funny you say that because everybody like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. But then when the rubber meets the road, it's like, oh, we're scared, we don't want to change. And I think it comes down to basic change management. And you know, and I'm, I've just recently kind of taken over the reins at a company with a lot of legacy systems and challenges and change is hard. Right. And even if we're doing it in a very inefficient way, it's the devil you know, it's what you're used to. So people will always tell me what I want to hear in a meeting. And I'm very, you know, good at getting people to agree with me. But when it comes down to, okay, we need sign off on the budget, we need to take this risk, it's getting people comfortable with the risk of change. What are all the things that, that come with the risk? So, for example, let's say you want to switch over a tool from one tool to another for a number of reasons. You know, I'll typically switch a tool because it doesn't work well with the CRM. That's, you know, if it works well with the CRM, then I'm going to say let's, let's keep it and try to fix it. If it doesn't connect with the CRM, it doesn't integrate Then I'm going to say, we need to get rid of it. But it's really fear of the thing that they know. And then there's always a misperception of, oh, everybody uses it and everybody loves it. And it's like, well, you know, let me show you some data that says otherwise. So there's a lot of perceptions that come behind it. I've had a sales manager make a completely disruptive change because he was like, literally the only power user of the tool, but he, you know, he kicked and screamed the loudest. So therefore, you know, the change didn't actually happen. So have to, you know, kind of go back to plan B. So it's really just that, that understanding each individual's needs, it's just like a sales process. It's like consultative selling, like going to each stakeholder and saying, like, you know, hey, if you change, here's the benefit, here are the risks, here's what we're doing to mitigate the risk. But the greater good is it impacts the customer. And I think some folks come into organizations and try to boil the ocean. You know, if you're a consultant, it's easy to do because, you know, you can come in, tell them what they need to do, and, you know, if they don't do it, it's on them. But if you're an employee in an organization, it's a little bit harder. And I think that's the frustration when I talk to folks at conferences is how do I actually, you know, you know, enact that change? And. But I think it just comes down to communication, collaboration, and mitigating risk and teaching folks that, you know, the. The perception is one thing, but it's overall change management. And do you have a sound implementations plan? Do you have a realistic timeline? Do you already have the process built? Like, why are you getting the thing? Why are you making the change? Is it because a process is broken? And if it is, then you need to fix the process first, not put a band aid on it. So. But yeah, it's hard in the. The older the company is, the more tools there are, the more people who own the tools, the. The more difficult it is to get that alignment in an organization.

Thank you so much again for listening to the Sierra Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the Sierra Collective communication strategy, and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible.

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A aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even a old salty CRO and you're looking to either become a chief revenue officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a chief revenue officer. We offer the CRO Accelerator course. It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a 15 week course that is populated by aspiring chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator course. It's people who are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader, or even rev ops leader. And they either want to move into the C suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. The serial Accelerator course, we kick off the next one in May, mid May 2025. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn. Just DM me CRO accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information to give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO accelerator course, 15 week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it, it's been great. And you'll see some more information about it on the website.

Thanks. Everything you're saying resonates. I think if I'm listening, the problem that we're running into here is again, it's one of the things that, you know, it's like polls. You know, if you run a poll, it's easy to get people to give you the answer that you want, whether they really believe that to be true or not. And polls are clever because they're designed in a way to get the answers that they want so they can create them narrative they want. And I think the same thing occurs with something like this. And this is why I make that distinction or that analogy. And that's because if you went to every organizational group inside of a company and you asked them if the customer is important, of course they're all going to say yes, right? Who's going to say no? I mean, you know, you'd be fired if you say the customer is not important. But there's probably some to some degree a lot of people would just even agree that the customer is important. But Then if you try and take their dashboard away from them, they just love so much. All of a sudden, you know, the customer is not that important anymore. Because I really like working with this tool. And you know, for a lot of reasons. I mean, one is some software is design better, right? Whether it works or not is sort of not part of it. It's the way that I interact with it. So if I have a particular piece of technology that I use and I like the way they built it because it's easy to use, or the interface is bespoke or whatever, it might be a lot of other reasons why people are very accustomed to the tools that they use. And switching to a new tool is, you know, it's a new tool, it's new learning, it's a new behavior, it's a new interface, it's, you know, there's a lot of emotion that comes up for people when they're being asked to be in new environments. It's so different than like if, you know, if you go leave your house and you go to a different place for a month, you know, all of a sudden you have to kind of acclimate to look at the kitchen, you know, in a new shelving unit, you know, in a different set of drawers. You know, it's like you have to kind of change your brain in ways that are, we don't want to. It's, it's a lot of work. And those things all you're talking about have very little to do with whether the tools work or not. And I think that, you know, going to the rank and file is the place where you need to change hearts and minds because they're the ones that use this stuff every day. So if I go to the CEO or even the CTO and I say, look, you know, ultimately I think that they're typically, and I don't mean all of them, but most CEOs and CTOs are generally more strategic thinking about the business. They're looking at the bigger outcomes and how the things are making a difference on the bottom line. But the people in the middle of the organization, they don't. And it's not because they don't care, it's just that they're worried about their own day to day work. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's sort of. I am asking this because I'm curious to know how, because you're right, this is a change management thing. Really. How do you create enough of a ripple effect across an organization to have them evaluate their Rev tech such that they're willing to like undo existing agreements, undo existing contracts, undo existing infrastructure. I mean, man, I've had people talk about moving to a different CRM and it's, it's like earth shattering for people. They'd much rather deal with the problems than do that.

Yep.

So what are your. Like, how do you deal with those things?

Yeah, I mean it's, it's tough. I got, you know, I got a kind of outed the other day for saying the word salesforce in a meeting because, you know, we're a HubSpot shop and there's, there's challenges. You know, HubSpot's a great tool but for different business needs and pricing and things and there's just, there's some limitations there. And, and so it's a, it's a perception thing. You know, there was a, you know, decision at some point to, to over and, and you know, so it's, it's, it's definitely a sensitive topic. But I think, I think back to like. And I, I've heard. I talked to someone the other day who's still dealing with this or just recently got off of Classic. I don't know if you've ever worked in Salesforce Classic and there was a time where like you had. Everybody had to move over to lightning and for a long time you could flip between views in Salesforce. Right. And. But the admins, it drove all the admins crazy because the new reporting, everything was lightning and building but people just refused to flip over until we forced it to go away and then they. They couldn't do it.

Yeah. Given a choice, they'd rather stick with what they're comfortable with than the new.

Thing, even though it's worse and more clunky and you know, because they're used to it. They're used to it. And you know, I do onboarding and you know, I'll get folks where Microsoft shop. I'll get people over from, from G Suite and they like, you know, for the first three weeks just freak out like using, you know, dealing with Outlook and dealing with add ins. You know, if you're coming from a G Suite shop. So it's changed now they're forced to do it because they don't have a choice or at a new company with new tools. So I'll like literally do like therapy sessions with them to say, hey, here's how you can make Your view in Office365 kind of look like Gmail and you know, kind of help them through their first Couple of their first couple of weeks. But yeah, it's, it's tough. So. But just an example of something that I'm doing right now. You know, in our organization we, we have a really, really huge operations organization and the sales team and marketing teams all in HubSpot. The rest of the company is in Monday and it's a very siloed, there's no communications, no data. So when I first started I said, well, you know, obviously I'm not going to boil the ocean and get everybody on a central centralized CRM in a matter of months. So I started working with our implementations team who handles all the go lives. So we already have a handoff process with them. So I started from a customer journey perspective, like here's our, here's our sales process, here's our marketing process. Now let's talk about our handoff process. We rename that, we rebuilt stages, we define roles and responsibilities. And then I'm like, last step is get you guys into HubSpot because we needed to tie the tracking of our go lives and we needed to improve the Go live rate. So the problem I was trying to solve was generate more revenue quickly, reduce cancels. But what I learned through my problem is one, we had a disjointed handoff process. We were disconnected by systems and we weren't tying back the Go Live status to the deal. So we didn't really know kind of what happened in the black hole after we sold the deal. So it was a number of problems to solve. One of them was working with the implementations team to get them into the CRM because we needed their communications, we needed to see their calls. And so it just took me working outside of my CRO Org with the head of the operations and the head of team. And now we've expanded our HubSpot contract to include the service hub where in process. We've finished the process design, we finished the administrative design. Now we're in a training phase for the managers and then we're going to roll in the rest of the consultants over February, March. So we're taking a small group of 30 people, bringing them in, but it's connecting a process, it's bringing the communications in. So that's the first step in pushing out to the rest of the organ, the rest of the operations team. So our plan is to prove this out as successful and then take the next group of people and then have this be an iterative plan over the next. You know, essentially it's probably going to take two years to get you Know, everybody kind of in, in operating in the same place and having the communications and phasing out some of the CRM activities that are happening in Monday where they should be in the CRM in a centralized place. So that's an example of, you know, change management. I went to the coo, work with him, work with his team, and we're doing it chunks at a time versus saying voila.

Everybody's yeah, because you can't boil the ocean. Anyway, I think that probably would never sell through. So I, I think I applaud the approach which is let's try it in certain areas and you know, create success stories that we can then, you know, prove out the model, blah, blah.

Well, and the data, don't forget the data because I'm going to improve the go live like I believe fully this is going to drive revenue faster and improve our, you know, our time from, you know, close of sale to go live, right.

So I mean those are sort of metrics that you want to use as proof points, right? So that goes to my, my next I guess question slash point, which is the, the way that I've found that these sort of initiatives that seem dauntingly just too difficult to even fathom are usually substantiated is when you first can demonstrate how the current system is resulting in things that they don't want. Right. So you have to be able to do that. Right. So you know, what we're doing with our clients is, you know, we're looking at things that sort of encompass technology, but they're more all encompassing, like the entire revenue process, like all the systems and organizational structure and all that stuff. And so like you, like we have the same problem in that, you know, it's not hard for me to get people to agree with my general premise. Everyone's like, yeah, it makes perfect sense. I'm seeing that happen. It's like we said, it's hard to get them to take action on it. So the step that we employ, which I suspect is probably similar to what you would employ is well, why don't we see how bad it really is, right? So it's a theory, right? I mean I have a theory here, I've got credibility. But we don't have proof, right? Let's get proof, right? Pay me X perform this assessment that's very specific and I'm, you know, usually I'm pretty right, you know, because it's not too hard to discover problems with this stuff is I'll yield a report that will demonstrate to you monetizable risks that you have in your current system that now that's presented now all of a sudden a case can be made. Right. Because all of a sudden money, money talks. Right?

Right.

If I, if I see that the way that I got things set up despite my love for this particular dashboard is losing me money or it's creating churn in my customers or et cetera, then, you know, it's easy for me to refute someone's love affair they have with a specific piece of software, when in fact I'm seeing that its use is creating an outcome that's negative to our bottom line. So that's what I think, you know, is the only way you have to get somebody to determine that, you know, this is compelling enough for us to invest in an exploration to determine if in fact what we're doing is costing us money. It really is what it is. It's costing us money.

Right.

And that money could be a lot of ways it could be translated to lack of efficiencies. People aren't working as, as effectively as they can. Maybe my opex is too heavy. I don't need this many people. I can probably work with a lot less people. I'm losing customers, we're not charging enough for customers, or we're losing a pipeline. You know, churn, you know, things that I think if you can demonstrate. How do you do that? Like, what's the way that you produce evidence to support your thesis?

I mean, I jump. First thing I do is jump right into the CRM and just run an analysis. That's the first thing I did when I got over to Patra is like, you know, okay, what are the current sales results? You know, everything from average deal size to sales cycle time to, you know, how long the deal has been in the system. You know, so what are they actually using it for? Are they logging in? Are their apps connected? I mean, I just went through a full. And you'll inevitably find something ugly and. Right. I mean, you're, you're, you're going to. It took me, you know, literally less than five minutes to, you know, kind of get an assessment of what was happening. I just, you know, going into the analytics tool and just, you know, seeing what's there and what's happening, what's not happening. So I think it's, it's pretty easy to find, you know, when you're jumping into the systems and then, you know, asking people, like asking, you know, okay, well, why asking the sales managers? What are your biggest problems? I put a quick survey out When I started at Potra, for the sales folks to say, you know, like, where are you spending your time? And most of them are spending their time in spreadsheets and going into multiple systems because our data is in a lot of different places and it's a lot of, it's just in spreadsheets, in people's email inboxes. So I think starting with just real basic metrics, like, you know, what, what is your, what is your, you know, close ratios, stage to stage. You know, I figured out the stages weren't sequential and people were just start at stage four. They weren't even putting deals in the pipeline. They were just kind of throwing them in at the end. And the ones that were sitting there had been there for, you know, 200, 300 days. So. So I think getting those analytics and then just saying, you know, what are some small tweaks? Because a lot of times it's just a very small tweak that you can do to make an improvement, right? It's just some. Something that, you know, maybe, maybe not connected or some person that's not getting informed or something that wasn't updated. But yeah, just, you know, kind of getting some of those basic core metrics. Because if the data isn't in there, that means they're not putting something in there, you're not capturing it. So you have to kind of see what's out there first.

Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free please to share the cross like podcast with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here and want to get the word out to as many people as possible. And your, your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bi monthly group of six seasoned Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer Board of Directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Master's Councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own Board of Directors of Chief Revenue Officers, it's a private confidential conversation that we have. It's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other Chief Revenue Officers you can talk to and say, hey, I'm working on this. Or have you guys figured that out? Or, I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with Chief Revenue Officers. Chief Revenue Officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job, and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DME masters or master's Counsel, and I'll follow up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there, and thank you.

Agreed. So who. Who do you think is a stakeholder here? Is it. Is it the Revenue Operations leader? Is it. The Chief Revenue officer is the head of sales?

Like, who's the person you think really.

Not is, but should be the one who's running or in charge of this particular decision?

I mean, I think that it needs to be sponsored by the entire C suite or it doesn't work. You know, ultimately the, you know, if your org, you know, has a CRO or a C. It just depends on the org structure, you know, there. I guess, theoretically, they'd be ultimately, ultimately accountable for, you know, what. What I call the revenue engine. Right. But in terms of the decision making, you know, the Rev Ops leader should be advising, like, what should happen. And there needs to be C suite sponsors, sponsorship. That's when it doesn't work. So, you know, when I was at Nimbus, I took my. When I first kind of came up this idea with Revtech, the whole idea was like, I needed to get the C suite on board. And our CEO invited me to their little meeting and allowed me to present my idea that we needed to consolidate because I found a number of systems that we could get rid of. There were, like, four project management tools. It was crazy. So I was like, I had a great boss who, like, let me kind of run, run my sphere of control, but outside of that, things were, you know, really owned by operations and project management stuff. So I needed to get up to that C suite level and get them all bought. In that one, we're spending money on duplication. So I put together a deck that, you know, just started out with our problems that we were trying to solve. And I had a number of tools that I was able to say we can get rid of if people can, you know, get outside of their egos, like, these three tools do the same thing. And so I came up with a pretty sizable money, to the tune of six figures, to say, like, I can off the top, reduce this in our budget next year and bring these processes together and improve our communications and reduce the number of meetings because people are in different systems. So I had this. I essentially pitched the C suite on that, you know, they needed to sponsor the project, and I needed money for a headcount to help me do it. And I was successful when I. When I did that. And that's when I kind of. Of took this Rev Tech idea because they were so bought into it. And we did make the changes we. We went through. But it wasn't until I went to the C suite and got that buying, got that actual sponsorship. Literally. The COO at the time, she was like, all right. And the cmo, they were like. Both of them were like, all right, everyone pull up the couch cushions and get Sandy some money so she can execute this plan, because we need to do this. And so it wasn't until that time that I was able to get them. And I appealed to their greed and the fact that, you know, I threw some data up there that said, you know, we basically suck today and you're paying for tools that you shouldn't be. Because, I mean, I had. I literally put three project management tools, and the head of product was in there. I was like, you guys are using this tool. I won't name the tools right now because people freak out.

And then there was a crew and a Monday, and.

Yeah, this. Okay, yeah, it was. There were three. And then we even had two instances of Monday. And I was like, they're all fine.

It's just. Pick one, you know, that's all it is, you know?

Yeah, it doesn't. Doesn't matter. And so, like, if you just got rid of two of them, I see that a lot.

I see that a lot. I see crazy things like that. I see groups inside the organization using a different tool to manage their projects that are outside of what everybody else is. We like it better. Or, you know, just. What happened was they hired somebody who uses it all the time, and they made that suggestion to the group. And there's all these really strange little pockets of authority that go on in little silos like this, right? Or you have a group of people are working on a project, and there's someone who's in charge of it. That person has some sort of endowed authority to make that decision and just says, we're going to use Asana, which again, not to knock it, it's fine. Everyone says, okay. And then no one steps in and goes, steve, listen, no, you know, our company uses this, you know, how are we going to extrapolate that into the rest of the organization? And they create these little small factions and that sort of goes to, you know, my premise, which is if my, my, my point of view on this whole topic, if you don't have someone in charge of the whole revenue operation, these things are going to happen. Because if somebody has to basically make these decrees, right, and have the authority and the autonomy and the control to be able to say, everybody. All right, look, I know there are going to be some, you know, rogues here and some mavericks that want to go out and bring in your own, your technologies and stuff, and I get that. But, you know, here are the tech that we're going to use for the following categories, right? We do, we're at this house, we're a, we're in Asana house, we're a HubSpot house, right? And that's it. And I know everyone's going to get all upset, but, you know, I have to make these decisions because, you know, we have to interoperate and we can't have fragmented technologies floating around here. I bet I've seen this before. You do a, an audit, let's say, of your company, you find all these weird credit cards on file with all these weird platforms that some guy in some mid manager level just went and paid for it themselves. They were frustrated and now you're using it and you know, company data is in it and it's like, how do we get this? Well, Bob picked it one day and I, you know, it's tough because on one hand, and I think this is where interesting part of it too is this, let's go. Like the evolution of a company is.

There'S a point where you sort of.

Want people to have that, that, that nimbleness that you want, you want to encourage them to make decisions and you know, be proactive and remove friction because we have to move. But then there's a point where that stuff becomes really a problem. All of a sudden everyone's making decisions. There is no, the friction is removed to the point where now no one's on the same page. And I, I see that our business model when we're implementing is designed to help mitigate the change between, let's say the startup pre complexity phase to the post growth stage complexity phase, which is where those things start to happen. All of a sudden it's like, okay, guys, I know that we've been asking you all to be really intrepid and bold, but, you know, we have to kind of cut the, you know, because now, you know, if you have too much flexibility, you might make a decision that interferes. So we do have to create some standards and guidelines, and we have to make a decision. There's probably some technology council that should be created at around 15 million in revenue. Okay, we are a HubSpot house. We are a Monday house, you know, and. All right. And I just think you got to double down on these things. And it's probably a really worthwhile exercise to have just some organization go through an audit and find out, like, how many errant technologies are floating around with subscriptions in them.

You know, I did that. I did that audit at Nimbus. And, you know, it was funny because I work with the finance team and I got, you know, I said, I need the credit card subscription, the recurring credit cards, because I know there are other accounts out there. And we found them. They were automated. You know, we found like 10 more tools that people had, you know, a subscription of $20 a month to that they were using outside of, you know, whatever the other tools were. And it was. It was very easy to find. And. But I. I pushed forward that audit myself because I was trying to come up with money to say, like, you guys need to back me on this Revtech thing. I know people are doing bad things that you don't even know. And, you know, and so I kind of pulled that through and it was. It was impactful, but someone's got to do it. You know, the it. The head of the IT department should be doing it. Or, you know, if there's a cio. You know, a lot of companies don't have a cio, but those are the kind of things that they should be running. Or if you have a procurement process, and even in the procurement process, this is where I jumped in, is like, yeah, everybody has budget. Yeah, it meets, you know, whatever security criteria. We vetted three vendors, blah, blah, blah. But we need to answer the question, should we do it? Should we do it? Does this make business sense? Do we have another tool? And that's the step that needs to go in. But it gets out of control fast. To your point, like a startup, you know, they. It starts out very innocently. I need to get this thing to get it done. I get the free version, then I got the team version, Then now it's the enterprise version, because we've grown. Now you've hired three more VPs in who got their own tools, and it just. It. It gets out of control, like, super, super fast.

This is like the crazy insidiousness of the freemium model, which is brill. I mean, it works. I got to give them credit. It's no question. But it makes ditch too easy to sign up for software. And then, you know, what happens is all of a sudden, you add one team member, and it's like, yeah, I guess I can afford another 15. 15 bucks a month. Why not? I'll add Maria to the team. And then bam, now you're. Now you're a paid user. You get the pro, you know, pop up every once in a while, and it says, you can get these three features. You know, it's. It's incredible how smart these companies are. And, you know, it's very simple for the human being to get behaviorally indoctrinated into that timeline and all of a sudden find themselves later, all of a sudden being a power user of something that they just wanted to try once because they needed. You know, I'm guilty of this.

Yeah.

You know, and the implications for me are different in that, yes, it cost me more because I have a smaller company, but I'm not using as many things. But if I get a pro version for, like, you know, 25 people, that's a lot of money that's being spent on something that may not be even integrated or utilized properly. No one's been trained on it properly. So, you know, like, I want to make sure we're kind of wrapping up, up in a way that makes this ties a bow on this. Right. So I think we're certainly in agreement that the RevTech issue is one that can very quickly get out of control. And it's a big area for misalignment in data misalignment and process misalignment. And it's one that is difficult to entrench. Right. So I guess I'd say is, you know, what are some of the top three or four things that you'd say? Let's say someone listening to this right now, and they're saying, oh, my God, I get this is exactly what I'm dealing with right now. And how do I. I. What do I do? Like, what's the first thing I can do to create some movement around changing this before it gets out of control?

I like to Start with the customer journey. It, it's the, to me, the, the easiest way to bring this conversation up without kind of coming in in a threatening way. Because anytime you go set up a meeting with somebody about a tool, start the conversation, it immediately is like a defensive line, like conversation. So I think every company should have some sort of a customer journey map. The rev ops leader should own that. You know, they should have one. Right? And if, if you're a leader and your rev ops leader doesn't have some sort of customer journey or process map or blueprint, you need to get one and work on one. But it's a great way to map out all the technology you have, who owns it, and just being inquisitive and getting that kind of out into the world in your company and just starting there and then ask questions like, oh, well, why did you get that tool? When did you get that tool? You know, how does it work for you? You know, does, do all the teams use it? Do you think they should use it? And just literally starting from your inbound lead process, going to your marketing team and then, you know, to your sales leaders and into, you know, if you have project management, any sort of onboarding process, and the customer success teams and really just mapping out, you know, their journey and what tools they use and just kind of starting there. And inevitably, people engaging go, oh, well, yeah, well, what do you use? And it just breaks down the barriers. Like, I, I, I do this, and I find that because you want their input, like, well, where do you come in in our sale? You know, where do you come in in the sales process? Where should you come in? And then inevitably you start talking about the tool. So I think that's a great approach to it. And to answer your earlier question, like, you should empower your rev ops leader to own that. And I think that, as you know, the true rev ops leader should be more of an advisory role, not just, you know, okay, here's, here's some tech. Go administer it. You know, that's really a means to the end of driving revenue. Right? So if they're starting with this customer journey and going throughout the organization to really tie that all together, I think that's a great way to start anyway, to start the conversation.

Good stuff. So you're on the speaking circuit, you're talking a lot. What other things are up to and what are you trying to accomplish? How can people help you?

Yeah, so I'm having fun. I've been working on some, some kind of new content around this whole idea of Taking, you know, everybody has sales methodology or some sort of, you know, training or consultative selling, whatever the approach is, right. You know we've got spin selling, we've got Challenger. There's you know, in a SaaS maybe it's like demo to win, we're rolling out command of the message. And you know my background, my more recent background is you know I have a master's degree in training and education. And you know, how do you sustain these things? Right. We spend money, companies spend $70 billion I think in the US a year on training. An average of like 1500 per salesperson and they have these event based training and now you know, kind of post Covid everybody's doing in person stuff and you know, if you've ever been through one of these things, you've probably been through many of them. I have in my career. How many have sustained and are successful And I think that I've had experiences rolling out great successful programs and really horrible programs. And the difference is in the strategy and the rollout, right. One kind of going back to Revtech, having the C suite true buy in and support not just sponsorship but living and breathing it. But really this whole idea of tying the methodology to the process, to your internal processes, that customer journey mapping out out like literally when does each item happen and then enabling it in the technology. If it's not everywhere a salesperson goes, they are not going to consistently do it. If the sales leaders aren't consistently coaching and they don't have the tools to do it, it's gonna, you know, it's gonna end up, you know, getting, you know, getting caught in the trap of the forgetting curve. Right. Like because after you know, 30 days like you forget 90% of everything you learned in a, in an event based training. So it's really just tying that all together is the, is the way to continually see it and have it be top of mind. But if you don't have all three of those components, the methodology, the process and the technology like working together, it's going to fail. Like that's, I mean I've just seen it. So that's, that's kind of some of the new stuff that I've been working on and excited about. You know, some of the work that I've been doing and rolling out consultative selling and medpic and things and trying new things and trying to get people engaged and to continue and to develop and coaching and, and everything.

That's great. Yeah, I kind of put a bow on that and emphasize how I believe maybe in being a bit opportunistic. But the CRO really needs to be ultimately the call general on this stuff. Mainly because, you know, if you look at all the people that are all the stakeholders you're talking about, having a leader who runs revenue be the person who sets forth all these directives and owns it is really going to make it a lot easier. Well, great. So I hope I see you in New York in March again. The Chief Revenue officer summit is March 20th and that whole event is I think like the whole week week in New York and we'll have fun there. And really, again, thank you so much for coming on. Again, love your content and I think what you're saying makes so much sense and I really appreciate you spending some time with me today.

I really appreciate you having me. I appreciate the discussion. It's fun and love the back and forth and look forward to seeing you in New York as well.

All right, great. Thank you for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. The CRO Collective's mission is to help CRO succeed and help founders and CEOs build CRO ready organizations. You can find out more information about our services@the crocollective.com that's the crocollective.com and we look forward to having you join us next time. RA.