Janis Zech: Welcome to another episode of the RevOps Lab. We're here with Camela Thompson. So glad to have you. Welcome to the show.

Camela Thompson: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Janis Zech: Same here. I mean, you're probably known to many folks in the community. You have your own podcast. You've been working with Matt on growing RevOps Co-op. You're doing a bunch of things. So maybe for the audience, can you do a quick introduction?

Camela Thompson: Sure. So my title today is a little misleading. It's it's great. So I'm head of marketing for the RevOps Co-op. I also do some freelancing for other clients. But I started in revenue operations before it was a thing. I was in marketing ops, sales ops, CS ops for fifteen years in B2B SaaS from startup to major giant company. So that's why being in marketing at the RevOps Co-op is a very unique and and great fit for me, and I love it.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I mean, we had met on the show. We love the community. We've been sponsors of the community. We hosted a few events together, and I think what always strikes me is just the openness to share learnings and jump on calls and help each other. I think it's fantastic, especially in the RevOps role where a lot of the problems, as Sean Lane would put it, you know, have probably been solved before, but you just need to find the peers. And RevOps Co-op is a fantastic place to do that. So if you're not there yet and you listen to this podcast, then anyways, I don't know if you're listening to this podcast, but you should definitely join. It's it's really awesome.

Camela Thompson: Thank you. Yeah. Our whole motto is why learn RevOps the hard way like we did? So it was very intentional that we're sharing and don't wanna see people hit the same rough bumps or walls that we did.

Janis Zech: Yeah. So you're teaching a couple of courses in RevOps Co-op, and today we wanna dive into one of those topics, so reporting best practices. And, yeah, maybe to kick off, you know, I think it would be awesome to learn a bit more about, you know, kind of the the reporting truths to live by from your experience. And then we go into, you know, what the board actually wants and, yeah, how that actually trickles down to the ops community.

Camela Thompson: It's interesting. The advice I always give to revenue operators is the data and the reports themselves — it's very important to have them be correct, but that should be the beginning of where you're starting your journey. The real value is investigating anomalies and patterns and researching them and figuring out why these things are happening and working collaboratively. So it's really important to remember that staying curious is kind of my number one rule. It's very easy to go from company to company and assume that you're seeing the same things over and over again. The market has changed a lot. What works is totally different than what worked a few years ago. Just look at cold outreach. That game has changed a ton. So data doesn't change minds. Stories do. And I think I learned this very much the hard way. Speaking of learning RevOps the hard way, I'm very analytical and logical. I thought numbers would be enough to convince people, but it actually has more to do — even if people say they're data driven — with how they feel and what they're hearing from others, which actually matters more oftentimes than the data. So finding ways to tie the data into what they're feeling and what they care about is much more impactful than just pulling up a chart and saying, here's the numbers. The flexible mindset, staying curious, pick your battles, authenticity and trust are everything. So if you wanna be trusted as a strategic partner, it's very important to be transparent about what you think is real and what context you may not have. So approaching things from a learning standpoint instead of, this number says this, so it means this. You're missing context in your operation. And I don't care how embedded you are in executive meetings. There are things happening that you don't see. So approaching things from a curious standpoint instead of accusatory always goes over better. And then finally, your executive should never be surprised in the boardroom. So if there's bad news and people are starting to investigate other departments because they think something's wrong, go run to those departments. Don't tell on the people, but share with them what you're seeing in the data so they have a chance to explain themselves and research the problem. I always say, you could give them several chances and they still ignore you, then you could pull out the big guns. But really, try to start from a collaborative place. Give them a chance.

Janis Zech: Yeah. So important. So important. I think the context piece is huge, if you think about the last three years and that shift from, let's say, growth at all costs to efficient and sustainable growth where a lot of different metrics matter. And I think, you know, we had a recording earlier today where we talked about, you know, like, how is the annual planning process that we're all going through right now. Right? And it's often owned by finance, and then the go-to-market org also plays a role in collaboration with finance. But, you know, what sits on top of that is actually the board — what the board wants dictates a lot of what the executives will do. So, you know, how would you describe what generally boards want? Right? And I think it's maybe a generalization, but I think good to start there to think about what does this mean for the reporting story we're actually all telling.

Camela Thompson: Yeah. I mean, from an investor's perspective, they're looking for a winner. They wanna invest in something that's going to produce and hopefully produce a ton. So what they're looking for is what's your product market fit? Have you found it yet? How is it being received in the market? How big is your market? Can you sell this to a ton of people? What's your potential to grow? And what's your competitive advantage? I think the way we measure these things often goes to what's your rate of growth? What's your profitability or what's your profit margin, if you have a positive profit margin? Not all of us did back in the good old days. And then let's look at cost efficiencies, particularly in departments like marketing that has a large budget. We're often looking for how can we tell — which is very difficult to do, unfortunately — how efficiently and effectively marketing is performing.

Janis Zech: And then how do you prepare for that? Those are where a lot of different topics come in. So you need to somehow, like, bring it all together. You have all the different departments. Marketing can be quite big. Right? Like, for example, just with that example, like, how do you approach that?

Camela Thompson: So I think each executive needs to realize that the board really only cares about growth and profitability. So when you're forming your deck, you start with the punchline and what they care about the most and then work backward from there. So don't focus on the individual tactics and things that your team is doing. You start with, did we hit our most important goal? What did we do well, and what did we learn that we shouldn't do again? And how are we going to adjust as a team what we're doing to perform even better now? And that's across all departments. That's what we're really looking for in the board — did you hit your goal? Did you understand what went right and wrong? Did we hire the right leader? That's really the question. And then what are you going to do differently to improve? What have we learned? That's really what they're looking for.

Janis Zech: If you think about, you know, the execs, right, and what trickles through, there's obviously different expectations. Right? Like, what you're alluding to is probably the CEO story, but then often, right, there's, like, the CFO, which, you know, plays a big role in the board discussion for sure, right, always, but also CRO and whether you have a CMO or CCO, right, like, they play their part as well. And I feel like, at least in the boards I've been sitting in, there's always this power play — CEO, CFO, and the board — and then you have to navigate that. And ideally they are all aligned, but they tell a different story. Right? So, like, we maybe go through the different personas. Right? Like, what would you say are, like, things you should definitely not do as a marketing exec to start with?

Camela Thompson: Yeah. So I just wanna reiterate what we are trying to do, and then we'll get into what we shouldn't do and start with marketing. So, again, we're trying to prove, did we hit our goal? What did we learn? What are we doing different? So for marketing, I coach a lot of executives on analytics, improving ROI. And what I see done incorrectly consistently is that each quarter we are presenting different data points. That is a big no-no in board land because we want to establish a consistent cadence and have running data of at least five quarters so we can see, is there seasonality? Are there trends? Is there some kind of anomalous event that's happening and started maybe a quarter ago? And you can't understand that if you approach every meeting beginning with the latest trend. So what I see a lot of times is marketers starting the furthest point away from what the board cares about most, which is engagement and leads and some of the top line metrics, which is very important to what they are doing in their organization. But we have to remember that every single department has to do many, many tasks and not all of them are rolled up to the board. And that's okay. It doesn't mean those things aren't important. So what we should be focusing on is first our contribution to bookings, then pipeline, and then we can work backwards from there into leads and talk about conversion rates and important initiatives. So what I did when I was a marketer reporting to the board is I always started with acknowledging where we were as opposed to our goal. That was both for bookings and pipeline. We talked about lead volume, of course, but that came later as a leading indicator for where we're gonna be in future quarters. So always start with what we did and then talk about how you're going to change the outcome in future quarters, and that's what your pipeline and leads speak to, and conversion rates. So don't bury the lead. Know what they care about the most, and do not focus on different numbers every quarter or different initiatives. It's just a big mistake I see all the time.

Janis Zech: I mean, you just get people confused, right? Also if you change the layout of the reports and so on, even if it's the same numbers, people want to consume it quickly, they want to be able to interpret it quickly, and they want to have a repetitive motion around it. And the only thing that should change essentially — because, like, marketing KPIs, just stick with marketing now, but marketing KPIs, they're not fundamentally changed the last couple of years. Right? The key KPIs are still more or less the same. Of course, things are moving around a little bit here and there, but ROI, ROAS, whatever. Right? These are fixed KPIs. And so I think that consistency is sometimes hard to establish, harder than it should be, which is quite weird.

Camela Thompson: I would also argue that we really haven't had a standard. So you mentioned ROAS and ROI, and you look at how each company calculates it, and it's completely different. So if we look at sales and CS, they have standard metrics that are pretty much the same across — if I go to one SaaS company and then go to another, they're going to be fairly similar. Whereas with marketing, we may not even focus on ROAS. We may be looking at our bookings, a pipeline number, and then a cost efficiency metric. And it's a shame. I understand why marketing data is extremely hard, which I didn't understand until I moved from sales ops to marketing ops and went, wow, your systems are complex. But yeah, I hope we can find a gold standard. I don't think we're there yet with marketing.

Janis Zech: And just to dig on this point, like, what would you say are the most important things? I mean, you mentioned, right, like, bookings, contribution to bookings, right, which is very different than the old MQL model. Right? And then also pipeline generation, I would assume in, like, quantitative and dollar terms. So would you say these two are the new gold standards at this point in time?

Camela Thompson: I think those are still in flux because you talk to a different company, and they're gonna calculate it differently. So a lot of companies have tried to do a last touch model and give departmental attribution. And I think a lot of CMOs are under direct pressure to prove what their contribution is versus other departments rather than recognizing that they are dealing in thousands of touch points for one customer journey. So they're involved all over the place. It's not this nice, clean one-to-one opportunity that's won or lost. It's not whether a customer renews or not. All of these different things. So attribution is a mess. Saying which department did what is a very tricky, slippery slope. So is there a world in which we can agree on what that should look like, whether or not we should be doing that, and then focusing on things like LTV to CAC ratios? Or if you're a younger company, can we come up with a cost efficiency metric to show how efficient marketing is at generating pipeline compared to how much they're spending — top line pipeline. And just assuming that everybody we talk to is gonna be on the website, they're gonna be interacting in many different ways, let's look at the aggregate a little bit. When there's a problem, we always wanna dig into the details and look at each campaign and each channel, and that's highly problematic. So I guess, long story short, it's a complicated problem. I don't think we have a very elegant solution for it yet. We're still looking for the next best thing for attribution and really what should the gold standard be.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I think it's such a good point. I mean, I think the board, right, like, as soon as you start talking about campaigns and MQLs, they'll think about CAC payback, LTV to CAC ratios. And that's how they typically measure company valuations, depending on the board. Right? So it's different from private equity to VC to private. Right? Like, or let's say bootstrapped, or you don't really have a structured board, but let's assume you're in VC or private equity land. Right? I think it has shifted a lot from activities to actual real, you know, like, revenue generation KPIs and then also efficiency. Right? And I think the challenge we live in in general — and I think this actually has a big impact also on RevOps — is that although all the companies have done layoffs, although they've scrutinized budgets on the tool side, the CAC payback period is still increasing for many companies. Right? So I think one of the biggest problems in the SaaS industry today is actually pipeline generation, pipeline conversion, and renewals. Right? So I think this whole topic — there's essentially pipeline scarcity all over the place on both sides of the bowtie — and so that's what the board is fundamentally thinking about. Because, right, if you have a — like, the fund models in VC land, just maybe as a quick recap here — right, you need to at least three x return your fund to even raise a new fund, but the best funds return ten to twenty x, if not more. Right? So this is the top ninety percent quantile. And so, I mean, just think about it. If you have a five hundred million fund, right, this means you need to return one point five billion. This means you, you know, you have maybe ten percent ownership at best. Right? So it's fifteen billion in exit proceeds that you need to realize to be at three x, not ten x. Right? So I think this is important. Right? Because that's driving the board. The board is driving the growth profile of the companies, and that's why there's this big discussion around, like, you know, VC is that for everybody, of what company should be a VC-funded company. But let's not maybe go there. I think it's sometimes also interesting to remember. Let's maybe move to the sales side of things. Right? Like, what are, like, no-nos in reporting on this side?

Camela Thompson: So I've seen marketers do this — I'm not just picking on sales — but trying to tell a sunny, rosy colored picture instead of acknowledging what has happened, analyzing why it happened, and then talking about what we need to do to prevent that going forward is something I see very often. So when I see a VP of sales flash up their booking slide and then move on right away, that's always kind of a red flag. So it's really important to talk about what everybody cares about the most. Why didn't we hit our number? How did we hit our number and how are we going to replicate that? And then stepping back and looking at the other pieces. I think another thing to remember is that it's extremely taboo and looked down upon if you point to other departments as being the problem. And it's easy to say, well, it's a top of funnel problem when we're just not getting enough at-bats, or our product doesn't have features that our sellers need consistently. That is a dangerous game to play in the boardroom, and it's played often. So it is always smarter to focus on what you can control. So if you're seeing your sellers struggle with a very technical product, is there some kind of enablement? Is there some kind of get-well plan that you can put in play? So instead of pointing fingers elsewhere, have the conversations with the product team, the marketing team. But in the boardroom, bring a get-well plan that you can control and that directly impacts your numbers.

Janis Zech: I also think, like, if you try to play the blame game or, you know, if you're just not meeting quota consistently and so on, and your cost is, like, too high — like, I would say the problem is elsewhere. Right? Like, you set goals too ambitious. You hired too many people too quickly. Your SDR motion didn't work. Like, it's just not very clever to go down that path. And I mean, for me, I would say, like, okay, like, hey. What was our forecast? Right? What did we set out to do? How did we, you know, work against that? What were, like, some of the best selling motions? You know? What are the things we are truly certain about that we can replicate moving into the next quarter or the next year? What are the things that didn't work out? What are we gonna do to fix them? Or should we just scrap these motions entirely? Right? And what is the impact of those two things on planning? So, you know, do we need to increase headcount? Do we need to decrease headcount? Which are tough conversations to have, of course. Right? But also I think then the just the harsh reality there, particularly in sales, I would say. So from my mind, right, that's essentially the right way to go. If someone starts doing the blame game in the board meeting, I mean, yeah. What's the average tenure of a CRO?

Camela Thompson: It's actually shorter than a marketer. I think it's sixteen months now, and the VP of CS is twelve months, and marketing's around eighteen months. It's crazy in the US. We understand that if you don't hit your numbers, your time is very limited. So starting with introspection and collaboratively working with operations to figure out how to maximize efficiency is much smarter than saying, well, marketing's the problem.

Janis Zech: Yeah. For sure. For sure. I mean, just for context. Right? I think I remember I was at a dinner with some folks from Pavilion beginning of last year, and we just got through planning season, and there were around twenty CROs in the room. And basically the debate was like this. Look. You know, the CEO and CFO presented a top-down plan from the board approved. That's the budget. I have no clue how they came up with the plan, and, you know, I have to work against this number and cut costs. Right? And this is also a reality we're facing right now, and it's it's tough. Right? I think it's really, really tough. But even more important to be operationally excellent and really, you know, think about, you know, kind of what's your sales capacity. Is everybody really at capacity, or is it bloated? And I think that's just one example, but let's maybe go more structured. So over to you before I, you know, keep rambling here into various different weird directions. What do you think the board appreciates if you report to the board from a sales point of view?

Camela Thompson: So I think what's important to remember is to focus on the actual results and be very pragmatic about where there's bloat and inefficiency. So working with your operations professional — I mean, it's very much what you were talking about. That get-well plan is extremely critical. So understanding the landscape and figuring out what steps mean that you're thinking ahead, and not just trying to cover up problems. So I think that's very critical.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I think just to — we had that earlier at that point, but I just wanna double down on it real quick. It's just, like, this part that you also need to paint, like, a vision that the board can also believe in. Obviously, it needs to be founded in, like, reality, hopefully. Right? But I think, right, like, you need to create, like, a vision that the board can believe in and need to present it in a way that they trust you and that you'll deliver on it. Right? I think that's, like, with the get-well plan, that's the idea.

Camela Thompson: Yeah. And I think it's really important to remember too that the board doesn't like sales executives who are ever surprised. So if you don't have a mastery over forecasting and understanding how your teams — how good they are at reading the buyer committee — I mean, really, this is very much art and science. It's not strictly science. But I've heard people say, what good is a sales leader who can't forecast? They're not gonna stick around long. So that's something else to keep in mind — if you master one thing, let it be that as a sales leader.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember this — a company that needs to report to Vista Equity, and I think what they look at, you know, really in detail, and I really liked it actually — it was, like, quota attainment. Right? It's kind of the health of your capacity plan, your hiring plan. So you can read a lot out of that. If you think about what you just said about, like, five quarters. Right? Like, how is your quota attainment? And they actually have two metrics for that. Like, they have the quota attainment on the street and then the kind of the quota goal, and then also really understanding the health of the pipeline. I think we see this all the time. Right? We are in the forecasting and pipeline management space, and pipelines are bloated. You know? It's like there's data missing. People don't understand the health of the deals. They don't have good risk signals early on, and that then leads to inaccurate forecasting. So the data insights and then forecasting layers, right, being not well aligned. And so, you know, I think it really starts there. And so I think it's like, yes, of course, it's the storytelling, but I think also the storytelling rooted in really strong fundamental data that shows reality and essentially having a good commentary on that. Right? I think that combination is something you alluded to earlier, and I strongly believe is so important. Let's maybe switch gears. CS. You know? We had Daphne Costa Lopez on the show some time back. I noticed she spoke at RevOps AF. I really liked it. I think it's this really important role and a lot more important than maybe two or three years ago, I think. Yeah. So, I mean, what are no-nos on the CS reporting side? Like, what shouldn't you do? And then what should you do?

Camela Thompson: It's gonna be the same thing over and over again because each executive — or some executives — do this. It's just a different language and flavor that we see applied to it. So pointing fingers, blaming products, blaming sales for selling the wrong thing — these could all be true. But how do you operationally fix some of these things? Maybe talk about that. The thing that I really worry about is CS tends to be very much understaffed. How do you create an argument that's compelling to change your ratio of client to rep? Can you get creative with training? Are there best practices you can share across the team? There's a lot of things we need to think about before we start complaining about how few resources we have, because every department is feeling that. So are there other things we can get kind of creative with to figure that out? And ultimately, the board's looking for the same story from CS as from any other department — did you hit your goals, and what are you doing differently to get there? So really, the recommendation across the board is try to focus on what you can control, and then work collaboratively in the background and with operations to figure out those get-well plans and how to influence things behind the scenes.

Janis Zech: I think one thing with CS is also — in the end, right, it's the same as with sales or, you know, marketing. Like, you either try to increase revenue or you try to reduce costs and churn, so focusing on that always makes sense. I think focusing, for example — and I've seen this in the past — it's like focusing on things like a good NPS score. I mean, it's good if you have a good NPS score. Don't get me wrong. But it's not gonna, you know, change anything dramatically for the board. So, yeah, emphasize that the same things are true for CS as they are for sales. Just different KPIs.

Camela Thompson: And I love a good sizzle reel for the board, where we have interviewed customers and they're super happy. That gets everybody jazzed up. That's great. However, most customers who cancel are coded green, and we think they're fine. They don't complain. So health scores to me don't say as much as whether or not you're hitting your goals and what you're doing to try to improve the operation.

Janis Zech: Yeah. And, again, I think you look at the board, right, and they think of CS, they think of NRR, they think of GRR. Right? So these are the two main metrics. Obviously, and I think what has really changed and what we are seeing a lot of our customers doing is creating expansion opportunities. Right? So, like, basically understanding where the customers are. And I think, you know, a lot of companies have actually expanded their product offerings so that they can sell more into their existing customer base as new logo acquisitions become a lot harder. And so, you know, like, having that really structured and run like a sales process. Right? So you have your marketing qualified opportunities, sales qualified or sales accepted opportunities, and then also CS-qualified opportunities that then essentially create the expansion pipeline. I think this is something I'm personally quite bullish about because I do think it's a good strategy. It makes a lot of sense, and I think it's something that the board appreciates because it hits on the, okay, this is how we can get more out of the customers. And it also has, I think, another ripple effect that is, like, look — if a customer buys more from you, likelihood of churning is probably lower than if they don't. Right? So that's probably something to focus on and become really, really good at.

Camela Thompson: Agreed.

Janis Zech: Okay. Great. Look. I think we're at time. I really, really enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for joining. Maybe one closing question. You know, what book would you recommend? And there's one caveat here, not Revenue Architecture because that has been named too often. Any other book?

Camela Thompson: I'm gonna do Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck. And it's fantastic because it really encourages people to stay curious and view discomfort as an opportunity as opposed to something we should shy away from. Highly recommend.

Janis Zech: Over to you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.