Janis Zech: Welcome to another episode of the RevOps Lab. We are here with Matt. I think pretty much everybody knows Matt. Matt is the CEO and cofounder of RevOps Co-op, and we actually recently met in Berlin for a wonderful dinner with, you know, fifteen other RevOps folks. Matt, welcome on the show.

Matt Volm: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Janis. And we missed Philipp at that dinner, but I think we promise we'll get him at the next one.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. I love visiting Berlin even though I don't live there anymore, but it is a six hour drive. So, yeah, forgive me that I didn't show up. That's a long track for what would have otherwise been a short dinner.

Janis Zech: Yeah. No. It was awesome. We also went to RevOps AF, one of your first events in San Diego. We actually hosted a bunch of meetups together in London, Berlin, Munich, being sponsors of your fantastic community because we truly believe this is a fantastic way to learn and grow. So we have two parts today. One, we wanna talk a bit more about what you actually do with RevOps Co-op, how it helps people to level up on the RevOps side and, you know, build really strong connections. And then second, you know, talk a bit about RevOps trends. But before we start, who are you? What do you do?

Matt Volm: Yeah. So I'm — like I said, Matt Volm. I'm CEO, cofounder of RevOps Co-op. RevOps Co-op is a global community of almost fourteen thousand RevOps folks now from all across the globe. And I guess my job or what I do there is literally a little bit of everything. And typical kind of founder CEO fashion. So like before I was setting up like this tool to do like some website visitor analysis, I was in our CRM before doing some like traditional RevOps stuff before, you know, earlier this week, I was doing some sales calls. Right? And then I was also helping on the, like the customer success side. And I also field emails and support requests from our members. And then I do boring things like go and get the mail. So literally a little bit of everything. And then when I'm not doing that on the personal side, I'm either doing something with my two kids. I have a six and an eight year old, two boys who keep me very busy or I'm in the gym. I like to do CrossFit. As you can tell by my background, if you're watching on video, I also am a big fan of indoor plants. So I have, like, thirty, thirty five of those spread around our house. So those are all the random, unique, and certainly not related interests that I have.

Janis Zech: Maybe for the audience who don't know RevOps Co-op, what's your mission? What's your vision for the community? How does it work? And then, yeah, I would love to talk a bit more about the different programs you offer.

Matt Volm: Yeah. So the ultimate goal with the community of RevOps Co-op is just to deliver value to folks in revenue operations on a daily basis. And we do that through a bunch of different programs. We have a Slack group that people can participate in where they can ask questions, get answers. We create a lot of content. So we have a blog post, we have a podcast, we do video interviews, we have courses and education that people can view. We have a knowledge hub with a bunch of templates and worksheets in it, a career growth hub with a bunch of RevOps salary data in there. We have some programs that help facilitate peer to peer matching amongst our members. You can interact and engage with other RevOps folks in the community on a one on one basis. And we have chapters as well from all over the globe. You mentioned a few where we've done meetups before, like London, Berlin, all throughout the United States, Austin, San Francisco, New York, I think twenty, twenty five plus chapters. So that's kind of the, I guess the stuff we do with the community. Like I said, our ultimate goal is just to support people in revenue operations because while we've been at this now for, I guess, four ish years, it's still a field in its infancy, still very early. Lots of folks are still teams of one or small teams. RevOps is still very much getting defined in terms of how we view it and look at it. Then the other thing is a lot of people are still working remotely from home. So if you're a small team or a team of one who's working from your home office every day, the community RevOps Co-op gives you a great way to, you know, not feel so lonely or isolated and to get some of that support that you need on a day to day or week to week sort of basis.

Janis Zech: Yeah. So we had Sean Lane on the show yesterday, and he said something that really resonated with me. If you're in RevOps, most likely, you're facing a variety of different problems. And, also, most likely, most of those problems have been solved or looked at by other folks, but you just don't have them on your team many times. Right? And we actually spoke about RevOps Co-op as an example where I've seen multiple times people going into, you know, the Slack group asking a question on forecasting, multichannel attribution, specific vendors, and immediately probably got, you know, five folks that were offering, you know, to spend time with them, which I think is fantastic. It's a great way of actually solving problems. So I'm curious, like, beyond, like, the Slack community. Right? Like, what are programs you're offering for folks to learn RevOps? Because that's something, you know, as the field, you know, is maybe a bit newer and the role and responsibility is pretty broad often. Like, you know, what are specific things how people can learn more with you?

Matt Volm: Yeah. Yeah. So like you said, no one — the big things right now, right, no one goes to college or university and gets a degree in revenue operations. So there's no formal education. And because it's a relatively new field, it also means that, you know, you're basically learning on the job and learning as you go. But a lot of those problems, like you said, that you're facing are not necessarily unique to you, meaning other people have experienced them before. But again, because you're a small team or you're a team of one, you don't have the, you know, call it the experience or the expertise on your team to go and ask those questions. The community is a great resource for that. And so in addition to the Slack group where you have access to, you know, all fourteen thousand people in the community and you can ask those questions, we also offer a variety of education and courses on our website that have been built by other revenue operators, other folks that are in the community. So Jeff Ignacio, for example, has a couple of courses. One is called Unleashing ROI, which is about ROI standing for RevOps impact. So it goes through all the different elements of revenue operations. There's recorded lectures, there's worksheet templates available, there's office hours available with Jeff. He also has a sales ops masterclass course that goes deep into basically all things sales operations. And he's in the process of launching this finance for RevOps course with us as well. So we have courses like that, that touch on a variety of different elements of the revenue operations role. We have system specific courses like Natalie Furness has a HubSpot optimization course for revenue operators that we offer through the community. Then we even have an analytics and reporting best practices course for B2B revenue operators that's put on by Camilla Thompson. So bunch of different options that we have in our education and course catalog. Then we also do a lot of digital events that people can attend live. Those also get put up on our website afterwards, but those are all on very specific typical topics. So we're doing one next week that is all around how you can use SQL for advanced SQL techniques for machine learning forecasting. So that's a very kind of technical one. We've also done some broader ones on things like how to build the ideal go to market tech stack. And so with all these events that we do, we get community experts, folks from the community who are experts in certain topics, hold those panel discussions live so folks can attend, ask questions. And then we put the recording up on our website afterwards so that it's available to the rest of the community. So those are some of the things that we're doing to try to foster the education and learning aspect along with the conference that you mentioned and some of the in person events. We did RevOps AF here in the US in San Diego, like you mentioned, this past year in May. We're going to be doing the conference again next year in the United States. Then we're also planning to hold a Europe version of the conference as well. So again, with that, we're bringing people together in person, doing some breakout room sessions where you can learn in smaller groups with a local speaker who has expertise in certain areas, and then some main stage sessions that you can, again, kind of learn from folks in that group setting. So those are some of the different things we're trying to do to advance folks where we can and leverage the collective brainpower of the RevOps community that's out there.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. What I really like about this, so maybe as a disclaimer — before we became a community partner with RevOps Co-op, we actually were just like normal users of the Slack channel specifically. And, I mean, it's just — I've been in a few of these Slack communities. I think they did have a little bit of a hype a few years ago, and I would say most of them didn't do a really good job at community management and I really wanna highlight RevOps Co-op is, like, really standing out here. Like, it's insane, the level of quality you get there. Right? I've asked several questions there, and it's insane how quickly people respond to you. There will be a thread where people engage. It's very friendly, and nobody's, like, trying to sell to you. And if you wanna jump on a call with them, you know, most of them very, very quickly, like, give you, like, a time slot within the next couple of hours or days. So, like, the quality, the experience is just extremely good. So I think, really, like, if you're not a member right now, then just go there and join right this minute — you're not making a mistake. Right? And the way that you talked about it now is also just — I think it's great because there's something for everyone. Like, not everybody likes to just do everything online. Right? Like, I, for example, I'm not, like, a webinar guy. I find it very hard to concentrate and focus there, but I did enjoy the sessions at the conference so much. So that was so helpful and such great input. So yeah. Thank you for putting this all together. It really made my transition into RevOps a lot easier coming from product management.

Matt Volm: And that's the best feedback that we can get. And we do like, you know, one thing — like, we have those community guidelines, right, Slack guidelines for a reason. And, like, we yeah, we police that stuff pretty quickly to make sure everyone's having a good experience. I've kicked plenty of people out for breaking the community rules. The best sort of feedback I get is when I've heard from people that have landed their new job because of a connection they made in the community. I've heard of people that have landed new customers because of connections that they've made in the community, people who have built partnerships with people. So like, those are the, you know, just by getting all those people into the same space, you know, all that stuff can happen. And yeah, like you said, the other thing, you know, we offer all these different programs to members, not because we expect everyone to participate in a hundred percent of them, but because we know that, you know, different people are gonna enjoy different things. So like you mentioned, Philipp, digital events may not be for you, but you like, say the Slack group and maybe the in person stuff. That's great. We also serve RevOps people who may not be the most social creatures, right? That some of us are, and so maybe they don't wanna do any of the in person stuff and they just wanna do Slack or they just wanna do digital events. That's the reason why we offer all that stuff. So all this stuff will be made available to you, but by no means do we expect everyone to be participating in all of those either.

Janis Zech: Yep. So maybe two things here. Like, one, we did a RevOps salary report with you guys. I think it got, like, eight hundred and fifty participants. One really interesting insight was, like, that I think over fifty percent — I don't have the exact number off the top of my head — were still working remote, which I think was really, really interesting. And then secondly, you know, I recently did, like, a little mini study on, you know, which cities have the most RevOps people. And quite interestingly, or I think also not surprising, New York was leading the charge with one thousand two hundred seventy five, San Francisco nine hundred sixty two, London five hundred eighty five, and LA, Austin, Paris, Seattle, Berlin coming next. I'm super curious. You're, like, close to the heart of RevOps and all the trends that are happening. What are some of the trends you're observing throughout the community? Would love to dive into that.

Matt Volm: Yeah. One of the big things I guess we're seeing — well, two big things in terms of kind of overall trends. So one is you mentioned some of the global cities that you looked at there, right? London, Berlin, Paris. When we first started the community, majority of folks in revenue operations were based in North America or the United States. So one big thing that we've been seeing is growth outside of the US, not only in places you'd expect like throughout Europe and the UK, but places in South America like Brazil, which has a lot of folks in revenue operations. So a lot of other countries outside of the United States where RevOps is a growing field. The other thing is a lot of growth outside of software technology. So like a lot of, call it more innovative or new progressive things, the software and technology companies are typically the first ones to adopt things that are new. I saw it before all this RevOps Co-op stuff. I was at an OKR software company and we saw the same things. OKRs was this new goal setting framework. It was being adopted by companies like Google and other software technology companies. They're the first ones to take it, and then it starts to branch out from there. And we've seen the same thing. So back probably two years ago, we had about eighty percent of our members that were based in software or technology, working in software technology companies. When we looked at the data recently, our community has continued to grow. So we're still adding about seventy five to a hundred new members per week in the community. But as our community has grown, the percentage of people in software technology has gone down. So while it used to be eighty percent, as our community has grown, that number is now closer to sixty, sixty five percent. So what that tells you is that our community and the RevOps field is growing, but that growth is coming from places outside of software and technology. So places like manufacturing, retail, hospitality, things like that. So those are two, you know, kind of big trends I've seen just like in terms of where people work and then where our members are located. And then the main thing with the role that I've seen evolving or changing is mostly around like the focus area for folks in RevOps. So traditionally you're typically right, it starts with maybe a heavy focus on the sales operations side, the customer life cycle, but I've really seen that expand a lot. I'll say on both ends of the sales ops spectrum. So like post sale, a lot more focused on what happens after someone becomes a customer, how do you drive renewals and retention and drive expansion. And then on, call it, the front end of that, so the marketing ops side of things as well. So, you know, really just bringing things truly full funnel is another big thing that I've seen.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. I think this is a development now that is really good to see, like the CSM side and also the marketing side getting more tied in into it. It feels like, you know, RevOps, like, it started as an, like, an overarching vision. But it truly was actually sales ops in a sort of, like, glorified way. And now, like, now that the ball is really starting to roll and, like, more and more people really understand the overall concept and buy into it, like, with good reason. Right? I think you see private equity, for example, really hiring, like, RevOps people, doing, like, due diligence with RevOps before they actually do M&A, and also afterwards, after they make an acquisition, really insisting on RevOps being there to help with the efficiency. I mean, I think that says a lot, right? If private equity goes down that path, for me, that is good quantitative evidence, basically. So yeah, I think it's a really good development to see. One thing I'm curious about is sort of, like, on the challenges that RevOps is facing, sort of, like, what do you see, like, being the biggest problem areas that really are not solved yet? Right? I think, like, there are some things like, I know, automations in Salesforce, how you set up a CRM — these things, I think those are basically taken care of. But what's sort of, like, really more or less unsolved?

Matt Volm: So one of the big things I think that we're still figuring out is I'll say like the ownership and accountability aspect and where the RevOps role fits within the org today. And I guess what I mean by that is I think we were starting to agree now on functionally, what should RevOps do or be in terms of like people, process, technology that spans marketing, sales, customer success, post sales, making sure those things are aligned and driving revenue as efficiently and effectively as possible. But then there's all this aspect of like, especially on the people side, right? Like you're coming in with maybe like a CMO and a CCO and like a VP of sales or like a head of sales. Like, how do you have accountability or ownership over the pieces of RevOps that you need while those functions are in place the way they are today? And do you, or do you not need a change in that to kind of help you there? So, you know, like some examples of what I mean are like, okay, if you're a RevOps team, who's gonna be your, call it your boss? Like, where do you report? Do you report to say the CEO? In which case, you know, they also have all these other things going on. Right? They might also have the head of marketing, the head of sales, the head of CS reporting to them. They might have product, engineering. Right? They've got all these other kind of competing priorities. And so it's like, okay. If the CEO doesn't make sense, then what's the next thing that makes sense? It's like, well, do you have a COO, chief operating officer? Do you have a CRO? If you have a CRO who's a chief revenue officer, are they really just a glorified VP of sales or are they truly a CRO who's marketing, sales and customer success? And then the other aspect is like, sometimes you see them reporting up through like a department head, right? Marketing, sales or CS, in which case, even if you call it RevOps, you're just — if they report to the head of marketing, they're marketing ops, right? Cause they're going to do ultimately what their boss needs them to do. And so, you know, that's the piece where RevOps makes obviously a whole lot of sense, but you also need to consider how that plays with the other aspects of your org and where you're starting from. You want to make sure that they do drive, that they have accountability and ownership over the things that they should, and they need to be supported in that way as well. And there's still — you know, I think we're still figuring a lot of stuff out when it comes to that.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. I fully agree. I think there are these two different things. Like, one is like, okay, different companies have different go to market motions because the business just demands for that. And I think then, like, also RevOps should be, you know, reporting to different parts of the organization. And then the other part is sort of, like, the company maturity. So, like, at a certain time in the stage of the company, it probably makes more sense to be part of the CEO reporting, you know, infrastructure. Then maybe at some point, you move over to the CRO. And if you're, like, more like pre IPO or post IPO, maybe, like, the CFO is a much better choice. I feel like this has not been so super clearly defined, but probably there are some patterns that you could actually observe if the sample size was just big enough. But I think we're just not there yet. I think that's also the reality.

Matt Volm: Yeah. Look at, like you said, with the sample size, right? I mean, think of all those things you're like, well, it'll vary based on company and stage and size. You think about like RevOps being this thing that's been in existence for the last four or five years — like you said, we just don't have enough history there to necessarily say like, oh yeah, this is the model that makes the most sense. And then also nothing's been consistent over that time as well. Like just look at how much the market has changed over the four or five years. And I think that it gets to the point we talked about earlier of why RevOps kind of started with more of this focus on the sales operations side, because four years ago, back when interest rates were low and VC money was flowing freely, right? Like the key to revenue growth was sales, right? It was new logo acquisition. If you could spend a dollar to get a dollar of revenue, I mean, heck, if you could spend two dollars to get a dollar of revenue, like most people were fine doing that, but that's obviously a very different climate today. And I think that's also what's pushed RevOps outside of the core kind of sales ops piece and why we're seeing more and more attention there. But yeah, I think we just need some more history and years under our belt and then just a bigger sample size to figure out, like, truly what makes the most sense.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Two comments here. So one, I really love how you describe the existing structure because I think, yes, there's one — the potential, you know, theoretical model of where should RevOps report to and, you know, what's the accountability model. But then there's the reality of the org structure. And if you have a CCO and you have a CMO, they're just not gonna go away. Right? So that's not the option. And then I think, again, like the topic of, you know, making sure that you have alignment with your core stakeholders, especially the executive team, to become more strategic is extremely important. And so obviously, the organizational structure you face will have a big impact on that. And if you come in as RevOps and say, well, you know, CMO and CCO, you shouldn't exist, there should be one — right? — probably the alignment will not necessarily increase or improve. So that's one. I think the second point you made on, you know, how has the climate changed, I think is such a good point. And what I always find fascinating is that, you know, back in the days, I think, you know, like, actually, the customer acquisition costs haven't really improved still, right, for various different reasons, you know, demand shortage, longer sales cycle, a lot more rigor around pricing. And then often, I think what kind of the jaws effect is talking about, right, this kind of the deals being stuck in indecisiveness. Basically, like, no decision is better than taking a risky decision, which I think is something that a lot of folks out there are facing today and what makes, you know, forecasting and, you know, really good logo acquisition extremely challenging for most folks in the space. Maybe, like, one other question before we go to our closing question. Like, you know, what would you say are, like, the three to five things that pretty much, like, are table stakes for every RevOps team? We talked a lot about, like, what are the unsolved problems. Right? But, like, what are the things, you know, that everyone who wants to become really successful in RevOps, you know, should have experience in so that people who are learning RevOps today actually can take those courses, can look for that information, can really level up on those? What are the, yeah, three to five things you would list there?

Matt Volm: Yeah. So I think — I'm a big believer in that. I don't think RevOps is necessarily unique in this sense, but like a lot of things for any job, whether it's RevOps, sales development, right? Like finance, I don't know, you name it. Like a lot of things can be learned, right? You can go to school, take courses, you can learn things on the job. I think when it comes to RevOps — I think Janis, you mentioned this at the beginning — like the main thing that can necessarily be learned, the main skill that you need to have is the ability to adapt and to basically be faced with a new problem every day, every hour, right? And for your initial reaction to be like, I want to dive into that and figure it out versus like, I want to run away. Right? And, you know, like be more comfortable because with RevOps, like you will have a very broad set of responsibilities and a broad scope. And so there's just gonna be stuff that you will face regularly, like not once a year, like, but once a week, that you've never experienced before. And you need to have the ability to, you know, be able to problem solve for that and to want to be able to solve those problems. You know, a lot of people like jobs that are more comfortable than that, where they kinda know what to expect and they have the swim lane, right, that they need to operate in. But that's not RevOps. Like your swim lane is basically the ocean and you can be faced with a whole slew of things on any given day. And then the other stuff, right, I think can be learned. So I think, I see folks in RevOps or even people hiring a RevOps, the whole notion of needing a systems expert, like someone who's really good at Salesforce or HubSpot or Marketo — again, anyone can learn a tool or a system. So like the same thing with even some of these other areas, like getting into the sales ops or marketing ops or like CS ops side of things. I think it's unrealistic to assume that any revenue operator is gonna have experience across every single tool that you need, every area of the customer life cycle. But what you want is someone who's gonna be able to learn those things quickly and figure them out when problems do pop up. So those are the things that I think every revenue operator should have. And then focus on being well rounded. I think the last thing that I'll mention that is important for folks is a connection to the finance understanding. So I took this for granted because I kind of came the opposite direction. Most of my earlier career was in finance and accounting. Then I kind of gradually got into more of like the biz ops and RevOps side of things. And so just being able to make the connections between — again, this might sound obvious, but it's called revenue operations. Don't forget about what the revenue part of that means, which is revenue is a line item, perhaps the most important line item on your financial statements. Right? So as a revenue operations professional, you should understand how the operations part impacts the revenue that gets recorded on those financial statements every single week, every single quarter, every single year. You should understand that total contract value does not equal the amount of revenue that you're gonna recognize over a period of time. You should be able to see the activities that your sales team, for example, is doing as like, oh yeah, we're paying those people a salary and that salary flows through expense onto the financials. So like having an understanding between the operations side of this and the financial outcomes is also just a really good skill to have, because that allows you to bring things full circle. Like Philipp was saying before, private equity, VCs, investors, your CEO, the board — like that's the stuff they're looking at. Right? Like they're looking at the financial statements to see what does the health of this company look like. And so understanding the impact there can get you really, really far.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. I really like that. I think you have all these different layers of data, but eventually, in the end, right, you need to have, like, metrics that make sense for the board, for the investors. But there's a certain business process that you need to understand in order to capture, like, all those data points that eventually, like, give you NRR, GRR, whatever, that you then wanna report to the board or whoever you need to report it to. So I think, like like you said, like, the tools, everyone can learn those. But really, you need to understand the process in order even to be able to buy a tool and to utilize a tool. Because if you don't understand the process, no tool is gonna solve that for you. Perfect. Matt, thank you so much for joining. I think this was really good. And, again, to all of those who are not part of RevOps Co-op yet, please go to revopscoop.com and join. You're not making a mistake. In fact, you're making quite the opposite of a mistake, I would say, if you join. Sorry, German way of saying you're doing something right. You will not regret it.

Matt Volm: It could be okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like my mother-in-law always says, it's not bad. It's not bad. Right? Alright. So she's Hungarian, though. So anyway.

Janis Zech: Alright. So we always ask this one final question. What is one of the kindest things someone has done for you that has really propelled your career?

Matt Volm: Yeah. I think so I'll bring up two examples. So one is — I think what we all need to understand is all of us have a first, right? Like that first job, that first new job, the first company we start, right? At some point throughout your career, you're always gonna do a new thing that you've never done before. And that in most cases, that's gonna require someone else taking a chance on you. And so I can think of like two specific examples. One, early on in my career, I was working in public accounting and I can give you the name of the guy. This one guy I worked with, Aaron Weend. He worked on the corporate finance team at this company. A new role popped up. He thought I'd maybe be a good fit for it. And despite the fact that I had zero experience in that area, he recommended me for the job. I got the job and that helped kind of propel my career early on in corporate finance. And then the other was this guy. His name is William Hsu. He's a partner at Mucker Capital. And my first startup that I had back in two thousand seventeen, I never started a company before. I only had corporate finance and public accounting experience. I had an idea for a product that could solve a problem. So I literally just like put a pitch deck together. I had some people willing to help me out on it, but basically just an idea. And I went around to a bunch of investors who I just cold called and emailed and everyone basically just dismissed me right away. They were like, you've never started a company before. You've worked in corporate finance at a big company. And now you're telling me you want to be a founder of a technology startup. Like why on earth would I place a bet on you? But Will was the exact opposite. He was like, these are all the things that we like because we're placing a bet on you and we're doing things differently than everyone else. And so he wrote the first check for that first startup. And he's been a supporter of mine ever since. That first startup didn't work out. I lost all of his money, but he invested in my second startup as well. He's made introductions elsewhere. And I would not be sitting here today with RevOps Co-op if it wasn't for him. So those are two examples of two people that have really helped me a lot. I would say for me and for all of us, try to be that to somebody else. Give someone else a chance. Be that person that takes a chance on somebody because, yeah, I can guarantee you won't regret it.

Janis Zech: I love that. I love that. Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you so much for building this community. It's fantastic, and thanks for joining.

Matt Volm: Yeah. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you.