Philipp Stelzer: Welcome, Adrienne.

Adrien Del Bonta: Hi. It's very nice to be here. Thank you for including me.

Philipp Stelzer: Great to have you. Thanks for spending time with us today. And, you know, I think maybe give us some context. When you joined Contentful, how big was the RevOps team? How big was the company? And how big is it now six years later?

Adrien Del Bonta: When I joined Contentful, I joined to help build out sales and partnerships operations. We didn't have RevOps yet. We were thinking very, very much around how teams functioned. And when I joined, there was a person who was on the team who was sort of the sales admin, and that was it. The sales and partnerships team were about thirty or thirty five people. It's a little hazy now. Six years is a long time. The company was about a hundred and fifty people or so globally. It was headquartered in Berlin. I joined the San Francisco office. I think I was person around fifteen in the US. Now, there are within the field organization because we've become a field organization in the intervening years. There are about three hundred and fifty people, about eight hundred people on the company. So it's a lot of people growth. A lot of people change as well.

Philipp Stelzer: And and how did it work? Were you hired really for the US market, or was it an international role right from the beginning?

Adrien Del Bonta: Right from the beginning, it was a global role. So the then VP of sales got hired in May. He started looking for a RevOps person very quickly. So I had contact with Contentful, like, September. I started November first. It was very, very fast. He was a leader who was definitely committed to building out the operations of his team. And from the very beginning, I think my first trip to Berlin was about a month later. I was not quite prepared for December in Berlin. It was a really, really good lesson.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. So sorry to hear that.

Adrien Del Bonta: Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't know about Christmas markets.

Philipp Stelzer: Yes. I I had to learn about how to adapt and, how to have a great fun at a Christmas market.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I'm I'm sure the German culture is very different to the US culture in terms of how direct to say something, but that's a different topic. So I'd love to dive into your lessons learned. I mean, six years growing like Contentful did as a company, but then also as a revenue operations organization. Now tell us a bit more about your main lessons learned.

Adrien Del Bonta: It's an interesting topic. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and how I kind of frame it in my mind is really two ways. One is how the job changed, what I learned about the job, and the other one is what I learned about myself in the job. And we're people, so we have to think about how we exist at the same time. Right? So around the job, if I think about the last six years and all the things that I would do differently, it's a very long list. But where I can focus is really my top line. Document. Document. Simplify wherever possible. I think lots of RevOps people will tell you people get really wrapped up in their tools and really wrapped up in their ROEs, and this is how we do it, and this is how we do it. Stop. Simplify. Because if you simplify, you can scale. Prioritize and share the priorities, communicate, and remember always that you're a neutral third party. And if we think about RevOps or sales ops or whatever kind of go to market ops you're in as the way that the company's strategy shows up every day, you have to remain neutral. So those are the themes that keep going through my mind and around those themes, what I could have done better. So when I started because I started, I mentioned in November, we were in planning season. And so, typically, you wanna start a job and you wanna meet folks and ask a lot of questions and listen to answers and really try to understand what's happening before you start to expound. I didn't have that opportunity. I got there. Okay. Create the plan for next year. So, my VP and I were furiously working on spreadsheets and trying to create what was going on for next year, and I didn't take the time to stop and really figure out what that plan was gonna be for how we were going to get to these numbers. It was very much a spreadsheet exercise. And so one of the biggest lessons for me is no matter what, take a moment, sit down, and think about it, and document it, and then start building off of that. And the documentation, I think, always needs to begin with customer journey. So you can't — I don't think you can come up with a great plan until you understand what's happening. And the only way to do that is if you haven't already documented it. And if you have, that's fantastic. But if you haven't, take the time to sit down and follow things from beginning to end. Who's doing what? Who's responsible? Who's associated? Do you have tools? Do you have enablement around it or documentation around it, assets you're sharing? What does forecasting look like? What does pipeline attainment look like? All of that stuff. And really create for yourself a map. And in the intervening years, especially in the last year, we have done a much better job of that. But initially, we would have saved ourselves — I would have saved myself a lot of time if I had taken a moment and done that.

Janis Zech: How long do you think the moment should be if you join a new role? And then how would you structure that onboarding to be successful?

Adrien Del Bonta: I think it's gonna depend upon what you're joining, how complex what already exists. If somebody's already done that, fantastic. You just saved a lot of time. You're just confirming and asking lots of questions to clarify and learn. And, also, depending upon how complex the sales process. And when I say sales process, I'm also including renewal process and understanding customer behavior, the customer success side of it. So I think it depends. For Contentful to do that, when everyone's aligned, and I'm gonna get to that in a second, not too long. Couple weeks.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Great. So you mentioned alignment. Right? So I'm super curious, like, I think that's a big topic and especially in RevOps, right, you're basically working with so many different stakeholders. Super curious, you know, like, what you've learned there, and then also how that changed while the organization became bigger.

Adrien Del Bonta: So, yes, alignment is a big topic, and you have to build it not only within your organization, whatever your support organization looks like for RevOps, whoever you are set up to support, but cross functionally. And one of the big tools now, I understand in retrospect, is if you've documented your customer journey, that's the place you start. Then you can start to socialize. This is what we're observing. These are all the things that happen. Do you agree? No. I think this is different. And even when you go to finance, these are everything I think is happening. Let's especially talk about pipeline attainment and forecast. Do you agree? And I think it takes a lot of communication and time to make sure that everyone is looking at the same plan in the same way, and that also requires you to ask questions to listen to the answers and not just to talk. And some of us, I think, us RevOps folks, we're so committed to fixing problems that sometimes we can jump over that step because we think we know the answer instead of understanding that you're not trying to get the answer, you're trying to get the people, then you can get the answer. And then a lot of it is to just communicate, communicate.

Janis Zech: On this communication part, like, that's really interesting to me. Like, I think the devil is in the details, right? So I think, like, one thing you said is, you know, terminology, for example, right? Like, having different terminology for, or a different understanding of what forecasting means, for example. So, how do you educate? How do you educate so many people? Because RevOps, you know, like, you're really across so many different functions, types of parts of the organization. So, you know, like, in your opinion, what's the best approach to that? Should you, like, hold educational classes, do a webinar? Because I think, like, an email will probably not cut it. Right? Like, you send an email, write some definitions in it. Probably nobody will read it.

Adrien Del Bonta: I think if this were a multiple choice question, I would say all of the above. I think that one of the tricks for change management is meeting people where they're at, and people learn in different ways. So, if you can do it visually, fantastic. Emails, webinars, using the same slides over and over and over and over so people are seeing the messages repeated, sitting down individually, having office hours, having coffee with people, especially people you know who are influencers within their groups. Hey, you know, whoever it is, did you have a chance to take a look at this? Do you wanna talk about it? I have some free time. Can we meet? Making sure that you have built up some goodwill, but it's also gonna build up some trust and some confidence along the way. But I think the trick is understanding that the job is not for you to deliver the message. It's for them to understand the message.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I think that's so important. I mean, in general. Right? I mean, if you think about what you just said, first, understand what's the real problem instead of thinking you have a solution, right? So listening, doing good discovery, you know, not just with one stakeholder, but with multiple stakeholders. Then essentially taking that back, trying to come up with a solution, essentially build an MVP, test the solution, and then make sure that it's actually gonna get used properly. And whether that's behavior, that's tooling, that is dashboards, insights, or an entire process. Right? Overcommunicate. I think the rule of seven. Right? Communicate. Communicate. Communicate via different media. I absolutely love this. You touched on another point, which is influence. Right? And I I think we've all been there. Right? Like, you have to build rapport and influence and trust among the organization. I think, especially in RevOps, this is super important. In a, you know, rocket ship like Contentful, that's obviously even harder because there's so many moving pieces, so many people coming in and out. What were your learnings on, you know, developing influence?

Adrien Del Bonta: For me, it's about being authentic and being willing to be vulnerable. Getting on your show and talking about all the things I did wrong is not necessarily comfortable for everyone. But I think if you're in RevOps and you're trying to get change completed and successful, you have to be willing to walk into a room and say, I don't know what you do. Can you please explain it to me? And when you start to do — tell me what's important to you. Tell me what's working. Tell me what your challenges are. And you do it across the organization, you're gonna start to build not just goodwill, but you're going to try to start to put the team you're representing, the organization you're representing in a really good spot as a partner within the organization. And when other teams can see how what's important to them — I think a lot about this around finance because they're trying to figure out what's happening for the next five years. Right? So if you've gone to finance and they've said, these few numbers on, let's say, a Salesforce opportunity are important to us because this is how we use them, and then they see it show up. You've done something wonderful for them and not hard for you at all. And if you go into those conversations thinking, look, things change, things evolve, nothing is precious. We're gonna make the changes we need to make, and it's not about our ego. It's about getting the goal completed. You're gonna put yourself in a better position to be able to be successful.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I think this is great. I mean, essentially, this is about, like, being genuine. Right? Like, you wanna be recognized as a person that is generally interested in the overall well-being of the organization and the people who work in it, and I think this is exactly the mindset you need to bring along the journey for any of these supportive roles. I think RevOps, obviously product management, but there's many parts in an organization that have exactly this role. You are here to support other people in the organization and not your ego or just your own team. I think outside of RevOps, I just want to say that I think it's generally one of the best things to invest into and not to have this fake persona that's completely different privately.

Adrien Del Bonta: Probably a good human skill.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Think it's not easy for some people.

Adrien Del Bonta: Yeah. It also helps to be confident. It also helps to know what you're talking about, and once you do that, for those moments that you don't know what you're talking about, if you've already started to build trust, you can say out loud, you know what? I don't know very much about that. Let me go find out, and I'll get back to you. And people will let you do that, and you won't lose anything. Yeah. But it does help to have some experience.

Janis Zech: Hundred percent. Yeah.

Adrien Del Bonta: Percent. Yeah.

Janis Zech: It reminds me a bit of somebody I worked with at Fiverr who was in product and the absolute go to person for all things customer demands. Right? So almost like a product solution engineer. And because he delivered so many meetings with so many good outcomes, people were just naturally going to him for all things product and solution engineering. And I think it's interesting because, you know, it's like you have your job, right? But then it's also about your impact. If you have continuous impact and people see that when they come to you, you really help them resolve certain things, and even if it's little things for you, for them it's massive things. That builds trust. That builds, you know, essentially influence and just overall a much better culture to work together. So I absolutely love this learning. This is really, really good. I mean, I'm sure you learned a lot about scaling the team, growing the team, you know, hiring the right people or even not the right people, right? I think that's also unfortunately always part of it. Maybe you can tell us a bit more about, you know, how do you grow a team from two to twenty five people successfully?

Adrien Del Bonta: I think you have to know that you're gonna make some mistakes, and you also have to know that there are different people at different times, and that's okay. You start with a plan. So if we're growing — if we, as a go to market organization, are growing in a certain way, how do we scale the organization first? So from a RevOps perspective, we'll probably talk a lot about automation, simplicity, automation, and data. Those are the things that we can really have impact on efficiency. Right? And then who are the people that we need to be able to do that and then also support the day to day needs of teams? And what does that look like? So for Contentful, because we're global and because we did not invest early enough in our go to market operations teams, we arguably maybe had too many people, but we didn't have those people until fairly late in the game. So I don't think I hired my first full time sales operations person until the summer of twenty nineteen. And, prior to that, there was the person I told you who was doing a lot of admin work. We had a great working students program that you all have in Germany, which is fantastic. I think we converted four people to full time out of that program, but I didn't have someone with a sales ops background for a good year and a half, almost two years, which kind of put everything behind. And that was exacerbated because my then boss and I didn't do a great job of planning out what we needed to make happen. We were really reactive. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about when I talk about showing up as a person, but the difference between being reactive in a moment and having a reactive department, huge learning. So if we had documented the customer journey, first thing, if we had thought about the steps it was going to take instead of just jumping right in. And we also had some functional misalignment between our team and some cross functional teams that took a lot of the time away from my time, then I think we could have gotten ahead of that and brought forward a lot of the things we weren't able to do for quite some time. So that takes scaling. And then about the team, I think the trick — after you have your plan, after you know where you need to really invest, then it's around the people. And the people for me, you know, I already know what I know. So I need to figure out what I don't know, and that's where I need to hire. So if there's too much of what I'm doing, like the day to day stuff, like the Salesforce tickets or the tools tickets or the I can't find my quote tickets. Great. Let's find somebody for that. But then when we get into planning and scaling automation, I have to figure out where my strengths don't live and fill those holes. And then I think about how everybody on the team is gonna work together, and I try to balance. So if we have someone who's particularly analytical, great. I need somebody who's particularly process oriented because we need to address all of those needs, and that's how it came to be. And I ended up being surrounded by a lot of great people.

Janis Zech: I mean, I think hiring great people is a super skill to scale organizations in general. I'm curious, you said something really interesting, like, hire people where you have gaps. Right? And so then the question is, how do you know that those are great people? Right? Like, how do you find the best of the best when you hire those? Any learnings there?

Adrien Del Bonta: Oh, yeah. So part of it is the real world. What budget do you have? Where are you in the economic climate? Where are you physically? Do you have to hire in a certain place? And once you know — and what's the philosophy of the company around hiring and remuneration and all that kind of stuff? So once you know that, then work really closely with, hopefully, a great recruiter recruiting team. And we work closely with them anyway because we're responsible for the headcount plan. So we know the recruiting team really well. So work really closely with your recruiting team. Don't be afraid to change your job description. If who you think you're looking for turns out to be not quite right after you've talked to a couple people, change it. Don't waste more time. You know? It's RevOps. Be efficient, and get other people involved. So go look for a hiring committee, an interview committee who is affected by this person. So maybe who they would be supporting. Folks, if you're hiring a leader, involve the people — at a certain point, you need to involve the people who are making up that team who will report to that person. Maybe somebody who isn't necessarily part of even the go to market team, but whose opinion you rely on. Like, maybe somebody who is in IT, but you think, gosh. This person really seems to be connected with the company and understands how people work well together. And listen to their opinions.

Janis Zech: Did you ever work with external consultancies or services, or was it always the goal to really build out the knowledge inside of Contentful?

Adrien Del Bonta: We've had over the years a couple of consultants, but mostly we built our team internally. We started out — at this point, now there is a VP of RevOps who came in two years ago. There's me. There is a people management structure. There are individual contributors, and there have been working students. So we built out a whole — we built out a hierarchy, really.

Janis Zech: I have another question. Often in those growth organizations, the majority of headcount is actually hired in the go to market org, not in RevOps. Do you think that RevOps could elevate the quality of the go to market org in terms of people and hiring? Not just the enablement part, but really the selection part.

Adrien Del Bonta: Yeah. So think about what RevOps does. We buy software. We implement software. We are part of — in many companies, we're part of sales cycles. We're part of deal desk. How much could a person who is customer facing learn from their own RevOps groups?

Janis Zech: Yeah. And and in terms of really, like, sitting in the hiring committees, trying to improve the hiring structures, is that something you did at Contentful, or was that mostly done by the sales leaders and managers?

Adrien Del Bonta: I did more so in the early days. And in fact, in the first couple years, I met with every new person joining the department, and we would go over comp plans and quotas and territories and things like that. But, yes, I participated in a lot of hiring. The thing about RevOps is that we have a little bit of, we would say, a bird's eye view, a collective view of everyone working here, and we see not just the numbers and how they're contributing to whatever their functional responsibility is, but how they interact and how they interact within the company and how they interact externally. Because, you know, like, we're on Gong, we're on Chorus, we're all that stuff. So we have, I think, a really interesting perspective on what makes a great team member.

Janis Zech: Great. Initially, you said two things, how to do the job and, you know, how I show up to the job. Right? And so I wanna switch gears a bit and talk a bit about, you know, like, how you show up to the job. I mean, I'm sure six years in such a growth environment, a lot changes. Right? What were some of the personal things you learned about yourself and areas to improve?

Adrien Del Bonta: I think I said a little bit earlier, one of the qualities that RevOps people that I've encountered have is that we wanna solve problems. We really like to do that. Probably the thing that excites us the most. And I think we can get lost in that very easily. And my dear friend and colleague Andrew Hazzard once told me not one good thing ever turned out for a murder. In fact, I have it on a poster on my monitor, and it's right in front of both of your faces right now. And he's right. So when we don't prioritize, when we're completely reactive, not only do we burn out, but we stop doing our jobs well. And we stop supporting our teams well, and that means we're not supporting the company well because we're a neutral third party. And what we do affects how the company is trying to reach its goals. So I just like every other ops person, I definitely got lost in that. And I had my little — at different points in time, I've had a very shiny halo on. And, you know, that also builds burnout and resentment and self righteousness. And that's not good for you. Wasn't good for me. It's not good for the company. It's not good for your team. So that's one of the things that I need to remind myself of. I also have had to think a lot in the last six years about the parts of the job that I'm not the best at. We have such a huge set of responsibilities, and they vary from technical to analytical to soft selling and relationship building. You will be invariably, like every other human being, better at some parts than at others. So wouldn't it benefit you out of the gate in the beginning to understand what those are? I'm not an analyst. I'm just not. But when we get big enough, I can hire some really great ones, and we'll have better insights because of that. But for now, especially when you're joining a, you know, B or C round company, you might be the first or the second or really small group of people, we're gonna get through it. We're gonna do our very best, and we'll keep going, and then we'll build. So just being — for me, being clear about that and not spending a lot of time beating myself up, but also at the same time — and this goes back to that — you have to figure out how to prioritize. You also have to save time to learn because things are changing. Just think about what AI is doing to everybody right now. It's changing everything. And are you taking the time to step away and make it a discipline to ensure that you're figuring out what's coming next because that's gonna benefit you and your team and your company, etcetera, etcetera. You know, we get so, so, so, so buried, and these are the everyday problems, and here are my Salesforce tickets, and here are my decks I need to build, and my QBR I'm prepping, and my KPIs I'm running. You have to step back and learn. Also, you gotta pick your battles.

Janis Zech: Sorry. Just on that last part. Like, I'd like — how actually do you get to that? Like, were you able, like, in all your years at Contentful to actually finally, at some point, arrive at that position where you're not reactive anymore and can really, like, say, okay, this is, you know, this is my quarter. This is how it's gonna look like, and, you know, no one is gonna barge in here and shove those priorities in my face, and I'll have to take care of those immediately. Like, did you get there?

Adrien Del Bonta: That's never gonna happen. Never ever ever ever gonna happen that nicely. But what we did do was, as a team, especially as we grew and we started to hire more leaders, we spent time every quarter talking about — whether you're doing MBOs or OKRs, whatever those are — here are big projects for the quarter. Can you tie what you're doing every day to those big projects? And that's gonna help you prioritize. So whoever's coming to you — if it's a, hey, I can't get my deal done, everything stops. Help them get their deal done. We all know that. Right? If it's I have this idea, okay. Great. Let me see if that aligns with some of the things we're working on. If it does, fantastic. If it doesn't, that's a great idea. Let me get back to you about that. And maybe it will be a different quarter. And we got better on self promotion here.

Janis Zech: Over the episode with Darren Fay who talks exactly about this topic. How do you build an intent based RevOps structure that is mission driven and ideally aligns, you know, all the core priorities around that mission, whatever that mission is, and be really intentional and centered around impact, because I think it's a huge problem everybody's facing. We hear it again and again, and something that is really hard to achieve, actually. Right? Because the reality, the day to day looks just so different. I think you mentioned something earlier just maybe interesting to as the final learning, you know, pick your battles. I mean, you know, like, what would you say about that? I mean, I know that, you know, a hundred people company looks very different to an eight hundred people company. And maybe it's not even meant as, you know, people battles, but more like, you know, projects. But, yeah, curious what you learned about that.

Adrien Del Bonta: Just because you wanna fix it, one, doesn't mean it needs to be fixed. Two, doesn't mean it's aligned with all of the other priorities that have been set. And three, doesn't mean you have time to do it. So know when to let things go. We used — you were mentioning the episode. I listened to that. And I was thinking we used a framework called Smallify. And using that framework, which was about, okay, here's how you break down a project into its component parts and how you can track, am I doing this? Do I need to readdress? That's one of the ways we, as a team, helped pick our battles.

Philipp Stelzer: So typically, we ask every guest, you know, what would you do differently if you started in, you know, RevOps now again? But, I mean, I think you actually answered quite a bit, so I won't ask that question today.

Adrien Del Bonta: That was my first line, right? Shush, shush, shush.

Philipp Stelzer: But maybe, you know, where can people find you? Are you on LinkedIn? Are you on Twitter or now X?

Adrien Del Bonta: I am. I'm on LinkedIn. Yeah. I'm not — can you say it? I don't tweet anything. I don't really have very much to say, but I am on LinkedIn. I'm around.

Philipp Stelzer: But, look, Adrien, thank you so much for joining us. I think this was super insightful, so many learnings, and I am sure we could invite you back for many deep dives into these different sessions. Thanks for spending your time with us. Wish you a great weekend.

Adrien Del Bonta: Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Philipp. Thank you, Janis. It was great to be here. I appreciate it very much.