This episode features an interview with Brian Tully, Chief Revenue Officer at Goldcast. Goldcast is a platform for enterprises to conduct meaningful and measurable digital events. Brian’s specialty is quickly growing SaaS companies year over year. Brian explains how to build a solid RevOps strategy and how to gather actionable data. He also describes how to expand enterprise, mid-market companies internationally.
Today we'll hear from Brian Tully, Chief Revenue Officer at Goldcast. Goldcast is a platform for enterprises to conduct meaningful and measurable digital events. Goldcast provides strong tools/dashboards for you, the marketer, to measure the ROI of the event and get strong lead qualification insights. Brian’s specialty is quickly growing SaaS companies year over year.
In this episode, Brian explains how to build a solid RevOps strategy and how to gather actionable data. He also describes how to expand enterprise, mid-market companies internationally.
Guest Bio:
Brian is a senior technology executive with 20 years of experience in Go To Market strategy, B2B Implementation, Sales, Operations, and Marketing at Startups and Fortune 500 technology companies. His specialty is rapidly growing SaaS companies 50%+ Year over Year.
Guest Quote:
“Don't go bankrupt expanding internationally. First of all, you need to have a base to know what works first. Full stop. You need to have the US and find a niche, find a persona, find an industry, find a problem that you solve better than anyone else. You're like, yes, this is working. Cuz if you don't have that yet and you think you're gonna solve it by going international, that's probably like getting married to solve the bickering that you have.”
Time Stamps:
**(01:12) Brian’s role at Goldcast
**(03:18) Brian’s RevOps strategy
**(06:52) What makes a horrible client experience
**(16:40) How to know your plan is working
**(20:18) Expanding internationally without going bankrupt
**(24:08) RevOops
**(28:58) What metrics matter
**(38:04) Quick hits
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.
Links:
[00:00:34] Ian Faison: Welcome to Rise of Rev Ops, I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. And today I am joined by a special guest. Brian, how are you?
[00:00:43] Brian Tully: Very good. Thank you very much for having me here.
[00:00:45] Ian Faison: Excited to have you on the, on the show. Excited to chat rev Ops, as always, talk about Gold cast. We're gonna talk about webinars and events and all the cool stuff that y'all are doing. Uh, this show is always brought to you by the good people at Qualified. You can go to qualified.com to learn more. Turn your website into a sales machine.
[00:01:03] Lots of love and exciting, uh, uh, rev op stuff here for today.
[00:01:07] Brian Tully: Wonderful team.
[00:01:08] Ian Faison: What was your first job in revenue?
[00:01:13] Brian Tully: First job in revenue. I'm actually gonna say investment banking.
[00:01:16] Ian Faison: Hmm.
[00:01:16] Brian Tully: first job in revenue, uh, investment banking is just glorified sales. So Lehman Brothers gleacher out west, you know, selling billion dollar bond offerings. And then, uh, basically went start up with a company called Tax Stream, a bootstrap, just two of my friends and an accountant.
[00:01:33] We got together and at that role I was in charge of sales, customer success, support, basically everything but product and dev.
[00:01:41] Ian Faison: And flash forward to today, what does it mean to be C R O of Gold Cast?
[00:01:46] Brian Tully: Fast forward to today, CRO of GoldCast. Um, it's a very exciting company, very exciting role. Great time to be part of it. So, I have a long history. I'm pretty old, but this is the best dev team I've worked with, full stop. Which is amazing. They can push out high quality product at an amazing clip. But it's fun because that comes with a challenge of, okay, now marketing, sales, and client success have to step up.
[00:02:16] You have to constantly be innovating, constantly, you know, learn how to pitch and sell and market. Who's the best persona fit for the new product, all while moving upstream and moving internationally at the same time. So, you know, it's almost kind of easier when your dev team's a little bit slow because you have time to catch up and set it and then go. This is like, oh my God, it's Christmas every single day, and you have to play with the new toy.
[00:02:41] Ian Faison: That's really fun. That's exciting. And it seems like, you know, um, gosh, how, how needed is, uh, is Gold Cast as a solution right now? Because, uh, data more important than ever? Obviously with the rise of AI and everything, uh, just having a solution, uh, to be able to help us go to market, uh, is, is so critical.
[00:03:02] Brian Tully: Yes, definitely. I mean, uh, the core is it has to be, it has to be an amazing experience. Otherwise, no one's paying attention anyway. We're here talking. If we're not engaging, no one's gonna care. Um, the second is, it has to be easy, otherwise no one wants to do it. And then the third is you have to rely on it.
[00:03:20] Cuz if it doesn't work, then you're gonna be scared and it adds a lot of stress. So those are the basics. And then you get into repeatable so that you can do things once, keep it going forever. You get AI snippets, you know, 15 second, 30 seconds right out of the box afterwards, and you get to edit it and you have an event hub. So the content lasts forever. So 10 years down the road, someone can watch this glorious, uh, discussion and glean some knowledge.
[00:03:49] Ian Faison: And what's your rev ops, uh, strategy?
[00:03:53] Brian Tully: Rev ops strategy, um, aligns with the business strategy. So I would, I always start with what is the business goals? What did the executive sign off with? Once you have that, you say, okay, what do we currently have in place? And then what do we need to add to get there? I actually like to start with an Excel spreadsheet of just what is the forecast of, uh, traffic to our webpage, to the amount of, uh, leads we're gonna get inbound to the conversion of those leads, outbound prospecting, how many BDRs do we have? Where are we going? And then from the initial first touchpoint all the way through scheduled, uh, demos to closed demos, meaning they actually happen to proposals all the way through. And I'd like to start with the measurement because it first forces our team to think it through about what needs to happen.
[00:04:50] It allows us to then take it up to the tower, up high, the board and the execs to say, Hey, this is what we think we can accomplish to make sure we're aligned. And then once it is, then you start enacting that whole process through your funnel for your persona or your different products. So you're able to be effective and you're able to measure what's working and not working and why, and then adjust along the way.
[00:05:16] Ian Faison: Tell me about, uh, the first six months in the role. What, what, what did you learn?
[00:05:21] Brian Tully: I gave them a product vision for a year and a half. They basically accomplished it in seven months. So I needed to recalibrate my mindset for the speed of which this can actually happen. Once I got over that, it was a couple core things, you know, pretty standard. Uh, persona, who's your real icp, cuz any startup, especially when you're, you know, founders and you get to a certain size and you could still be like 10, 20, 50, uh, million ARR.
[00:05:50] You're just excited that people wanna buy your software and you say yes to everybody and they all flood in and it's fantastic. And you go, yay. Results are good. But then you kind of realize, wait a minute, we're not a fit for everybody. You know, there's not one Swiss army knife that could really make everything work. So where's your true match. And you start with the end. You start with what is actually renewing, what clients are really getting value, and then you back into the equation of this is really who we should target cuz we're gonna be able to help them the most with our current product set. So it was ICP was one.
[00:06:29] And then to your point, uh, structure and digital journey. a lot of it was done with, uh, you know, TVA and a couple tools, but are the tools put together in the proper way? So data just flows and everything just works? No. Is there manual reporting on the side? Of course. So because of that, you know, we need to create the proper structure in order to support our clients, our real ICP effectively.
[00:06:52] So that was one, the people and the process. But then, okay, now that we have the people in the process, we have 16 different tools, which I'm happy to list off. These all have to work in harmony and we need to reduce the seepage of data and time along the way so that our clients can truly have a magical experience, and our employees also enjoy their jobs better.
[00:07:15] Ian Faison: I love that. That's great. All right, let's get to our first segment, rev Obstacles, where we talk about tough parts about rev ops. What makes a, uh, a horrible client experience.
[00:07:26] Brian Tully: Oh, that's a wonderful question. Uh, my first is always looking at Comcast. Comcast once got a score, a client success score worse than the irs. Now if you think that you could do worse than the irs, that's like the pinnacle of being awful. So directly answering your question, ask the customer 15 times for the same information. Ask 'em for their name and their profile, and what do they care about and what's their use case. When the BDR has already said it and not documented it, the AE got it but didn't transfer it to onboarding. Onboarding, didn't transfer it to the csm. CSM doesn't transfer it to support. So when they call and they have a challenge, support's like, hi, who are you?
[00:08:09] What is your name? What is your event type in Goldcast or something like, it's just miserable. And by that point, even a core advocate is pulling out their hair saying, you do not care about me. Okay. So I would say the first thing is when you get in information, make sure that that rev ops flow is documenting it and making sure that's in the right places for the right teams, in the right systems.
[00:08:36] And if you just do that, clients will at least feel you're listening to them. Clients will feel like you care about them, and that goes a long way before you even really start your journey. Part of that is not gathering the proper information in the first place. All throughout that journey from b d R to AE marketing, B D r, uh, ae uh, client success, uh, onboarding support are always amazing opportunities to gather the proper qualifying questions.
[00:09:08] To make sure, wait a minute, are you a fit or not? You know, from the sales side, once you're a fit or not and their property is stored, then you go into, okay, well is it documented in a project plan? Is it documented in a place where it is very clear to the client and you that this is what you're agreeing to When they sign that little piece of paper with a number on it. And then your onboarding team can take that and go, okay, I'm gonna follow that plan that we talked about, and if I do that, we should be in alignment and be successful. And then that needs to be documented. So the CSM and support, no, wait a minute. We did this thing for you. Now you're talking about something different.
[00:09:49] Let's go from there. Instead of just rehashing or misaligned expectations. And that's really what cross causes a lot of friction in the entire journey and drives clients up a ball. Those two put together.
[00:10:03] Ian Faison: So who do you think should own that? Like what is Rev ops role in that? Um, in that process.
[00:10:09] Brian Tully: I think Rev Ops owns the execution strategy of that and facilitates the entire journey for sales, for, um, CS and for marketing. So once Rev Ops understands the strategy, it's essential to understand the strategy and the goals, what they want to accomplish. Outlines who's involved in the process internally and from the client, and then at each step understands what needs to be collected and why.
[00:10:43] Then they basically give, whether it's the Salesforce form, the Salesforce fields, but then that feeds over automatically to Catalyst or Monday or some of the other tools, and then it feeds over to Zendesk. So Zendesk has the profile right there, like that's how Rev Ops. Materially reduces costs cuz it's not just wasted hours, enhances revenue because there's not drop leads and the stuff that closes is actually a better fit. And because it's a better fit, you're gonna have higher retention. So I really see Rev Ops as the facilitator and the strategic partner of all three of those divisions to make it successful.
[00:11:25] Ian Faison: How does a company go from mid-market to enterprise effectively? I mean, this is one of the big rev obstacles that's that's out there in, in any format because it's so hard and so many people are trying to do it.
[00:11:39] Brian Tully: Yep. And I think some of it is a lot of people have only seen one side or the other. So you've only worked in small companies, so you know how a small company works, and I can talk to you and go, Hey, and I understand you and other people have worked at really big companies, and really big companies have really different problems, but you know, they understand what that is.
[00:12:02] I think my advantage is I've actually done both. I've worked for very big companies, very small companies. I grew a company from zero to half a billion dollars. So I saw the journey all along the way. And what that does, it allows me to sit down with a team that's really good at doing mid small market and saying, okay, first let's educate. So. This is what enterprise means. And I'll, I'll back up a step. Normally the founders that I talk to, uh, hear enterprise, like we're gonna go enterprise cuz they have really big dollar figures. Yeah. And I like big dollar figure deals and that's how we're gonna move the needle. And it's, yay, very exciting.
[00:12:45] But I have no idea what that entails. You're gonna have a longer deal cycle. It's gonna be a six month to a year deal cycle. Not a, you know, one to two months. You're gonna have to invest in product improvements or product changes to specifically address enterprise. And that focuses on non redundancy and templates and making things easy and lockdown and security and compliance, you know, to a much greater extent than you see in small market.
[00:13:15] Founders need to know that people who really are gonna go on this journey need to at least grab an expert or get a course or understand what enterprise really means and what they need. Then you can build the journey and the path, and then you need sign off from the board and from execs so that you get the proper investment of time and resources. To have that year period. Otherwise you could be like, we're gonna do enterprise. And then they go four months and they're like, oh my God, we don't have any enterprise clients. Cancel the whole initiative. We're gonna move on and do something else. Well, did it work or did it not work? You don't know yet.
[00:13:51] Ian Faison: I mean, you have to at least do one full budget cycle, right? Like if it's something that's like a net new, so like this is with us with Caspian. When we go to a company and we're selling to an enterprise company and they go, okay, well we have X amount of marketing dollars. We could like use some discretionary budget on this thing, but ultimately, like, we gotta budget this. So like, we just have to look at 2024 like this, just this chunk of money doesn't exist. So like if, if we were to be selling there and we're like, well it didn't work, you know, it's you. We got all these leads but nobody closed. And it's like, yeah, well they haven't even budgeted at once. And then that person comes back around, you know, in, in January 1st and they're like, yep, got it budgeted ready to rock, you know.
[00:14:34] Brian Tully: So I'll give you the flaw and then I'll give you the right way to do it. The flaw that I see over and over again is some execs or, a finance creates a top-down model of like, I'm gonna hire three executive reps. And three executive reps are gonna bring in 2 million by the end of the year. Great. You know, $2 million.
[00:14:52] Then they have some sort of blur up on the quarters. Well, but they don't think through product and they don't think through a lot of the other steps or marketing or, that's probably a new brand for that, um, uh, environment and that's all headwinds that you're gonna have to address. Not just hire three, you know, senior sales reps and go after this cuz they've done enterprise in the past.
[00:15:14] So the proper way to do this is start off again with the business plan and write up who you're gonna go after. Write up your targets, write up how many leads, how many inbound requests, how many outbound meetings I'm gonna do first out of those meetings, what percentage is actually going to turn into opportunities when that's gonna happen, which is probably q2, q3, Q, and then how many of those are gonna go to contract? And then how many of those are gonna go through? Cause otherwise, you're gonna hit that four month breaking point where maybe things aren't going that well, and then all of a sudden, what initiatives are we gonna kill? And the first thing they're gonna kill is the thing that's not bringing in anything and they're gonna move on. You have to be able to, right off the bat, say, Hey, month one we were gonna have 12 conversations with, um, you know, random people just to identify the industry. And we had four. Nobody would even give us the time of day. Well, that's pretty scary right there. And if you Okay, change your persona, change your icp, do some adjustments.
[00:16:18] If by month two you're not getting it by month three, you didn't get those, then you can actually make a legitimate, okay, are we even a fit? We need to do a market study about what's happening. What do they care about? What are the value props? You know, are we even in the zone with our current products and software suite, uh, service offering to address any of those and do we need to change our messaging? Or maybe you do have to kill it in month four, but it's an educated decision. And if it's happening and you're on trend and okay, I had the meetings, and the meetings turn into two opportunities and two opportunities of that. When there's that panic moment, we need to kill something, you're like, we are actually on track for that 2 million over here and here's the proof of it.
[00:17:00] And that's what a lot of sales, marketing, CS, especially first time journey, if they've never done this before, don't have to prove it to get to that nirvana state.
[00:17:13] Ian Faison: And how do you know, how do you know it is working?
[00:17:15] Brian Tully: You know, it's working by tracking on a weekly basis, you know what was supposed to happen, what is not happening. On a monthly basis, you do a real review, and you flag those results to the execs. You flag those results to the board. Hey, just wanna let you know here's an update on our initiative and where we are and the progress we've made, and be very honest about it. Some months are gonna be great. Some months might be awful. You know, keep pushing it through. You need to track that scale, so you basically come up with the forecast of the future and you need to track against it. And it's really that guess of the future. That's going to give you the best estimate of, okay, is this working great?
[00:17:56] Is this kind of working? Maybe not. Do we need to change or do we need to just hold and give it more time? Or no, it's not working. And if it's not working at all, what's plan B, plan C that we can, uh, do for the remainder of the quarter to kind of get back on track?
[00:18:12] Ian Faison: Anything else about sort of taking mid-market enterprise?
[00:18:16] Brian Tully: Yeah, from a rev ops perspective, uh, first you need to have the actionable data. You need to, you know, get your data source, get your data lake, identify your IPAs, the ones you're gonna go after enterprise how. Um, what you're gonna find is there's not just four contacts inside the company. There's probably 400 that you can contact.
[00:18:34] So which ones are you gonna go after first, and how are you gonna use marketing in order to do it? On a rep by rep basis, you need to have the measurement and reports in, uh, Salesforce, in your prospecting tools so that you're able to track the right data so that you can have that weekly meeting. And you need to then chase that whole journey. And as it begins to go down into opportunities, into closes, into, uh, implementation, into renewal, you need to track that whole journey to be able to show. On one clean chart to the execs and to sales management. What's working, what's not working? Bonus points, get it by persona. Because what you might find is it is not the company, it's the person you're talking to in the company is actually the real defining factor. You know who is your real evangelist? You'll find that out and then you need to loop that back real quick into your BDR tool to say, great, your iic, your I C P A just changed and you're only targeting CMOs or you're only targeting operations people, or you're only targeting this cuz we're finding success there.
[00:19:43] Ian Faison: How do you view retention?
[00:19:46] Brian Tully: I view retention. Um, As GRR, I like GRR better than NRR, uh, 'cause GRR,is your client getting value out of your product? N R R means you found a niche with a couple clients that might even go triple, quadruple. They might go way up, but g R R is, you know, are you going after the right persona from the very beginning and are they going through and do you have a real business model?
[00:20:18] Because if your G R R is sub a certain number, you're really only selling sugar or you're selling services. It's really not fast. It's not, you know, renewing. Every year you're really doing a one-off service to solve a need, and you just move on.
[00:20:34] Ian Faison: What's that number again?
[00:20:35] Brian Tully: I think the over under is about 70. If you're sub 70 g rr, then either your ICP is way off or you, um, just are not delivering enough value to your client.
[00:20:49] Ian Faison: Right, right. Let's talk international expansion. How the, how the high Do you not go bankrupt when you expand internationally?
[00:20:58] Brian Tully: Um, don't go bankrupt, uh, expanding internationally, first of all, you need to have a base to know what works first. Full stop. Like you need to have the US and find a niche, find a persona, find an industry, find a problem that you solve better than anyone else. You're like, yes, this is working. Cuz if you don't have that yet and you think you're gonna solve it by going international, that's probably like getting married to solve the bickering that you have.
[00:21:24] It's probably not going to work. So, um, start there. Once you have a solid foundation of, I know that I really know my icp, I know the persona I'm going after. I have my systems in place too. I need to have my data cleanliness and I need to have my onboarding ready. It all those have to be good because you're, when you go international, not only is it kind of a big distraction, but it can really mess up your existing businesses from marketing all the way through to client retention because of the additional challenges that they have.
[00:21:57] So how do you do it? You start off with your US customers that are larger. If you have, um, say enterprise, any kind of mid-market or enterprise, and you find the local team. Internationally and you start working with them there. So a good example, and you start with English speaking countries, and the only reason you're starting with English speaking countries is because I assume if you're starting off in the United States, you're probably not internationalized.
[00:22:24] Even if you can handle three character digits, can the entire panel, can the entire backend and front end, um, be translated into a certain language? Probably not. So start with, uh, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Canada, and Australia and India. Like, those are the places to test your strategy. Start with the companies that, uh, you currently have to have a presence there and see if they can use you in the local department.
[00:22:54] Not the, you know, being sponsored by core in the Us. Are there local users there that you can turn into advocates? And the reason why is if you can get enough of that to start, then you can leverage them up with marketing. You can leverage them up with case studies. You can have a local presence and a local reference when you start prospecting. Because the first thing, they're not gonna know your brand internationally. They go, who are you? I know these five companies that do this locally. Why should I even pay attention to You gotta get over that. That means your ICP and your core messaging have to be pretty sound. Great. Now that that sound, they're gonna go, oh, prove it and prove that you could do the support for me.
[00:23:36] I'm six hours off, I'm nine hours off. Prove to me that I'm not gonna be screwed when I have this challenge moment. And you can do that. You have to be able to map out the implementation and you have to be able to map out the support. And this is part of the go to market. Like before you even go there, don't even go there unless you've figured this out.
[00:23:54] Cuz if you're trying to make it up on the fly, it's gonna be pretty wonky. And then finally, Now that I have that they're gonna be like, mean anyone else who have used you, they, because people rarely wanna be the first in their country to use your product. And that's where you pull like, oh my gosh, I know Ian and Ian's in, uh, you know this company and he is amazing.
[00:24:16] You should talk to that person. And that gives you the pseudo presence to get into, um, UK and really land your first true native UK Ireland client. And then you start building your base that way.
[00:24:29] That's kind of the magic recipe for success. And that didn't cost a lot of money. I didn't have a local base. I didn't hire any local reps. I basically playing it out for the US until I could prove it, to make the investment to make sure it's gonna work.
[00:24:42] Ian Faison: Have you had any, uh, rev oops, moments in in the last year?
[00:24:47] Brian Tully: Uh, yes, there's always revoops moments. We switched from one tool to another tool, uh, that was core to our BDR prospecting, and we did not ask the proper questions because one of our employees, we actually came from that company, so we kind of thought they knew everything about it, and they know if they say it's good, it has to be good. So we didn't do all of our proper due diligence.
[00:25:18] Lo and behold, uh, the way pricing and structuring works, we actually probably have one 10th of the value of the previous product under the current, uh, nature. And we now need to unwind that, or we have to have some real conversations in order to fix that. And that's basically just a classic example of we made some assumptions along the way.
[00:25:44] And we didn't document our needs and we didn't document our process before going into it. So we're only a couple weeks in, but it's material enough that we're like, whoa. And we are now backtracking and trying to fix the, uh, problem within the next week.
[00:26:00] Ian Faison: Alright, let's get to our next segment. The tool shed. We're talking tool 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. Brian, what is in your tool shed?
[00:26:17] Brian Tully: Ah. So we have about 20 different tools that we use, which to me is always kind of fun because I remember the good old days when you probably had a CRM and. You know, a marketing platform and that was basically all you were using. So, uh, Salesforce, Gong, sendoso, HubSpot, zoom, and Gold Cast are our primary tools.
[00:26:38] Um, straight up, uh, gong is definitely probably one of the sweet spots of what we have. Uh, they actually have, we use it for product marketing. We use it for product management. We use it to, uh, keep execs and the board in involved. We use it with clients constantly sending them their own calls and snippets of calls about what's important.
[00:27:00] Um, in addition to that, we have Shopify, uh, for job change software. That's pretty cool. Uh, we use outreach for email and phone. We use lead IQ for email addresses and phone numbers, sales navigator to filter job titles. So we're basically trying to use as many tools as possible to automate, uh, the BDR search function so that they could be more effective and contact as many of our ICPs as possible.
[00:27:31] And then of course, we have catalyst on the backend. Uh, for, uh, client retention. We use duly for note taking, which is a fun tool. And we use Notion company-wide and we use Monday for implementation. So our Rev ops team has no shortage of, you know, integration challenges that they need to keep up with, especially as we're launching new products.
[00:27:55] Ian Faison: Obviously you use gold cast as you mentioned. How, how do y'all use, use your own product?
[00:28:01] Brian Tully: Sure. So, uh, we'd like to drink our own champagne. That's what we'd like to say. we have, uh, v i p webinar series. So we basically have, um, Once a month, uh, special guests come up, talk about their marketing challenges, talk about their event challenges. That data not only isn't a great experience, but that data is, uh, real time sent via Slack so that our reps get notified as soon as one of their, uh, Prospects or clients is in there so they can actually join them in the meeting if they want to or actually answer a question that's going on.
[00:28:35] Uh, in addition to that, uh, the data gets automatically transferred into Salesforce so that, uh, you can personalize the outbound back with the notification. Um, and we also get 15 second, 32nd snippets about, uh, 20 to an hour after the video. So, M most people will send the one hour webinar. Oh, you missed the webinar.
[00:29:01] Here's a one hour webinar. I don't know anybody who's ever watched, uh, a recorded hour webinar. You know, at normal speed, maybe at like a five times speed, but normal speed all the way through. This way you can be like, look, here are two clips that you care about, about this very specific thing, you know, amazing.
[00:29:19] We also do this for live events. Our 10 events, we chop it up and it basically creates our content strategy.
[00:29:24] Ian Faison: Gotta love drinking the own your own champagne. Uh,it's a part of every modern, uh, marketer tool shed, that's for sure. what metrics matter to you?
[00:29:33] Brian Tully: From a top side perspective, G R R and rrr. New business of course, but just as important is CAC and cash burn. So you can close as many clients as you want and that's amazing. You can make tens of hundreds of millions of dollars, but if you can't keep your costs under control long term, not in the short, you can always, you know, run red if you need to, but you need to know the business model is actually functioning.
[00:30:01] So if I close you for 10 million people might get excited, but if it really costs me 12 million every client I bring in for 10 to service you and renew you well, that's actually a problem. So cash burn CAC is always, uh, top of mind. And then Klein Health score and support CSAT like our client's happy.
[00:30:24] That's insane. Like we really want 45 plus every single month, and we get pretty damn close to that. And that's because we want to make sure that we're making as many clients as happy because that really is long-term retention. That is building your brand in the marketplace. That is making sure you're successful from a rev ops point of view.
[00:30:45] I would say full funnel. You know, web traffic, inbound demos, prospects is contacted. Demos booked. Demos attended, uh, demos, SQL skills, opportunities, opportunities and proposal, you know, close loss, close one by persona, by industry, by revenue, by employee count. You need to have those four attached to that data because then you can immediately address questions when someone's like, oh my God, why is retention bad?
[00:31:18] Well, maybe retention's only bad in this one area and that's probably an area we shouldn't be there in the first place. Or you know, oh my God, we just closed this amazing deals. Well, what's the profile of that deal that we should now make our I C P A or really focus our BDR team and marketing on? Uh, you need that other data, you know, is a thousand your sweet spot of employees or 10,000 or you know, is it 200 or 50? You know, having that data appended to all of the things I just listed, really make it sing and enable the entire business to become a lot stronger. Uh, for retention. It is. QBR is completed cause we do quarterly business reviews.
[00:31:59] If you do half your annual, that's fine too. Days, uh, from last touch. Are they interacting with us in one way, shape, or form? And every business has a certain metric where it should be. Yes. Even if it's product like growth, they should be interacting with your marketing or interacting with their product or something so that you are keeping them engaged. And then product usage. Now, not only are they using the product often, what areas of the product are they using so that when you follow up with them, you have a very strategic follow up. And you know how to make recommendations to improve whatever function they're trying to do.
[00:32:36] Ian Faison: Some metric or, or something that you, you wish you, uh, could measure better? Uh, what would that be?
[00:32:43] Brian Tully: Right now just in, in a Goldcast's journey, we are, uh, ramping up our training, uh, internal training and training, uh, programs. So because of it, it's not part of our health score, which really, really drives me nuts cuz uh, when I think of health score, Yes it is. You know, do I have a court advocate?
[00:33:02] Do they like us? Are they having good experience? That's one check. And then you think, well, product usage, that's another avenue of the client health score. And then are they engaging in our brand, in our marketing material? Um, are they, have they shown up to any of our live events? Have we seen them, uh, at our v I P dinner series or at, you know, Salesforce or Adobe World. Um, and then training is a key part of that. And not only training of your core advocate, but if you have 10 licenses and they're being used, have 10 people been trained or you only train one person? Cuz I think if you get through the training and your training's right. Then they should have an exponential chance of success on your software and be that much more stronger in your advocate in the industry. So personally, it's, if I could wave magic wand training initiative would be done today. It's gonna be done soon.
[00:33:56] Ian Faison: any, uh, any technology that you're, that you're looking at investing in or excited about?or you've added recently.
[00:34:02] Brian Tully: I am very curious about ai. You know, we're, we're doing that too, we're, we've jumped on the ai. And ai, by the way, is a bad word. We should all do a shot. Every time we hear the word ai. We'd probably be drunk by like 11 o'clock. Um, so ai that can automate and enhance the BDR prospecting function, especially mixed with deep fake. I am fascinated by that because let's say ChatGPT six can actually do all the language and respond correctly to the, um, question. You combine that with a deep fake and that is real. That doesn't look fake. And then it gets pretty scary what that combination can do all for all, you know, positions pretty much cross the board if you have the proper knowledge base base into it.
[00:34:58] So I don't think it's gonna happen in the next five years, 10 years, but maybe 10 years. It's out there. It's definitely coming where there's gonna be, it could be me or it could be a synthetic me that looks like me and ChatGPT you know, six is the one answering the questions and people won't be able to tell 'em.
[00:35:18] So I think that is gonna be a different world when that happens.
[00:35:22] Ian Faison: Anything cool that you've done with, uh, with data? uh, recently?
[00:35:25] Brian Tully: We basically identified, uh, through a persona analysis exactly who is our core advocate and the two, um, sponsors. So we actually have been able to shorten up from 20 titles to four. If we have those four core titles, we will be successful or have a much higher chance of success. And what that does basically eliminates a bunch of wasted time and makes, uh, our higher probability of success across the funnel.
[00:35:59] Ian Faison: Looking at it from the CRO position and, and looking at your team and, and, you know, finding out what they're, Hey, what's the, what's the RFPs that they're chucking your way. Like, Hey, I wanna buy this. Hey, I wanna buy this. You know,
[00:36:12] Brian Tully: I guess, uh, Lupo, uh, Lupo is, uh, a really amazing tool that we're adding to the tech stack. Uh, used it a couple times in the past, but you only need it when you're going enterprise. So a good example, if you're doing RFIs, RFPs and you're doing only one of 'em per month, no big deal. When you crack a certain thing like six per month, Lupo is an amazing tool in order to, uh, standardize the RFI R F P process.
[00:36:39] Ian Faison: Anything, um, that we haven't touched on so far? Uh, from revenue perspective, rev ops perspective, uh, something that that jumps out at you as people don't do well or could you know, something that you're doing that people could implement in their companies?
[00:36:55] Brian Tully: Yeah, I would say when you're, A lot of people think internal and external and they don't merge those together. There's actually a lot of information that you collect in, uh, Salesforce and other systems that if you make transparent to the client at the same time, They will actually correct data, they will enhance it, and they become one with you in order to expand within the organization.
[00:37:21] So a good example, we've created a enterprise template that is a full breakdown overview of a lot of information that's actually in Salesforce and uh, catalyst. And it basically gives our core advocate. An amazing overview of not just, oh, I licensed the software, but these are all the different teams, all the different divisions inside my organization that are using it.
[00:37:45] Here are the ones that are interested in it, and then here are the ones that aren't interested in it. And by doing that, They feel ownership of the entire relationship. They're like, oh my God, I didn't even know you were talking to these people. That's amazing. And you're actually helping them do their job and it helps get buy-in from procurement executive management on their side.
[00:38:07] There's no additional work if you do it right and you set up the reports. But a lot of people think, okay, I have my data, and then they have their data and by merging it together and figuring out the right proof points to like show to them, You can really build an amazing amount of points and expand relationships at previous companies.
[00:38:27] Uh, uh, a marketing company expanded a relationship from 15,000 to over a million dollars using that technique for Amazon.
[00:38:35]
[00:38:35] Ian Faison: Oh, let's get to our final segment. Quick hits. These are quick questions and quick answers. Brian, quick hits. Are you ready?
[00:38:42] Brian Tully: All right. All right. All right. Let's do it.
[00:38:44] Ian Faison: If you could make any animal any size, what animal would it be and what size?
[00:38:48] Brian Tully: It'd be a tiger. It'd be a really big one. Cause they're beautiful and powerful. I love them.
[00:38:53] Ian Faison: Do you have a biggest rev ops or revenue misconception?
[00:38:58] Brian Tully: Yes. Uh, biggest revenue, rev ops misconception is I'm gonna buy this tool and I'm gonna hire this person and all my problems are magically gonna be fixed. Because what you need is, in addition to that, a plan to roll out. Also, employee buy-in and management buy-in, because if the employees don't want to use the tool, guess what?
[00:39:23] They're barely gonna use the tool. And if management doesn't support your efforts, you know you're just gonna do a bunch of time and effort and not be successful. So that has to be, you need the time. You need the buy-in of the employee, buying of the manager, and a good plan on top of amazing people and amazing technology.
[00:39:45] Ian Faison: Do you have a rev ops prediction?
[00:39:48] Brian Tully: Rev Ops is gonna be a real certification, so, There will be universities, master programs, PhD saying, yep, I graduated Harvard for rev ops. And it will be a standard thing because it is that important in the organization.
[00:40:04] Ian Faison: Any piece of advice for, uh, for someone who's, who's getting into rev ops.
[00:40:08] Brian Tully: uh, touch as many tools as you can, uh, so you're not just stuck in one platform. So, Definitely get the certifications and the badges for whatever your court is so that you uh, have the pedigree that way. And then really focus on being able to do basic code for integrations. Cuz any amazing tool, it's always I need to get my product information into there or I need to get the information from this amazing product, you know, Salesforce to Catalyst or Catalyst to Zendesk, and I need to do that.
[00:40:41] If you have that trifecta. You are amazingly skilled and powerful, and every single company on the planet should want you.
[00:40:49] Ian Faison: And last question, what piece of advice would you have for a chief revenue officer who is leading a Rev ops team?
[00:40:57] Brian Tully: Give them support. Make sure they understand the plan. Make sure they understand 2024 and every single quarter and what you want to do and why, and then give them the support so that if you agree on an initiative, you're gonna help encourage the employees and management. To, uh, have buy-in so that the rev ops person will be successful in their initiatives.
[00:41:27] Ian Faison: Awesome. Brian, this has been fantastic having you on the show. Uh, really appreciate the conversation. Uh, for listeners, go check out goldcast.io for revenue driven event marketing platform. Uh, that's, that's super awesome. Um, and I've used it before and it's, it's, it's really cool. So everybody check that out.
[00:41:46] Um, Brian, if any final thoughts, anything to plug.
[00:41:49] Brian Tully: I mean, it was a blast to, uh, uh, meet you have some time on a Friday afternoon. Uh, and uh, I really think this is a great show, great program.
[00:41:59] Ian Faison: Awesome. Thanks so much, Brian, and take care.