Janis Zech: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the RevOps Lab. We are here with Lorena Morales. I hope I pronounced this correctly. We first met at RevOps AF in San Diego last year. And, yeah, super glad to have you on the pod.

Lorena Morales: Thank you, Janis. Yeah, I am very happy to come back to talk more RevOps. I know a lot of people have heard me through the last eight years speaking about like many, many things about RevOps, but I never get tired honestly. I think like the message of people that are still successfully doing revenue operations is important and I hope that your audience enjoys it. So very happy to be here.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I mean, we couldn't agree more. I think we're up in our sixty five episode or so, so quite advanced by now. I mean, maybe before we jump into our topic, like who are you? What do you do?

Lorena Morales: Right. So Lorena Morales here, as Janis and Philipp here nicely introduced me. I am currently the Global Director of Revenue Operations at Jones Lang LaSalle or JLL as many people know it. It's a quite big real estate company focusing mainly on commercial, but we do have several business lines around globe. And so that's the job that I'm doing currently. In my past lives, I was in consultancy, I was in traditional marketing doing pretty much every single arm of the marketing engine. So yes, that's who I am right now.

Janis Zech: Yeah, awesome. And quite big is maybe an — I would say you're probably the RevOps person at the largest company in the podcast ever. I think JLL, you know, in our podcast at least, JLL has over a hundred thousand employees globally, spans across eighty markets. And so today's topic is how to do RevOps in a hundred k people company outside of technology. Right? So and yeah, maybe to kick off, right, like would love to understand a bit like your org structure. So how big is your team? What's the role and responsibility? Yeah. If you could share more about that, that would be a great starting point.

Lorena Morales: Yeah. So when they first hired me almost four years ago, the expectation was that I could handle the five regions that were more profitable for the business. And so it was five countries that are considered what we call the J5s, J8s a few years later. Today, we handle more than thirty six countries across the world and we have expanded to also non digital activities to also kind of be in charge of field marketing. And what I mean by being in charge is they brought me to build a team from scratch. It didn't exist. It's the first role in the company and nobody has held this role ever before. And so it was kind of like a good thing because I had a lot of room to kind of put the standard and like test because that was one of the requirements, right? Like if I was going to leave SaaS, I needed a place where I could kind of redefine things again. And I think the organization has been very kind to me in that sense. And so what are we in charge of is mostly trying to tie every single marketing activity to revenue, therefore finding revenue we could just grow the entire funnel of all the business lines globally. And so it's quite a challenge because as I was talking with you guys in San Diego, it's just a different flavor, right? Like you would think RevOps, when it started, it was mainly in the SaaS space. And now bigger and bigger companies are starting to bet on it because they understand that of course alignment, which is one of like the biggest things that RevOps do, but also understanding like the full life cycle of your customer along with the processes. How do you really and effectively put people and processes before the tool? Because I think in a world where like we are so suffocated with the amount of tools that we have available, it's a challenge to say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't get the shiny toys yet. Please bring and clean your house before anything and then be mindful about it. And so I think that's what has been and it has been evolving through the past four years. Now I hold one of the most larger teams in the digital marketing team.

Janis Zech: Just one thought I wanna bring in here. Actually two things. First of all, so when we started Weflow, we also thought, we have to focus on RevOps and SaaS. That's, like, the biggest opportunity. But turns out, at this point, right, we have customers in finance, banking, health care, identity management, pharma, chemical companies. So it is crazy diverse. Right? Like, just focusing on SaaS, for sure. Like, there's lots of RevOps opportunities, like jobs, in RevOps, in different industries. And another just small insight that Revenue Wizards, they published a study looking at the impact of revenue operations across different industries. And it was actually not SaaS where the uplift was, like, the biggest. It was actually outside of SaaS, which I thought was, quite nice, to see. I don't remember the exact exact numbers. I don't wanna spread any, like, false information here, but you can look it up. Right? Revenue Wizards, they have the study here from Harris, he also shared it on LinkedIn. You can definitely find it there. Yeah. Just confirming what you're saying there. RevOps is more than just, like, focusing on SaaS companies. Right. There's lots of opportunity.

Lorena Morales: Right.

Janis Zech: And how is your team structured? Like, do you have like a decentralized role if you support so many companies or centralized or both?

Lorena Morales: No. It's actually a centralized team. So, I am the one at the center, you could say, holding strategy, and then I have ICs in the regions. So, now it's eight direct reports plus an agency that holds probably like around — like right now I think it's around sixteen people working with us. And those two things, I manage those two things, like my direct reports and one of the biggest agencies that we have helping us in the lead management process. And so the way it works is I try to hold the vision and kind of see the forest of how we're going to move the entire organization. Like if we're going to start reporting by business line, if not, if by region, like what makes sense and what is reachable. And then my local RevOps managers, they are in charge to hold the point of contacts for every one of the regions. So APAC, Americas and EMEA. And then on the side, I also have like a mini hub of analytics, which is really important, right? Like for revenue operations, because in my case, the reason why we started living at the very beginning when I started on their digital marketing is because that's where the data lived. So it made sense. And everyone tells me like, wait a minute, you never report to the COO. And I'm like, guys, mistake. Again, like that's the area that we have in SaaS, but in a global company, need to see where are the wins, are like the places where you can move. In my particular case was digital marketing. It's the department that held literally all the data that we could start analyzing. And so that's where we started. Then fast forward, now we live under an operational umbrella, now touching more on processes on both sides and the technology as well. Like, so it has been evolving over the years. But yeah, it's a pretty nimble team, I would say, but a very efficient one. And I'm literally in love with this team. I don't think I've ever had this level of overachievers. I think it's funny because right now it's performance reviews at the end of the year and I never had such a hard time because of the good reasons. Right? Of course. But, yeah, my team is stellar and we've been able to report revenues that were never even visible to the organization.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I really love this. I mean, it's so interesting, right, like to first like come in and see where are the wins, right? And I think the way I understand you is like you focused in on almost creating business partners for the specific regions. In HR, you have this HR business partner concept. Almost, I think, there's more and more RevOps teams that are also applying similar ideas, right, to have like counterparts in different regions so that the marketing or sales leads, right, like have somebody they can, you know, physically work with closely. And then it sounds like one of your first priorities was to identify leakage. Is that fair? Can you share more about that?

Lorena Morales: I mean, this is still one of my priorities because I think even after four years, there are still times where I'm like, wait, what is this? Like, there's been like a lot of reorganizations. There's like products that I'm still learning after four years, which is like a really nice place to be because I'm the type of person that I need to be in constant learning in order to feel satisfied. Right? And with that said, leakage was in the sense of, like, for example, we are a three hundred year old brand, right? Like you would think we didn't have any problems and we actually, we don't, like we have like the really good problem where we have excessive amount of leads, right? Inbound at the point that sometimes the brokers don't want them because they get the privilege of saying, I only want the X or Y leads, which is a beautiful problem, right? Like every single company in the world wants to have an excess of leads problem or an excess of traffic. That was on kind of like the inbound side. But then on events, given the brand that I just described, we are really good at kind of treating our customers very nicely. The problem is that we didn't understand what was behind that investment or like the LTV of a customer that would come from an event. And then the third assumption was that at the very beginning when I started, we were putting everything in the same box, assuming that everything would convert the same. It was not the assumption that everything converts the same, but it was like there was no team in charge of saying, wait, your events are gonna convert at a different rate than the website, than a download, than paid, than organic, and then starting to be intentional about like the channels and where to put our dollars based on data. And so that's what I mean by leakages because a lot of the journeys that our customers were taking — nobody was looking into that. And so I think it's still my priority, as I said, because I think as RevOps, you should be hyper vigilant of where do your customers churn, where do your customers come back if they come back or, like, where are the moments through the customer journey that are gonna ultimately give you retention, right, which is another one of the metrics that we care about.

Philipp Stelzer: So if you compare that experience, right, of like trying to find these ways of improving the understanding of, like, you know, what is, like, a channel that is worth pursuing and to double down on, like, in your mind, how is that, you know, differently challenging at a company with, like, a hundred thousand employees plus versus a company that's fifty or, let's say, two hundred employees or something like this? What kind of, like, blockers did you experience that were really surprising to you and made it all more complicated? And maybe there are also, like, positive things, to this. You know? I don't wanna, like, turn it into, like, oh, it's so hard to work at a hundred thousand employee company. I mean, there sure must be also some good things about it.

Lorena Morales: Of course, Philipp. And I think that's a great question. Like, if there weren't good things, I couldn't — I wouldn't be here. Right? But I think we should kind of focus on the challenges as well because that's the way people learn through podcasts. I think one of the biggest surprises for me at this level was the idea of like, you need to make peace of mind with yourself that there are some things that we are not going to track. And for me, that's like, wait, what? Like in a SaaS company, in a smaller company, in a hyper growth company, in the marketing, whatever you are, marketing ops, regular marketing, whatever, you're going to try to pinpoint every single thing that you can. Even there's been discussions and attribution forever and like, how do you do with podcasts, etcetera. At this level, like at JLL, there are going to be things that you're gonna have to make peace and say, like, let's focus on like the really big ones, right? Like the millions and millions of dollars, events. And then once we get that, maybe we can go to the smaller things. And I think it's an organization that is really smart in the way they have capitalized their events, for example. And so, I think that was kind of like the first impression that it was my moment where I was like, oh, so here you can't grab everything. Like, it's just not possible. Right? Like you can't see every single dinner that a broker is gonna have in, as Janis was saying, in eighty countries. Sometimes we don't even have access to the information that brokers are managing, which is a very interesting world, right? Like to know that your company is doing something that you are never gonna have your sight in, it was pretty eye opening. On the good side, however, I think I love the idea that the challenges that this presents has to do a lot with culture. And I've always prided myself to be — I call myself a citizen of the world because I've lived in several cities around the world and like living in them and understanding the culture of how they proceed with business. And now it seems like my career took me now to the place where all of this comes together and I get to see culturally how business is pursued in all the world. And so it hits me every single day, right? Like I was talking to you guys, like even the language, like that was one of the first things that I really, really enjoyed changing in the organization, right? Like where people, there were some people that they didn't understand what was an MQL. And then even if you explain to them, they gotta still think of it differently. Or for example, the fact that in France, they love picking up the phone. Like we tested a chatbot and it didn't work because they don't like it. They don't like to talk to a chatbot in the computer. Whereas in the other neighbor region, like we also manage UK, the chatbot was a fantastic idea. And so like those things and being able to be the one that experiences all that knowledge and then pass it, I think it has been amazing.

Janis Zech: Yeah. And at massive scale. Right? So, I mean, you basically come in founding this team. And, I mean, I think I really like this. Like, you know, I think one takeaway here is, right, like, you probably need to accept a lot of things that are not being captured in terms of data and trackable, but these already have massive scales and probably massive investments behind them. And then you have to identify the one or two things where you feel like you can actually make the biggest difference. But then once you start applying the skills, the impact is super big, right? Because the scale is large, so obviously if you do a percentage improvement here or you reduce some leakage there, it can have massive impact. And I think that's a great takeaway, actually. Maybe going on the challenge path, I like what you said about, you know, let's focus a bit on the challenges because that's where, you know, people learn from. Like, what were some other challenges you encountered?

Lorena Morales: I think — and I hate to be the person in RevOps that ends up the conversation in technology, but it was technology. And I'm sorry to disappoint everyone.

Janis Zech: I don't think anyone expects this to be on the forefront of technology, but sorry for interrupting. A bit more — what are some of the specific challenges that people would encounter if they go into an enterprise like this.

Lorena Morales: I think, Janis, it was the scale of the problem of technology. Because when I was in consulting, when we would go and do the audit calls at the very beginning to understand what was the current status of the systems, I mean, one thing was like, okay, your lead scoring needs to be adjusted. Okay. I can deal with that and I can deliver like in maybe two days. Right? But then here it was like, wait, there's like eight different lead scorings for one solution. And then that's going to multiply and then that's going to multiply and then that's going to like, it's almost like an infinite thing, right? So that's just like one little example. Like it was the scale of the nature of technology or the technology problem. And then the other one is the systems. We currently, and this is public information anyways, we have six marketing automation platforms because at some point in the organization, decisions were made at the local level, at the very regional level, where like, if they had a need and they had the budget, they could purchase. And so then I would come as kind of like the head of RevOps and I started like, what do you do as RevOps? Like understanding, like auditing everything. And when I saw it, I was like, this is gonna be complex. Because of course, as we understand the MAP, it's one on one to your CRM, right? And so all of that conversation of like, wait, but then there's six, but then at some point someone even told me that there was like around eighty six CRMs. And right now we don't have eighty six anymore, so don't get scared. But we probably have quite a few still. And so like those conversations, like in smaller companies, would be like, why is your Marketo not communicating with Salesforce? Okay, let's find something, an extra tool to kind of put it in between and then like do magic here and there. Here is like, but the solution is not that one instance. It's like, what I need to think about is like the other seven that are around and how, like the thing that works for Americas is not necessarily gonna work for APAC or EMEA. And so you need to be very considerate of like everything that happens. And another thing, nurturing, right? In Americas, we have free rein of like nurturing the hell out of people until people get tired. Then in EMEA, you have GDPR. You need to be very careful with how you treat that in your systems. They have teams, all of those things become — that's why you see me smiling because it's like, oh hell, I'm up for the challenge. Don't have the right answer. It's been four years and I'm still not where I would like to be, but I know there has been progress. Like there's a reason why from five countries now we manage thirty something.

Janis Zech: I think it's only natural, like organizations that grew this much, you're going to see these, what I've called in the past, functional silos. It's normal. Yeah. And I mean, look, you know, these kinds of companies, right? I think the company also originally merged two very large companies together in nineteen ninety nine, right? Like then, you know, there's more acquisitions. Right. Like, I think everybody who's had, you know, experience with real estate knows how many emails are being sent. So, you know, the marketing automation systems matter a lot. Right. For lead generation, they matter a lot. So basically, you're also doing an open heart surgery. Right? The answer is not like, okay, then just like rip everything out and put it all in one. Although, right, like, that would be kind of — that's where you want to be at some point in time. But the reality is, like, it's just not that simple. And, yeah, I think it's a great illustration of complexity and, you know, like accepting maybe status quo that you would wish is different, but it's a many year project to actually get it to a different place.

Lorena Morales: And the skill set, Janis, is very different — and I laugh every time that I read posts in my network of, I just started as a RevOps whatever, and I decided to clean up the Salesforce instance, and now I'm gonna go to HubSpot. I was like, that's something I would like — in this size of company, you would never ever, ever be able to do. Like, just to say, like rip it off and then put something else and then start like a clean start. That's one skill. And then another skill is saying like, I know I'm never gonna be able to fight with politics, with multi million dollar contracts, with things that actually work in some regions and then in others might not, but you need to find a solution. So I think one of my biggest skill sets here has been adaptability, right? And to make sure that I don't lose it and that I don't give up. People joke with me in general because they tell me like, you still come with a new child in the hood energy, like as it was your first day. And I'm like, because it's been four years and the problems are still very unique. So, I feel like I've got the chance to be very patient, number one. And then what I was saying, like flexibility and adaptability to environments that can change from one month to the next one, or on the other side that will never change. And so that's how it is.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I love that. Let's double down on that part because I'm curious, like, what you can share for our listeners, other things, skills, like, or just mindset that is really helpful for joining such a large company. I only had, like, a relatively short stint at a publicly traded company for, like, two and a half years or so. But for sure, it was, like, more politics. It was, like, longer, like, time to get stuff done. So I think it just requires a different type of thinking. So, yeah, I'm curious, like, what you would tell others who are looking to join, like, such a big company.

Lorena Morales: I think be ready to — and kind of be good at it — to unlearn things. Because a lot of the things that my previous manager, who is still really good friends of mine, Jason — I came like you start a new job and you come with a repertoire that you already know, right? Like almost like a playbook. And I've always said, and I say it in interviews even, why do people look for hires that have the playbook? Throw away the fucking playbook. Like it's not gonna equip you. You know, like what I value now in my teams is can you unlearn the habits that you brought from your other companies, from your thirteen years of experience, and then be curious enough to see how does it look like here? Can you re-adapt to new environments without the noise that you had in the past? Of course, there are things that you still need to keep, right? Like the communication between teams, like understanding systems, these types of things. But as you said, I have changed. I hope that I change. I hope that I was not the same Lorena that I was like twelve years ago. And I think that's the value that I bring to teams. Like, I am very, very comfortable with uncertainty. I don't break in front of a meeting that nobody knows what the hell is happening. I'm going to be the person that says, okay, nobody knows. Totally fair. But let's figure it out. Let's give it a try this way. And so, I think that's what makes me the manager that I am today. And there's another set of skills, right? Like when people interview me like, oh, you were in marketing ops. No. I'm one of the very few people in revenue operations that comes from traditional marketing. I was never in the systems. I mean, I was dangerous enough. I've always been very dangerous in the things that I learned, but I was never the person fixing your Eloqua or your whatever. I come from branding and from like paid and partnerships and like all the traditional marketing stuff. And so today when people tell me like, how did you end up in RevOps? I was like, because that's the beauty of life. And now with AI, you're going to have to reinvent yourself multiple times. And if you don't know how to do that, I'm sorry, but you're gonna be lost. And so I think what JLL allowed me to do was a beautiful opportunity to reinvent what I used to believe.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. Okay. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. I mean, one thing I also like that you said earlier, I just wanna emphasize that, is also, look for opportunities to win. Paraphrasing here, but I think that's basically what you said, which also stuck with me because that's also something I felt from my time in, like, a larger business with, like, just five thousand employees, but it felt quite big to me back then. And, was also just, to say, like, hey. You know, like, you can't win here. You can't win there. Like, there's, like, no way for you to move the needle. So go and find, like, a place where you can actually move the needle, have a real impact on the business. And like Janis said before, even just a couple, like, zero point five percentage points or something like this, right, it's not like peanuts then, if you are at an organization of that size. So, I think that's also, like, in addition to what you said, like, you know, pick — I mean, it's sort of like pick your battles kind of thing.

Lorena Morales: And I would add, Philipp, and keep your ego in check because what is gonna happen — I see a lot of people in revenue operations joining the career of an operator because of the credit, because you're gonna be the person that comes and fixes everything and you're gonna win the trophy and everyone is gonna clap at you and like you save the organization. I think in my career, little by little, and I brought about this on LinkedIn, like I became kind of invisible, right? Like in an organization of this size, most likely you are not going to get the credit that you used to have before. You need to be okay with that. And you need to kind of go at night to sleep and say, you know what? I did it. And I feel proud of myself and I don't need sixty people to, I don't know, like in sales when they hit their little bell or whatever, when they close a deal, nobody's gonna do that for you. Nobody.

Janis Zech: You mean when they hit the Weflow, right? Nice.

Lorena Morales: So that's the only thing that I do — like make sure that your ego is in check because it's gonna hit you at some point.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I mean, I think this is in general in life, right? Like now we're going very off topic here, but finding something where, you know, you wake up in the morning, you do it for eight, ten, twelve, sometimes fifteen hours, I don't know. And you go to bed and you're like, okay, this was a good day. This was interesting. I learned something, right? It's not every day is going to be awesome, but you should enjoy that path. And it's hard to find, to be very honest. I think it's not constant. It's dynamic. I think that's certainly crucial. Look, I mean, I think we're at time, but we would love to end this with asking one closing question, and this is, what's a book you would recommend to our listeners? One thing you cannot say, Revenue Architecture by Jacco. He was on here as well, talking about it — it's a fantastic book, but it was mentioned too often. So any other book.

Lorena Morales: Yeah. I think, yeah, that book is great, but it's never gonna be my answer in a RevOps podcast. I've always been very attracted to similar personalities than mine and Scott Galloway is very cynic. Like that guy is super, super cynic. And his last book, The Algebra of Wealth — I've always said, why on earth we don't learn finance as kids? And being in an operational career and now like working for a billions of dollars company, I was like, wait a minute. Like, there are some basics that I need to go back a little bit and try to understand myself. And I think Scott Galloway makes a fantastic job at making it relatable. And so, I think that has been my latest book. I read about many weird things. Your audience doesn't need to know. But The Algebra of Wealth by Scott Galloway is one of the most normal things that I've been reading lately, and I think it's a great book.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Now I wanna know, but okay. Alright. Thank you. Thank you, Lorena, for joining.

Lorena Morales: Thank you both. It's been an amazing time talking about this.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Same here. Thank you so much. Ciao.

Lorena Morales: Ciao.