In this episode, Justin Gray, CCO at Shift Paradigm, discusses facilitating the client journey, the importance of finding alignment at the executive level, and looking through the revenue operations lens.
This episode features an interview with Justin Gray, CCO at Shift Paradigm. Shift Paradigm, is a consultancy that executes like an agency, and represents an end-to-end shift in the way organizations align around growth. Justin is a serial entrepreneur who has made a career of launching successful companies and scaling them, with successful exits of over 250MM. After joining the Shift Paradigm family as a result of the LeadMD acquisition in early 2021, Justin slotted into a role near and dear to his heart, helming the go-to-market team where he manages Sales, Marketing and Business Development.
In this episode, Justin discusses facilitating the client journey, the importance of finding alignment at the executive level, and looking through the revenue operations lens.
Guest Bio:
Justin Gray is a serial entrepreneur who has made a career of launching successful companies and scaling them, with successful exits of over 250MM. After joining the Shift Paradigm family as a result of the LeadMD acquisition in early 2021, Justin landed in a role near and dear to his heart, helming the go-to-market team where he manages Sales, Marketing and Business Development.
Justin is also a strong voice for pragmatic entrepreneurship, modern marketing, and building intentional organizational culture. As a recognized speaker, Justin has been published over 500 times in industry publications and maintains a regular column in Inc., while also contributing to Entrepreneur, Tech Crunch and others.
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Guest Quote
“If we think about how we serve our clients, how that buyer buys and how they progress along that path, you have to be aligned at that executive level, right?
Do they understand their goal, their KPIs, their area of influence? And if you don't have that alignment at the top it's almost impossible to get that alignment from within the team. So I think that that relationship at the executive level and just how they view the necessity of their peers and their counterparts there is very indicative of how successful you will be in a revs role.” - Justin Gray
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Time Stamps:
**(02:46) - Justin’s journey into RevOps
**(13:14) - How would you organize a RevOps team?
**(20:41) - RevObstacles
**(22:52) - RevOops moments
**(31:38) - The Toolshed
**(43:25) - Quick hits
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Sponsor:
Rise of RevOps is brought to you by Qualified. Qualified’s Pipeline Cloud is the future of pipeline generation for revenue teams that use Salesforce. Learn more about the Pipeline Cloud on Qualified.com.
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Links
Narrator: Hello and welcome to Rise of RevOps. This episode features an interview with Justin Gray, CCO at Shift Paradigm. Shift Paradigm is a consultancy that executes like an agency and represents an end-to-end shift in the way organizations align around growth. Justin Gray is a serial entrepreneur who has made a career of launching successful companies and scaling them with successful exits of over 250 million.
After joining the Shift Paradigm Family, as a result of the Lead MD acquisition in early 2021, Justin slotted into a role near and dear to his heart, leading the go-to-market team where he manages sales, marketing, and business development. In this episode, Justin discusses facilitating the client journey, the importance of finding alignment at the executive level and looking through the revenue operations lens.
But first, a brief word from our sponsor,
Ian: Rise of RevOps is brought to you by Qualified. Qualified's Pipeline Cloud is the future of pipeline generation for revenue teams that use Salesforce. Learn more about the pipeline cloud on qualified.com. And
Narrator: now please enjoy this interview with Justin Gray, CCO at Shift Paradigm, and your host, Ian Faison.
Ian: Welcome to Rise of RevOps. I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios, and today I am joined by a special guest. Justin, how
Justin: are you? I'm great. Thanks for.
Ian: Yeah, excited to chat about Shift Paradigm, RevOps and everything in between. So let's get into it. Tell us a little bit
Justin: about Shift Paradigm. Yeah. Shift Paradigm is a fairly new brand made up of a lot of old companies.
So I was the CEO and founder of a organization called Lead md. Primarily at Rev ops consultancy, also specializing in go to market data science research, and then just a lot of kind of nuts and bolts making things work at the end of the day. Rise of marketing technology has, has been a, a, a rampant and a swift one.
And so we helped organizations really embrace those different tools, integrate them together, apply process, and, and ultimately, ultimately succeed with those platforms. We were acquired in February of 2021 by a private equity backed agency roll up. So there were different organizations there that specialized all within kind of that circle of marketing technology, marketing go to market and, and ultimately email product.
So now we've come together under the Ship Paradigm umbrella and service growth stage, all the way up to large enterprise organizations, all centering around that notion of growth and connecting and leveraging technology to promote that growth.
Ian: Awesome. And what's the scope of, of your
Justin: role? So I am the Chief Revenue Officer, so I own everything, marketing, sales, and partnerships.
Essentially the go to market motion. And taking
Ian: a step back here, How'd you get started in Rev Ops?
Justin: The best way to get started in something, and that's by. So I, unlike a lot of folks out there, because it's not very common, actually graduated with a degree in marketing and immediately started doing jobs that I hated.
Marketing was very much kind of a traffic cop, uh, role, at least a marketing coordinator role was back then. I graduated in oh one and kind of went through a string of, you know, marketing coordinator, marketing specialists came up through that, that marketing channel. And then had an opportunity in 2006 to join an early stage startup, which I really had no idea what a startup was at that point.
I just knew that they had very few employees. I was employed in for six, and I came on as their first VP of of sales and marketing. And with that, You've got kind of that concurrent, again, rise of, of technology. Salesforce was just starting to kind of take over the world, and then this whole new category called marketing automation came into the mix.
We were like 11th hour to buy Equa and went out to Dreamforce to. Formalized the contract ran into the folks over at Marketo, of which they were like 15 people. At that point in time. I met a guy named John Miller who gave me a demo of their platform, who of course is one of the, the ultimate co-founders over there, and, and those guys had a great exit and was just kind of blown away by that, that technology.
It was easy to use, it was, you know, it could accomplish everything that I wanted to do and so right. Then I, I. Was thrust into what is now called revenue operations. How do I make this, you know, the first time where a platform is designed to serve marketing, really marketing system of truth? How does that integrate with our, our then crm, which was Salesforce?
How does that integrate with the rest of our stack? How do we, you know, track the buying journey and, and, and, you know, add new data and augment it? Understand that, that digital footprint and market successfully, so, Lot of, you know, bumpy roads. Back then there, there wasn't a ton of enablement around rep ops or, or marketing automation.
And so I was fortunate enough to have an exit from, from that organization and in, you know, very much accidentally, couple other organizations reached out and said, Hey, would you come on and, and help us do the same thing that you did at that organization, which was called Billing Tree. And so I took a couple.
Fractional gigs, kind of this weird blend between CMO and, and you know, Rev ops manager really kind of being in the weeds, but at the same time designing their strategy, their go to market. And that gave way to the ultimate birth of, of Lead MD and we started to do that for organizations across the globe.
What's your definition of rev ops ? Good question. I tend to think of. You know, marketing ops and sales ops always under that umbrella of, of rev ops, just because we, we service predominantly B2B or, or considered purchase organizations. But it really is the nuts and bolts of, of how we get things done these days.
You know, as you saw marketing shift from kind of that agency traffic cop, where, you know, my early days were, were managing an ad agency and a creative agency and a web design agency. And then with the influx of really marketing automation that got put into the lap of, of marketers, you know, how are you going to acquire leads?
How are you gonna facilitate that, that buyer journey and lead someone to an ultimate point of purchase? All of those nuts and bolts and, and, you know, kind of making that work at the end of the day. Falls to rev ops. And you know, for me, so it is that I hate to use a kind of a tired, uh, description, but that that process and technology coupled with the, the people knowhow to make it happen, that people process technology is, is at the fundamental, I think, I think revenue operations.
I'm
Ian: curious since you've been around for, for long enough to see sort of this transformation, kind of this birth and rebirth like Phoenix from the Flames and back again with sales ops, with marketing ops, now with revenue ops and you know, customer success being a part of this, which, you know, historically wasn't really the case, or I guess technically was the case, but nobody really cared for a long time.
How do you think companies should be addressing revenue ops? How should they be building this new function?
Justin: Yeah, in a lot of cases, in the opposite manner then would be intuitive or what they, they've previously done in the past. And, and I say that because marketing has always been such an an idea.
Centric discipline, right? Like I've got a great idea for a campaign who can be the most creative, who can come up with the next big, disruptive, innovative thing. And that's great as long as that's aligned to what the client wants, what the customer wants at the end of the day. So, you know, I always recommend that.
That revenue operations lens is looked at through the lens of the client. How do they wanna purchase, How do they wanna be enabled? How do they wanna flow through that quote unquote buying cycle, Which is really just their, their maturity cycle with, you know, what, what is the use case that they're trying to solve for, and what's the solution that you have to provide that enables that?
And how do they go from A to B within that process? And, and there's a lot of learning that goes into that. There's a lot of enablement. I think, you know, Covid was massively beneficial in terms of. Kind of BS checker that that was for a lot of marketing and, and sales folks in that you have to give that value.
We're not living in the age of, you know, put a gate in front of that, Put a sales rep in front of that content, that value, that information. We need to give that all to the buyer now. And so how do they wanna consume that? What do they need? What solves their pain? What is their kpi? And then structuring our, our ultimate processes and the technology to, to enable those processes around that core compet.
I think so
Ian: much of marketing over the years was being terrified that sales is gonna think that you're not doing enough. So it's like, well, if we put everything behind the gate, if we put every event that you have to sign up for, you know, if you, if we, you know, need to take a, a vi blood to prove that you, you were there and all that stuff, then we can go to sales with a list and be.
This is who came, this is what we did. This is like, you know, justifying all of that effort. And now with a lot of, like with the modern martex acts like a, you don't have to gate anything anymore if you don't want to, and you don't have to monitor as closely. That people are, are following a linear path because buyers don't follow a linear path.
And so like, I'm curious, do you think that as, you know, a Revs person or you know, looking at, at people who are out there in Revs, sort of, you don't necessarily have, have to be like justifying. Marketing spend for, for the sake of justifying that, it's like you can get a little bit more tactical into, you know, helping sales and marketing and customer success, figure out what is working with a bit, little bit more of like a pragmatic approach or, or am I totally off
Justin: Well, I, I think it calls attention to the, the one thing that I really coach marketers to pay attention to, and, and this is what I think is, is the biggest gait in terms. Success as it pertains to marketing is, does the organization and, and the ceo, the founder, fundamental, the board, whoever that that kind of represented body is, right?
Do they believe in marketing? because to your point, so much of marketing is justification, right? Like we look at attribution, which is such a, you know, should be such a great tool to understand how we've influenced and, and, and what's been successful. But it, it's framed up through justification. It's framed up as I wanna claim credit for that and my job is justified and I should be able to hang on to that budget.
And so much of that comes at the, the tail. An org that just doesn't understand and doesn't believe in marketing. So as folks are, are looking for, you know, a, a job, a new organization to call home, that, that's the most fundamental for me. And it should be a, a no brainer if someone's hiring in marketing, right?
But marketing has become table stakes. You have to have marketing, Everyone does it. Um, what that means and what that looks like within an organization is largely, uh, uh, you know, highly reciprocal to, Does that org, does that leader believe in marketing? Do they. Well, you know, I,
Ian: I host a marketing podcast as well, and one of the things that's so interesting.
marketing operations or rev ops has now become like an uncut thing for marketing. Right? Like, I mean, No kidding.
Justin: We, we've built our own prison in that regard in a lot of senses, right? Like you have to have it. Yeah,
Ian: for sure. And so I think that there's sort of an adversarial, uh, relationship, uh, at times, especially with, with sales ops.
Instead of everyone sort of like seeking the truth, it's sort of like everyone's seeking to look at other stuff. But how would you recommend that revenue ops teams look at managing these three personalities, the sales, marketing, customer success, to make sure that there's enough, you know, food to go into each, uh, very large mouth.
Justin: Yeah. I. Obviously there's a, a necessity for all of those individuals, right? If we think about that, that, you know, how we serve our clients, how that that buyer buys and how they progress along that path, you have to be aligned at that executive level, right? You know, fundamentally, do those folks see value in one another?
Do they understand their, their goal, their KPIs, their area of influence, And if you don't have that alignment at the top, it's, it's almost impossible to get that alignment from within the team. So I think that that relationship at the executive level and just how they, how they view the necessity of their, their peers and their counterparts, there is very indicative of how successful you will be in a, in a rev ops role.
But
Ian: if you're, you know, like if you're like a manager, And you're like the chief revenue officer and the chief marketing officer and you know the chief customer officer all sitting in a room and you're like, Hey, by the way, do you all know that? You don't even like look at the same metrics sometimes , you know, or whatever it is.
Justin: It can be challenging. Yeah, critical. Absolutely. And, and you know, if you're, you're finding yourself in that, that conversation, right? Like, it, it, it's a difficult one, but I truly believe if you've done, or, or, you know, probably an impetus to do some of the research, but if you talk to your clients, And really where they're seeing value and you know what they want in each stage of that journey.
I do believe like ideal customer profile work is, is at the heart of a lot of alignment, uh, you know, in, in relation to that topic. So that maybe is a, an avenue that folks can go down, right? Like, let's get our customers together, let's do some focus groups. Let's, let's understand what they need and then let's map that out across these, these three very important disciplines.
How
Ian: would you organize a Rev team? And like I, you know, I'd assume you, you have a Rev team, uh, as well, so you could, you'd share that, but, but also how do you think that like Rev ops team should be organized for some of the folks that, that you all work with?
Justin: Yeah, we've got a kind of a different problem.
Our, our problem is that our teams are so large, right? And so, but I, I do think it's some of the ways that we've structured those individuals, you know, internally to us, to a consultancy, to an agency has legs, you know, from the client side as well. And that's really to look at, do we have a team that's well built to specify in a couple different disciplines, right?
There's revenue operations through the lens of technology. And need to need really deep expertise within, you know, the pieces of that particular tech stack. There's rev op strategy. You know, there's rev ops as it pertains to data management. So do we have strengths on our team that can care for and foster each one of those very specific areas and disciplines that revenue operations spans?
And that's how I suggest anyone, you know, look at those different functions. Can we care for the strategy? Can we care for the process? Can we care for technology and can we care for our data? And at the end of the day, we've gotta make up the DNA of that team to ensure that, that we can focus on all those critical areas.
So that may be different individuals, it may be someone who's multidisciplinary, but understanding that, you know, there's a lot. Bridge that extends into different areas of our org. Someone has to be able to understand that, that kind of CMO mind, the strategy mind. How are we going to market? How are we engaging our buyers?
And then span that into, again, process, technology, data and so forth. So I, I guess, Fractionally is kind of the answer around that, and that's kind of how we structure our, our disciplines here internally. Rev isn't a team. They are members of our dis different disciplinary teams, and it's, it's allowed us to, I think, be very successful in, in how we service clients.
Oh,
Ian: interesting. So you sort of, you know, have the, the different verticals and then revs is a slice of each of those, rather than saying like, it's just like a giant pillar that serves
Justin: everyone. Exactly. We kind of fraction that talent out. So again, we've got a, a strategy pillar. We have a technology pillar.
We have a process pillar and then what we call enablement, which is like very high volume campaigning and, and buyer engagement work. And Revs will sit across each one of those disciplines with those specialties. And it, again, it when, when you're from a client perspective, oftentimes you wanna know. How it's gonna work.
But more importantly, you want to know that that strategy is gonna be cared for, like how it's gonna work within our tech environment, how it's gonna work within our process, how's that process maybe need to change? So it's very much a blended discipline and, and again, one that changes daily. So you need those, those specialties, those specializations.
And then, you know, if
Ian: for, if you were the, you know, VP of Rev ops of, you know, whatever, a. SAS company or something like that. How would you arrange your
Justin: team, do you think? So I think the biggest question everyone asks is, should we separate marketing ops from, from sales ops and I, and I really like a revenue operations team that serves those different disciplines, but is, is housed together.
I think it's a great way to align those different journeys. You know what marketing's typically cares for? What sales, what customer success. If you can string that, you know, along one unified. Single mind zuki, metaphorically obviously, but it, that, that is just so much more powerful than lighting up each one of these silos that has a, a huge propensity to kind of operate in a, um, divisionally within what is one fluid buying journey.
Yeah.
Ian: I, I tend to feel the same way, and I feel like selfishly the CRO and the CMO want to like, That's my girl, and like she's awesome and I wanna make sure that she's cranking on, you know, marketing stuff all day every day or sales stuff all day every day. And I totally get that. But as you said, like the buying journey is so multifactorial at this point.
Like there just isn't, I mean, unless you're in one of those companies where you have a funnel that works like a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The vast majority of us aren't like that. So if you're not looking at sales and marketing together as one motion, if someone isn't, and it should be someone who's close to technology, it, you know, it's hard to, hard to imagine that stuff.
Justin: So when you think about the biggest disconnect there, right? Like there's been so much focus put on sales and marketing alignment, and so there's been a lot of action that's that's come out of that. But the biggest disconnect is always, all right, they're a. Now what? Right? Like it's so important to bring customer success, what, whatever you call that, that, you know, customer support process that you have internally and, and make that part of that, that journey as well.
That's the biggest disconnect that I see within organizations is, you know, maybe it was a great buying experience and then you're kind of starting over the minute that you become enabled on that tool, that service, whatever it happens to be. So I think that's so critical to, to extend into customer success.
any examples
Ian: that you've seen of folks that have done that really well in terms of organizing their teams, bringing in customer success,
Justin: Anything like. So obviously we have a number of clients that, that I think do this very well and the similarity across them. So I'll name a few, right? Like you've got folks like in the, in the medical space, Edwards Lights, Life Sciences, which is a, a med device organization or in the healthcare space affecting Dickinson bd.
Um, the similarity, well, other than the fact that they're very large organizations, they've put a lot of focus. Centers of excellence because they are so large, but also because they wanna maintain those best practices. And I really, I see that concept as being so important, even as we're bridging, you know, marketing, sales, customer success.
You know, what is that revs best practice that can be scaled out, you know, amongst those different disciplines. So a lot of those orgs that we see that are, are really mature within their Revs journey, have been doing this for a long time, that their, their secret to success is having. A center of excellence that is shared amongst those disparate teams.
And especially when you get into field marketing, that's, that's such an important component. So I would say a lot of the organizations that I look to that, that are admirable and, and are doing this really well, have, have put a lot of focus on process repeatability, best practices, enabling teams and centers of excellence, uh, seem to be a great tool to, to do just that.
Yeah.
Ian: Digging in there to. The processes and, and around repeatability, Like what's an example of something like that? Uh,
Justin: I mean, I think you take any, any campaign for example, right? Like you, you've. A marketing campaign that you wanna run that's, that's event focused. So again, a lot of our, our clients have big field events teams, and that's just coming back as a result of, of coming outta covid.
And you want to, to view metrics in a way, in a certain way, coming off those events. Well, if I've got that center of excellence and I can deploy that to my customer success team who's running very similar events, but with a different focus so I can get those same types of metrics, I can look across my, my performance KPIs and understand that's, Even consistent stages, right?
Like progression steps and, and, and spanning how we run someone through a program or a campaign. That consistency is just so critical when you're, when you're trying to get unified dashboards. Like one of my sayings I love is like, the only wrong way to do something is inconsistently. So I think that's a, a big help, especially in expansive orgs.
All right, let's get to
Ian: our next segment. Rev. Obstacles.
Justin: Obstacle. Obstacle. An obstacle to what? There's your obstacle
Ian: where we talk about the tough parts of rev ops was the hardest rev op home you've faced in the last six
Justin: months? Uh, certainly scale and the acquisition of talent. You know, we've hired over 180 people in the org. Obviously not all within Rev, but, but a lot within that discipline. And, you know, you're dealing with a, a discipline that's incredibly.
New, incredibly fresh. It changes all the time. It's so defined by the technologies that folks leverage. And obviously when you're serving clients, we have to have a, a strong expertise in every platform that they use. So, you know, going out to the market, and this is what we hear from clients as well. I, I don't think we have a single client who's not hiring someone in marketing and a lot of them within the area of Rev.
You know, there just are no. I'll say it. Meaningful certifications out there to determine what level of talent is this person at, Like what are their specialties? You can look at where someone has, has been previously, right? Like largely revenues are, are made up of logos these days, and if someone was at Google or they were at Adobe or they were at, you know, toast or some, you know, high, high velocity startup, we can make inferences.
How skilled they are. But environmental fit is, is, is such a, a key element of that. So certainly as, as we, uh, scaled our team, you know, we're looking at all of that. We're looking at not only hard skills, but we're looking at soft skills. How, how well do you operate within a rapidly scaling and changing environment?
We're, you know, obviously the result of m and a and we continued to acquire organizations. We just, uh, announced. 10 days ago. That's a different environment than, you know, a c or d round technology organization that's largely dealing with optimization and, and focused on scale. We're, we're focused on growth, and so we have to tap into that mindset along with the fact that there just really are not a lot of great measures to understand how, how skilled someone is in, in that.
What about
Ian: a, a rev oops moment. Is there a mistake that you've made in the past year or maybe you've seen one of your clients make as it relates to their, uh, their rev ops?
Justin: Yeah. I mean, as you know, Rev becomes a, a spiderweb pretty quickly. A bird's nest, and so even when you have new talent coming on board and you know, a.
Reflection of, of the challenge I just mentioned. But folks that enter a, a rev op seat are, are not always as skilled at coming into new environments as perhaps they were in building their previous environment. Like, again, these, these stacks are new. A lot of people's first experience is their own experience right now.
And so bringing someone into an environment where we've got a, a marketing automation platform. Has 11 plus years of history running on it, a CRM that has 12 plus years of history, uh, running on it. And suddenly you do that first import and you don't really understand, Hey, what, what are the operations campaigns running in the background?
How's this gonna impact something like scoring? You know, we use a lot of complex platforms, like Six Sense for, for predictive scoring and, and, and modeling. So yeah, we've had a, a couple of oops moments in, in terms of, Oh wow, why are we. Why are we qualifying all those folks for this campaign? I'm pretty sure 40,000 people just didn't become, uh, a warm lead, right?
So there's always little landmines that there are obviously learning moments, but I think that also speaks to. You know, the challenges that all orgs are eventually gonna face as, as we mature on these platforms and, and suddenly they're not a year old, they're 10 years old and there's a lot of bodies buried out there.
And, and documentation, quite frankly is, is something that I think marketing and and revenue operations are, are not really. Skills in relation to as a, as a whole these days. You know, a lot of your kind of opinionated, you know, you get your walk mes and your penos of the world, right? Like, just kind of that in-app guidance.
I think you're gonna see a big rise in, in popularity of those areas as text X mature and, and we run into more and more challenge about how do we onboard someone into this environment successfully and, and ensure that we don't have a lot of those oops moments. So when someone comes to.
Ian: Looking for rev ops support and they're like, Hey, you know, we understand the shift.
We wanna focus on growth. You know, we need to, we need revenue operations as a weak point. Are they usually coming to you with a rev ops leader in place that like identifies that and is like, Hey, I would like to work with someone. Or they usually coming to you with like a big, you know, gaping hole and saying, Hey, what the heck should we be?
Justin: So in terms of inflection points for us, like loss of talent or new talent in seat or acquisition merger, like those tend to be really big inflection points where organizations reach out and they say, We need help, right? Maybe they're buying a new platform, maybe they're coming to the end of a contract.
So a lot of times change is really, really in the air when someone reaches out to engage. Most often in terms of ac acquiring a new platform like, Hey, we think we're ready for a customer data platform. Or maybe it's just a point solution. Maybe we're ready for an ABM tool or, or what have you. There are those, those times where they've lost a resource and they're looking to fill that gap.
But the real consistency there is change and, and I obviously that's, um, a plus for our business because change is so prevalent. Covid again, another major change where for the first time ever I saw CROs and CMOs getting on the call with us and saying, You guys figure it out, meaning their team or, You guys don't have a home here in six months and then bouncing off the zoom.
So that was both a really exciting time for us because those, those gates had kind of been removed versus like, Hey, we want you guys to help us in this area of the business. Like everything was kind of on the table and at the same time a really scary moment, right? Like, you wanna help people do their jobs well, You wanna help them navigate through those times of change.
So really change is, is the biggest constant. Any other stuff that you
Ian: see on like, common mistakes or, or things people miss or ways that they overinvest or underinvest or, Yeah, any, uh, any
Justin: rev obstacles? Yeah. I, I, I think certainly the most predominant, and this is like by a country mile, right? Like the.
Biggest issue that we see? The biggest challenge is overinvesting. It's technology first thinking, and I don't blame marketers for this because, you know, these shiny objects are very shiny. Um, there's new technology every single day. It's so easy to glom onto a new trend like ABM or plg and Google it and say What's, you know, or talk to a friend, like, What's, you know, what, what are you guys using for abm?
And suddenly like that, that's, that, that's a buying process, right? Marketing is, is a sexy discipline. But oftentimes it starts with, you know, the grunt work. It starts with putting in, you know, the labor to figure out do we need an account based motion? Uh, how, you know, for what segments of our go to market, for what segments of our customer?
Do we really understand who those customers are? Or should we take a, a step back and focus on redefining tam, redefining ICP, and, and really getting some solid persona work done before we. That shiny tool, right? That the orgs that do that, that pre-work, that background and, and really feel confident that they've got the foundation laid are the ones that are successful with technology.
Um, it's not hard to throw a rock and hit someone that is, you know, adopting a new process or adopting, You know what? Fill in the blank. By buying technology, that is still absolutely the most predominant trend, and oftentimes we're filling in gaps post that purchase because no one. That pre-work ahead of time.
So I would definitely still encourage folks even though it's, you know, not the best thing to say for my business, cuz we're happy to fill those gaps. But, um, I would really encourage folks to focus on, you know, the who, what, when, where, and why before we go out and we buy that, that new tool to enable the entire process.
Yeah, I mean, it goes back to
Ian: strategy. I mean, you know, it's one of the things that we, um, we deal with at, at, at casting when we, when we onboard our customers to, to create podcast and video series where they have to have the go to market motion that fits within that thing. Like, yeah, of course, I think every, you know, every single company should have, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever podcast or video series.
But at the end of the day, like it has to map into their go to market and. I can't sit there and, you know, build your go to market and say this is how it should fit. Like here's your content strategy, like here you go. Like I can, I'll provide as much help as as you can and our team can work on that with you.
But like at the end of the day, if you just wanna sort of, you know, slap something on, And I feel the same way with technology is like a lot of the times how their sales organization feels about something or you know, or whatever it is. And just saying, Hey, we're gonna slap some technology on and hope that it works when like, that's not really.
How you're actually going to market, or, or if it is you don't really care about certain other things, then, um, you know, that, that doesn't necessarily, doesn't necessarily make
Justin: sense. Yeah, it's always easy to jump to the end, right? Like, to your point, you know, how are we organizing this content to be, you know, I think most people, you know, start podcasts for awareness and for list building, right?
Like, we wanna create a house list, we wanna be, you know, our own media publisher, uh, which everyone does these days. But really, how have you or, you know, integrated that into, to your point, your marketing motion, your sales motion, How are you leveraging that content, Keeping it to evergreen, you know, utilizing it for the.
Questions, promotion within the sales process for your clients, right? Like there's, there's so many ways to, to scale out this, this thing, this motion, but, um, it's so attractive just to jump at the end and say, Hey, these guys can get it up and live for us. We can check that box. We've got a podcast, right? Um, so yeah, I, I think there's a lot of parallels.
Yeah.
Ian: And, and, and another para parallel real quick. There was, you know, like, we have a few customers that use Wtia and, you know, and it's a great tool and then, and, and it's, uh, fantastic for video. And so you say, Well, hey, you know, if we drop this X video on, on this page, we can, we can track it. And then you say something like, and this is just an example that kind of speaks to the same MarTech solution to attribution, all that stuff.
It's like, Hey, well this video that we posted, you know, doesn't have. Quite as many views for X, Y, or Z Reason. I feel like you know, folks, folks just might rush to, uh, Rush to just, you know, slap some, slap some tech on it, and that's not quite there. All right, let's go to our next segment here, the tool shed.
Hey,
Justin: hey Brandon. Michael, go do me and mom a favor. Get off that shed. This is my favorite place. , the tool shed. Get off the shit,
Ian: or we're talking tools, spreadsheets, metrics. Just like everyone's favorite tool qualified, no B2B tool shed is complete without qualified. Go to qualified.com right now and check them out.
This is a tool that you can just slap on tomorrow and you should be, if you're a Salesforce customer, that's for sure, because it, uh, it pays for itself. So go to qualify.com right now and check them out. Justin, what's in your tool?
Justin: I mean, of course you've got the basics, right? Like I think most organizations have a marketing automation platform and a CRM these days.
So we've always been a, a Marketo and a Salesforce shop. I think the last time we did an analysis, we've got over 60 tools in the, in the stack. We get a lot of technology obviously for, for. Our partnerships, and we've got some, some great partners out there and, and a robust, um, network of those folks. But I would say at the end of the day, the stuff that we can't live without, certainly Marketo, Salesforce Six Sense does all of our segmentation.
It does all of our scoring, it does all of our digital ads, a lot of our ABM metrics, uh, reside within that platform. We, we absolutely are, are an account based go-to-market motion. We wanna be focusing on our ideal clients only, so it makes a ton of sense for us. Um, let's see, what else? Print and mail. We do, uh, a decent amount of print and mail, so we do, uh, use sendo for that.
Let's see, what else? From a criticality standpoint, tons of little widgets like lean data that help us route and, and, and, you know, further segment data within crm. That's kind of the core. Any tools
Ian: you've been trying out recently? Something, something new, something cool.
Justin: Yeah, I mean, a lot of the new stuff that we're looking towards is CDP focused, right?
So our, our friends over at Telium, we love their product. Um, we also love, uh, I think, and any marketing department these days should have a snowflake instance that they don't already have one. Just in, in terms of. Access to metrics that make sense, that span marketing, sales, customer success. And we see a lot of that from a customer standpoint as well.
Snowflake has just gotten incredibly popular, you know, light that up with an ETL tool to extract data with a visualization layer in Tableau and, and frankly, a lot of organizations would solve their KPIs and their visibility challenges that are created. By opinionated software that doesn't necessarily jive from an architecture standpoint.
So especially as we're talking about, you know, marketing, sales, customer success, bringing those together, I'd, I'd highly recommend that, you know, orgs explore some sort of DA data warehouse solution with a light ETL and, you know, Tableau, Power bi, what, you know, whatever they have access to for visualization.
Um, and I think we'd get away from a lot of spreadsheets and last minute board decks with, uh, the type of additive tool. Are you a fan of spreadsheets, ? I am not a fan of spreadsheets. I, I, I really never have been. I think it goes back to my, my college days and, and not really being able to, uh, be the best Excel user.
I do think they're necessary. I just think it needs to be an intentional question within an organization, like at this size, at this scale, at this point in time. Should we be using a spreadsheet for, fill in the blank? I think the question. Is often, No, and I'll give you an example of that. So I think 9, 8, 9 years we operated on a commission model.
That was, I thought, pretty. Complex and we had built this monstrous spreadsheet to, to reinforce that, right? Like a lot of different deal nuances. You had like year one comp versus past year one comp. We had a, at Lead MD we had pretty much everyone in the organization tied to some sort of variable compensation plan.
So it'd gotten pretty outta control, right? And. Three people in the org that he could even operate the damn thing. And so we made the, the, the very intentional decision to move to, uh, uh, a software platform, which was spiff, which I highly recommend. Anyone take a look at who's, who's exploring scaling their, their compensation operations, and.
It was great. I mean, ultimately it turns out they were able to meet our needs in that regard. My, you know, variably compensated folks can log in, they can get a, hey, if everything in pipeline closed, if these deals closed, they can kinda get that variable look into their, their comp structure. And it's been incredibly powerful just getting that out of the, you know, hands of my controller, myself and, and my billing manager.
Um, so that's just one example, right? Like now, in the early days, I would. Pay, you know, for a, a compensation software and, and a spreadsheet was a great way to make that happen. Or, you know, pulling together some quick and dirty data and making things jive. But I think at some point we, we have to graduate off spreadsheets, not as an org, but for a particular need.
Are there any.
Ian: Blind spots that you feel like you have, that you wish you could measure better?
Justin: I don't know that it's a blind spot, but it it, it's an area that is difficult to measure that requires a lot of intentionality and a lot of curation and. I will say this is probably a blind spot for most organizations because I've seen it within our client orgs and it, it's, it's a really different area, difficult area to measure.
So I'll kind of back up and I'll give you guys a whole diatribe here, which is great. Right. I truly believe, and I think Covid just put the exclamation point on this sentence, that from a customer success standpoint, we have to stop measuring ourselves along the lines. Metrics that make sense for our organization and measuring ourselves in accordance with our client's organizations.
What I mean by that is, so take your, your typical gain site software provider mentality that we can build proxies for customer success. I e number of users. Number of emails sent, number of campaigns built, you know, complexity like usage of the software as a proxy for success with the software. And I, I very much disagree with this sentiment because I've been on, I am on the CU customer side, right?
Quite often. And just because I'm using a tool does not mean that I'm seeing value from that tool. Just means that I'm, I'm conducting mission critical items. I can, I may very well switch to a new. Next month if I feel like they can meet my needs better. About probably about four or five years ago we rolled out something meant to solve for this within, you know, then Lead MD now Ship Paradigm called outcomes.
And so, As most organizations use leads to identify a new potential buyer, right? Then they're gonna bring that, that buyer through the the buying journey. We use something called outcomes. And what that outcome is, is what is the mission critical objective that that client is trying to achieve. So we talked earlier about, you know, uh, Points of inflection or, or, or, or, you know, areas of change that are driving engagement with a consultancy, normally it's to grow revenue, to retain revenue, to expand revenue at the fundamental, But along the way, there's a lot of, you know, uh, uh, dependencies, right?
Like, we wanna grow revenue by launching X product into X market, and we want to achieve a penetration of 30% by X state, right? That is the foundation of a good outcome. So we. Enter that outcome. Obviously it's attached to a leader context, so we're not totally divorced from that concept, but we, we structure these outcomes as a way to provide consistency and visibility across that service cycle.
The first conversation they have with a, a, a sales rep, we're gonna start recording that. We're gonna start curating it over time. When we bring in consultants, we bring in principal, which are like strategic advisors. They're all working. Outcome till we get to a point where we and the client say, Yes, this is what we're trying to achieve.
Here are the deliverables that are gonna do that at the end of the day, and how are we gonna measure that project that, you know, that initiative, that engagement that goes on our scope of work like that literally gets signed by ourselves and the client. And I'm using that example, you know, because I truly believe during covid, like everyone was reaching out, how can I help?
How's this impacting your business? They should have already known the answer to that question. They should have known the answer to what that that client was fundamentally trying to achieve and the role that they played in that achievement. Now, Covid might change it, you know, and I think that is a much better question to ask, right?
Like, Hey, we were trying to, uh, enable you to do X. How's Covid changing that? How do we need to course correct? How do we need to, you know, to adjust? Service our product the way we're enabling you to ensure that you achieve that goal. I think that's what buyers are expecting these days. They're expecting that our KPIs are their KPIs.
When we do those terrible QBR or annual reviews, they want to know that, hey, we're going to into that informed. We're not asking you what are your strategic. Goals for this next year. What were they for the past 12 months? Like we know that and we're, we're coming with recommendations. We're coming with areas that, that are pre-built in terms of here's how we think we can provide value.
Obviously there's gonna be feedback from the client involved in that process, but they wanna know that someone is, is writing right there with them. Shotgun in, in, in their business's growth. And so I think the, the, the biggest blind spot is just that is, is measuring ourselves in the same way that our clients are measuring us.
And the reason I put it in that blind spot category, certainly think there's a lot of orgs that don't do that today, but even ourselves, who, who, I mean this, this is a core tenant of, of ship paradigm. It's difficult to. and it's difficult to do because there's so many translation layers in an org, you're, you're inevitably gonna speak to someone who says, Success is standing up this platform.
Okay. That may be the, the rev ops, you know, uh, practitioner's view of the world, but is that the CMOs view of the world? Is that the board members' view of the world? So there can be a different objectives and outcomes within an organization as well. And I think we need to challenge ourselves to speak the same KPIs and the same language as the clients that we serve.
Ian: Yeah, that's, it's one of the things that. Been tough when it, when you have a product that sort of fits mul multiple needs within a buying committee or a buying group or things like that, it's like, well hey, you know, I want, you know, the C H R O needs to get their compliance need met and the CFO needs to be able to, you know, whatever
Justin: make, make the number sure profit at the end of the day, right?
Yeah. She profit, right.
Ian: Uh, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it's a, it's always a little tough cuz you're like, there's all these sort of different things. Your solution needs to be able to tick, hopefully all of those, but sometimes it's not gonna tick a couple of those. And you know, that's where you can get little,
Justin: all the, So, and, and that's a great rev op example, right?
Like, so we built this, this is a custom object in, in Salesforce. It's actually got a couple of custom objects hanging off of it to track the cyclic nature of what we call outcomes, right? Like we may take a. It's selling a project that a achieves that outcomes, that outcome. And maybe we lose that project.
Well, we wanna record the fact that we took that shot. We also wanna keep that outcome live and take another shot. Eventually down the road, becomes even more prevalent within client cycles. So you need. That strategic understanding of how deals move through a system of what we're trying to record with, with outcomes.
And then you need that operational wherewithal to, to build that within Salesforce, within our reporting tools, to have marketing automation react to it to ensure that we're sharing that data. Even for us, within our, our project management platform, which is Adobe work Front, that object is actually shared between those two platforms I think.
Projects like that are, are what gets me excited about Revs because they're not just the age old, Hey, let me plug in Salesforce and Marketo, Like, we've been doing that for a long time these days. But truly what is that business need that we can facilitate with good process, with good technology, um, and with a caring for the ultimate strategy for the.
Ian: Okay. Let's get to our final segment. Quick hits.
Justin: Quick, quick.
Ian: These are quick questions and quick answers. Justin,
Justin: are you ready? I'm ready. Let's do it quickly. ,
Ian: if you could make any animal any size what animal
Justin: what. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Truly a question that I've never considered before in my life. . Um, I would make an, I would make an animal, uh, that would. Act, behave, and, and have all the characteristics of my two and a half year old daughter
Um, probably the same size. Basically, I just wanna make my daughter as everyone's pet, um, because she's awesome. She, she is the, and I'm sure this will come back to bite me later on in life, but she is the most. love forward individual I've ever seen in my life. If, if we were in a room, she'd run up to you and tell you she loved you right now.
That's awesome. Um, so she just a, an, an awesome spirit and a great reminder of, um, uh, of how, you know, carefree and happy we all should be. Do you have any, uh,
Ian: rev ops predictions
Justin: for us? Um, I've got a lot of rev ops predictions. I, I, you know, we could, we could deal with the boring ones, which are like the rise of PLG and the continuance of ABM and, and and so on.
But I really do think that the. Most important fundamental revs prediction, is that what I mentioned earlier in terms of KPIs, right? Like that, that's not a nice to have that, that is how our clients will be holding us responsible for their businesses. We have to become business partners with, with the organizations that we serve.
We have to understand their metrics. Um, and so I think as a whole has to respond in kind like we have to start record. Why our clients are purchasing from us and we need to start serving that need and kind of being the steward of that from marketing to sales and to customer success. And, and, and at the end of the day, lighting that up is a fundamental kpi.
I think it's just so critical that that Rev is able to show value. . Right. And I think the connective tissue between those, those different departments is, is at the, the heart of showing that value. Um, we've got so many clients that are going through budget cycles right now, and, and a lot of them are trying to.
Either hang on to budget that they feel they can lose or are trying to win back budget that's already been taken from them as a result of, you know, first covid, then the economy, and so on and so forth. Um, and so I think that's a great way to, to show marketing and, and sales and certainly customer success is value is, is aligning that organization certainly around the buyer's journey, but more importantly about the buyer's value journey.
Favorite movie character of all time? Oh, I gotta go with Darth Vader. I mean, it really is. I, I, I've always loved anything, you know, I love the villain in black, so Darth Vader, certainly.
Ian: Best advice for someone who is newly leading
Justin: Revs team. Talk to as many, I, I would say both marketing and sales leaders is, Outside your org.
You know, just, I, I, I always encourage everyone, like, I've never had anyone reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, Hey, can I have five minutes of your time that I've turned out? Really? And I truly believe that that executives are, are generous with their time if they're good folks. And I think a lot of them are, um, not a sales pitch, right?
Like, not the old, Hey, can you look at my tool for five minutes? Or, Hey, are you interested in business financing? Um, but truly like, Hey, I'm, I'm a stu, a student. Discipline. I just want to, you know, get your advice for five minutes. I, I, I will make the prediction that you will get more yeses than no, certainly within that, that outreach.
Well,
Ian: maybe you're the most love forward person, person. Cuz if you're accepting that many invites, you're, you're a champ, Justin.
Justin: Um, seriously, I get very few, uh, I will say this, I get very few, um, truly like sincere albums like that. Normally once someone wants to sell me something, you know, But I've had student, I had a student from Germany who reached out to me like, I do know a little bit of German, but you know, we made it work in English and, and it was a great conversation.
I think we even had a, we did, we had a follow up to it. Like any of that, like truly like, Hey, I just wanna learn from you. I, I think people are, are ripe for that. Well,
Ian: that's it Justin. That's all we got for today. Thanks so much for, uh, for joining the show. For our listeners, go to shift paradigm.com to learn more.
Obviously, if you need some rev op help, who better to ask go check out Shift Paradigm. Uh, yeah. Any, any final thoughts? Anything to plug?
Justin: I mean any, I know this episode's gonna be up for a while, so like just, you know, like you said, go to our, go to our website, our best practices area. I think we roll three to four new pieces of, of content and, and best practices live on a monthly basis.
We give away a ton of knowledge. Go there, check it out, get answers to your questions. Our events, uh, area of the site will certainly show you where we're gonna be. We try to be anywhere where Revs or or go to market is happening and, and if you can't find what you're looking at there or looking for there, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, unless you're trying to sell me something.
I will definitely respond. . I love it. Thanks again, Justin. For sure. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to Rise of Rob Ops. If you enjoy today's episode, please leave us a review and subscribe wherever you're listen. This podcast was created by the team at qualified The pipeline Cloud is the modern way.
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