Season 4 wrap-up: AI, alignment, & collaboration, with Sandy Robinson

Speaker A: Hi, everyone. I'm Sandy Robinson, your host of Revops Unboxed. I'm really excited to be here Today. We are wrapping up season four. Can you believe it? There have been four seasons of RevOps Unboxed. First of all, I want to say how privileged I feel and I am to be able to host this show. I really enjoy getting, with every guest, understanding their challenges, what problems they're trying to solve, sometimes commiserating and really just getting ideas and spreading that. That into the RevOps and Revenue Enablement world. Today, I'd like to do a little bit of a recap. I've had, gosh, I think, 10 guests this season, 11 guests this season, and I wanted to go through each episode, take a few highlights, talk about that, and then kind of wrap things up. Episode one was with Lindsey Procnow, and during that episode, I was really excited just to hear from somebody like Lindsay. She is really a true operator. She's in the weeds. She's held multiple roles in revenue operations, and she really talked a lot about identifying a single source of truth around data, identifying icps. She talked about how to leverage our metrics and our dashboards and communicate them to really tell the full story that you're trying to tell. She really dove into the CRM, the ecosystem, how she really communicates the overall mission of revenue operations back to her different stakeholders within her organization. It was really a great episode, and I found myself really relating to a lot of the things that Lindsay said. So I really highly encourage everybody here to just be thinking about those things. I know that, you know, a single source of truth isn't really. It's like a utopia, right? We all strive for that utopia. There's a single source of truth. Uh, but her point of all this was really trying to drill down and identify those ICPs and what you're really trying to do and how you tell that story in revenue operations, uh, too. That was with my buddy, Tyler Hooper. Tyler's a great guy. Tyler talked a lot about collaborating in larger organizations. His experience in larger organizations was really insightful. During that episode, he really talked about being a strategic partner in Revops. We get kind of in this trap of being the CRM admin. And he really talked about this management, this idea of a management operating system, and this idea of codifying the rhythm of the work to the business and really being able to work with any leader in place without a leader at all, in fact. Uh, so he talked about this idea of collaboration and how to build that revenue engine and how to become More of a strategic partner within your organization. So whether you're in a small organization or a large organization, you really had a lot of great insights. And uh, not unlike Tyler, uh, episode three, uh, chose Olga Truskova. If I can talk. Olga who? Um, I love Olga. Uh, she and I spent some time together last year, actually filming a different podcast at the Creator House. And I really got to know her. Uh, she's a great person, great, great Rev Ops leaders. But she talked a lot about the challenges that come with attribution. She uh, has a marketing background. So she really talked about how it's useful to understand the needs of both sales and marketing and how to really drill down this attribution and this idea of having a centralized Rev Ops department that oversees the whole customer journey. And what was interesting is her coming from marketing was great because she really gets it. She really gets this idea that marketing is so rooted in understanding exactly every aspect of attribution. So she really breaks it down around how to solve for that for the entire customer journey. And she's. She talked about, and this was earlier in the year, so keep in mind, she talked about what she was doing and starting to using. To use AI. I'd, uh, love to hear from her now after months have gone by since we actually filmed that episode. But the bottom line is she talked about your data being the foundation of everything being the foundation of AI. You can't set up a great AI on shitty data, basically. So check it out, episode three with Olga. Another, uh, woman leader, rev Ops leader guru that I was so happy to have on the show in episode four is Lior Spira. Lior, man. I, uh, followed her for years online. It was so great to have her on the show. She talked about building Rev Ops from scratch, putting together the tech stack, that scrappy stuff, really building the infrastructure, being data driven. And she was talking about this idea of ABX being account based everything and earning the trust of every rep, encouraging them to have early adoption by bringing them into the fold. Lior, oh my gosh, we had this great conversation. I was so happy to track her down. I've been following her for years. We talked about building revops from scratch, as many of us have done. Putting together the tech stack. How do you start with that? Uh, how do you start with the infrastructure and this whole idea of being data driven, the importance of account based everything. Abx, baby. I really dove into that and I loved her perspective on it, especially as a Rev Ops leader. Really thinking about the customer, the customer journey. And she Talked about just really engaging with the reps, engaging with your internal audience, earning their trust, encouraging their adoption, having them be early adopters, taking a real collaborative approach. Great chat. I, uh, look forward to connecting with her soon. And I highly recommend checking out episode four, Episode five, Lonnie Sternberg. Lonnie talked about balancing top down and bottom up approaches to RevOps. So, you know, it's really challenging in some organizations if you don't have the support of leadership and they don't understand what RevOps is, what RevOps does. So we talked about the necessary job of Revops leaders to be able to balance that, uh, top down approach and the bottom up approach as far as initiatives go. So you have to have both in order to make them work. We dove into some challenges and considerations. When you're evaluating CRMs, you have to think about the entire sales journey. You have to think about end to end, what does that look like, not just one department, and how cross functional collaboration is critical. And he talked about a data dictionary, this idea of having standardized terms to use across systems. It's so easy for people to use different terminology and different acronyms. Especially if you're hiring in your company, you're bringing in different folks. Great conversation there. And then my Buddy Richard, episode six, Richard DeVere. Richard, man, Richard has this idea of this North Star metrics and I'm telling you, it's genius. He really puts together this QBR for Revops and it's something everybody should do. And I really, uh, am striving to get there. But he really ties together the customer journey, the bowtie model, all its applications and how it applies to what he's doing and continuously measures his team and their work and the results that they're getting. Great, great episode. I love watching everything that he's doing and getting all the updates. That brings me to episode seven. Interesting story. Ali Spinelli. We never actually worked together, but when I was@web.com, i saw her name on a bunch of reports and what happened was Web.com acquired the company that she was working for, which was Yodle at the time. And with acquisitions things changed. So I don't know, months later, uh, I was brought in on the Web.com side and running revenue operations. And uh, she had previously run, uh, the department in the old company. And so it was just really interesting. We met at a conference and I was so excited to listen to what she was talking about up on stage. I had to have her on my show and we've become buddies. Uh, we chit chat. Uh, quite a bit. Uh, just a very interesting story, how small the world of revenue operations is. But she really gets real. She dove into breaking down silos, building relationships and trust. We talked a bit about AI and Rev Tech and how automation is really changing the space and really changing the role of RevOps. And you have to be kind of really proactively transitioning out of that help desk model to a partner model and really aligning your technology and AI to your investments and business goals. So check that one out. Okay. Episode eight. Dan Giovanntini. Uh, Dan, I had a little pushback bringing him on the episode. Not going to lie. Dan's a COO. I was like, I don't have CEOs on here. Not going to talk to you. And he's like, no, no. But I'm an operator. I know this shit. I built up Rev Ops. You got to have me on the show. And I'm really glad I did. Dan, great guy. Uh, really enjoy keeping, uh up with Dan. But he really talked about the importance of continuous learning and improvement, uh, the early days of building a revenue motion, this idea of bootstrapping it and being an impact player versus a typical contributor. So he really talked about, like, you know, if you're in Rev Ops, like, how do you stand out? How do you, uh, build your career? How do you work your way up? How do you do things that benefit the organization? And he really talked about how it's important to stay curious about AI and manage the tech stack with new AI tools, really keep them at the forefront of everything you're doing and, you know, understand the data, understand the root of what these tools are looking at and really being strategic about how you're implementing your AI. Episode nine, Keenan. I saw Keenan at an event, and I basically chased him down and cornered him. And, uh, Keenan agreed to not only come, uh, on my show, but to invite me to be a contributor for his magazine, Revenue magazine. And I really wanted to have him on the show again, even though he's not the typical guests. And Keenan's a baller. Okay. Kenan has been there, done that. He's built up, uh, he's. He's the best sales guy I know. And, uh, his new speed model attracts and aligns with, uh, really, uh, getting revenue operations involved and. And having that, you know, you can't just. It's not just all about sales, right? It's about the customer journey. So knowing your numbers, knowing your metrics, these are things that we talked about, really. This idea of having that interdependence with RevOps and enablement. So we really get into enablement stuff, uh, about you know, enablement is critical. Without enablement, what's the point of RevOps? Without RevOps, what's the point of enablement? Without sales, what's the point of it? You know like these things all work together. You've got to know the metrics, you've got to enable it, you've got to build uh, for scale and you've got to have a great sales motion. So he dove into that a little bit and uh, you know he said like hey look leaders, you need to step back and assess your sales methodology, your CRM hygiene and, and your overall sales process. So great, great discussion. That was episode nine. All right, Episode ten with SK and Chris. Man, these guys really know their shit when it comes to AI. They've built some insane stuff over there. They talked about this idea of a program across the company. So it's really an initiative, not something that like a person owns or something. It's more like, you know, if you've ever done EOs or something like that, company initiatives and they have major AI initiatives. And he really talked about how uh, you know, he was able to build some better tools for better data management, make buying decisions and show the value to leaders in the organization. And he's really been able to drive adoption and it's, it's all change management stuff so it's really cool. But this idea of program based versus project based is really what he's talking about. A project is kind of a thing, you check a bunch of boxes. A program is something across the organization and that's the impact they've had in building out their AI architecture. So great stuff. Check out episode 10. And finally episode 11 with Ethan, Ethan Lipman. Ethan, man, he's a fintech guy. Rev Ops guy, love chatting with him. I've seen him at uh, different conferences, I've watched him speak and uh, had to have him on the show. Uh he talked about some of uh, the implementations that they're doing. One uh, being outreach. He talked about a sales advisory council which is uh, really kind of across his organization and different methodologies, uh, using digital sales room, how to provide the right content when and where they need it. And he really drilled down on the importance of democratizing, disseminating in narrating information in RevOps. So this idea that you have multiple communication channels communicating up to leadership the value of RevOps but really demonstrating the value of RevOps day to day through the different initiatives and things that you are providing. So really great stuff. And, you know, it's been an exciting season, it's an exciting time in RevOps and I'm just so thrilled to be a part of it. I'm thrilled to be able to talk to really amazing leaders. Uh, and I'm going to be doing again in season five, so you'll have to stay tuned for that. But the theme this year really was all around collaboration, cross functional collaboration, communication. How do you start to look at AI and make that kind of the core of what you're doing and touching on, you know, implementing some of these different AI initiatives and architecture. But you really have to keep tuning in. Thank you so much for all of your support. I'm so excited to bring back another season of Revops Unboxed and make sure that you are working with your teams, that you're collaborating, that you're communicating, that you're thinking of RevOps as the entire customer life cycle. So getting that bow tie out and then how does AI play a role in what you're doing? So be thinking about that. If you want to be a guest, hit me up, find me on LinkedIn. Uh, all my links are here. Take care and peace out. This has been another episode of Revops Unboxed in partnership with the Revenue Operations Alliance. Until next time, keep unboxing.