In this episode of Rise of RevOps, we talk with Michelle Torrey-Teunissen, Chief Revenue Officer at 6clicks. 6clicks helps you reimagine and implement risk and compliance programs. There, Michelle leads the sales and marketing team and is responsible for revenue-generation strategy and execution. Today, Michelle describes the importance of cross-functional teams for optimizing revenue. She explains which structures and cadences have worked best for her in her career, and how she’s found success in RevOps.
In this episode of Rise of RevOps, we talk with Michelle Torrey-Teunissen, Chief Revenue Officer at 6clicks. 6clicks helps you reimagine and implement risk and compliance programs. There, Michelle leads the sales and marketing team and is responsible for revenue-generation strategy and execution. Today, Michelle describes the importance of cross-functional teams for optimizing revenue. She explains which structures and cadences have worked best for her in her career, and how she’s found success in RevOps.
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“That whole telemarketing concept, I think, is dead. It's a thing of the past. Buyers now buy self servicing through digital resources and education online. Most CSOs do not take cold calls. They don't wanna be reached out to via email… Understanding how buyers buy today and the need to develop digital assets that they'll consume prior to even having a conversation with you, I think is important.” - Michelle Torrey-Teunissen
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Time Stamps:
00:40 About 6Clicks
03:18 Defining RevOps
07:16 RevObstacles
13:16 RevOops
17:06 The Tool Shed
19:47 What Metrics Matter?
28:12 Thinking About Cybersecurity
32:03 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.
[00:00:00] Ian: Welcome to Rise of Rev Ops. I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. Rise of RevOps is always presented by the great people at Qualified. Go to qualified.com to learn more. And I am joined by a special guest. Michelle, how are you?
[00:00:14] Michelle: I am well, thank you, Ian. Thanks for having me on the show.
[00:00:17] Ian: Yeah, excited to chat. Excited to talk Rev Ops. Excited to talk Six clicks, so let's get into it. First role in rev ops.
[00:00:26] Michelle: First role in a global revenue position for sure.
[00:00:30] Ian: Pretty exciting time to, to come in to own revenue. And oh, by the way, own rev ops. and we're gonna get into to all that stuff. Uh, tell us a little bit about six clicks.
[00:00:40] Michelle: Yeah, thanks. Um, well, six Clicks as a company was founded in 2019, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. We are A G R C SaaS platform. G R C stands for governance, risk and compliance. So we help, uh, risk and compliance in information security practitioners not only manage their cybersecurity programs, but also, uh, manage their regulatory obligations and manage risk for their organization as well as be able to report up on their risk posture to their board and, investors, clients, et cetera.
[00:01:15] Ian: and what types of, uh, customers do you have?
[00:01:18] Michelle: the GRC space has been around for about 30 years, Ian. and so it's, it's fairly mature, particularly in the US market. I think the UK is, is second in terms of RegTech maturity and then Australia would be third, just in terms of embracing technology and getting off of spreadsheet to manage a GRC program. The types of clients that we have, historically have always spent more regulated markets, but we're moving away from that. know, at this point. Most organizations realize, that they are a potential to be under attack or be held by some sort of ransomware threat. they also have obligations to their board and their clients to, instill confidence and trust. And so organizations are now moving away from a need to have, grc to, um, excuse me, a nice to have to, a need to have so that, they can really get their arms around not only. Managing the complexities of regulatory compliance, but also, being able to report out and instill confidence. And I was gonna suggest that, you probably haven't heard on your show. I'd be surprised if you had that, risk practitioners or information security practitioners have ever been involved in rev ops, but if they aren't, they should be. because six clicks and grc, as a concept, As a methodology, has the ability to enable, driving revenue. So it's a business enabler. So for an organization, invests heavily in information security, best practices, as well as, A certification like ISO 27,001, for example. they actually then have the ability to like I said, instill confidence in their business, uh, associates, their investors, their board, and their clients who wanna know when they want the assurance that their data is secure if they give it to those companies. So without having the ability to manage that, I think it puts an organization at risk for, growing or getting to their next objective.
[00:03:16] rev Ops is really a cross-functional discipline that, is designed to optimize revenue, both existing revenue, uh, in terms of protecting it as well as growing your revenue stream. And when I say cross-functional, I mean it, it really touches every portion of the organization from, well, the obvious sales and marketing, but also customer success. back office oftentimes has to be involved in, uh, rev ops. And as I said, I think information security should play a role in that as well.
[00:03:47] Ian: yeah. How do you think about Rev op in your company? Obviously, you know, y'all are in a, a massive enterprise, so a lot of this stuff, you have to have your hands a little bit, more in as, as C R O.
[00:03:57] Michelle: Yeah, I think, being able to make, metrics based decisions or database decisions is critical in any size organizations, but particularly those that are smaller because you're running leaner, with fewer people and, not so deep pockets. So you have to be a lot more, thoughtful and a lot, better informed about the decisions that you're making. And I think, rev ops is critical to, being able to bring that empirical data to the conversation.
[00:04:25] Ian: Yeah, I think about this all the time where especially when you just don't have as large a data sets that, there's just so much noise rather than signals and you're like, oh, is that, you know, with, whatever a hundred accounts versus a thousand versus, you know, whatever, or whatever the thing is. to take sweeping, generalizations from the data is, perhaps. Fool's errand.
[00:04:47] Michelle: Not just generalizations, but also, vanity metrics. I think a lot people get caught up in only portraying the metrics that reflect well on them because, you know, they're protecting their jobs or they're, you know, trying to promote, uh, the organization to outsiders or investors. Where I think the metrics become really critical and, invaluable is if you're able to derive real, uh, findings from them, right? Findings that can inform those decisions and help you pivot if you're not doing something properly or if there's a market segment that isn't responding, uh, as well as you'd like it to, then those metrics give you the ability to make those decisions.
[00:05:26] Ian: So obviously you don't have like a huge rev ops team or anything like that. Uh, how do you think about staffing rev ops and making sure that you, you know, have a function that can exist?
[00:05:37] Michelle: I think about it in terms of, uh, our tech stack that we use to a large degree. bringing in individuals that have the ability to run the applications that we rely on, pretty heavily. and manipulate those applications to meet our needs for reporting and, and information the way that we need that information, depicted so that. That experience, that skillset will drive, the staffing of the Rev ops team.
[00:06:03] Ian: Yeah. Do you feel like. If you're a smaller company like y'all that, or like a startup or you know, whether it's series A startup or series B startup or someone like that, how do you think about like investments in rev op and like when should you do stuff like that?
[00:06:18] Michelle: it's gonna vary. I think organization by organization. Ian, I was fortunate when I joined, Just shy of two years ago that we already had a CRM in place. When I came in. we didn't have a lot of historical data because the company is so young, but we had at least one year's worth of data. so we've since obviously built on that, we now have three years worth of data that we can leverage. I think, uh, having a sales operations person is critical. We do have a customer success team, and we track, data like, clients that are at risk of churn, clients that have churned. and we, profile those, accounts and those deals and those clients by quite a few different, data metrics that we slice those, you know, what type of account are they? Are they an advisor? Are they a reseller? Are they an end user? you know, at what point did they churn? what are we hearing from the account? There's just a lot of metrics that we keep, and we've got several dashboards that we publish projected a variety of different people in the organization.
[00:07:17] Ian: All right, let's get into our first segment, rev Obstacles, where we talk about the tough parts of rev ops. yeah. What's the hardest rev ops problem, uh, that you faced in the last, you know, six months to a year?
[00:07:28] Michelle: I think personally it was coming into an organization that is, uh, headquartered outside of the US and trying to operate within the us. Um, it's the first time I've, operated in a global role. Where the organization was outside of the us. So, having to come in and use Australian contracts for other jurisdictions, whether it be the UK or the us, has presented some challenges. So I've had to regionalize our contracts. I've had to Come together with our legal group and bring those contracts into a more fair and balanced language, um, model so that contract negotiations don't drag on and on and on for months. and also meet the needs of the jurisdiction of the client that you're talking to or working with.
[00:08:17] Ian: Yeah, that's challenging. I mean, that something that, you know, something where you just try to do a sprint, try to say like, how do we fix this? Or is that sort of like an ongoing thing that constantly needs tweaking or readjusting?
[00:08:31] Michelle: I think over time you learn the callouts that you're gonna run into that become regular callouts, right? almost as though they're the FAQs you can expect from every contract, cycle. And so if you have enough of a pattern that you've defined, you can then take that to your legal group and say, okay. This situation comes up in every single negotiation that, we're dealing with, let's head that off at the pass and change the language. and I think ultimately it's about reducing the friction, right? Minimizing the time to get a deal closed by reducing friction and creating a more fair and balanced approach to, negotiating with the legal team.
[00:09:09] Ian: you know, that was gonna be one of my questions is, is it just sort of like, Back office paperwork type stuff that, holds things up. Or is it like real friction to getting deals done because those two things are, coincided with each other or they can be like, yeah, you know, it's just kind of a back office problem, but you know, it ain't slowing down velocity.
[00:09:28] Michelle: No, I think it's legitimate. it's legitimate legal issues. The, the things that we had tended to run into before I started addressing this. Was limitation of liability. indemnification, intellectual property, infringement, data privacy. Those were sort of the key areas, that we would run into. And then jurisdictional or geographically related things such as, the limitation of liability cap and insurance coverage translated to the currency that you're operating in.
[00:10:00] Ian: Oh my gosh.
[00:10:01] Michelle: so it, it was running into quite a bit of complexity and I just sort of put the kibosh on that. I said, there are ways that we can address this. This isn't rocket science. So,
[00:10:10] Ian: I love that. Talk about a rev ops problem. that is definitely a rev ops problem. You're like, Hey, how come, uh, how come deals are slowing down? It's like, oh, are. the way that we're doing our, uh, you know, contracts with our, going through seven rounds of legal review because of the, cost of the insurance. so, I've been through all that stuff before, so I know exactly how that goes and, uh, it's absolutely brutal.
[00:10:32] Michelle: And that's the last thing you want when you've got a, a happy customer who you've been through a full sales cycle with, which in and of itself may have taken some time. last thing you wanna do is drag it through the legal mud.
[00:10:44] Ian: you could just say that for your entire life, the last thing you want to do in any situation is drag anything through the legal mud. The lawyers always disagree with me on that, where they're like, no, they want to add more mud, But yeah, that's a, it's a good rev obstacle. how do you balance supporting sales, marketing and, and customer success with a, with a smaller team?
[00:11:02] Michelle: Very long days. Uh, just be candid. I'm also dealing with multiple time zones, so, uh, I'm not lying when I say the days are long. I start quite early in the morning, working with clients in the UK and in some cases India. And then, late into the evening working with Australia. but generally speaking, you know, again, just like the contracts, issue, it's not rocket science, it's structure, uh, bringing structure to an organization and, defining a cadence. So creating some regular meetings and touchpoints and setting expectations of, uh, all of the team members and making sure to give accolades where they're due, you know, a lot of people thrive on, on getting credit as they should, and, it's free and it doesn't take much effort. So I, I'm a firm believer in making sure to give credit where it's due.
[00:11:52] Ian: Yeah, I'm curious, like, as a cro, who's thinking about go to market, getting in front of folks, closing deals and then, you know, figuring out that the customer success side when you're balancing rev ops sort of goals you mentioned like sales ops is a key part of that. Are you thinking about things like, Hey, let's prioritize like our go-to-market closing deals, with whatever, 70% of our rev ops bandwidth and then 20% Cs, and then 10% with additional, know, sort of things Or how how do you think about prioritizing when you are a resource constrained, younger, startup?
[00:12:31] Michelle: I hate saying this as an answer, but it, it is heavily dependent on what your long-term objective is. If your goal is to have some sort of an exit as an organization, then driving revenue is the number one priority. I think organizations should consider at what cost they drive that revenue, and that helps dictate the priorities. So if your entire goal is. You've gotta get every deal in the door, you possibly can. and dam the churn, it doesn't matter. then you drive hard at revenue. but most organizations who have investors and have a responsibility to those investors, really try to balance that. And so that dictates the priority for how you spend your time.
[00:13:13] Ian: Any other thoughts on, um, on rev obstacles or maybe a rev Oops moment that, that any rev, whoops, moments that you've made?
[00:13:20] Michelle: Yeah, I would say, if I could turn the clock back and do something differently. When I joined six clicks, I gunned pretty hard for, having a BDR kind of telemarketing team. Outbound dialing for dollars sort of team. because we didn't have a dedicated marketing team here in the States, I thought, oh, this would be a good way to get some leads. And I learned pretty quickly and we pivoted quickly as well. We failed quickly on this one. Um, just don't buy that way anymore. And so that whole telemarketing, concept, I think is dead. It's a thing of the past. buyers now buy, Pretty much self servicing through digital resource and education online. most CISOs do not take cold calls. They don't wanna be reached out to via email. although I will say we do have some pretty strong response and click through rates on our email campaigns, but nevertheless, whole BDR model didn't work well. You know, understanding how buyers buy today and the need to develop digital assets that they'll consume prior to even having a conversation with you, I think is important.
[00:14:24] Ian: I love that. That's a great, shout because I mean, I feel the same way, you know? It's things that we hear a, a lot of, and a similar sort of, thing that you just said is, you know, when you're seeing those click-through rates or you're seeing, people clicking on emails and looking at that stuff, that speaks to the pain. I mean, clearly there's a massive pain in the GRC space. Clearly this is something, as you mentioned, is going from. Nice to have. The need to have. So if it's a need to have, people need to have it, right. They just don't want to be called on their personal phone,
[00:14:52] you know? They just don't want to be called while they're at the gym. They don't wanna be called while they're in 5,000 meetings. And the thing is, like most executives look at their calendar and it's literally their Google calendar is stacked from, you know, sent up to sundown with meetings. So when would you even reach them and. What are they gonna do? Call you back? I mean, a crazy notion. I mean, if you're selling to someone else who has a phone, like a pizza place, and I would be open to seeing the data there, but, if you're selling to senior executives, like no chance.
[00:15:24] Michelle: Yeah, no, totally agree.
[00:15:27] Ian: I'm curious then with that sort of knowledge in mind, what did you shift toward?
[00:15:31] Michelle: more digital asset and, trying to support the buyer journey, you know, at the various stages of the journey with a variety of resources. So we've gotta, A GRC buying guide that we've put together that has, you know, uh, active links in it, which gets them to even more data like an ROI calculator. we have started soliciting reviews from our clients so that, uh, buyers can go online and, and look at reviews of other users that have leveraged the platform. so we're really investing heavily in some of those areas.
[00:16:03] Ian: Interesting that a lot of those things, would be potentially like a CMO function or a marketing function. Seems like you kind of see revenue as a little bit more fluid with sales and marketing as sort of like a more joint go-to-market motion. is that fair to say? It's, I mean, it seems that way from the way you talk about it.
[00:16:19] Michelle: It is, today it is, um, you know, I think at some point we're gonna hit a maturity, milestone and, and that'll be decoupled. our CEO is also actually quite active in our marketing, both from a campaign development standpoint, ad development, as well as, I mean, he himself does quite a few interviews, podcasts, and contribution articles and things like that. So,
[00:16:44] Ian: Very cool. All right, let's get to our next segment. The tool shed. We're talking tools, spreadsheets, and 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, especially if, if you're in rev ops, you gotta have qualified. Uh, if you're using Salesforce, go to qualify.com. Okay. Michelle, what's in your tool shed right now?
[00:17:09] Michelle: So, the CRM that I inherited when I joined was HubSpot and hadn't used it prior to six clicks, but I've actually grown to really enjoy the platform. Uh, we used it extensively for not just. You know, tracking deals and managing forecast pipeline, but all of our ad campaigns, event campaigns and so forth, run through HubSpot as well as, lots of reporting and dashboarding capability and collaboration. I think it's, uh, a great collaboration tool. that's our crm. Sales intel. We use ZoomInfo, for sales intelligence, of course, LinkedIn. and then I've been researching recently RFP response. Solutions. There are several out there. but we try to avoid RFPs, but they're not entirely avoidable. And when you do have to respond to one, they tend to be really time consuming. so these tools will allow you to sort of replicate, previous responses and give you the ability to, would say, shave 80% of the work off by repurposing some of the, the responses you've already delivered in previous. RFP responses.
[00:18:18] Yeah. So I'm, uh, really looking forward to moving forward That, and then the last thing I use is, uh, actually this is for the interview process of finding good sales people, which is always a challenge for, sales managers looking to hire. I use an online, uh, assessment tool, sales assessment tool that takes into consideration. it's not a psychological analysis of any sort, but it does take into consideration how an individual themselves buy. So let's say you, Ian, you're making a decision on a, a large purchase, whether it be a home or a car, or a piece of land or a vacation. How do you consider buying that large item? do you give it a long time to think about it? Do you do a ton of research or do you just first thing that comes along that you really like, you jump in and make the decision based on how you buy? You will also sell that same way. So you'll either allow people very long time to consider, think it over, you know, look at competitors, look at alternatives. You know, wait for the sale to happen, you know, the discount, versus, you know, you're going to try to drive to closure because you yourself operate in that way. So those are the types of things that the sales assessment, tool looks for. and then among other capabilities, I, I look for several attributes that are must-haves in a sales candidate for me. So, That's a really helpful tool.
[00:19:47] Ian: What metrics matter to you?
[00:19:49] Michelle: well, as I mentioned, uh, I do try to avoid the vanity metrics. I think using leading indicators is really critical. So things like, number of meetings per week, number of deals created in a month, uh, number of quotes going out the door. Probabilities, excuse me, close ratios, deal velocity. Those are the types of things that you can use to get a, a, fairly predictable picture of revenue. at least in the six month term, I'd say.
[00:20:19] Ian: What about something that you wish you could measure? Maybe a blind spot.
[00:20:24] Michelle: I wish that there's a way to get more data about losses. That's usually the biggest area that, any organization struggles in. I don't think that we're unique in this, in that respect. knowing competitors you're up against, what the competitive landscape looks like, you can generally find out some information about that. But if you lose. It's nearly impossible to get that client back to the table to explain what could have tipped the scale in your favor or why it didn't go your way. and that's really important information from a learning standpoint. So I'd say that's the biggest blind spot. that's more from traditional sales standpoint. I guess from a rev op standpoint, if you don't have, uh, the proper, you know, leading indicators that I mentioned, it makes it nearly impossible to make, uh, empirical decisions and then you're just really kind of relying on gut instinct with some data, so,
[00:21:21] Ian: we just did a really cool episode that hasn't come out yet about win loss analysis. That's gonna be very fun. we talked with the team that closed and they shared a bunch of data about win loss and essentially whatever the rep puts in is the reason why it loss is usually not right.
[00:21:39] Michelle: Yeah, I can believe that. Yeah.
[00:21:44] Ian: yeah. Pretty funny. anything cool that you're doing with data? I know obviously it's again, a early stage company, so, you don't exactly have an entire data science team, I, I'm guessing, that are at your beck and call, but,
[00:21:54] Michelle: I went through an exercise just literally a couple weeks ago where, um, I expanded our pipeline to include a couple more stages. I think I added three new stages.
[00:22:04] Ian: Hmm.
[00:22:05] Michelle: Because what, uh, I had this sort of, effect, what I would call just the easy bucket effect going on with the sales reps where they were dropping. Pretty much every deal into a specific category, but it was very difficult for me to understand truly how closeable that deal was or how winnable it was in the month. So, I added more granularity and I'm also forcing them to using HubSpot workflows to answer specific questions before they can even move a deal into the next stage. So they have to stop and think about what they're doing and actually acknowledge that they've kind of gotten that deal. You know, through the next gate as it were. and then the other thing I included in that workflow was, this concept of tagging, uh, within HubSpot, which is really cool. And we're using it to identify three different indicators on deals. One of 'em is, within 30 days. So this is a way to just kind of look at the pipeline and, and easily visually see which deals are coming within 30 days. We've got a tag defined as a strategic deal. These are ones that are over a hundred grand. And then, uh, the third tag is whether or not a deal is in, in trial. So they actually have their hands in the tool. Pre-sales.
[00:23:21] Ian: Very cool. can you share, so a little bit more about how many stages you have now total? That I love? I could talk stages all day. I love stages. I think it's like one of those things that the rev ops leader and the CRO and maybe the sales ops person, and the reps, everybody disagrees on what the stages should be. So I I love I love talking stages.
[00:23:43] Michelle: That's funny. I've got nine stages before closed. One.
[00:23:46] Ian: Cool. Okay.
[00:23:47] Can you, share
[00:23:48] Michelle: Um, I'll share a hundred percent what they are. So prospect suspect is the first one, lead or registered deal. So our deals don't start necessarily when a lead comes in. Um, qualified discovery demo is the next stage. Decision maker bought in, proposal sent, approved for purchase vendor onboarding. Contracting, procurement and then closed one.
[00:24:17] Ian: Yeah, that's interesting. So you have so many post commitment there, because of procurement and all the stuff that goes into that. So which ones did you add?
[00:24:27] Michelle: So I added, uh, vendor onboarding and approved for purchase.
[00:24:32] Because generally speaking, most of the deals we're doing these days are all net new logos. So we're not in these accounts already. And so there is very much a, a vendor onboarding component,
[00:24:44] and that's one of the things that wasn't being accounted for previously.
[00:24:46] That was creating delays.
[00:24:48] So,
[00:24:49] Ian: what I've seen with this is that you get massive delays potentially. And the deal still usually almost always closes, but it really messes up your forecast. You obviously miss a month, miss a quarter, whatever, because of those vendor onboarding pieces and the procurement, and I don't know if you feel this way, but procurement right now in the current market is under way different scrutiny than it was obviously a year or two years ago. So, it's just an extra layer of procurement. There's times where like that can actually kill a deal now, where I feel like, you know, years ago, like procurement's probably not killing most deals. They're gonna ask for a discount, but they're not gonna kill it.
[00:25:28] Michelle: Mm-hmm. It's so true, Ian. I had a situation last month where we literally on a Friday, were told, budget's there, it's been approved. We're going in for signature tonight. Uh, we'll send you the signed, contract on Monday. Monday rolled around, they said, yeah, we in for signature and we literally were told that it was reneged. So they lost budget.
[00:25:50] Ian: I've seen the same thing. everybody's in agreement, decision maker, senior leader, everybody all the way to the top, and then procurement pulls the plug. in finance said, Nope.
[00:26:02] Michelle: yeah, there's, so much contraction going on right now in the market, and I think going to be that way for some time, and we're heading into an election year. That's typically a. Cause for concern with organizations or it's paralyzing, I should say, in terms of decision making.
[00:26:17] Ian: yeah, that's interesting. It's a really interesting piece because I think that, you know, those final few stages, I mean, I don't know if you have like, percentage numbers associated with those, those final few stages, but I mean, it's gotta at least shave off a couple percentage points for each of those later stages.
[00:26:35] Michelle: We do, yeah, we definitely advance, the deal into a higher probability when they're in those stages. But they're still not a a done, it's not a foregone conclusion.
[00:26:45] Ian: yeah. Any other thoughts on that stage stuff? oh, you mentioned that there was like certain things that they have to answer when they go into those. Is that just like something in the CRM that they have to answer, like a question or how does that work?
[00:26:55] Michelle: Yeah. So if a rep wants to advance a deal into the vendor onboarding stage, The have to answer, uh, is a security questionnaire necessary because we ourselves are being assessed by customers for our security posture. Uh, and then they have to answer. I'm trying to remember the other one. vendor onboarding forms, I believe is the other question. And it's really, know, we're not soliciting specific data from them. It's just a reminder that, hey, you need to go make sure these things are happening before this deal gets dropped into this category.
[00:27:29] Ian: this is like one of those things that I always wonder who should do what for these things because. Gosh, I think there's just more room for even more specialization with this. Like, when does onboarding happen? Who's in charge of onboarding? When does the like account manager come in? Or if you keep it with an AE or however they're structured to just like, knock out some of these admin tasks. But it's like, at the end of the day, like ain't closed until it's signed. Every AE on earth knows that. So, if you want this thing to get signed, sealed, delivered, you gotta make sure that that stuff is done.
[00:28:02] Michelle: Yeah, no question.
[00:28:03] Ian: You know, one thing we talked about this idea of cybersecurity. Now that fits into rev ops. what do you think should Rev ops people be thinking about cybersecurity? How should they be thinking about cybersecurity?
[00:28:15] Michelle: Uh, I think rev ops people are usually on the receiving end of cybersecurity measures, because they're, you know, employees in an organization where they have to, read and attest to certain policies, like an acceptable use policy or, mobile device policy or those types of things. So generally speaking, rev ops people aren't. Exposed beyond their, you know, security training that they get at at their new employee onboarding or once a year thereafter, which is a requirement of most regulations and most best practices. They say you have to have security awareness training for your employees. You also have to publish your policies, and the employees have to attest that they've read them. But, conversely, I think information security practitioners should be thinking about revenue and how to speak to the business about driving revenue based on. Their own information security program. One of the things that, I've heard from a couple different CISOs is that they tend to wear a target on their back because when there's a breach, not if, when there's a breach, they're the first guy out the door. So one of the ways to protect your position and shore up the fact that. You're valuable to the organization beyond just protecting the organization, is to create this story of, foundational trust, right? As an organization, these are the things that we have done to ensure that the data of our partners and the data of our customers and the data of our investors, Is safe and secure. And, if you can, uh, affirmatively state that then companies can take on new projects. They can release new products in the market, they can go into a new market segment that they've been considering for quite a while. They can make investment decisions, so on and so forth. So I think it's. It's actually, uh, liberating to have that, awareness and understanding of a strong risk posture, assuming that the, the CISO is, is managing you to a strong risk. Posture.
[00:30:19] Ian: one thing also too that rev ops people need to look at from a security standpoint is just like, obviously first party data is so important now, and it'll be interesting to see how rev ops people are, are. Going to be able to leverage their data, leveraging third party data and cookies and all that stuff. It'll be fascinating to see what we can and can't do going forward, cuz I think it's gonna be pretty different.
[00:30:44] Michelle: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:45] Ian: any other, uh, tool stuff you, you had mentioned sort of, I like that, uh, The RFP stuff, I've after being in a couple of those this year, and like, you're right man, I wish I could take 80% of my time back on those. Uh, if we can go back retroactively and do it. any other things that you want to invest in or things that you wanna, look at investing in? I know it's when you're a small company too, it's like, or when you're a growing startup, you're like, there's, there's so many more things that you want and you need to figure out how to, you know, weave in there. So any other areas that you're looking at?
[00:31:14] Michelle: there are a few other small applications that I've heard about. we use a, application called K Flow for our partner portal. It allows our partners to do deal registrations, and then we have another application that we use called Think iic, which is, um, for our six clicks Academy. So we do online self-paced training courses for our customers and partners. And then there's some other things that I have my eye on. clay.com. Ama it's essentially gives you the ability to create consistency around meetings, note taking, and, um, what questions were asked and so forth. It, it's almost essentially like a note taker. it makes the reps better informed. Um, so that one's actually quite interesting to me. I've got that on my radar. I haven't done anything with it yet, but, keeping an eye on it.
[00:32:00] Ian: Cool. Very cool. All right, let's get into our final segment. Quick hits. These are quick questions and quick answers. hits. Michelle, are you ready?
[00:32:09] Michelle: I'll try to be.
[00:32:11] Ian: If you could make any animal any size, what animal would it be and what size?
[00:32:16] Michelle: Um, you have absolutely stumped me on this one. Ian. I even asked my husband earlier today, what, how do I answer this question? And it was, uh, we just had a good laugh about it. I mean, I have a, a 16 pound dog, so he might be offended if I supersized any other animal and brought them home, because he thinks he's a big dog.
[00:32:40] So,
[00:32:43] Ian: How about your favorite book, podcast, TV show, something you're checking out.
[00:32:50] Michelle: Ooh, that one. Let's see. Um,
[00:32:53] I read a sales book recently by the HubSpot cro and I can't remember the. title?
[00:32:59] Ian: Hold on. I can look it up for you. I got you.
[00:33:01] was it the sales acceleration
[00:33:03] Michelle: Yes, yes. That was a really fantastic book.
[00:33:07] Ian: what's the gist? Uh,
[00:33:09] Michelle: really collaborating closely with your marketing team, marketing department. And, this particular cro, used to be an engineer in a prior life, and so he brought a lot of his, You know, measure twice, cut once philosophy to sales. And nothing he did, no decision. He made, no hire, he made, was done without, a lot of, uh, analysis and a lot of, and a lot of discussion. but it was, database decisions. Data driven decisions kind of operating in a vacuum, you know, without the collaboration of marketing or without the collaboration of the other, uh, business organizations really, you know, just makes you ineffective. So I'd say that, uh, that was probably the biggest takeaway for me. And just the way that they went to market with the digital assets and the, the blog posts and volumes and volumes of content that isn't even necessarily related to their product. It's just content that's enticing and that draws people in, been hugely effective for them.
[00:34:15] Ian: Do you have a best piece of advice for someone who is a C R O
[00:34:21] trying to figure this whole thing out?
[00:34:23] Michelle: Yes. I think, instinct without context is futile. Instinct without data is futile. So while it's important to follow your gut, I think having, data is critical. You can't operate without it.
[00:34:38] Ian: Michelle, it's been awesome having you on the show. Thanks so much for joining. Uh, for our listeners, if you need that, go give a elbow to your CISO and say, check out six clicks for our GRC software. really cool. Any final thoughts? Anything to plug?
[00:34:54] Michelle: Prioritize. Finding ways to make improvements in your organization that'll eliminate the need to discount,
[00:35:00] Ian: couldn't agree more, but it's so hard. And then procurement wants a discount. Everybody wants a discount. It's crazy times. I don't know what you do.
[00:35:06] Michelle: sell value. Sell value. Thanks Ian. It's been a pleasure.