Janis Zech: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the RevOps Lab. Today, we don't have a guest. I'm here with Philipp. Philipp is drinking iced tea. I'm actually having a Friday afternoon beer. Cheers, everyone. Hope you're all doing well. I hope you all had a great week. It's always good to record a podcast Friday afternoon, and our topic today is strategic RevOps. For context, I launched another cheat sheet this week about strategic RevOps because it's a topic that comes up so much in our conversations with so many RevOps leaders, ops professionals. And so what we did is we basically dissected that topic about how to be more strategic in RevOps, and we thought it's a good idea to have a beer and talk about it on a Friday afternoon after a very busy week. So that's what we're going to do today. And we'll kick off with common pitfalls that we are observing. And I'll kick off with the first, and then we're just going to go through it. And then we have essentially a few tips on how to be more strategic. I'm sure you all have been there and worked through this. So let's kick off.

Janis Zech: So common pitfalls that we're hearing again and again. I'd say number one, we live in a time where most companies are trying to do more with less. And that's actually really stressful, right? Like there's a huge strive towards efficient growth. And so the teams and headcount discussions are a lot more challenging. So most people have to do more with less. And this often leads to a situation where you have quite an overload, constant pings on Slack, different teams drawing you into different directions, and many people we talk to feel like they're drowning in internal support requests, internal projects, and with different stakeholders pulling them into different directions. That's certainly one of a big pitfall because it basically jams you away from, you know, like working maybe on the most important things that really move the needle versus, you know, making sure that you keep your stakeholders happy. Philipp, what would you add?

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. I think a huge issue, right, for anyone, not only in revenue operations, and the way to solve it is you have to have a process in place where you can actually then take all these inputs in and then sort them by priority and educate people who create all these queries that it's their turn when it's their turn, which is super hard to do. Right? No question. If the CEO comes in and has, like, a crazy request, of course, that has probably a lot of priority and urgency. But for everyone else, you know, need to follow a process.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I think maybe to continue then, another very common one that we hear about quite often is having poor go-to-market alignment. It's basically where you have this problem where revenue operations works very much in isolation and doesn't really have clear visibility into what's happening on the strategic level and the rest in the go-to-market teams. That's a big problem. Maybe not even on purpose that they don't have the visibility, but there's no one who loops them in, gives them the updates, and so on. And then you in revenue operations are in a position where — I mean, maybe you do it. Right? Maybe you hit all the targets and you check all the boxes and everything is going super well. Right? That could happen. But there is this risk that everything that you're working on is misaligned with the actual goals of the revenue organization. That's a big problem. And obviously, I think, you know, easiest way to solve it is to have good rapport with the people who are sitting in the rooms where these decisions are being made, or even more important or even better is to sit in that room yourself and to have a co-ownership when it comes to these decision making processes or at least be one of the people who are providing the data and the input that then lead to these decisions and need to be in the loop. So that's something to work towards if you're currently not in that position right now.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. Absolutely. I think another point is weak data strategy. So obviously conflicting definitions, manual data exports, low trust in the metrics, always challenging to get the executives in line if that's the case, a root cause for a lot of potential conflict, credibility for the RevOps team overall. So certainly something to avoid and not being easy to fix. I mean, obviously, there's solutions like us that help fix that and others. But overall, I'd say, yeah, another pitfall that we see again and again. What would you add, Janis?

Janis Zech: Yeah, for sure. Another one, I think, is to not have time for strategy. I think it also is sort of like part of the ad hoc overload, where you're like super tactical all the time and just firefighting certainly plays a huge role. And so your calendar is basically dominated by just, you know, like small little things that, I mean, help and move the needle for some people. But if you want to get into the strategic level, which I think every RevOps person should try, then, yeah, I think you need to find a way where you actually can maybe automate some of these things, delegate some of these things, and yeah, you know, put yourself into a position where you are seen not as a firefighter or like super tactical all the time, but actually as part of the strategic group of the organization. Now maybe not all the time, but at least when it comes to, for example, annual planning, QBRs, things like this.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. I'm gonna go through a few more just one by one to just make it complete and then have also some view on who this is for. But obviously, we talk to people where the role is misunderstood. So actually, the executives don't really know what RevOps is. They don't really understand the potential strategic impact. That's obviously quite annoying. You can come up in situations, you join a company and actually, you know, the tech stack is completely chaotic. You might acquire other companies and you spend, you know, one or two years on migration projects that are necessary, but at the same time, you know, don't necessarily address the strategic needs of the business. Or, yeah, you have kind of, you know, a weak forecasting and planning process or like a tool-first mindset where everything you hear is basically trying to be solved with tools, which obviously, as we all know, is not the right approach because it should really start with why are we working on what we're working and what's the potential impact of the projects we are prioritizing. And then tools are ways to help you achieve that similar to processes. It really starts with, okay, what are we trying to solve? So I think these are all pitfalls we hear all the time. And, yeah, if you have any others, let us know. I mean, we're always interested in hearing what are some of those problems.

Philipp Stelzer: Now, the question is really like, okay, how do you rise above that day to day? And maybe for context, right? I think there's obviously always context of the organizational size, the size of the RevOps team, and your specific role within the company. Like if you just joined a company and you're the Salesforce admin, it's going to be hard to prepare the next board meeting. And that's also okay. That is not a hard requirement. You don't need to be in that. It's just unlikely. But then still, I think there's always a difference in how you can basically progress in your career. I would say that's like being reactive versus proactive, right? And so what I mean with that is I think that's a general, very powerful theme. In RevOps, very often you actually have the ability to understand the data, the metrics, the systems, the processes, and ideally also the strategy, and you should be proactive about trying to identify things where the company can become more successful against their core metrics they're measuring. So I think that is, in general, a mindset that is very, very valuable. And if you're drowning in day to day requests, taking some time away and essentially identifying these gaps and proactively communicating them to people in the organization that can essentially take these and see that you're thinking about it and then ideally create strategic initiatives around them to change them — I think that is always appreciated in every company. If it's not appreciated, you might be in the wrong job, but I think that should be appreciated in general. And I know there's always politics and everything, right? Don't get me wrong, there's also the company reality similar to reporting lines, the idea versus the reality. But this is, I think, a general theme I've seen really work well in my career so far.

Philipp Stelzer: With that said, let's maybe dive into the overall framework we have in mind. So I think the way we would describe it is what is basically the overall revenue cadence of the year, a quarter and a month that revenue operations can take a strong lead in to ensure that you basically work on the most strategic things and you have a big impact on strategy, how companies make more money or reduce costs or both at the same time. And I think that is essentially a framework that can be applied and will go from annual to quarterly to monthly to give you some examples of how this could look like. I don't know. Janis, maybe you kick it off.

Janis Zech: Yeah, just one thing I wanted to just quickly add is also when you think about these, like where can I maybe proactively bring something in? Before you spend a lot of time preparing something and doing something, talk to a few people. Get their input. Just, you know, let them double check if your thoughts make sense. And only then invest the time, because that's just something I've seen a lot of times. Someone comes in very motivated, spends a lot of time preparing something, but kind of misses the mark there. They're super motivated. They want to do something to help everyone, but just have not fully understood yet where they can have the biggest impact. So just want to put that out there because I think this is, you know, not a RevOps pitfall. It's just a general pitfall for people who are just starting out and wanna become more strategic.

Philipp Stelzer: Love it. Yeah. Just a warning, really.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Warning through, you know, experience, harsh truth. Yes. And I've been there myself. Right?

Philipp Stelzer: Same here. Yeah. For sure.

Janis Zech: Okay. So, I mean, the way that we were thinking about it is basically that with the annual planning, like becoming a part of that, basically, what that means is that you put yourself into a position where you, maybe not fully, but to some extent, start to get more control over the overall revenue cadences of an organization. So annual planning, obviously, is the big one. There's also QBRs. And then there's a lot of different areas where you can add value to the annual planning. So obviously the first step is to understand, is there an annual planning? What is this custom annual planning? And is there maybe, like, a way where you can improve and extend it? And then there's different areas where, you know, we think, from a revenue ops perspective, this is a good area to add value to it. So one example here, for example, is the whole topic of bottom-up GTM planning, where, you know, basically what you're trying to do there is really come up with rep productivity models that help you understand, you know, how good actually is the current attainment. Do you have enough reps for the goals that you're setting yourself? Is there maybe like a gap? How big is that gap? How many people would you need in order to close it? Get a better understanding, you know, by breaking that down into territories, for example. And that is a huge undertaking. Right? But the truth also is a lot of organizations don't do that well. So if you have a good grasp on that topic, that's something where, you know, you could really add a lot of value that I think would be highly appreciated by the leadership team because it improves, you know, the headcount management and also their ability to actually attain the revenue targets that they are setting out to achieve. And then it also plays a role, you know, thinking further for marketing teams. Because also, obviously, in order to achieve revenue goals with the capacity that you have or with the capacity that you're aiming for, you also need to create pipeline. So it also touches on pipeline coverage, pipeline generation. And really, your impact here is just about creating realistic, very data-driven plans that paint a realistic picture of the reality that the organization is in.

Philipp Stelzer: Okay. So Janis is taking off dreaming here on a Friday afternoon because obviously the reality in the annual planning process is often very, very different, as we all know. But no, I think just joking here — I already finished my first beer, so I'm getting a little bit into any direction. But no, the annual planning process is more often than not, and actually always, owned by finance. And it is essentially something you need to put in front of the board to get approval for your budget. And so part of that process is essentially really being close to the FP&A team that is typically doing the top-down model. And we're actually going to record an episode with Seth London next week, who has an FP&A background and is now in RevOps for Meltwater. And we're going to talk about that in detail. But I think the primer here is what are the metrics that FP&A owns? What are the metrics that RevOps owns? And how do you make sure that those are aligned on the planning process? And then the board comes in and says, well, it needs to be twenty percent higher. So you will identify gaps. And I think being really explicit about those gaps is crucial because, okay, the board might decide it is a higher number that you have to hit. What does this mean for what Janis just alluded to? Pipeline generation, rep capacity models, upsells, cross sells, renewals, right? So across the entire bow tie, how do you ensure that the model still makes sense? And how do you ensure that you know what you're working against next year? And this sounds, I mean, this sounds really like a one-on-one annual planning, but the reality is you have then your annual plan and you need to operationalize it. So I think being really good at that is another major challenge where RevOps can be hugely beneficial because I think what comes out of the annual plan is essentially metrics, budget, investment decisions. But also what should come out of it is actually the go-to-market strategy. So the strategic part of what are the initiatives you're taking next year to actually still hit your numbers, although there are gaps, which more often than not is the case. And so obviously, you might look at kind of your segmentation. You might look at the ICP definition to ensure that you're more focused on specific accounts, account planning, right? Like there's a variety of things that then need to happen that are maybe more tactical, but they still, you know, lead towards the operationalization of the annual plan.

Janis Zech: You know, I'm gonna finish the beer so I can talk again. Where do we go from here? I mean, I don't know. So, I mean, kind of threw me off here. But I think, no, I think like the reality — I think what you said there is very true. Right? Like, so you are in a position where you can actually understand which KPIs or, like, what are the numbers in the model, in the formula, that are driving things in a certain direction or that are blocking them, you know, to move forward. And I think this is, like, a lot of value that you can provide to the team instead of putting these models together. So understanding the model and then looking at the data, trying to improve how the data is calculated, slicing and dicing it, dissecting it, looking for anomalies and things like this. That's totally in your control, right, if you have access to the data. And so, I mean, obviously there's the whole overall planning, but it's also about — you can do it obviously by different segments, by geos. You can do that by teams. All of this has value in and by itself. So it's not like having to create a plan for the overall business or a company, but of course, focusing on a smaller part of it is already quite valuable. This can then have other impacts in other areas here. So for example, the way that teams are thinking about ICPs and account segmentation, for example. Does this still make sense? Do the numbers maybe tell you something different? Should this maybe — we worked a little bit because it changed from last year? So maybe last year's definition of the ICP still made sense and now you look at the same data or the way that the data was calculated, and now it doesn't make sense anymore. That's valuable, because from that, a whole new motion can be derived and can be created. And obviously, you can't do it by yourself. And, obviously, you need to talk with other people, but there will be other people, hopefully, that you can talk to on the marketing and finance side and, obviously, also on the sales side to, you know, cross check that and give feedback on it. So obviously, all of this is like a process. Right? Like, it's not like you coming into a meeting with, like, a hundred-page spreadsheet or a hundred-page PowerPoint presentation and then convincing everyone that you're right. Like, it's a longer process, where you are involved in talking to people leading up to those meetings, because that's the reality also of it. Right? It's, like, a lot of back-channel discussions and, you know, talking about these things and then having, like, a clear picture and idea of the outcome already when the actual annual meetings are happening. Decisions are being made already by that point.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah, I think Shantanu from now Personio — we had a podcast with him last year where we talked about the annual planning at Personio. I think what they did is they flew everybody in for a week and basically had a lot of prep work beforehand, but then really drove alignment around the ICP, kind of the geo strategy, right? Like the big building blocks of go-to-market, like should we invest in internationalization? Should we stay local? Should we go upmarket or not? Some of those fundamental things that you know are investment decisions, that are strategic initiatives that ideally help you move forward. And then also account planning, account territory planning, things like that. So I highly recommend to listen to that. And then also what you just said reminded me of an episode we did with Jeremy Donovan, right, about account planning and territory planning, where typically that's also part of the process. And so I think the reason the ICP and the territory planning is so important is it is essentially you sitting there and deciding on where people spend their time for the next at least six months. Let's assume if you do it in the six-month rhythm with maybe some reassignment rules around them. And that is obviously, if you think about it, right, that's actually something that is quite important because where people spend their time in a one hundred, two hundred, five hundred people sales org is essentially what will have a big impact on the execution day to day.

Philipp Stelzer: Let's maybe switch gears. Let's assume we have a great annual plan. There's some gaps, but we're all aware of the gaps. We know what we're hitting. We know what the different teams are hitting. And we basically operationalize the plan in a way that everybody's aligned and knows what they're going into the year. Like what are some of the vehicles that you can stay strategic? And I think number one is there's a quarterly cadence that typically runs where executives hold specific type of meetings. This might be the forecast meeting. This might be the pipeline meeting. This might be meetings between sales and marketing or sales and CSMs and, you know, like different type of rhythms. This might be, you know, win-loss analysis. And so RevOps often owns that operating cadence and ensures that those meetings are productive and well run to essentially drive alignment, but also ensure that it helps you operationalize the annual plan, which is obviously super crucial. And what we've heard quite a bit, I think, is that those then lead into internal QBRs, right? So you have basically a review end of the quarter. And again, I think you can use that to essentially help the leadership team to be prepared to have the right conversations. So all of those different type of meetings you hold, things where it's not just about what kind of meetings, but what is happening in the meetings, what's the composition of the meetings, why are you having this meeting? How do you run it? And how do you run it in a way that is actually helping your cause versus destroying trust and culturally being challenging, which I think we've also all been in where forecast meetings feel more like interrogation and the ripple effects of those are really negative for the organization motivationally. I think owning that operating cadence gives you a lot of ability to have the right information and to basically drive alignment across the quarter, across the month, across the year. And that's a continuous effort and that's an achievable outcome also. And that's not like aiming too high. And you don't need to start, obviously, across the organization forecasting meeting. Can just be focusing on some key teams and some key initiatives, key territories, whatever is available and possible for you to impact and influence, I think.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all this then leads into potentially QBRs, which can be really effective. I think we also had a session, like a recording on the topic. Highly recommend it as well. Put it into the show notes. I actually don't recall which episode it was, but I think we talked at length about QBRs and how they can be used and how RevOps helps the leaders to essentially prepare those QBRs so they're actually effective meetings. So I think this is the internal review process of the quarter. And then you have the external discussion, which is often centered around board meetings, where ideally you combine those because you have the set of metrics in place from a go-to-market perspective that help inform the board decks. And again, something we're going to talk about next week with Seth is how do you make sure that you have the right numbers owned? Because I think what often happens is the board meeting happens, and then people get called to prepare their board meeting, and then two weeks, you're basically jammed. It is a very strategic thing. Obviously, meetings matter quite a bit to the executive layer, so they give you a lot of exposure. But ideally, you have a setup where every board meeting, you have the same set of metrics and you have the same set of things you report on, so you don't need to reinvent the wheel every time you do it. And then it's less about the metrics, but it's more about the proactive analytics of, okay, this is actually what's working really well. This is where we need to improve. And these are the things we're doing to improve because that's what typically the CROs actually care about. They might be behind in hiring or they might see that specific conversion rates drop or pipeline generation is a challenge. So really understanding from a company perspective, okay, this is what we laid out in our annual plan. This is the goal. This is how we're tracking against the goal. And here's where the gaps are in the actuals. And then what are the initiatives to turn this around? And I think that's exactly where the executive layer, the leadership layer, and the RevOps team should closely work together to ensure that the right things are prioritized to basically turn this around. Think super crucial.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Two other areas, because thinking about just annual planning and QBRs and forecasting, you can also become strategic on a tactical level, which maybe sounds weird, but I think it's also something that is very true. And I think, you know, one obviously huge topic there at the moment, but still gets a lot of attention and deservedly so, is the whole customer lifecycle management. So working with the CSM team, you know, thinking about how that is treated at the moment, how is that process, the journey looking like, mapping out the process, looking again for just ways to improve how you measure adoption, how you can kind of, like, predict retention. Just really, like, measuring, you know, dollar retention properly sometimes can be a challenge in and of itself. Again, I've also seen this in the past. And then looking at the motions that are in place for upselling, cross-selling, maybe the CSM team is not fully enabled there at the moment in the way that they should be. Maybe the compensation there, there's a problem that is not creating the right incentive. Maybe the incentive is misaligned with the current company goals. It always depends on the type of company, but these things can happen. That's another area that maybe is less sales forecasting — I mean, it's also sales forecasting in here, but that is more tactical on the CSM side. And you could do the same again on the pipeline generation side, where you then focus more on the GTM piece and then work more closely with marketing. So there's, I think, lots of different areas where you can do all that. And I think it always comes down to the same thing, understanding what is the formula behind this? What's the formula behind this process? What are the input factors? What's the desired outcome? I think it's always like the first step to understand. And then, you know, to understand, okay, are those inputs actually currently correct? Have they changed? What direction have they changed? And is there, like, a way, where if I would tweak this by, like, x percentage points or by that number, what would that impact be, and is this something we can achieve as an organization? I think it's always something, like, in my mind, always a framework that everybody understands, or everyone who should, I think, understands this in the leadership team, and it's always, like, a good way to convey, like, an idea or concept.

Janis Zech: Yeah, love that. I love that. I think that's actually really good. You look at maybe some benchmark data, like what should NRR be, what should churn rate be, blah, blah, blah. And then you look at the actuals, you look at the development over time, and then you look at your annual plan and you compare and say, if we improve this by ten percentage points, would that actually move the needle? Or is that just nice to have? It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, right? But I think looking at pipeline generation that way, looking at your win rates and sales cycle lengths, basically pipeline velocity that way, and looking at your expansion renewals, so ARR, GRR, NRR, that way is super healthy and it's something that goes into — I mean, we could probably continue talking about this, but another topic that is very much centered around how do you basically communicate the message, right? I think the way executives talk about those things is very different than typically on a more operational level. So the type of metrics, right? There's kind of a hierarchy of KPI metrics. And we actually have a cheat sheet about that. But like, you know, it's pretty crucial that you basically distill down the metrics from the kind of executive or board level to the actual day to day. And when you then go back and you talk about maybe churn rate, the executives only measure NRR and GRR. So you basically have to translate it in a way so that they are like, oh, okay, I get it. Like, look, I looked at pipeline generation, looked at pipeline velocity, I looked at NRR and GRR and here's what I found. And, you know, here are things how we can change that.

Janis Zech: Thing I'm going to say, because I now finished my beer and I feel like I can't speak English anymore. Actually really tired after a long, intense, but awesome week. Okay. So, I think we talked about many topics in a maybe less structured way than we typically do. But ideally, get the cheat sheet. Fundamentally, we went through the pitfalls and then a few areas where you can have a more strategic impact onto the business. And I think it's one worth fighting for because it will have a big impact on the career trajectory, whether you want to get to VP level or COO. Yeah, would love to have this discussion with many of you out there. Thank you so much for listening. Really appreciate it, and wish you all a great weekend.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. Likewise. Thank you so much. Don't drink too much beer. That's for sure. I mean, our listeners. Yeah. Alright. Thank you all.