The Mindset for the Most Effective Rev Ops Teams with Sean Lane and Laura Adint

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu. And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

Tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you and your marketing operations career.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com, powered by all those MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartman, joined today by Just one of the 3 Amigos, Mike Rizzo. Still recovering, as we know from our last— yeah. Uh, but also getting ready for Moxapalooza 2025, which—

Actually in planning mode.

Yeah. So if you're listening to this in late 2024, is, are there still early bird pricing on tickets for 2025 or is that done?

Ooh, it's a good question.

Yeah. By the time this comes out.

Yeah. The super early bird will be done, uh, on the 22nd of November, but the early bird rates will be available. For quite some time. So take advantage of it, folks.

Yeah. All right. So that by the time this gets out, it will be past that super early bird, but that's all right.

All right.

So joining us today are Sean Lane and Laura Adent, co-authors of the book, The Revenue Operations Manual. Sean is currently a founding partner at Beacon GTM. Prior to founding Beacon GTM, Sean held several operations leadership roles at Drift, including both field operations and sales operations, among others. Prior to that, he worked at Upserve, starting as a customer success manager and rising to director of revenue operations and a bunch of stuff in between. Laura is currently in operations at a financial services firm. Prior to that, Laura served as vice president of field operations and sales development at Drift. Prior to Drift, Laura held several leadership roles in sales strategy and operations within companies such as SugarCRM and Xilinx, among others. She has also been in operations-focused consulting roles. And had roles in finance and audit. So near and dear to my heart, I'm a fan of finance. So Laura, Sean, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us. Excited to be here.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's—

Sugar CRM call out, by the way. I was like, oh yeah. Okay. Sugar. Here we go. That's awesome. My first ever project, Laura, for, for, for like anybody was I went to this company. We now refer to it as SaaS. At the time it wasn't referred to as SaaS. They were on Salesforce, bootstrapping their business. I mean, borrowing money from their homes to keep it alive, right? I learned this years later.

Mm-hmm.

And I was like, we're paying a lot of money for this CRM. Let's move to something cheaper. And they're like all for it. And so I went and migrated us to Sugar and everybody kind of like scoffed at me like 5 years later, you did what? And I was like, no, it worked really well. It was fine. So anyway, that's my short story.

I bet it was cheaper.

It was, it was cheaper.

Did it still have the lead object? That's like all I care about. Like that's, if it didn't have the lead object, it's a winner.

I was using the totally like bespoke version that wasn't like, uh, you know, we installed it on our own server. So basically it was like whatever I wanted it to be.

Nice. Oh yeah. Yeah. Server-based stuff. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's, let's get into it. Um, Now that we've plugged SugarCRM, we'll send an invoice. Okay, so the two of you did, I mentioned, right, recently co-authored and published the book, The Revenue Operations Manual, which I have not finished but have started. Good stuff. What was like, what's the, what was the genesis for that book and what was that process like? And Laura, maybe you can take the first shot at that.

Yeah, so Sean and I used to work together at Drift. I was Sean's boss and then I was actually leaving. And as I was leaving, Sean and I had this conversation. He's like, so what next? And I said, well, I have this idea for a book and I'm not real sure. And he's like, well, let's stay in touch. Let's keep talking about this. And so about a— it was about a year later, I think. And we started the conversations again. And We sort of came together and like put together all the stuff that we always wanted to see and all the things that we like to read out of books and, well, managed it on a spreadsheet as like good operators would. Of course.

Can never escape the spreadsheet.

Sean still has the spreadsheet somewhere, I'm sure.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, we both do.

still reference it as much as we possibly can. But it was a really good guide for us. It kept us on task. And once we went from, hey, this is kind of a cool idea, to like, we've officially signed on with a publisher and we have a hard deadline, it became a pretty critical tool to keep us on track.

Yeah, I can only imagine. Yeah, I mean, I did a little piece for Mike in the community that was, I don't know what, 15 pages of something, like more of a white paper. And like, I can't imagine doing a whole book, right? Just, it was, The staying on task was actually really hard, way harder than I expected. So I can't imagine, like, because your book is, it's definitely—

80,000 words is no joke. It's not.

That's significant.

That's significant.

80,000 words.

Wow.

Is that, is that how they, is that how they, uh, like contract you is like by like a word count or is it—

There was a minimum count.

Guidelines.

Yeah. Okay.

And then I think we kind of naturally, you know, to Laura's point, when we started to figure out the topics were that we wanted to make sure we covered. That's how we then started to actually like bring some structure to the book. You know, there were a few things that were important to us. One was we wanted to make sure it was something that incorporated other voices besides our own. Like, we are not vain enough to think that we have all the answers. So there's interviews with more than 50 different operators included in the book from a whole bunch of different industries. Another thing that was really important to us was we wanted it to be a practical guide for people to actually use in their day-to-day work, right? And there's plenty of business books where You can read the first chapter and you've basically got the entire book in terms of content and everything else is just kind of reinforcing the same points over and over again. And we did not want it to be that. So that was really important to us. And I think to, you know, to a large extent, we—

Thank you on that, by the way.

Filled those goals.

Sorry, Sean.

That's okay.

I just wanted to say thank you for acknowledging that. 'Cause like, I love that you wrote a book this way, and I love that our listeners get to hear a little bit of this behind the scenes from you to know what they might get from it. Because I have read so many books that I got like, I don't know, maybe halfway through and I went, I get it, and I put it down. Right.

We really didn't want that. Yeah. And then the other thing that bugged us a lot about a lot of the books is that it's always about the things that went well. It's, it's always about like everything smooth. Well, the reality is like, that's also not what you learn most from, right? So we have a section in the book, like throughout the book called Confession Corners.

Nice.

Where it's the things that didn't go well. Now we anonymized it so that it could create a safe space, but like those things that don't go well, a lot of times that's what you learn And are like hard-earned lessons. So why not learn from others? So back to making sure that we, it's not just the two of our voices, it's over 50 operators for both the things that went well and the things that maybe didn't go so well.

Yeah, I love that. Love it. And I've already hit some of those and it's definitely, it brings it to life, right? And I think that's really helpful. Okay. So before we go too far, because I think the term revenue operations is out there used in a lot of places, it's a big topic. I think there was, in fact, I think you, in your book, you referenced it. It's been, it was like one of the, it's supposed to be one of the top growing roles in the near future at the time when you were doing it. But I think there's still a lot of inconsistency on what, when I say it versus somebody else says it versus what you say, right? You all have, we all have different ideas on it. So Sean, maybe you want to take a shot at, like, when you say, when you say revenue operations, how are you defining that?

Yeah. So first of all, I think it's hard to define. And the reason why there's such a variety in what you're seeing, Michael, in the market is because it's an inherently cross-functional role, right? And so because it's working across so many different parts of the business, it means different things to different people. It's actually been really fun as we've been going through this book process of articulating what RevOps is to people who have never heard it before, right? Like, then that's a really interesting conversation to have where they have no context. But I think the thing that Laura and I found in the folks that we talked to and in kind of planting our own flag in writing the book is we wanted to make sure that our definition of RevOps focused on outcomes, right? A lot of people talk about kind of like the traits of RevOps, like they're like, oh, it's cross-functional. Oh, it makes my reporting better. Oh, you know, I get a unique view of the customer journey. And then that's usually where the definition stops. And that's fine. Those are good benefits. But what we really want to make sure is that this is a team that is driving business outcomes. And so the way we think about actually defining revenue operations is we believe that RevOps transforms siloed, unpredictable businesses into high-achieving, predictable, and scalable revenue machines. And so high-achieving, predictable, and scalable are kind of the descriptors of that outcome. And we spend a lot of time in the book talking about how to make that happen, but that's kind of where we plant our flag on how we define RevOps.

That makes sense. So what I mean, I know that like even for my own edification, occasionally I see Well, let's say job postings to say revenue operations, but when you look at them, they actually are like, oh, this is really sales ops with a different title. Like, have you, did you, did you, again, still working through the book, have you, did you cover that or do you see the same thing, right? Where people are sort of using the term, but not really in the way that you think it should be.

Yeah, I'll take a little bit of that. Yes, we actually do talk about that in the book and we talk about how if you are talking about revenue ops and it's really just sales ops in disguise, you're missing so much of the power and the actual being able to affect outcomes, because you're missing so much of the customer lifecycle journey, and all the ways in which you are able to affect the outcomes. So, we definitely talk about that. We talk about if you are missing full areas of the business, like marketing, like customer success, like professional services, you are missing the power of what revenue operations actually has the capability of doing.

Yeah. So, okay. So, I think that's interesting because, again, still reading the book, it's interesting to me that you had to actually call that out because I think I agree, right? I think it does a disservice for the, for the actual, what the role should be. So it's interesting. So Sean, you and I spoke earlier as we were kind of getting ready for this, and you talked about that there are things that unite different parts of what is revenue operations. Could you like maybe give us an explanation of what you mean by that? And then maybe specifically for our audience who's primarily marketing ops professionals.

Yeah.

Yeah. How does that fit into what, what do you think about that? Yeah.

I mean, this was, this is a conversation that Laura and I had a bunch of times as we were writing the book. Right. And we were under no illusions that every single topic that we cover in the book is going to perfectly cover every single role and responsibility within what is a pretty broad RevOps spectrum. Right. But we do believe that regardless of what the name of your role is or who you report to, there is more that kind of unites the type of work that we all do. than divides us, right? And so the way we think about that is we kind of break the spectrum of ops work down into 3 buckets: planning, execution, and insights. And so planning, again, regardless of whether or not your primary customer is marketing, sales, customer success, or all 3, is everything that happens before any of those customer-facing folks are even in their seat, right? So things like territories, budget planning, Comp design, headcount quotas, all that good stuff, which industries or geos you're going into, all that lives in the planning bucket. Execution is all about the day in the life of all of those internal customers, right? So if you're in marketing ops and you are specifically marketing ops only, your job is to make the marketers on the team better at their job, right? How are you going to democratize a lot of the tools and processes that you've so carefully crafted into the hands of the rest of the team? And that's where things like Pipeline creation, pipeline management, forecasting all live kind of in that execution bucket. And then insights should be the bridge between the two. And there are, you know, an unlimited number of ways you can slice a marketing funnel, as I'm sure your audience is painfully aware. But that's where like the core reports, the KPIs for the business live, but also hopefully the proactive analyses that marketing ops folks can be running and the insights they can be delivering back to the business, right? And so I think like, You can, you know, search and replace marketing ops and everything I just said with sales ops, rev ops, CS ops, whatever your flavor is. And I think those buckets of work will still be true.

Yeah, I like I like that planning execution analysis model that actually makes a lot of sense because I think in models for just marketing ops, I mean, there's that matches up right? We've got You know, campaign ops is often probably the biggest bulk of what most marketing ops folks do, which I think is the execution piece.

So, and what Laura and I ended up doing is we actually specialized our team in those buckets, right? And not everybody's going to have the luxury to do that because you're going to have a lot of folks listening to this who are 1, 2-person teams.

Yeah.

But you can still think about even the work that you do as an individual in those buckets. And then hopefully as the team grows, It might make sense to actually specialize people into those areas, 'cause then you can go super deep. And the other added benefit that we found is all of your internal customers, it becomes incredibly clear to them who they should go to for a particular area of expertise, right? And I think that's a challenge sometimes for marketers, sales leaders, whoever it might be, to look at their ops team and say, okay, there's a bunch of people over there. Who do I actually go to about campaign execution? Right? Who do I actually go to when, you know, the Google Ads integration broke? You know what I mean? Like those are the types of things that I think make that really clear to help make the partnership better.

Yeah. And I would say that I think a lot of leaders actually are source of that problem, right? They get, they try to funnel stuff back through themselves in the, in the guise of trying to protect my team, right? As opposed. So, Yeah. I mean, I think I've seen that myself and it drives me bananas. So I try not to be that guy, but I'd like, yeah, I just, I want to re—

like echo my appreciation for that framework and what you were talking about there. Like we talk a lot about, and, you know, Sean, Laura, I'm sure you've heard it many times over, right? People, process, and then technology. And I think by sort of really thinking first about— Michael's going to laugh at me because I'm going to refer to it as a product. But when you think about like the product that is your go-to-market sort of tech stack and your team, and you're thinking about like, how do I go, you know, let's abstract away from a product for a moment. But if I'm going to go build a business, I'm thinking about how all the people that need to be involved in that business and all the jobs that need to be done, and then the things that we need to build. And the same is true when you're looking at your broader go-to-market tech stack, right? So think about the people that you're going to be interacting with and then the process, you know, your territories and all that other stuff. And then, you know, let's figure out how to enable them with the technology on the other side of that stuff. But I just, I really love like the way you've sort of articulated what you just shared and what is clearly outlined in the book that everybody now needs to go read. Yeah, just advocating for like, yeah, rah-rah, that was awesome.

We appreciate that. I think the other thing that Michael called out with the leadership part of it is like, you actually want the people who are owning one of those buckets to be the expert in it. Right. And like Laura modeled this incredibly well when I worked for her. And then I hopefully did a decent job of it when she left. But like the whole point is that those people knew more about sales ops execution than I did. Right. And so that you came in and say, okay, this person is the expert in this area. And so out of, for purely selfish reasons, people wanted to go to that person instead of to me. Right. And like, that was the whole point. And so that's, that's another just added benefit for folks who are considering whether or not that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That, that makes a ton of sense. And like the, the guise of protecting the team thing for anyone that's maybe used that before, shame. But, but, but the, the other side of that is engineer the process to allow your team to protect themselves, right? Like, if there is an expert that Sean's alluding to, right, that someone knows that they can go to that person and that person has a reliable system to fall on that says, here's how you can engage with me, they're good, right? And you help structure them in that way, right? You don't have to be the gatekeeper to accessing the team as the leader. You just have to equip them with the right Stuff to be able to— anyway. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's— go ahead. Go ahead, Laura.

Go ahead, Laura.

I was just gonna say we have an entire chapter on how to say no.

Yes.

But do you actually say no, or is it like how to say no without saying no?

Um, well, sometimes it is you have to say no.

Absolutely.

And we do talk about that. And then we talk about The ways in which you can empower your team to be able to really get to the heart of what the request was. So, we talk a lot about getting to the why and asking the why and really understanding the why you're being asked something so that you can then kind of go, okay, well, do we already have something that addresses that, that we need to funnel through? Do we have the priorities straight? Because if you're getting asked to do something and drop everything, do this, you've got to have established priorities. So, it kind of goes back to goal setting. And do you have established priorities set between you and your stakeholders? And then you can go back to that and go, okay, where does that fit? And that's not really saying no, that's allowing people to prioritize, right?

Yeah.

And be able to negotiate with that. So, yeah. I hear that.

Well, there's no free lunch, right? I mean, there's like, I think that's the thing that I, like, I try to help my teams whenever I do that is like, I'm like Sean, like I think of them as the experts on whatever it is that they're, they're doing and I'm not, especially nowadays. But I want people to know that I'll have their back within reason, right? Um, but I want them to kind of do the same thing, right? See the big picture, understand the priorities. And be smart. Like, yeah, we, I, we should do this. And I'm going to go tell Michael that this is what we're doing and this is why. And, you know, and then we negotiate on the timing and priorities if we haven't already settled on them. So interesting. So one of the things that you, I think Sean mentioned this was something about reporting structure. So I think it'd be interesting to get your perspectives if On that, I think there's 2 components to it. I think that I'd like to get into one of which I don't think we actually have covered before, but one is just like, where do you think RevOps in the way you've defined it should report up to? And I suspect that the majority of people listening think, oh, it'll report up to CRO or something like that. Personally, I'm not convinced that's the right place, but I think the other that Maybe it's come through in a little bit of a thread here is this. Do you put expertise on the— in relying the team around the functional parts of the business of marketing, sales, customer success, or do you do it sort of across those based on other expertise, say financial literacy, technology, analytics, right?

Yeah.

So throwing that— 2 of those things at you all at once here, but Or maybe you want to take a shot at this first.

So I think that, you know, where it, where it reports, and we sort of have a chapter where we talk about different organizational structures, does depend on the company. And it does depend on, okay, so what does the CRO have? Is it, is it all of the revenue organizations and pieces, in which case that may make sense. We do talk about it kind of doesn't matter a little bit as long as you've got the right mindset. So, we'll talk about mindset. I'll have Sean kind of talk through the mindset that we think about it. But when we also think about, like, you're talking about, you know, where do all the individual people sit organizationally? And we sort of have 2 ideas of where you can have a hub where you have centralized ops. And you may have folks either specialized in your areas. But if you do that, you must be really thoughtful about making sure that you have one continuous thought idea of your, your customer experience. So even if you have specialization within that, like, let's say, the marketing, the marketing tool, There's some very particular skill sets there, and you may need just one person to do that. But are you operating in a way that you're really thinking all the way through downstream, upstream, sidestream through the entire process? We do talk about other people do more of the spoke model where, you know, operations sits within each of the organizations, but you can actually achieve the outcomes that we talk about if you have the right mindset of making sure upstream, downstream, through stream, all of the way, and how do you tie. So, both Sean and I have operated in companies where you had centralized as well as some separation, but the ops teams work together. So, and that's sort of how you can operate and achieve these objectives whichever way you happen to be organized, but it comes down to how do you approach the work.

Yeah, the only thing I would add on top of that is I think it's important to remember that a lot of the people listening and a lot of people when they come into a company are not necessarily going to be the ones in charge of making this particular decision, right? And so I think if you are going to wrap your whole personality up in the fact that like, I'm only going to work in a centralized RevOps team, or I'm only going to work in marketing ops if I report into the CMO, like you're going to be disappointed. Because just because that's what the structure has when they, when you walk in the door doesn't mean it's gonna be the structure, you know, a week later. Right. And so I think it's much more important to Laura's earlier point to think about what are the things that will be constant regardless of the reporting structure. Right. So like what will be constant is you have to care about what happens in the parts of the customer journey that you are not responsible for. So if your title is marketing ops, you still have to care about how the decisions you make will have ripple effects on sales. Sales ops folks have to care about the changes that they make to the sales process that will impact post-sale teams, right? And so as long as you don't have like the blinders on for your area of the business and you can look cross-functionally and say, okay, this will be the ripple effect over here, I'm gonna go talk to this person who's responsible for that area. That's where we find like the, the very best operators really, really live and, and function.

It's really interesting. So I know, Sean, you and I talked about mindset maybe being more important than reporting structure. And I think that's what you're alluding to. It's interesting because I also like, this is a little aside. It's interesting because I noticed that this is a nuance that I pay attention to. I try really hard not to speak up, but Sean, you talked about internal customers, which is like fingernails on chalkboard to me. Like, I hate that term with a passion. I'm surprised you didn't say anything earlier. No, no, it's, and it, and it, this is like, there's a long story behind it, but, but, but then, Laura, you talked about stakeholders and I'm, I'm, I'm much more of a, I think of people internally as stakeholders because, and this is where the mindset for me comes in, is I wanna remember that customers are the one who enable us to have the job, right? They're the ones who write us checks to make the company or whatever we're, where we're working viable so that we, and I, I, that's my own sort of mindset. baggage did I bring to this? But to me, that's part of the mindset I want too, right? So anyway, long story, like, I don't want— we could go off on a complete tangent there, but I'd love to get more about this mindset concept that you have, because I think you've talked to me, you've mentioned some like 6 mindset components or something like that. So if you could walk us through that, Sean.

And yeah, and by the way, Laura and I are happy to chat about customers versus stakeholders too, but We are. We— so just to answer your question directly, what we, what we ended up figuring out, and really, we figured this out over the course of writing the book, this was not something we went into the process already having kind of preordained, is like, we were actually able to codify these 6 statements in what we call the revenue operations mindset in the book. And the whole idea behind this was, as we were looking at all the interviews we had done and the writing we had done so far, These patterns kept emerging. And like any kind of set of statements or ideologies, whatever you want to call them, principles, you can't just take one of them. You kind of have to take them all together as a whole. If you took one in a vacuum, it probably wouldn't be great. But some of them include things like operators are strategic partners, not support functions. I'm sure you guys hear that all the time. We focus on outcomes, not inputs. are a perfect blend of strategic and tactical. We are lifelong learners and we're okay with being proven wrong. We believe in a better, better, never done approach and making things incrementally better, right? So it's things like that that started to become signal for us across all of the different work that we're doing. And I think because the role is so cross-functional, because every company's version of the role is slightly different, these things were just kind of universally true. And so I think if you're trying to, you know, if you're stuck and you're trying to figure out, okay, like, I'm the bottleneck on 27 different issues, I've got too many people asking me for stuff, like, if you kind of fall back on this set of core principles, we think that that's a pretty good recipe for being a successful operator.

So I'm curious. Yeah.

Do you, um, but go ahead.

Okay, so Mike, go ahead. I, I think I'm going to take us on a different path here, so you do your follow-up first.

I just do my follow-up first. Um, I, I think, I think it goes without— I, I, I am kind of headed down a different path too, so, but I, I feel like it is a part of this broader discussion in general Because we just talked a little bit about reporting frameworks and mindset. I'm really struggling and I understand you've got a book, right? You've got literally a book that is called the Revenue Operations Manual. Is RevOps a role or a department?

Say more. What do you mean?

Is it— we got at the top of this episode, you gave us a definition, which I greatly appreciate because we love more definitions on these things. Do you feel confident that it is someone's job to be revenue operations professional? Or is it rev op? Is it— do we— or maybe do we think over time we're going to see that evolve? with more clarity. And right now, it's really just a departmental function right now. Like, yeah, like there's a marketing team, and then there are roles in the marketing team. So it can't be a RevOps org.

It's really funny you bring this up, because I've actually been thinking about this a lot, like over the last couple of weeks. And the catalyst for why I've been thinking about it a little bit differently is because I had to explain to someone who had never heard of RevOps before what I thought it was. Right. And I, again, we've written 80,000 words on it. It's not like I don't have anything to say, but it's a very different context to have the conversation in. And so I think the answer to your question, and I don't mean this in a cop-out way, is both. And the reason why I say that is like, I do very much believe that like this being a specific role within your organization makes the organization better, period, full stop. I also think that a lot of the stuff we've been talking about with you guys today, and a lot of the stuff in the revenue operations mindset is just a smart way to run a business, right? Like, it's just a smart way that if everyone adopted this mindset within the organization, again, the organization would probably get better, period, full stop, right? And so I think that both of those things can be true at the same time, Mike. And I think if it be, you know, it's the number one fastest growing job on LinkedIn, right? If that kind of continues as a trend and more people start thinking about, okay, planning, execution, insights, in how I run my team, then great. Like the ripple effects of this job will permeate through all of the functions in the organization, those internal customers. And they—

I see what you did there.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, every, like rising tide lifts all boats, right? So I think it's a super interesting question. And I think that's like the future of the type of impact that this role can have.

Laura, anything to add? I love it. I'm okay with both, Sean, to be honest with you, because I've been in a handful of, we'll call them healthy debates on LinkedIn and with some one-on-one discussions too. And I've been challenged by this question lately. Like, I don't know, but Laura, any thoughts to add or?

So I think the way I would Summarize what I hear Sean saying, right? Is then the conversations that we've had is that RevOps is it the role of someone? It absolutely should be. Should because things will get better if it is. And is there a way before perfection to get better and having the mindset and moving towards And do I believe that that is something that's going to become more well-defined over time? I do. I absolutely do. I do think that the value of it will show. But is there a way to move towards that? And that is more of the first— the second part that you talked about of sort of, is it more of the mindset and the way of approaching it? Can you get there versus having it be— A particular role. So, and then—

I think just to make this like even more tactical for folks, right? We, it's easy for this to be like very kind of like theoretical and like a bit of an amorphous blob of a conversation, right? Like there's a great story in the book. You guys probably know Pete Kazanjie, who started Modern Sales Pros, CEO of a company called, it's called Atrium, it's sales analytics software, right? And what he basically said to us was, look, like The whole reason why this function even exists is that the company believes that with the salary they pay you to do your job, you are going to create more yield for the company than the salary they pay you. And it's really as simple as that. And so I think to answer your question, Mike, is like, as long as that is true, then that's the justification for why the role exists. It's true if it's a super cross-functional RevOps role. It's true if it's a super specific marketing ops role, right? But like the whole reason why you're there is to create more yield than the company pays you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's interesting. I appreciate all the perspectives on it and I continue to chat, you know, one of the things, there's other really good points in this discussion we want to get to and be respectful of the recording time today. But The last thing that I'll say, and maybe we'll just get to have more conversations on this in another episode, but we challenge a lot the notion of how do you measure the success of an operator, right? Of an operations professional, particularly in marketing operations when your job isn't necessarily to fill the top of the funnel, right? Or to even fill the bottom of the funnel or whatever it is. It is about efficiency and effectiveness and throughput and making sure people get what they need when they need it on the right time and all that other stuff. Which is a conversation about yield, right? And the ability to help fuel an engine, but it isn't, I'm getting on the phone and having a call to go close a deal, or it isn't, I'm coming up with the next campaign to go drive more brand awareness or reach or leads or demand gen and all those things. And so to that end, I respect the notion that your whole job is to help produce more yield for a business. But I think the way that that comes to fruition and the way that it's measured has to be very delicate. It's a fine line to walk. And I hope that we continue to see leaders, not just in RevOps, but executive leaderships in general, continue to respect that. Again, I know I'm pushing my own narrative on this one, but continue to respect the fact that these are product people, right? They are creating an engine that is efficient and effective, and you probably don't measure your product managers on how much revenue they're bringing in the door. So, we need to figure out a slightly different model to like, okay, well, what does success look like for this?

But I think some product managers are probably going, yes, I get measured on revenue for sure.

I'm sure some do, right? Like, did you create a feature that we sold and all of a sudden now we're making A lot more money, right?

Sure.

But to that end, anyway, I think it's all super healthy and I love that we're all pushing towards a better definition of it and that both could exist at the same time.

No doubt measuring the ops roles is a challenge, right? In terms of, I think it probably applies to all of them, but okay. So, I have a, maybe it's a somewhat practical question about the mindset stuff too, which popped into my head. So, it's I guess maybe 2 parts that are related, right? One is, is it a team dynamic? Like, are you looking to make sure that you have a team that across the team you fulfill these 6 elements of mindset? Like, maybe not everybody has all 6, but maybe they have the tendency toward, like, they're on the, let's say they're each a spectrum, right? They're towards the quote, right? end of that spectrum on those is part one. The other part is like, regardless of the answer on that, like, I would assume that this also is something that you would want to incorporate into your hiring and management practices too. So like, how do you, like, those are, those are all great mindset things. I agree. And I, I don't know that I've ever cracked the nut on like, how do you identify that in the process of hiring for people? So, curious what your thoughts are on that.

I'll start, Sean, and then maybe you can finish up, Bart. So, team is really important. I actually don't know how Sean feels about this one, but I'll say from my own perspective, I think the mindset actually should apply to all your— like, that's the fundamentals of what you're looking for out of your team. And maybe they exemplify, or maybe they need some coaching on some of them of how to go from being support to being strategic, that may be something that you need to bolster. But I think if you're running a team through these mindsets, you're looking to make sure that you hire for those that are capable of getting there. So, I'll put it at the mindset. Now, do all of your ops folks have the exact same skill sets? Absolutely not. And it's got to change over your lifetime of your company, of like where your company's at. So, we talk about about if you're at the beginning of, of you need, you need scrappy, you need folks that are creative, you need folks that can make things work on a shoestring. If you're at a very well-established company and you're trying to go public, you need somebody that actually knows a little bit more about controls and can help build in the proper controls for when you're going to go public. So, There's a whole big spectrum and you've got different roles within. So, you want your compensation person to be somebody that pays very close attention to every single penny. And, you know, this idea of rapid response versus somebody who's really thinking all the way through. Well, your orders desk needs to be, especially at the end of the quarter, needs to be rapid response. But do you want your folks that are in Salesforce or CRM admin to be rapid response? Not necessarily, because you don't want to be making changes without having thought all the way consequences through. So, I think, Michael, one of the ways that we talk about that is the mindset is sort of the fundamentals of what you're looking for, like more of traits and mindset, et cetera. And then there's skill sets. And we think that it's really important to develop operators over their lifetime so that you keep going through getting better, getting better and better and better. And that's, again, that better, better, never done kind of philosophy in the mindset. But, and we have ways that we have done to used to be able to figure out where do people have their experiences and what is it that they want to try next. So, Sean, I'll let you talk through, and I don't know if you agree with me on that, the mindset.

No, I definitely agree with you. I think just to illustrate Laura's last point there, a good example of something that we would do within the team is we do this color coding exercise, and basically every 6 months, everybody on the team, we had a list of areas of interest within kind of the RevOps spectrum. And everybody every 6 months would go through it and they would color code it. So green was, this is stuff I like doing and think I'm good at. Red is, this is stuff I don't like doing. Blue was, I haven't actually done this before, but I'd like to get exposure to it. And there's a few others. But basically, the whole idea was that you and your manager could have this conversation about where your areas of interest were so that when we were thinking about our upcoming goals for the next quarter, then it was time to say, okay, let's see if we can get someone some exposure to that forecasting project, right? Or let's get someone some exposure into annual planning on the next cycle, right? And you'd be shocked at how quickly people's colors change on the 6-month cycle and how big of a difference there was because they got something exposure to something and they're like, this is not for me. Like, I'm all set on comp. design, never again, thank you. But it also would then help Laura and I to figure out where our blind spots were. So when we were going out to hire somebody, we knew exactly where our gaps were, because the color coding exercise made it abundantly clear to us where those were, right? So that was a really helpful tool in terms of building and developing the team. And like, the thing I was thinking about, Michael, when you're asking your question is like, it's kind of amazing, the staying power that I think this mindset has had. And we didn't have it written down. A bunch of years ago. But like, I look at the people who are on our teams, and they've gone off and gone to, you know, spread across a ton of different companies and places. And I just like, I hear stories back from people who work with them now about how amazing they are at their job, right? And like, we were very lucky to work with great people. But I also think like the way we thought about the value of the work we did has persisted And like now they're pushing the boundaries in their companies and like coming to the table with a point of view, which I think is like, unfortunately kind of rare in ops roles, right? We're enablers and doers by nature. And I think it's rare that people show up with like their own kind of fully developed perspective on how things can and should be, which I think is, you know, why they're doing so well.

Amen to that.

Absolutely.

The push for strategic involvement and speaking up and, you know, it comes with experience, right? You have to have the experience, the exposure and all that other stuff. But like, I love that your book and the lessons that you've imparted on the folks that have been on your team, that that can instill the confidence in people to start thinking differently about how to come to the table with some of those. insights or strategies or whatever it might be. So yeah, plus one.

So why don't we kind of wrap it up here? One last, again, multi-part question, I guess. But so I think perception-wise, this certainly has been my perception more or less for the last bit, is that RevOps roles tend to get filled by people with SalesOps backgrounds more than MarketingOps. So tell me if I'm, if I'm correct or not, or if you see it a different way. That's like part one. But part two is, let's assume that I'm accurate, it's accurate. And our listeners, again, being mostly marketing ops folks, what do you recommend that they do in terms of gaining experience or training or trying to learn that would help them be in a position should they want to, to be in a RevOps role?

So I think if I took those as 2 separate pieces, right? I think the answer to your first question is, goes back to Laura's point about reporting structure. And like, if you've got a CRO who has a sales background and they own everything in the full go-to-market spectrum, like guess who they're gonna tend to hire, right? It's the people from their background, the people who are most closely aligned to the work that they do. So I think that is more a symptom of who's in the senior-most chair that Ops rolls up into, right? I think if you rolls in a CFO, you're probably going to get more FP&A and MBA style folks in that type of role, right? And so that's I think where that dynamic comes from. But I think the the construction constructive answer to your second question is like what can marketing ops folks do? Like I think that color coding exercise that I was just talking about is a perfect starting point, right? Figure out where you as an op as a marketing ops person. Where your blind spots might be, but also where your interests are, right? I am more than happy to admit that marketing is by far my weakest area of the go-to-market spectrum. I know that about myself, and I have an immense amount of respect for the people who can go super deep and be truly experts in what is a very broad discipline, marketing as a whole, right? Like, I cannot, you know, go toe-to-toe with people on marketing budgets and ad spend and SEO. Like, I just, it's just not my strength. I know that about myself. Right. And so what I would say for the marketing ops folks is if that's what you like the most, that's okay. Like you can continue to rise through the ranks and work directly with CMOs who need that right-hand person and provide a ton of value and have that seat at the table as a value-add partner. But if you're sitting there to your point, Michael, and you want to be more in like the full go-to-market spectrum conversations of RevOps, like you got to figure out You know, small incremental ways to get exposure into those, right? Shadow your sales ops partner for a day, go and sit with the renewals team for a day, right? Whatever it might be to slowly give yourself exposure, because I think the folks that have had kind of like tours of duty with other teams are the ones that end up becoming so well-rounded in the end.

Laura, any additional thoughts on that?

No, I think it's the really exposing yourself to other parts of the business and making the connections with your internal partners, customers. They may be partners only, right? They actually may only be partners. But the going and sitting and understanding and then being able to connect what you do with the impacts downstream, that's, that's what they need out of RevOps leaders. So, if folks are interested in that, you can use every single opportunity that you get exposed to, which operators do get exposed to a lot of opportunity to learn more about the business and more about downstream and product teams come and ask for marketing information. So, learn how they're using it. Yeah. So every opportunity.

I, I really like that because that reinforces what I believe. Like, I think people need to be proactive. That's the first thing. I mean, Sean, what you described is you need to take action. And I'm a big fan. I've talked about it multiple times about places where I've worked, where actually as a policy point, people were sort of required to do, like, spend a day or two with other people in other departments, not just even in go-to-market functions. And I think it's hugely valuable. So love that. I love this color coding concept. I may follow up with you and see if I can borrow that. I think it would be interesting for those organizations where people are in marketing ops, if they've got a leader in marketing ops and sales ops where they could go to them and say, yeah, I would love to learn some more. Can we as cross-functional teams, right, do this exercise together and see how we can make all the entire You know, ops functions across go-to-market motions or activities better. So I love that.

We'd be happy to give you guys a link for your audience for that. And I think like, to your point, there's both a leadership, there's a tops-down and a bottoms-up version of that. But like, one of the things that was important to Laura and I when we were writing the book was like, there is a small subset of ops people that just kind of like are whiny. And they like kind of act as though they're like victims of whatever this like pigeonhole that they've been put in. And we really wanted to make sure that there was not like a whiff of that in the book. And so you gotta, you gotta take a little bit of ownership and, you know, craft the role as you kind of see it.

Uh, you took the words outta my mouth and I would say it's more than a small fraction. Uh, so, and Mike's heard me say that before, like, I'm like, no whiners.

No whiners.

No whiners. We don't need those. Uh, this has been a lot of fun. Laura, Sean, thank you so much. Uh, obviously we can, uh, I think we could put a link to the book in the, in the show notes for sure. But, uh, beyond that, if folks want to kind of catch up with what you're doing or follow what you're doing, what's the best way for them to do that?

LinkedIn is for me.

Sean?

Yep.

All right. Easy. See, we like, we give LinkedIn like promotional stuff, like every time we have one of these, I think. It's like the only time. I don't think we've had anyone who said something else, or at least not included it. Um, well, again, thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun. I can't wait to finish the book, especially now that I've learned a little bit more about it. Um, thank you, Mike, for joining and always adding some flavor to this. And thanks to our listeners for continuing to support us and Uh, bringing us great ideas for guests and topics. If you have one of those ideas or guest ideas, uh, or want to be a guest, reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me, and we would be happy to talk to you about it. Until next time, bye everybody.

Thanks guys.

Thank you.