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Speaker 1: (00:00)
Ben, you ready to rock and roll?

Speaker 2: (00:02)
Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1: (00:03)
All right, cool. Well, welcome everyone. Um, so the title for our webinar today has been up here for a bit, but we're gonna primarily be talking about, uh, what is in your CRM and how you can use a lot of that data to accelerate some of the growth goals that you have as an organization. Um, we'll dive into what that means a little bit more in detail. But before we get started, we'll jump to introductions, uh, which Ben, I will let you go first.

Speaker 2: (00:25)
Yeah, thanks Connor. Um, yeah, Ben Turner. I'm a head of our partnerships team here at Insights Squared. Um, really that encompasses everything from implementation partners. Um, we work with Salesforce and HubSpot Partners as well as, um, is s v private equity, venture capital, and really insight squared. Um, we are a revenue intelligence platform, so we help companies take the data that they have within their CRM systems within conversational intelligence, um, email calendar data, and really turn that into actionable, uh, insights that they're able to drive actions off of throughout the forecasting process, managing pipeline, managing leads, contacts, things like that.

Speaker 1: (01:06)
Sweet. Uh, and I'm Connor, I run after date. Uh, we are a revenue operations consulting firm. So we're, we are an in-state squared partner, we're a Salesforce partner, we're a HubSpot partner. Uh, and primarily what we focus on as an organization is helping folks get the most out of some of their CRM infrastructure, uh, and sort of setting everything up so that they can drive insights from a lot of the different, uh, revenue platforms that they have. Um, and so we're super excited to go through all the stuff that, uh, we're gonna talk about today. Um, so we can jump over to our agenda here. So what we want to go through with you guys today, so the outline for everything is we want to talk about, uh, why sort of missing data in the CRM is a problem, um, and also what the opportunity is for your organization, um, as you sort of work to fix it, and then touch through some specific ways that you can actually fix that problem, um, and how you can solve for it as well.

Speaker 1: (01:56)
And so in this webinar, we're gonna talk through how some best in class, uh, revenue organizations that we work with, uh, that Ben as his team work with, um, can take their analytics and reporting up a level through how they're actually executing, uh, on their data capture and how they're using that for their organization. And ultimately we wanna talk through is how you can move beyond some static dashboards and start to use real-time insights so that you can drive business decisions, improve some of your conversion rates, and ultimately increase some of your rep capacity overall.

Speaker 2: (02:27)
Cool. Um, yeah, thanks Connor. And really in thinking about the, the first point of like, how do we identify the gaps, I think we, we also want to take a step back and just think about like Connor mentioned, like why these gaps exist. And really what we've found is that within revenue teams, and really that encompasses everyone from the cro, the head of sales, the head of operations, sales leaders, all the way down to individual contributors. Everyone who contributes to that revenue team ultimately like starts and ends their day with strategic questions that they need to answer as well as tactical questions. And on the tactical side, typically that stops with what's our forecast and are we gonna make our number? Um, obviously that encompasses a lot of other components, such as like, what are our historical conversion rates, like, how well do we typically convert on opportunities on leads?

Speaker 2: (03:22)
Um, how do we help identify and understand like what are the true upside deals? And really, if we think about that, one of the biggest issues in identifying those things has always been how do we have the data? Or do we trust the data within our crm honestly, to be able to make actionable decisions on those? Do we trust that our reps are going in and updating data that we're actually capturing all of the activity and all of the engagement that goes into all of our leads, all of our contacts, um, and all the deals that we're working on. So I think from our perspective, typically what we see is that CRM was never really designed to be a rep tool. And so it leaves a lot of companies wanting in terms of being able to trust what's actually in the crm and then the data that they're capturing there, is it actually reliable? Can we make these key strategic and tactical decisions off of that data? Or are there things that we're missing in gaps that we have in our process? Um, Connor, from from your perspective, I'm curious like what you kind of see from some of the, the firms that, that you work with in terms of how revenue teams are, are answering those questions.

Speaker 1: (04:33)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that with some of the, the teams that we, we see today, right? I, if people do these things, they're doing them pretty manually. Um, they may or may not have an internal rev, rev op function. Uh, we function as that for a lot of these customers, and that's one of the primary reasons that we end up working with people. But what we see is that without somebody really focusing on aligning cross-functionally their need for the C R m, um, they're interested in these questions, but they, if they are able to have any of that data, they're doing it with incomplete data. Um, and there's just not a lot of c r m adoption beyond maybe that core se selling team or the SDRs, the AEs. And so what ends up happening is people are trying to answer a lot of these questions, but they sort of just come back to the constant issue of, well, this is really interesting, but we, we can't really trust the data that we're basing this off of. And it makes it difficult for them to drive any kind of meaningful, uh, outcomes from that information.

Speaker 2: (05:22)
Yeah, and I think if we, if we jump over to some of the, the strategic questions like these even become, at least in, in from our experience, even more difficult to start to answer because a lot of times on the tactical side, if we're thinking about where, where are we gonna finish? What are we gonna forecast? We have have an idea of like what's in flight, but if we're looking out on the, the strategic side, where are we gonna finish at and what are we gonna forecast out 1, 2, 3 quarters, it, it becomes even more difficult to understand like, where are we gonna finish? Do we have the right sales process? Are we setting up our people to be successful? Um, like can we shorten our sales cycle? And ultimately, one of the big things that we are helping companies solve for is from a capacity planning and a sales efficiency perspective, um, really aligning on how we can help reps increase their capacity to, to sell like one to three more deals per rep per year. And so by aligning on what is the gap, like, why does it exist, and then ultimately like getting the data that we need to actually take action on it, it it, it really becomes less about are we looking at the right data, but now that we can get the right data, how do we actually build processes around that? How do we understand and take the right action there?

Speaker 1: (06:45)
I think building on that for, for your point as well, I think one of the things that we see happen a lot is people get fixated on how do they tactically get answers out of their CRM without looking at it is really this, this is a, a database they can drive a lot of strategic decision making, um, and actually move to helping you make decisions about what you're gonna do next quarter and next year and define that hiring map beyond just sort of answering, you know, how many deals did we get last month?

Speaker 2: (07:10)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of times that leads to like just huge unwielding spreadsheets that people are using to manage the business. And it becomes really hard to then say, Hey, we wanna manage our business out of HubSpot, but we also want to manage our business through the spreadsheet that has nothing to do with the data that's in the crm. And so getting a unified view of the business by identifying some of these gaps and then using automation or whatever it might be to help solve for them, I think is a, is a key key component there.

Speaker 1: (07:41)
Cool. I think, I think last thing that, I'll tack onto that and then we can move on, but I think one of the things that we see happen all of the time to that point is like there's this huge c e o spreadsheet. Everyone's pulling data from a bunch of different sources and piping it all in here, and somebody adds a field or makes a change to the business process or something adapts or adds a new record type and all of a sudden all of that data's wrong and it's this huge ordeal to try to go and and disentangle it. And what ends up happening is, even if you do have all of that working correctly, any of the insights or information that you can glean from that are gonna be however long backdated from the last time that you updated it. So you're always end up working with out data information.

Speaker 2: (08:19)
Yeah. Um, and really I think what that kind of leads to is like how do we get trusted answers out of the crm? Um, and so if we, we jump over to the next slide. Really, like every company, uh, wants to be data driven. Like every vendor says, Hey, we should help make you data driven. But at the end of the day, like that phrase gets thrown out a lot, but what does it actually mean to make a data-driven decision? Like you really can't do that if you don't have complete timely, accurate data in the cr r m you're not able to answer the strategic and the tactical questions that you need to be successful in your role and as an organization to grow if you can't get that timely and accurate data. And so a lot of times what we've seen is tech stacks that become bloated because they're siloed databases, there's tools that are solving for one specific problem, but they don't talk to each other and therefore it leads to, uh, uh, an over-reliance on manual reporting, um, which makes it really hard to get timely answers for those revenue questions.

Speaker 2: (09:27)
Um, and really when it comes to the data side of things, like through our research and a lot of what we've seen with our customers and in the market, we've really found that upwards of 90% of activity and engagement data isn't effectively captured within the crm. Um, and while that number may seem really high, even if a company said, Hey, we get, you know, 30 to 50% of the activity in, in engagement data, like at the end of the day, you don't want be making decisions that are driving the business on a limited view of that data. And so we believe that all of that activity management, that engagement should be taken off of the rep through something like an activity capture tool to be able to get all of that data into the CRM so that you can use things like machine learning and activity reporting and analysis to really be able to drive some of those strategic changes there within the business. Um, Connor, I'm curious on, on your side, like what's your thoughts there? Are there,

Speaker 1: (10:30)
Yeah, for sure. So we see some people trying to patch some of these gaps with tools like lead enrichment, whether it's a ZoomInfo clear bit, you're using some of the HubSpot insights tools, but ultimately how you can sort of pull some context data into your CR M and, and that gets you some more information. Uh, but obviously you're missing a ton of the gaps on the overall process. I think one of the things that we also really like to see and and we work with a lot of customers on is using automation to drive data updates themselves. So simple versions of that are, you know, when a quote is sent out to a customer, what through a document management tool, whether it's like a Conga or DocuSign or a Panda Doc or whatever it may be to kinda like update your deal stage and then that way you have sperm dates, when we're we sending these things out, starting to back into some of the velocity reporting, but you can get much, much more complicated from there.

Speaker 1: (11:16)
But really kind of focusing on what, what behavioral information can I be capturing from our team that allows me to then automate some of the data updates that subsequently allow me to drive some of those insights. And I think we also look at building reporting building blocks. So even if you don't have, you know, a full data warehouse, you don't have a data analytics platform, um, really focusing on how you can start to build out modules and components of reporting and starting to stack those on top of each other so that you can get a lot of those insights without needing to drive every single time that you want to assess something, you sort of have to build bespoke reporting, additional questions, pull in analysts, and really focusing on building a foundation that you can start to iterate on top of.

Speaker 2: (11:56)
Yeah, I think the, the iteration piece is, is like really key there. If we think about, okay, if we are able to get all of this data and then we're able to start to analyze on it, there has to be that continual improvement process. And a lot of time that's done it, it should be done automatically. If it's done in a spreadsheet, things get stale data changes, like you said Connor. And so starting with those building blocks to be able to have things to iterate off of to go look back and say, six months ago, you know, our conversion rates were X, Y, or Z, we made this change within our sales process and now we can tangibly see that it, you know, impacted how well we were winning deals in a specific segment. Which, and I know we'll we'll kind of get to this in a little bit, but really starts to drive some of that cross-functional alignment to make sure that everyone is, is kind of on the same page there

Speaker 1: (12:48)
For sure. Um, I think in terms of eliminating the gaps, right, I think everything has to start with getting that data into the system. Um, and what we really look at is, is how can you mo both make sure that you're going broad so you know, what are all the different points of engagement in that sales cycle? What are all the different components that happen and how can we make sure that we're capturing that across each one of those critical moments? Um, and also what we really like to see is ensuring those Stagen process updates are built into your, into the system, into your discipline. And what we mean by that is we really like to see sort of like bant criteria being required at certain stages and, and more than just like looking at your sales process. And one of the things we see a lot, especially in, in Salesforce orgs is, you know, there's, there's all these rules and validation rules to say you can't move to this stage without filling out 50 different fields, and then reps end up getting fatigued and just putting whatever information they can to get the thing to move forward.

Speaker 1: (13:37)
And so what we really think is important is focusing on how are you building your required fields and your required data updates in a way that actually helps your sales team know what they need to do to move that deal forward instead of it just being a chore that you're adding on top of them. And that, you know, with some of the tools, uh, which I know you'll speak to on some of the activity capture components, if you can automate a lot of the data capture, you can actually focus on decreasing the number of things you have to ask your team for, which should inherently increase the quality of the data you're getting back.

Speaker 2: (14:08)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the, the biggest piece there is that the reps job is to sell, the rep's job is not to input data into the crm. And so the rep should be taken out of the process of, of manual data entry and through activity capture or action prompts, have the things that they spend hours and hours of their day and week doing, like updating next steps and updating the close date and CCing things to Salesforce or making sure that all their emails and activities get logged within the CRM system. All of that time should be given back to the rep so that they can be more efficient and more effective in terms of where they're focusing the opportunities they're focusing on. And through using something as simple as as activity capture, now we know that we're gonna get all of the data that we need into the crm.

Speaker 2: (15:01)
And I think it, it also goes back to the first point you brought up around going broad and deep. Like there are a lot of people at every organization that touch deals, whether it's customer success reps or account executives or sales engineers or the executive team. Everyone is touching all of these deals and really in order to get a holistic view of like how much activity does it take us to win or how many meetings does it take us to win a deal? We need to be able to capture all of that data, not just the data that the reps are entering. Because you want to know if your CEO is reaching out to your, to an opportunity, you wanna know if that actually has a tangible impact because maybe we should change our sales process or again, design automation to include that as part of our sales process. And so by having all of that data, you can start to align cross-functionally with marketing on what are we doing from a lead gen perspective with product on what are the things that are and aren't working? Um, and then also with the sales team on how we can create more efficiencies within the sales process.

Speaker 1: (16:06)
And I know we're gonna touch quite a bit on, on how you solve this problem, but I wanna, I wanna take a second from what you just said to be like, how you should not solve this problem. Um, and one of the biggest things that we run into all the time is this attitude of like, oh yeah, we'll just ask the reps to put this in. Like, we'll just increase the friction in their process. We'll just make it harder for them to close deals. And I think one of the things that anecdotally we see all the time is when we work with customers who have these convoluted sales processes and their sales reps aren't getting deals done, and they're like having really low c r m adoption and it's like if you have them go sit down and say like, show me how somebody progresses a deal. It's like every time they try to do something, they're getting a validation error. They're like, oh no, you missed out this information, you missed that information. And people are just like clicking whatever they need to click to try to get the thing to move forward and the tools stops being something that helps them do their job and and sort of turns into something that's just like, I have to check off these boxes so I can get to the next step.

Speaker 2: (16:59)
Yeah. And not to belabor the point, but typically what we've found is that the best reps at companies are the ones who input the least amount of data a hundred

Speaker 1: (17:08)
Percent.

Speaker 2: (17:09)
So therefore you end up with, you create turnover because reps are like, I'm not doing this. Like I can't, I'm, I'm not gonna keep at having to be reminded to check a box in, in, in the CRM system. And so just getting them out of that process to ease that friction is, is a really easy way to, to just improve that and get rid of some of those gaps we're talking about.

Speaker 1: (17:29)
Cool.

Speaker 2: (17:31)
Um, from the next perspective, I really think once we get a foundation of data, it's like, okay, well if we have the data, why does that matter? Like I think we can all assume that you probably care that data is important, otherwise you wouldn't be here. And what we do with that data and how we use it within the business is really key. So we're gonna talk through like how we can really use the data now that we have it to improve execution within all parts of the business.

Speaker 1: (18:03)
And I think the main thing here, right, I think what we'll see sort of for these bullet points is like, these are the types of things that you can start to answer with the data, but being just able to answer a question is, is one piece of it. What you really wanna focus on is like, what can you do with the answers to those questions and how can you sort of take that information into a decision and and inform some of the strategic directions for the organization. And so first and foremost, right, if we're looking at some of those stage to stage conversion rates, some of our stage analysis and different types of deals, you can really start to use that to get accurate forecasting. You can start to look at and understand what are we gonna close six months from now and how can I be making strategic decisions on my demand gen spend on my hiring pipeline, on, on where I'm making investments for the business based off of what my projected sort of closings and bookings are.

Speaker 1: (18:50)
And you can also use that information to find the right channels. What are the types of channels that actually drive deals that close the business at high velocity? And who's my icp? Like who is the person I should be targeting because these are the folks who move through my sales process really quickly. These are the folks that what I'm doing resonates with, uh, and these are the people that I can actually sell to. And if you're tracking all this information, you can start to glean a lot of those types of insights. Um, I think slightly more tactically, but something that really informs the investments that you're making from an operations standpoint is starting to understand where your sales process needs work. Where where can you accelerate the velocity of your deals and what stages in your overall sales process are redundant? If they're getting moved through very, very quickly and they're never getting spending any time there, it's possible that they can get consolidated down.

Speaker 1: (19:36)
And also what parts of your process need to be broken out. If you can see where my deals get stuck, um, how can I start to understand, okay, cool, just having this step of negotiation is, is insufficient. I need to be breaking that out into more steps, but also where do I not have enough clarity? Where do people move things and sort of get stuck and say, I don't really know what I need to do next to move this forward, and how can you define your sales process and your rep enablement tools to actually help them know how to keep advancing things forward? And I think ultimately to everything, it's is our strategy effective? Are the changes that we're implementing as an organization actually driving positive results or not? And you can't make any of those conclusions unless you have the data in the system that's gonna inform what you need to be doing.

Speaker 2: (20:20)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think going back to what we were talking about initially just around activity, like having that level of granularity on data, um, like everyone knows that activity is, is extremely important if you are reaching out to a deal and they're responding to you and you're having dialogue, and that is a good leading indicator of a deal being successful, but being able to actually take that data and tell a rep like, Hey, you're engaged here. This deal's trending. Well, this is where you should be focusing your time. And then to your point, Connor, driving the right actions off of that so that people know where they should be focusing and they're not guessing because they like talking to this prospect, but in reality they're trending like someone that they has never bought before. So really using a lot of the data and enabling it to, to really work for you, like you said.

Speaker 1: (21:14)
And I think to bring us into that next point, right? I, I'd be interested, especially from your guys' perspective, obviously a lot of that data is cool in reporting school, but it's how do you translate that into a, a rep conversation that can actually drive, um, some of, of that. And I think looking at it as from a qualitative versus a quantitative view as

Speaker 2: (21:32)
Well. Yeah, a absolutely. Um, I think the big piece is using that data to one, like identify dead deals quickly. So we see a lot of times whenever we connect to someone CRM system where we have a lot of pipeline things look good, we have five x the pipeline that we need to close, but in reality, those deals have been sitting there for 6, 12, 9 months longer than deals we typically win. And those deals should have been closed out a long time ago. But reps like keep, like, to keep things open, they like to say that they have more pipeline than they do. Um, reps

Speaker 1: (22:07)
Hate closing

Speaker 2: (22:08)
. Exactly. I mean, I can, I can speak to that. I used to be a rep . Um, but really the goal is to identify dead deals as quickly as possible, understand where are we not engaged, and then kick those things back to marketing so that they can nurture them. And then that frees the rep up to really focus, focus their time on qualified deals that are in the funnel that are behaving well. And our take is that we, you also should use things like machine learning, whether it's on activity profiles and engagement or any of the static fields within the C R M or HubSpot, um, to really understand like, how is this deal trending based on our last, you know, 12, 15 months of data in terms of what are the deals that we've won in the past, what do they look like? And then using that to inform conversations to direct things like field enablement around where do we win the most? Why do we win there? How can we focus our reps on the right deals, on the critical things that they need to navigate the inflection points in the sales process.

Speaker 2: (23:15)
And I think you were kind of hitting on, on some of this Connor, um, but really some of the key challenges that we see from a rep coaching perspective are really grounded in the fact that people don't have the data that they need. And a lot of times when we sit down with CROs or sales managers and we talk about what do you do in your, in your funnel review or your pipeline review or your forecast calls, and it's like, well, it's, it's an interrogation process of like, what are we doing? Tell me about all the, the deals that you have in commit and why they're there so that when I build my forecast, I trust that what I'm, what I'm committing is actually true. And really that gets away from the point of a funnel review or a pipeline review. The one-to-one is there to be a coaching tool so that the manager can engage in a conversation with the rep about where they should be spending their time, what are the deals that they could potentially be pulling in and not just sitting there and saying, you're committing these three deals, convince me that they should be committed.

Speaker 2: (24:14)
And I mean, from personal experience like this, that leads to losing deals, deals slipping, um, and so having that level of visibility really helps the manager engage with the rep at a much deeper level so that in turn we're able to build out a more accurate forecast because the machine, the machine learning has already validated the deals that are in commit, we can quickly spot the activity, what's going on, and we can also do that down the funnel to identify deals that are at risk, um, things that are potential pullins and, and a lot of, a lot of components there from a coaching perspective.

Speaker 1: (24:52)
Yeah, I think, I think to your point there, right, we, we typically see great sales leaders are, are much more coaches than they are managers. Um, and what we sort of see is like if, if your sales reps every week are dreading their, their weekly one-on-one or their quarterly pipeline review or whatever it looks like, uh, that probably means that your structure is not as allocated to helping your reps actually progress things through. And instead it's, you know, every one of these conversations is an interrogation of saying, do I trust the information that you have in here? Are you giving me what you need? And if you're capturing blockers and if you're capturing this data throughout the sales process and who the decision makers are and enriching the CRM continuously, you shouldn't be able to help coach those reps on how to navigate those deals.

Speaker 1: (25:34)
And you have to remember that, that reps are ultimately for force multipliers, right? Like you're taking your, your sales leadership, who's the best people of communicating your value, and you're using your reps to extend that value across a broader number of conversations. And if you aren't using data to drive those coaching sessions, e every one of those one-on-one reviews is just gonna end up saying like, oh, you know, we really just need to add more, you know, more contact roles to this deal. We need to figure out who the decision maker is. We have to make sure we have, you know, buying power. Like, and, and ultimately what you're doing is just repeating platitudes to those reps instead of actually helping them define what their next steps should look like. Um, and I think to your point, what we see as most important is making sure that you are building out that CRM process in a way that empowers your sales leadership to actually guide some of those conversations as opposed to them using those to just get a download of everything that's going on.

Speaker 1: (26:28)
So I think I on all of this, right? Like we're talking a lot about the technology aspect, how you can sort of add these tools, how you can drive some of this information, but ultimately technology doesn't drive change. People do. Um, and it's likely that you're tracking some of this data already. And the next question is really how do you drive insights from it? So Ben touched on this kind of at the top, right, but like every company not only wants to be a data-driven company, but, but they can be now, right? Like CRM technology is so accessible. Um, and if you are, if you're a business, you should be focusing in on rev ops roles and rev ops technology so that you can own this problem and ultimately, you know, you can make your data and your business process and the information you're capturing about your sales process a competitive advantage.

Speaker 1: (27:12)
Um, and so we typically see sort of like what goes into a fully baked kind of rev ops team internally, um, is you need sort of a rev ops leader. You need some systems administration who's stitching all these things together and maintaining their coherent, um, some light development, whether it's outsourced or in-house to sort of do API integrations, extend some of your functionality, and then that tools budget for crm, C R M tools, reporting tools, data capture tools. Um, and we typically see, you know, if you are a an organization that's initially looking at how do we build out a rev ops function, um, you're probably looking at like a 350 k annualized budget, um, to really get something in play place that's gonna make an impact in your organization. And I think secondarily to that, um, if we go ba there we go. Cool.

Speaker 1: (28:00)
I thought we skipped one. Um, if you're a services provider, and I think if you're, if you're a business as well, um, there's a huge growing space, um, with rev ops consultants, contractors, people like us, tons of other folks in these various ecosystems, whether it's Salesforce partners, HubSpot partners, other, other folks that work with Insight Square. Um, if you're a service provider, you should really be building service offerings around this opportunity. Um, and what you'll see is you can drive entirely new service categories for your organization. You can have setting up rev ops ready infrastructure and doing implementations and extensibility work for different customers. Um, you have funnel audits. Something we love to do with a lot of the customers we work with is do a full audit of their process, their technology tools, how they actually manage a lot of this data. Um, you can start to analyze that data and recommend changes.

Speaker 1: (28:46)
And the best part of this is it's ongoing. You can do this every month, every quarter you can be building customers that you're taking a look at their data and their processes and recommending those changes. And you can even extend that into implementing those suggested solutions for customers. Um, and I think really when we look at this, it's, it's, companies are gonna struggle to solve this problem on your own. Uh, and really if you are, if if you're a company that's working with other businesses and you're not a service provider, uh, you should really be looking in 2021 to build out a team around this, um, or starting to look at providers that can help you manage some of this because people are making these investments and they're yielding results. And if you're a service provider, um, there's still a huge demand for this type of an offering. Uh, and we don't think that the market is remotely saturated so much so that, you know, we're out here telling other folks to come and, and compete with us because we think that there's plenty of room in the market and a lot of opportunity, uh, that people can start building those offerings around.

Speaker 2: (29:43)
Yeah, and I think from our perspective as a, a technology company, like we feel very strongly that everything should be grounded in data. That data should help you build insights and then those insights should create action within the business. And that insight, that action should be across all functions of the revenue team. But one of the big things that, that we see here, and one of the, the reasons why, like we're, we're excited to partner with the team at Aptitude eight and other, uh, like solution partners in the HubSpot ecosystem for example, is we see that as a technology company, there should always be a services component to that. And that sometimes comes from in-house revenue operations leaders at organizations who are able to take the data and create those actions and then drive the cross-functional change. But there's also times where the revenue operations team has 45 other things on their plate and they need, they need help there or they need to better understand and align. They need an outside set of eyes. And so things like that where, how can we align the technology with the services, because that's really when you can start to create, um, like cross-functional change and really driving, uh, a lot of really strong ROI both on the technology side and also the services side.

Speaker 1: (31:05)
And I think to your point, right, like every company, uh, can be a data company, but the reality is, is that you need people, process and tools to make this possible. You can't just buy a solution. Uh, and to Ben's point of you sort of go out to market, you buy a rev ops platform or you buy a technology solution and you just hook it up and you expect this to solve your problem and, and really just make all of this go away and give you the insights you're looking for, um, you're not going to succeed, but this is a solvable problem. And so in our world, all of this really falls under, under rev ops and you want to design your organization around the people that work there and what they need. And that's why we're seeing, you know, companies like HubSpot focusing on usability and enterprise power.

Speaker 1: (31:47)
Uh, and we're seeing this shift away from in a tech stack consolidation as people start to look at the tools in their stack that are powerful but really difficult to use. And instead looking for things where we're seeing business technology actually focus on consumer grade usability instead of just focusing on how can we build, you know, the most powerful IT focused solution. And instead looking at how can we make something that's easy to use and empowers the people that are working in it. And I think extending that is don't optimize your process for what makes it easy for you as a business to function and instead focus on how you can improve the buying experience and build your tools and your technology and your systems and your process around the experience you're trying to deliver. I think so much of what we run into and, and one of the big reasons that, you know, we have our rev ops sort of technical consulting arm, and we also have our demand gen and our growth strategy focused on.

Speaker 1: (32:40)
And when, when we bring those two together, we can really focus on what is that prospect or that customer experience you're trying to create, and then how can you build a technical solution around that experience? And what we see happen far too often is people allow their, their systems and their business process to dictate that customer experience instead of building a customer experience and building a solution around the experience they're trying to manage. Uh, and I think trend-wise, you see over the last 10 years, companies have just bought more and more tools and more and more siloed databases and just added things onto their stack. Uh, instead of, and instead of solving problems, all of those tools are just introduced to new ones. And so I, one of the other things that we'd really recommend people do to get started on a lot of these strategies is right size your tool stack to fit your organization. A lot of those tools now have redundancies. They've expanded over time. While it's the beauty of SaaS, it's also sort of the, the constraint, which is you buy all these things and then all of them sort of build capabilities that overlap and avoid software bloat and try to trim your stack down to what you can focus on.

Speaker 2: (33:44)
Yeah, I think from the tools perspective, like you touched on it there Connor, but really we've seen the market move away from point solutions that are solving one problem. And really, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. You can consolidate technologies that do one thing into one tool and really that allows companies to have one vendor relationship that they have to manage. Um, they're able to kind of say, Hey, this is the piece of technology that we're gonna grow with. We know that that technology is also gonna grow with us. Um, and really being able to minimize spend through tech stack consolidation, um, but also having tools that you can grow with as a company. So tools that have, um, flexible pricing to where you don't have to have every single thing that they do, but as you get larger as an organization, um, you can grow with them, um, is really one of the things that we've seen kind of evolving from away from point solutions and really into, um, kind of what we would see as like a, like the platform space.

Speaker 1: (34:49)
Yeah, I think you're seeing platform come up a lot and obviously there's, there's been tons of information here, but in terms of things that you, we think that you should be doing, uh, before end of year, if you wanna sort of double down on, I know that you were talking a lot about those tech sac redundancies.

Speaker 2: (35:05)
Yeah. Um, I think a big thing is really kind of analyzing like what are the things that we are spending money on? Where can we consolidate tools, whether that's getting rid of things that we don't use, um, or looking at new tools that can consolidate, um, things, whether it be, uh, I mean we look at insight squared and we say, Hey, we can do everything from activity capture and conversational intelligence to machine learning, forecasting and dashboarding and analytics. So finding tools that give you the breadth and depth that you're looking for, and then again, being able to get rid of some of those redundancies to reduce your tech spec spend, um, but also find the tools that fit best within your business.

Speaker 1: (35:44)
And I think to, to your point, right, in terms of figuring out what works best for your business, something that you can do, uh, either internally or or with an external vendor is really understand what does your customer journey look like? How, how do you move things from, you know, this is somebody who's just finding out at our business, they're maybe just filling out a form all the way to their customer now. Um, and really mapping out where are you missing data in that process, which systems and tools drive different parts of that process? And where do our handoffs get messy? So where are we seeing sort of the, the marketing to sales piece, so the sales to kickoff or the kickoff to the ongoing service team, like where do things start to fall apart? And that can kind of guide, I think a lot of those technology and process and investment decisions going into 2021, but we always recommend people really start with really map out that full customer journey so you can understand how people go through your business process to, to really work with you.

Speaker 1: (36:42)
So we can open it up, uh, for anyone who has questions on, on kind of anything that we, we touched on today. Um, and we, we'd be happy to stick around for another sort of 10 or 15 minutes and answer any of those is they might, uh, might come across. And this was a ton of content. Uh, I think one of the things we were working through was, uh, figuring out, you know, what, what pre-built questions can we answer in here, but we really strove to pack as much of it into, uh, the deck itself as possible. So if there's not a lot that comes through on your guys' end, by no means is that a, uh, a reflection of of your listening skills by any means. Um, I think that we really tried to put as much density in here as we can. So I'm gonna ask for a copy of the presentation. Yes. Uh, so we'll send out both a recording and a copy of, uh, of the deck overall. Um, so anybody who was in attendance and wants a version or wasn't able to sort of come, um, you will be able to, to go through those.

Speaker 1: (38:10)
Um, I saw something else here. So how do you grow a rev op function, um, at your agency? So I think this is coming probably from, from one of the HubSpot partners that we invited, uh, to the session. So in terms of growing a rev op function, I think the primary thing that we look at is, there's a technical component of this for sure. So making sure that you have in-house CRM technologists, people who can build out these solutions, people who can understand data models, um, especially if you're coming from a more traditional marketing angle, uh, making sure that you have somebody on staff who is a technologist at their core and and can understand data models and reporting and processes is probably step number one. Um, step number two is really to go work with one of your, your existing customers, um, anyone who you're functioning with on a marketing angle, and eventually you'll be able to actually open up the number of customers that you can potentially work with.

Speaker 1: (38:56)
But anyone you're supporting on a marketing angle is somebody who there is rev op opportunity for. You're likely delivering them some reporting already and, and starting to do a deeper dive into their overall business process, starting to do sort of an analysis of how do they work with the data that we give them, what happens to these leads after we create them is, is a good first step. Um, and I also recommend chatting with, with Ben, uh, people at Insight Square and other software providers in this space as well. Um, lots of them are growing, lots of them are looking for additional partnerships and a lot of them are, are very willing to sort of collaborate with you as you sort of build out a lot of those service offerings.

Speaker 1: (39:43)
Cool. Well thank you for all of you who are able to come today. Um, we'll send out a recording of the presentation. Uh, this is Mai and Ben's contact information. Feel free to reach out to us directly as well. Um, and then for anybody who is watching this live, uh, our information is also here, so also feel free to reach out to us. Uh, but we'll send through both a copy of the deck, uh, and a recording of the, the presentation, um, for those of you in attendance and for anyone else who was able to register, but, but might have had a conflict at this time.

Speaker 3: (40:16)
Awesome. Cool. Thank you

Speaker 1: (40:17)
All. Thanks El.