Lessons in RevOps From Pardot, Terminus, and Beyond - Mallory Lee

Justin Norris: 00:00:14

Welcome to RebOps FM.

Justin Norris: 00:00:16

Today we're speaking with Mallory Lee and Mallory, one of the really cool

Justin Norris: 00:00:19

things I noticed about your CV is you've kind of done it all when it comes to all

Justin Norris: 00:00:24

the different RebOps hats you can wear.

Justin Norris: 00:00:26

You were internal strategy consultant at Pardot.

Justin Norris: 00:00:29

You were a RebOps and BizOps executive at companies like Terminus and Nihilus.

Justin Norris: 00:00:34

I did a tour of duty with an agency, worked as a solo consultant, RevOps

Justin Norris: 00:00:38

product advisor, and most recently co founder of the RevTechReview,

Justin Norris: 00:00:43

which is a no BS way to understand revenue technology tools.

Justin Norris: 00:00:48

I also find Mallory sharing a lot of knowledge on LinkedIn.

Justin Norris: 00:00:50

You can look up and follow her there.

Justin Norris: 00:00:52

Mallory, so excited to dive in.

Justin Norris: 00:00:54

Thank you for coming on the show.

Mallory Lee: 00:00:55

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:00:55

Thanks for the invite.

Mallory Lee: 00:00:56

I'm excited too.

Justin Norris: 00:00:57

Maybe just to start, you know, I listed all of these

Justin Norris: 00:01:00

different things what is your favorite?

Justin Norris: 00:01:03

Which of those areas have you found, the most fulfilling?

Mallory Lee: 00:01:05

I think that's hard.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:07

think that I have the most fun as an in house operator, getting

Mallory Lee: 00:01:13

to be part of an executive team.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:15

So those roles tend to be my passion.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:19

helping to steer a business and grow it.

Justin Norris: 00:01:22

there's pros and cons.

Justin Norris: 00:01:23

It is fun as a consultant to kind of come in and tackle a very focused

Justin Norris: 00:01:26

problem and move on to the next thing.

Justin Norris: 00:01:29

There's something very gratifying though, about, growing with the business, uh,

Justin Norris: 00:01:32

long term you mentioned, in a recent post, so I thought it was really interesting.

Justin Norris: 00:01:36

I've been seeing this too.

Justin Norris: 00:01:37

I've been going through some renewal cycles right now.

Justin Norris: 00:01:39

So it's kind of been top of mind for me as a, buyer, but you mentioned an interesting

Justin Norris: 00:01:43

trend in, RevTech buying behavior.

Justin Norris: 00:01:45

about rev ops, no longer being the buyer.

Justin Norris: 00:01:48

And maybe we just started there.

Justin Norris: 00:01:49

I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit, because I think a lot of

Justin Norris: 00:01:51

sellers, they sell like a rev tech tool, that is a persona that they focus on.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:56

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:56

It's been kind of a fascinating realization for me, honestly.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:00

I've been in a position before where I owned the technology

Mallory Lee: 00:02:05

budget and made a lot of those decisions on behalf of the business.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:10

I still anticipate that that is a role that RevOps people need to play.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:16

But I don't think that there's very often a budget for a revenue

Mallory Lee: 00:02:20

operations dedicated tool.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:23

And most of the time we are spending money on behalf of other departments

Mallory Lee: 00:02:27

and trying to make sure that the holistic stack makes sense.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:33

however, you know, in the last few years, the rev ops profession and the role

Mallory Lee: 00:02:39

has been like the number one fastest growing job it's become very popular.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:44

And so a lot of founders rightfully.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:46

So have wanted to create technology to make the rev ops

Mallory Lee: 00:02:50

profession better or easier.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:53

it's this contradiction because, as a rev ops team, We spend all of our time

Mallory Lee: 00:02:58

thinking about how to make everyone else's lives easier very few times.

Mallory Lee: 00:03:03

Do we try to make our own lives any easier or better?

Mallory Lee: 00:03:07

So I believe there is a need for some Rev Ops technology, but I don't think that

Mallory Lee: 00:03:12

we're in the kind of economic climate where people are going to be able to

Mallory Lee: 00:03:16

make a case to say, Hey, this is going to make my rev ops team's life easier.

Mallory Lee: 00:03:21

Can we purchase this?

Mallory Lee: 00:03:23

and even if you're getting that approval from your CFO and, and yourself, people

Mallory Lee: 00:03:28

are having to make really hard choices about where to spend that budget.

Mallory Lee: 00:03:32

And I think that a lot of us just kind of default to, you know,

Mallory Lee: 00:03:36

sales and marketing efficiency for most of the rev tech budgets.

Justin Norris: 00:03:40

I totally know what you're talking about and it's hard.

Justin Norris: 00:03:43

Cause I would love to buy technology to make my life easier, but I think if you

Justin Norris: 00:03:46

look at like how companies are going to market, it's kind of like a week.

Justin Norris: 00:03:49

Positioning, to be like, oh, we're going to save your rev ops team time.

Justin Norris: 00:03:52

It's like, well,

Justin Norris: 00:03:53

maybe, maybe if you've got a, 500 person rev ops team that becomes

Justin Norris: 00:03:57

compelling, but usually not.

Justin Norris: 00:03:59

Is this a message that you've delivered, to any of the companies

Justin Norris: 00:04:01

that you're working with, maybe that are playing in that space, like

Justin Norris: 00:04:04

have, companies understood this or are people still trying to like,

Justin Norris: 00:04:07

Go this route and struggle with it.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:09

I think that almost any company out there has to spend

Mallory Lee: 00:04:13

a lot of time and it takes a lot of iteration to figure out, what's

Mallory Lee: 00:04:18

the pain point we're solving.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:20

How do we connect that back to the major impact on a business?

Mallory Lee: 00:04:26

How do we make it tie into a big enough and expensive enough problem that people

Mallory Lee: 00:04:32

are willing to invest budget on this?

Mallory Lee: 00:04:34

And it's not easy.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:35

And, and I've been there as a marketer trying to make that case, for the

Mallory Lee: 00:04:39

businesses that I've worked for.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:40

so the way that I think about it is take the feature set, take the problem

Mallory Lee: 00:04:44

we're solving and just keep following it all the way up the chain until we

Mallory Lee: 00:04:49

figure out what that ultimate impact is.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:52

And then let's try to tie into that.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:56

In our value prop, easier said than done.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:58

Like it's, very complicated, but people are really open to the feedback.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:02

They're open to hearing, okay, saving time's not enough.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:07

We need to also be, growing or scaling or making more revenue somehow.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:13

So how do we make that argument without everyone just sounding the exact same,

Mallory Lee: 00:05:19

I think is the challenge.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:20

Uh, and I, can't pretend to have that figured out, but it's an interesting one.

Justin Norris: 00:05:25

I'm curious, like the, the process of iteration that you

Justin Norris: 00:05:28

described, I've experienced it too.

Justin Norris: 00:05:30

And it's a really interesting, also sometimes kind of painful

Justin Norris: 00:05:33

and frustrating process.

Justin Norris: 00:05:35

if we look at like some of your in houses experiences, either as a marketer or

Justin Norris: 00:05:38

maybe as like a revenue operator, like working with sales teams on iterating that

Justin Norris: 00:05:42

pitch, like, what does that look like?

Justin Norris: 00:05:43

How do you kind of diagnose and how do you know when you're

Justin Norris: 00:05:45

starting to hit on something solid?

Mallory Lee: 00:05:47

I hope that data can help guide the story there.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:51

lots of data can be collected by just talking to customers, really

Mallory Lee: 00:05:55

understanding and interviewing them.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:58

What are you doing with this thing?

Mallory Lee: 00:05:59

How is it helping you?

Mallory Lee: 00:06:00

How is it making your life better?

Mallory Lee: 00:06:02

even if you learn something that sends you in a different direction, that's progress.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:08

So being able to get in front of customers, I think

Mallory Lee: 00:06:11

is the most important thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:13

second, having your platform instrumented in a way that you can understand

Mallory Lee: 00:06:18

what product usage is happening.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:20

And, um, Is vital and a lot of tools that have been around for a little bit

Mallory Lee: 00:06:24

longer, that have struggled in recent months or years might not be able to

Mallory Lee: 00:06:31

really see that They might know why someone bought it 4 years ago, but they

Mallory Lee: 00:06:35

might not know what's getting used today.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:37

What impact is this having today?

Mallory Lee: 00:06:39

what kind of buyer personas are deeply engaged with our product

Mallory Lee: 00:06:43

right now to keep evolving that, that value prop as they move forward.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:48

in the case where you have a very open and extensible product

Mallory Lee: 00:06:51

that can be used a lot of ways.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:53

That was the case at Nihilist.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:55

It was an API product that could be used a million ways.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:59

we really were attempting to dig into the data to see what Okay, this customer

Mallory Lee: 00:07:05

is in this industry, their office size, their product looks like this.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:09

And here are the 14 features they use the most.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:12

What can we kind of derive from these combinations to get a

Mallory Lee: 00:07:17

real sense of like what they're doing with it in their use case?

Mallory Lee: 00:07:20

that might be an extreme example because APIs are.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:24

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:25

Just inherently building blocks.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:26

They're very open to any use case.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:29

So hopefully it's, not quite that crazy for a lot of businesses out there that

Mallory Lee: 00:07:36

started with a hypothesis of what the product was going to do and going out

Mallory Lee: 00:07:41

there and proving, that it's working.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:43

But I guess I would just circle back again to like making sure that, the customers

Mallory Lee: 00:07:48

are getting to tell their stories.

Justin Norris: 00:07:50

you know, you were at Terminus, I think during a time when

Justin Norris: 00:07:53

the ABM category was really exploding and I've been thinking of this category

Justin Norris: 00:07:58

a lot in light of the, demand creation debate that I see happening in a lot

Justin Norris: 00:08:04

of posts in my LinkedIn feed, at least, um, around, is this a real thing?

Justin Norris: 00:08:07

Is that, is that not a real thing?

Justin Norris: 00:08:09

And I think of that as a category where like nobody had an ABM platform budget.

Justin Norris: 00:08:14

Like it just wasn't a thing.

Justin Norris: 00:08:15

And then all of a sudden that, emerged, there was a lot of great messaging around

Justin Norris: 00:08:19

flip my funnel and all this kind of stuff and everybody, you know, had to have one.

Justin Norris: 00:08:23

was that kind of like a gold rush to experience that?

Justin Norris: 00:08:25

Or were there any challenges that you saw?

Mallory Lee: 00:08:28

Yeah, there certainly were a few challenges.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:30

you know, I've gotten lucky to be in the right place at the

Mallory Lee: 00:08:33

right time a few different times.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:36

And I was at exact target when email marketing took off.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:40

I was at part out when marketing automation took off and then I was

Mallory Lee: 00:08:43

at terminus pretty shortly after everything just went insane with ABM.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:48

And I think at first we really needed to repurpose the advertising budget to

Mallory Lee: 00:08:52

get budget for something like terminus.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:56

That was the beginning of somebody spending money on technology

Mallory Lee: 00:09:00

for advertising purposes.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:02

So we were kind of taking program dollars and repurposing them

Mallory Lee: 00:09:05

toward software budget, but both components happened in the platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:09

You had ad spend and technology spend.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:13

So I think it was incumbent on companies like Terminus to Continue

Mallory Lee: 00:09:18

to broaden the platform, make that technology piece much more valuable

Mallory Lee: 00:09:23

outside of advertising alone.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:26

And so that's when you saw a lot of the intent data come in, a lot of account

Mallory Lee: 00:09:30

scoring and prioritization types of things, they needed to continue to add

Mallory Lee: 00:09:34

features to make that platform fee.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:39

You bigger than the ads themselves.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:41

And so it was, just a really neat experience.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:45

And I think this would go back to the idea that you have to keep iterating

Mallory Lee: 00:09:50

on the value prop, especially as competitors come in and begin.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:54

Doing similar things.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:56

let's say in the advertising world, how are you going to

Mallory Lee: 00:09:58

continue to differentiate?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:00

How are you going to help your customers progress and evolve?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:03

And something that we talked about a lot at Terminus was being this

Mallory Lee: 00:10:06

trusted partner to help someone with their account based strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:12

It can't just be about using the tool.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:14

It has to be about.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:16

Their overall ABM strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:18

how are they effective?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:19

How do they work with sales and have sales and marketing alignment?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:24

Those were very front and center for us because we knew that the

Mallory Lee: 00:10:26

stronger, the ABM strategy, the better.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:28

The better retention that we would have for our, product.

Justin Norris: 00:10:31

And when you think about that, category of ABM, as a

Justin Norris: 00:10:34

concept, ABM makes a lot of sense.

Justin Norris: 00:10:37

My observation on the category, not necessarily specific to Terminus,

Justin Norris: 00:10:39

cause I've never used that tool, but on some of the other players.

Justin Norris: 00:10:42

Um, and speaking to people in the community that hasn't always delivered,

Justin Norris: 00:10:46

on what it was intended to do.

Justin Norris: 00:10:47

A lot of people frustrated.

Justin Norris: 00:10:49

what's your observation there?

Justin Norris: 00:10:50

Is that something that you've seen too?

Justin Norris: 00:10:52

And if so, where do you think it fell short?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:54

Yeah, I've seen it and I've experienced that myself as well.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:57

and I think that there is a time and a place for account based ads.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:04

for sure, but I don't know if we ever quite had the right

Mallory Lee: 00:11:09

expectation for what that kind of platform should be doing for us.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:14

And so that is probably the underlying issue is that.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:19

We were trying to create something that was going to deliver on an

Mallory Lee: 00:11:22

expectation that never made sense.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:25

And when I had used ABM platforms prior to joining Terminus, I used demand based

Mallory Lee: 00:11:32

and I used Terminus at Cheetah Digital.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:36

And when I was at Cheetah Digital, I was leading marketing operations.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:41

So I was in the ops world, but I was laser focused on marketing and spending our

Mallory Lee: 00:11:45

budget effectively and generating demand.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:49

And my biggest message to everybody in the room was like, we should

Mallory Lee: 00:11:53

not expect leads from this.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:55

This is not a lead generation platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:59

We need to have the appropriate expectation about how it influences,

Mallory Lee: 00:12:03

and we need to think through what we really want to get out of this thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:07

And I always have a story, back from my exact target days.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:11

so I'm based in Indianapolis and exact target was in Indianapolis downtown.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:16

We had an office right on like The circle in the center of, of downtown.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:21

and when I started working there right out of school, they were just, you

Mallory Lee: 00:12:25

know, starting to really take off.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:27

And everyone I talked to, if they asked me where I worked, I said, exact target.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:31

And he said, Oh, I just see you everywhere.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:33

I see exact target everywhere.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:34

What do you do?

Mallory Lee: 00:12:36

And a lot of people didn't even know what the company did, but they were so

Mallory Lee: 00:12:40

familiar with the brand exact target had.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:43

an amazing product and such amazing people, it still

Mallory Lee: 00:12:47

had its sharp edges, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:12:49

everything does.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:50

It was really hard to use, back then.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:52

And the brand just helped us overcome so many of those potential issues.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:00

And so I think it's easy for people to overlook the importance of brand.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:04

And when it comes to something like account based marketing, it should

Mallory Lee: 00:13:08

encompass your entire demand gen strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:11

But those specific account based ads, they're banner

Mallory Lee: 00:13:15

ads, they're branding, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:13:18

They're not magical portals that people can jump to, to

Mallory Lee: 00:13:21

like get to your salesperson.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:23

And I think that we just put too much pressure on what we

Mallory Lee: 00:13:27

thought they would allow us to do.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:29

So if you think about them as a branding mechanism, and just a way to

Mallory Lee: 00:13:35

more correctly target the companies you care about with your branding, I

Mallory Lee: 00:13:40

think people see it very differently.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:42

And I think that you can start to justify pretty quickly.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:45

For it to make sense to just have impressions for those

Mallory Lee: 00:13:48

certain companies that you want to sell to on your target list.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:51

And you can see if you're engaging your target list, you can see

Mallory Lee: 00:13:54

if they're getting impressions.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:56

hopefully you start to see those companies respond to your emails

Mallory Lee: 00:13:59

because they see you everywhere.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:00

And that's the idea.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:02

So I think that's the best way to use it.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:04

And I think it's pretty easy to make a good case for those kinds of technologies.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:09

if we're setting the right goals.

Justin Norris: 00:14:11

one of the things that you just said that really resonated

Justin Norris: 00:14:13

with me was around, the lack of clarity on like what an ABM tool could do.

Justin Norris: 00:14:18

Like this concept became so powerful and yet there was like.

Justin Norris: 00:14:23

Almost like this magical black box of like, we're going to do

Justin Norris: 00:14:25

ABM and ads are a very important component of that, obviously.

Justin Norris: 00:14:30

But I've, at least personally, like using those tools, I've often like, you know,

Justin Norris: 00:14:33

open the box and been like, this is it.

Justin Norris: 00:14:35

where's the part where you actually help, do ABM and.

Justin Norris: 00:14:38

I remember, um, being in some like early design sessions, with the team at Engageo,

Justin Norris: 00:14:43

you know, it was later acquired by demand based and they were trying to solve this

Justin Norris: 00:14:46

problem around orchestration and how do we orchestrate multiple sellers and multi

Justin Norris: 00:14:50

thread and it never fully came to life, but it feels like that's the piece that,

Justin Norris: 00:14:55

you know, still doesn't exist very well.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:57

you're exactly right.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:58

And I remember back when I was working with, Cheetah digital, I really wanted

Mallory Lee: 00:15:04

to pair ABM and Engagio together.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:07

And I was always such a big fan of Engagio and that approach,

Mallory Lee: 00:15:11

didn't work out budget wise.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:13

We never pulled the trigger on that, but I agree with you.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:16

Like there's, there's a planning component, there's

Mallory Lee: 00:15:18

targeting component, there's.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:20

There's so much work to be done and just defining your ideal customer and figuring

Mallory Lee: 00:15:25

out who is the right fit for your product.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:28

that's a big part of the iteration on the value prop, you know, because

Mallory Lee: 00:15:31

the closer you get to understanding that the closer you will find the

Mallory Lee: 00:15:35

people who have those problems.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:37

And so obviously a lot of work to do and it's all, very intertwined.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:42

but I think that was part of the struggle with terminus back to your question

Mallory Lee: 00:15:48

before is it took off so fast and it became something that you just have to do.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:55

And it's almost like the hype, became more than what it was ever intended to be.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:01

And so, there were a few things that we almost had to like.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:06

Not walk back, but just go deeper on and explain to people like this,

Mallory Lee: 00:16:10

platform can't be your whole strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:12

Like you have to have strategy and then the platform helps you execute it.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:16

And, a lot of people make that same, mistake with a lot of different tools.

Justin Norris: 00:16:20

I think if we fast forward today, to some extent, we're probably

Justin Norris: 00:16:23

Probably repeating that mistake in many places with like signal based selling and

Justin Norris: 00:16:28

everything that's going on here.

Justin Norris: 00:16:29

and so I'm, I'm curious for your take, if you have a perspective, on the,

Justin Norris: 00:16:34

problem still exists and companies are still trying to go outbound.

Justin Norris: 00:16:38

Something I think about a lot just in my, my day job.

Justin Norris: 00:16:41

what tools out there do you like, what do you see?

Justin Norris: 00:16:43

That's interesting.

Justin Norris: 00:16:43

How do you see like tech and strategy marrying as part of executing that?

Justin Norris: 00:16:47

It's

Mallory Lee: 00:16:47

So I do have a tool in mind.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:49

I'll tell you a very quick story first.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:51

So when I started to see all of these signal based platforms come to

Mallory Lee: 00:16:57

life, there were some integrations that happened, on the tech side

Mallory Lee: 00:17:01

that just made it very compelling to understand when someone changed jobs.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:08

Right.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:09

I think that's one of the very first signals that people

Mallory Lee: 00:17:13

started to really lean into.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:15

And I remember specifically back at Terminus, we pay a contractor every month.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:21

To go find those job changes manually, and we would upload that list

Mallory Lee: 00:17:27

and we would go work those leads.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:29

and it was very manual.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:30

And then before you knew it, the software started to support that and back it up.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:36

And I still think that it's a powerful signal, but it's

Mallory Lee: 00:17:39

also probably like the most.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:42

Misused signal, and it's the perfect example of why the technology cannot be

Mallory Lee: 00:17:48

the only like savior because I am someone who, you know, wears a lot of hats.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:55

I've had a lot of roles.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:56

anytime I add an advisor position.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:59

To my LinkedIn profile, I get these messages from people trying

Mallory Lee: 00:18:03

to sell everything under the sun.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:06

Hey, I saw you joined rattle.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:08

Are you interested in buying this thing?

Mallory Lee: 00:18:11

I'm thinking to myself, you didn't even look at what my position is.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:15

I don't work there, you know what I mean?

Mallory Lee: 00:18:17

And so they're wasting this opportunity to, find out what that

Mallory Lee: 00:18:21

signal really means and approach with the correct message and the correct

Mallory Lee: 00:18:25

strategy from an outbound standpoint.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:27

So I think that is an example of where it gets ahead of you, that, signal

Mallory Lee: 00:18:34

platform is getting ahead of us.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:35

If we're not careful, we will back off of it completely because, you

Mallory Lee: 00:18:39

know, The outbound signals aren't working and it's because we're not

Mallory Lee: 00:18:42

using the information correctly.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:44

one way that I really think people should use it is to just

Mallory Lee: 00:18:50

make it a component of timing.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:53

Now there is some research out there that suggests that when someone starts

Mallory Lee: 00:18:57

a new role as like a VP or higher, they make their plans for their budgets.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:05

In the first, like six to nine months, that's when they decide

Mallory Lee: 00:19:09

how they're going to spend money.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:11

So, you know, that there is a window that you need to get

Mallory Lee: 00:19:14

in at it's not day one, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:19:17

People don't decide those things in their first week in a new role.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:21

And so jumping in too soon, not useful jumping in without realizing what

Mallory Lee: 00:19:27

technology they use already today.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:30

Not as useful.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:31

there are tools out there like built with that can tell you which

Mallory Lee: 00:19:35

technologies are on someone's website when they got detected, maybe it's

Mallory Lee: 00:19:39

going to expire a year from that time.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:41

Maybe it's two years from that time.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:44

So being as informed as possible, getting as much data as you can and forming a

Mallory Lee: 00:19:49

hypothesis that really allows you to reach out to somebody with something to say.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:55

I think is the important part.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:57

So, you know, it might be something like, Hey, congrats on joining this new company.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:03

I see you're going to be Ops.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:06

noticed that your team today is using Terminus.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:11

I'm curious if you are looking to adjust your plans for Terminus, if

Mallory Lee: 00:20:16

so, here's the way we, Add value and solve pain for a business like yours.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:22

And would you like to get a demo so you've got like full understanding

Mallory Lee: 00:20:25

of what you're working with?

Mallory Lee: 00:20:27

something that just shows that you have done the homework to know what's

Mallory Lee: 00:20:31

going on, I think is really important.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:34

And so if we don't do those homework jobs, kind of like surrounding.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:39

The signals, then we're going to continue to have poor outreach.

Justin Norris: 00:20:42

just saying that there's no silver bullets.

Justin Norris: 00:20:45

100 percent agreed on the customer job change signal.

Justin Norris: 00:20:47

I think it's an own signal that is hard for someone else to replicate.

Justin Norris: 00:20:51

They don't have your customer list.

Justin Norris: 00:20:53

shout out to user gems and full disclosure is a, sponsor of the show.

Justin Norris: 00:20:57

but we've seen in, in using that platform, which we use internally at my

Justin Norris: 00:21:00

company, when it works, it is magical or someone's like, Oh yeah, great.

Justin Norris: 00:21:04

Like, let's, go.

Justin Norris: 00:21:05

Like, yeah, I don't, I think we can skip the formal demo.

Justin Norris: 00:21:06

Like I bought, I already.

Justin Norris: 00:21:08

But, you can't apply it like we had to iterate a lot on it and work through

Justin Norris: 00:21:13

different cadences, work through different messaging, get the process in place.

Justin Norris: 00:21:17

It's a bit of a painful slog.

Justin Norris: 00:21:18

At least I find.

Justin Norris: 00:21:19

And I'm curious for your point of view on the rule of rev ops in there because

Justin Norris: 00:21:24

There's a lot of chefs in that kitchen.

Justin Norris: 00:21:25

There's like the SDR team and their leader, maybe sales,

Justin Norris: 00:21:29

demand gen or marketing is there.

Justin Norris: 00:21:30

Rev Ops is there.

Justin Norris: 00:21:31

Like, what should the ideal role of Rev Ops be in that process?

Mallory Lee: 00:21:34

So, the way that I think about this is that RevOps needs to

Mallory Lee: 00:21:39

have very tight understanding and very, iterative and constantly refreshed

Mallory Lee: 00:21:49

and very good command over the ICP.

Mallory Lee: 00:21:54

And that requires a lot of data and it changes a lot and we need to

Mallory Lee: 00:21:59

source, you know, where do we find the information that tells us, are

Mallory Lee: 00:22:04

you part of the ICP or are you not?

Mallory Lee: 00:22:06

that is chiefly a rev ops role to shepherd everyone into

Mallory Lee: 00:22:12

understanding what the ICP is.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:14

Reporting on those success or lack thereof, when we're working in the ICP

Mallory Lee: 00:22:19

incorporating, you know, the strategic changes that people want for the business

Mallory Lee: 00:22:23

to think about how it might shift in the future again, like value props, just

Mallory Lee: 00:22:28

reiterating that back through and making sure that the people we are targeting.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:32

Are experiencing this big pain point that we've decided to solve and then

Mallory Lee: 00:22:37

making that data systematically and accurately available to all of the

Mallory Lee: 00:22:41

people who need to look at accounts.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:44

And so, it's a great example.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:46

Like, when I was at Nihilist, we used, a CS platform I'm not going

Mallory Lee: 00:22:49

to call out which 1, because, um.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:51

I just don't feel like I need to, but, we were happy with it and it was great.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:55

And I signed the contract, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:22:58

So they had me in their database as someone to reach back out to.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:03

And when I started consulting and I was partnering with union

Mallory Lee: 00:23:07

square, I was in their campaign of.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:11

This person changed roles.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:12

We know that she's thought before let's get back in front of her.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:16

And so I got more than several messages, from this company asking

Mallory Lee: 00:23:20

if I would potentially be interested.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:23

And what they didn't realize was that union square was like a

Mallory Lee: 00:23:27

five person consulting company.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:30

We were not in their ICP at all.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:33

And so they were still targeting me.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:36

Regardless, and the messaging was nice.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:40

It was fine.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:41

There was nothing wrong with the way that they reached out.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:44

I even actually replied and said, Hey, we're not in your ICP, but

Mallory Lee: 00:23:48

I think that a rev ups team who has an idea and has a handle.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:53

On what that ICP looks like and how to correctly prioritize around it.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:58

And keeping in mind that it really is dynamic and it really does evolve a lot.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:03

they can help people avoid those kinds of mistakes.

Justin Norris: 00:24:06

Does it speak to like a lack of sophistication in the SDR teams

Justin Norris: 00:24:10

or the sellers that are there because you.

Justin Norris: 00:24:12

look at that, you know, something that anyone with a five second

Justin Norris: 00:24:15

look at, at LinkedIn could have made that discovery that you

Justin Norris: 00:24:18

described and avoided that misstep.

Justin Norris: 00:24:20

It's almost like if you're going to be that, I don't know, the word

Justin Norris: 00:24:23

that's coming to my mind is lazy.

Justin Norris: 00:24:24

I'm trying to find a softer word, but if you're going to not put that

Justin Norris: 00:24:27

work in, you might as well have AI just send that email because probably

Justin Norris: 00:24:31

with clay you could actually do your enrichment and prevent that to be honest.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:34

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:35

Well, I mean, in fairness with this vendor, I don't know if, it

Mallory Lee: 00:24:38

was an automated email or not.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:41

a couple of the emails I got were branded and a couple of them weren't.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:44

And I think that's.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:45

That's still completely automated.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:47

If you know, if you work hard enough to get that rhythm going, you can do that.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:51

so either they didn't take the time to check or they just funneled me

Mallory Lee: 00:24:57

into the same program everybody else was in and those emails were

Mallory Lee: 00:25:01

automated and the ICP segmentation was not part of their audience.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:07

Segmentation and building.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:09

And so again, we're back to like, first you have to have the right strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:15

The right strategy is to say, okay, identify the people that have changed

Mallory Lee: 00:25:20

roles and if they fit X, Y, Z criteria, then put them into the cadence.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:26

but from a technological perspective, do you have a way to score accounts?

Mallory Lee: 00:25:31

Do you send that account score data over to the place where

Mallory Lee: 00:25:35

you send your emails from?

Mallory Lee: 00:25:37

it all has to be, very connected to implement those strategies at scale.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:42

And, if you're not doing it at scale, then of course, please make the person check.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:46

But if you are trying to do these things at scale, you've got to get

Mallory Lee: 00:25:50

the tools to talk to each other.

Justin Norris: 00:25:52

Even a little bit further back into your CV

Justin Norris: 00:25:54

and into the tech landscape.

Justin Norris: 00:25:57

And you're right.

Justin Norris: 00:25:57

You have been in a lot of interesting places at the right time because,

Justin Norris: 00:26:01

um, you, it is, it is really, really interesting, but you were, you were at

Justin Norris: 00:26:06

Pardot, that was the start of my career as well, not, not necessarily working

Justin Norris: 00:26:09

at a marketing automation vendor, but just kind of like starting with

Justin Norris: 00:26:11

marketing automation and having that be my, my My access point into ops.

Justin Norris: 00:26:16

so we've got kind of the legacy players, and PowerDot and Marketo, and

Justin Norris: 00:26:20

to an extent Eloqua kicking around.

Justin Norris: 00:26:22

I'm curious how you see this landscape today.

Justin Norris: 00:26:25

Do we think that those players are going to be the players of the future?

Justin Norris: 00:26:27

Or is there like does marketing automation become something else to remain relevant?

Mallory Lee: 00:26:32

don't think it has to become something else, but I think

Mallory Lee: 00:26:36

that that first generation of tools was built for different businesses.

Mallory Lee: 00:26:42

They were just built for extreme inbound marketing.

Mallory Lee: 00:26:47

they've got good strategies for several things, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:26:50

So the reason that my mind just always instantly goes to segmentation,

Mallory Lee: 00:26:58

audience building, getting relevant, that is just in my DNA

Mallory Lee: 00:27:03

from my email marketing background.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:04

Right.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:05

And that is what marketing automation Really taught us was don't just send

Mallory Lee: 00:27:11

everyone the same email, get the information from the CRM, send the

Mallory Lee: 00:27:14

right email to the right person.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:16

They helped us build these dynamic audiences.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:18

And for the first time, we were able to do a lot with, personalization

Mallory Lee: 00:27:23

and targeting and segmentation.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:26

So that's still like very deeply embedded in probably everything I do.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:30

And so building on

Mallory Lee: 00:27:32

that, the question is like

Mallory Lee: 00:27:34

what do we need to keep up with the way, you know, our businesses have

Mallory Lee: 00:27:39

changed today and what I found and what I learned at Nihilus was that,

Mallory Lee: 00:27:44

none of the legacy players were built in a way that allowed product usage

Mallory Lee: 00:27:51

data to be part of the conversation.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:54

I really do think that all marketing automation is going

Mallory Lee: 00:27:58

to have to evolve to that point.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:00

Because all B2B is out there, they've got software of some kind.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:04

If they don't have software of some kind yet, they're probably

Mallory Lee: 00:28:08

trying to think of how to build it.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:09

And a lot of people, are blending now a license based approach and a usage

Mallory Lee: 00:28:14

based approach, because we've seen that that's great for retention and net

Mallory Lee: 00:28:19

retention and expansion of our revenue.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:22

So if you are trying to do old school marketing automation,

Mallory Lee: 00:28:26

With a new school product lens.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:31

it just doesn't work and I've tried it and you can't do it.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:34

So to make a long story short, I am a really big fan of inflection.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:38

io and their approach.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:41

And what they do is they are kind of product first and they hook up to your

Mallory Lee: 00:28:46

database or segment and they receive all the product events that are happening.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:51

And they digest those in a way that makes them available for marketing

Mallory Lee: 00:28:55

and segmentation and list building and, you know, dynamic email content.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:02

so I do think that that is the next wave of all of the marketing

Mallory Lee: 00:29:05

automation work that's going on.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:08

And.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:09

Even for something like, Terminus, for example, we never thought of ourselves at

Mallory Lee: 00:29:16

Terminus as a product led growth company.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:18

the real growth there happened before that nickname probably even existed.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:23

So if you take a step back and you think about something like Terminus, I

Mallory Lee: 00:29:28

remember being so frustrated that our product was not originally built in a way.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:34

That allowed us to see some of the details of the usage and that was nobody's fault.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:40

Like it just wasn't the way you did things back then.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:43

but we couldn't message people with that insight.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:45

And when our CSMs would be getting ready for a customer QBR had to go manually,

Mallory Lee: 00:29:51

see so many things about ad volumes and ad spend and how they're using the platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:58

but If I were talking to someone at terminus today, I would

Mallory Lee: 00:30:03

still suggest to them, like, you can be a product led company.

Mallory Lee: 00:30:07

You can do the things to get people to use the product more

Mallory Lee: 00:30:10

to grow their ad spend further.

Mallory Lee: 00:30:13

You can do things to help them grow and their database size will grow.

Mallory Lee: 00:30:18

And so even people who haven't historically felt that

Mallory Lee: 00:30:21

they were in a PLG company.

Mallory Lee: 00:30:23

need to be pursuing these opportunities to know how people are using the product

Mallory Lee: 00:30:28

and build that in to the messaging that you're bringing to your customers.

Justin Norris: 00:30:32

So with you about inflection, I've taken a few demos, had

Justin Norris: 00:30:35

David Gaudi on the show before and such big fans of, of what they're doing there.

Justin Norris: 00:30:39

I wonder if one of the advantages they have, and I think about this a lot

Justin Norris: 00:30:43

is, just simply that they're building the tool now and not, you know.

Justin Norris: 00:30:46

in 2010 or 2008 or whatever it was.

Justin Norris: 00:30:49

don't know how Salesforce and HubSpot have managed to do this, but there's

Justin Norris: 00:30:52

almost like, you know, your legacy tech debt of the product is this like black

Justin Norris: 00:30:57

hole sucking you back and there needs to be a certain amount of energy to

Justin Norris: 00:31:01

reach escape velocity, to like bring the platform into the modern era.

Justin Norris: 00:31:05

And it feels to me if I'm, I'm being Frank and I say this still as a Marketo

Justin Norris: 00:31:08

customer, but that the legacy platforms have generally not managed to do it.

Justin Norris: 00:31:12

Don't seem to be able to manage to do that.

Justin Norris: 00:31:14

And that's one of the big reasons why I feel like.

Justin Norris: 00:31:16

They'll be overtaken because they just can't evolve past that old architecture.

Justin Norris: 00:31:21

does that resonate with you at all?

Mallory Lee: 00:31:23

it does.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:23

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:23

I I'm on the exact same page as you.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:26

you know, I'm also friends with Dave and Aaron and And they will also be the first

Mallory Lee: 00:31:31

to tell you that they learned so much from the way they did it the first time.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:35

And building now is such a different advantage to the

Mallory Lee: 00:31:39

way that we built in the past.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:41

with that said, there are times where you see companies try to take

Mallory Lee: 00:31:48

a few quarters, hunker down, do an overhaul and get more modern.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:53

I think that there is a lot of courage in leaders who decide to do that.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:58

And it's not easy.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:59

And right now the environment's not very friendly to it because all of us are just

Mallory Lee: 00:32:04

trying to keep up with any kind of growth.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:08

especially after a lot of people's valuations got so out of whack.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:12

And so having a couple of off quarters is like, Very, very difficult right now.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:19

and it's happening to, you know, a lot of people, even who are maybe not

Mallory Lee: 00:32:22

trying to overhaul their products, but generally speaking, it just feels like

Mallory Lee: 00:32:26

a tough time to say, Hey, we're going to go reengineer this entire platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:32

And.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:33

what actually happened with, Nihilus is that our team did that,

Mallory Lee: 00:32:38

but they did it concurrently.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:40

They built the V3 version of the platform alongside the V2.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:44

And now there's a big migration in the works that's necessary for customers

Mallory Lee: 00:32:48

because, nothing could slow down while the other one was being built.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:53

And I think that's the definition of, fast paced.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:57

Technology that the cliche you hear is like, you're building

Mallory Lee: 00:33:00

the plane while you're flying it.

Mallory Lee: 00:33:02

And so some people are literally having to like build another plane next to

Mallory Lee: 00:33:06

the plane they're flying and then try to get people to hop over to it.

Mallory Lee: 00:33:10

And it's crazy.

Mallory Lee: 00:33:11

But, there are some products out there that if they don't do that kind

Mallory Lee: 00:33:15

of thing, it'll, be really tough.

Justin Norris: 00:33:17

It's a really interesting problem.

Justin Norris: 00:33:18

I feel like there should be like an HBR, article either way, it seems there's pain.

Justin Norris: 00:33:23

You know, if we think about the transition Salesforce and like how long that took

Justin Norris: 00:33:27

and, like, they managed to make it happen.

Justin Norris: 00:33:30

And in other cases, I look at Marketo and Marketo, not everyone was probably

Justin Norris: 00:33:34

aware of it, but they had the, short lived Marketo sky interface, which

Justin Norris: 00:33:37

was kind of like their new lightning.

Justin Norris: 00:33:39

And that project was failed and walked back.

Justin Norris: 00:33:41

And, you know, we're left with this kind of like Frankenstein interface

Justin Norris: 00:33:44

that no one really is satisfied with.

Justin Norris: 00:33:46

I feel like a lot of companies don't realize what an existential

Justin Norris: 00:33:48

problem it is, not just the UI.

Justin Norris: 00:33:50

Of course, those are UI changes, but the whole package, the building,

Justin Norris: 00:33:53

the new plane next to the one that's flying, I think is the perfect example.

Justin Norris: 00:33:56

of that, I want, I want to jump up and, and talk about

Justin Norris: 00:33:59

RevOps, writ large a little bit.

Justin Norris: 00:34:01

And, maybe actually I'll jump right to the punchline, which is, the

Justin Norris: 00:34:03

thing that everyone talks about, which maybe is, least consequential,

Justin Norris: 00:34:06

but RevOps versus GTMOps.

Justin Norris: 00:34:08

what is your take on this?

Justin Norris: 00:34:09

Is it just, we love labeling things.

Justin Norris: 00:34:11

Is it just a new name?

Justin Norris: 00:34:12

Is it something more meaningful than that in your point of view?

Mallory Lee: 00:34:15

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:15

I do have some strong opinions on this, so to skip to my punchline.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:20

I think they are the same thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:22

don't think there's any real difference between revenue operations

Mallory Lee: 00:34:25

and go to market operations.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:27

And I actually spoke about this somewhat recently at op stars.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:31

And that was what my entire session was about.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:33

Like.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:34

Is go to market operations, just a fad.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:37

You know, what do we need to be thinking about with this?

Mallory Lee: 00:34:40

And there are some people out there who, really think it's different.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:43

And what I have found in the research that it took for me to prepare for

Mallory Lee: 00:34:48

that, that speaking engagement is everyone has a different opinion.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:53

There's literally no two people who define anything the same.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:59

And so the takeaway for me is that.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:04

The word go to market operations is probably not going away.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:09

We need to find a way to coexist with it.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:12

we don't necessarily have to pick one camp or the other.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:15

I think the place where we end up having to choose is all about job titles.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:20

And, I'm a rev ops leader.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:23

I'm up for a promotion.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:25

Should I be lobbying to have my title changed because it's

Mallory Lee: 00:35:29

going to keep me Bye bye.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:30

You know, in this like modern labeling, you know, scheme the most common thing

Mallory Lee: 00:35:37

I can find is that people who use the go to market ops label, they are

Mallory Lee: 00:35:43

most likely reporting to a CRO who doesn't really oversee all of revenue.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:51

So if the CRO leads only sales.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:55

And the rev ops team is not solely sales ops, then they've gotten this

Mallory Lee: 00:36:02

like inherent bad name because there are people out there who say, Oh, well,

Mallory Lee: 00:36:08

sales ops is just rev ops relabeled.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:11

And it's not actually the full, bow tie or funnel or whatever.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:16

And then there were some people who are like, well, hold on.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:19

I am the whole funnel.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:21

I am called rev ops, but I do the entire customer journey.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:26

Just because my boss doesn't do the entire customer journey doesn't mean I don't.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:29

So I'm going to be called go to market ops now.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:32

And they're just trying to continue to buck this, negative trend that

Mallory Lee: 00:36:36

rev ops is still just sales ops.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:39

And I think, you know, both you and I have this like marketing operations background

Mallory Lee: 00:36:44

and it gives us a very unique way to think about what are these differences?

Mallory Lee: 00:36:49

Like, How do you do rev ops in a way that is not just sales ops relabeled?

Mallory Lee: 00:36:55

And I've been very lucky to work with leaders who are very supportive

Mallory Lee: 00:36:59

of a rev ops model that starts with marketing ends with CS and product.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:05

It's got to include product as well.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:07

So if you are, fully representing every part of that customer

Mallory Lee: 00:37:12

journey, call it whatever you want.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:14

That's all I care about is.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:16

getting every single phase as part of my data set, as part of my thought process,

Mallory Lee: 00:37:21

as part of the way I support the business.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:24

And I do think there are some people out there who maybe need

Mallory Lee: 00:37:26

to use that go to market wording.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:28

To overcome some kind of like reputation or stigma inside their company.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:33

And, you know, fine, do what you need to do.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:36

but it is hard for those of us who are just confused and it's like,

Mallory Lee: 00:37:39

well, what am I supposed to be?

Mallory Lee: 00:37:40

And one thing that I mentioned, at all stars is actually, you

Mallory Lee: 00:37:46

know, if we start to see such a divergence in these two categories,

Mallory Lee: 00:37:51

that one of them starts having.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:53

Like more earning power than the other.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:56

That's when I think you have to start paying more attention.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:59

Like if someone is paying 10 percent more or 20 percent more for a go to

Mallory Lee: 00:38:02

market operations leader, Then a rev ops leader, that's when I'm probably

Mallory Lee: 00:38:06

going to be like, okay, this is silly.

Justin Norris: 00:38:08

Back to your early point about the power of

Justin Norris: 00:38:10

branding, it is a real thing.

Justin Norris: 00:38:11

I'm so aligned with your, your point of view there, like the underlying problem is

Justin Norris: 00:38:15

whether it actually is all encompassing of all those different go to market teams or

Justin Norris: 00:38:21

not, no matter how many times you repaint it, it's not gonna, change that fun.

Justin Norris: 00:38:26

So that brings me to the question, because I think for some people it is

Justin Norris: 00:38:29

a question about whether a unified.

Justin Norris: 00:38:32

does make sense.

Justin Norris: 00:38:34

I've heard cases made in both directions.

Justin Norris: 00:38:36

It seems you're more in the unified camp, but I'd be curious to know

Justin Norris: 00:38:39

like why you think that's important.

Mallory Lee: 00:38:41

Yep.

Mallory Lee: 00:38:41

I am in the camp of unified, team.

Mallory Lee: 00:38:46

I also prefer a non CRO boss for rev ops to, a little bit for the objectivity a

Mallory Lee: 00:38:55

little bit, because I think that your, uh, Senior rev ops person and your

Mallory Lee: 00:39:00

CRO should be challenging each other and partnering and should be peers.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:06

is that always possible?

Mallory Lee: 00:39:08

Maybe not.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:08

I think that the unified model is really, really good for companies

Mallory Lee: 00:39:13

of a certain size and call it like series B to series D E.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:20

at some point the company becomes.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:23

Quite large.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:24

And that is when I see people start to veer back toward a more siloed

Mallory Lee: 00:39:30

model where they've got a big enough team where they really want that,

Mallory Lee: 00:39:34

like embedded support for the team.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:37

And, I think anything can work as long as the parties are all on the same

Mallory Lee: 00:39:43

page, working together, everything fits.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:46

I prefer the unified approach, but.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:48

I've been working in businesses of a size where that's easy to

Mallory Lee: 00:39:52

do and makes a lot of sense.

Justin Norris: 00:39:53

I prefer the unified approach to just conceptually

Justin Norris: 00:39:57

and based on some experience, but I do think, and you highlighted

Justin Norris: 00:40:00

like the marketing ops background.

Justin Norris: 00:40:02

I do think there are a lot of marketing operators who have a justified trepidation

Justin Norris: 00:40:07

about Am I going to lose my autonomy?

Justin Norris: 00:40:09

Am I just going to get sucked up underneath the sales ops person who

Justin Norris: 00:40:12

reports to a CRO and marketing won't care.

Justin Norris: 00:40:15

And then marketing brings in like shadow marketing ops to replace what they lost.

Justin Norris: 00:40:19

like, how do you address that fear?

Mallory Lee: 00:40:21

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:21

It's hard.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:22

I have been the marketing ops leader before who didn't want to go to Rev Ops.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:27

And so it's hilarious to me, uh, just thinking back because actually

Mallory Lee: 00:40:32

the digital, I was the marketing ops leader and I reported to the CMO.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:36

And then there was a sales ops team.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:39

That became a Rev Ops team and they started by joining, sales and CS

Mallory Lee: 00:40:45

and services operations altogether.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:47

And so it was like, what's Mallory going to do, you know, and I was already,

Mallory Lee: 00:40:52

appear to the Rev Ops leader and I already had a team of like 6 or 7 people.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:57

And for me personally, it was a career path thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:03

It was like, why do I need to go report to this guy?

Mallory Lee: 00:41:06

Who is my friend and buddy, who I totally respect and love, but like,

Mallory Lee: 00:41:11

I don't want him to be my boss.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:13

And back then I was much more in like a marketing career path.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:18

And so I thought it was going to mess up my career path.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:21

And I didn't want to combine, my very next role after that was terminus.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:25

And when I got there, They already had the combined unified

Mallory Lee: 00:41:29

model reporting to the CFO.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:31

And so I was really open to it.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:33

I didn't know what I didn't know, and I just wanted to have an open mind.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:37

And then I found out how much I liked it and how great it was.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:42

And I think that it depends a lot on who is leading that team.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:46

And when a marketing ops person.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:49

Is under a rev ops umbrella that reports to the CRO who doesn't own marketing.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:57

I don't blame them in the slightest.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:59

I don't think I would want to do that either.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:01

is it doable?

Mallory Lee: 00:42:02

Yes.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:03

Is it ideal?

Mallory Lee: 00:42:04

Probably not.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:05

every company has to kind of decide what kind of CRO they're going to have.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:09

A lot of people are hesitant to move marketing under a CRO

Mallory Lee: 00:42:13

because they already have a CMO.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:15

So again, that's a career path thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:17

Like what do I do with this amazing CMO?

Mallory Lee: 00:42:20

Who doesn't want to report to her peer, who leads sales and CS, like

Mallory Lee: 00:42:24

you can't unify in that model.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:26

And, a lot of times it does come back to the people, but on the same

Mallory Lee: 00:42:30

topic of people, if everyone can work together and everybody knows

Mallory Lee: 00:42:34

like how to, how to, how Talk about things and unify the data across the

Mallory Lee: 00:42:39

customer journey and work together.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:41

You can overcome, being on different teams if you have to,

Justin Norris: 00:42:44

I'm curious what your experience was like reporting into

Justin Norris: 00:42:48

the CFO, because I do agree that like having some Switzerland neutral,

Justin Norris: 00:42:52

like party makes the most sense.

Justin Norris: 00:42:54

CFO is often like they have a really valuable lens on the business, but they're

Justin Norris: 00:42:57

often a bit distanced from the day to day.

Justin Norris: 00:42:59

Did that impair at all?

Justin Norris: 00:43:00

Or was it, was it useful?

Mallory Lee: 00:43:02

for myself, it was very useful.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:04

I was lucky because I was working with a CFO who had a Rev Ops background.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:11

So, not exactly normal.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:13

but that's the kind of CFO that I was working with.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:16

now at other businesses, where the CFO doesn't have a Rev Ops background.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:21

I still think there's so much value there and there's so much exchange

Mallory Lee: 00:43:25

of knowledge that goes both ways that everybody benefits from.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:30

And so I have really loved learning about the more financial side of operations.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:36

And.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:37

Being tightly connected to an FP and a team can be a really big help

Mallory Lee: 00:43:43

for a rev ops group that doesn't have a lot of analyst horsepower.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:47

And that's been me.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:48

I've been lucky to have a lot of big teams, a lot of great teams, but there's

Mallory Lee: 00:43:52

just never enough analyst horsepower to.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:56

Look into all the things you want to look into and go as deep as you want.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:00

So those FPNA analysts have been my lifeline more times than I

Mallory Lee: 00:44:04

can count because they just, You know, they know how to get in

Mallory Lee: 00:44:07

there and find answers to things.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:10

and I think that if Rev Ops and finance are on the same page, you can

Mallory Lee: 00:44:14

do the right things for comp plans.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:18

You can do the right things for, you know, all kinds of different applications,

Mallory Lee: 00:44:23

but the Rev Ops leader has to have that ability to speak up and not just like

Mallory Lee: 00:44:28

be cheap because they work for the CFO.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:31

so for that reason.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:33

CFO is not necessarily my number one choice.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:36

I think that it is a fine choice, but I think for me, CEO has always been my

Mallory Lee: 00:44:42

preference because when it's time to sit down and plan and put something together,

Mallory Lee: 00:44:48

you know, you've got the CEO representing the board and the insane growth

Mallory Lee: 00:44:53

targets that are probably out there.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:56

You've got the CRO representing his team and his bottoms up

Mallory Lee: 00:45:00

view of what is possible from a quota attainment standpoint.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:04

and you have the CFO view who is going to be pushing for higher quotas, going

Mallory Lee: 00:45:09

to be pushing for a more scalable comp plan where, you know, we're not

Mallory Lee: 00:45:14

maybe paying out as much commission.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:15

Like everyone has these vested interests and their job is to bring

Mallory Lee: 00:45:20

their vested interests to the table.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:23

And then you've just got your neighborhood Rev Ops person mediating this whole thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:27

And it's like, okay, I see everybody's perspective.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:30

I understand like why everyone is motivated the way they

Mallory Lee: 00:45:33

are for me personally.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:35

I want to help us get to an answer that serves as many of those goals as possible.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:40

And the right answer is typically somewhere in the middle.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:43

And so that is the kind of leadership role that I've just

Mallory Lee: 00:45:47

really come to enjoy is like.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:49

Hey, Mr.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:50

CRO, like you're getting a little crazy.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:52

Like we're not going to be paying X, Y, and Z when so and so is

Mallory Lee: 00:45:57

only at 50 percent of quota.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:58

That's just not going to happen.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:00

And you have to be that like translator between these guys that are gals and,

Mallory Lee: 00:46:04

and the voice of reason sometimes, um, But that's, the fun part.

Justin Norris: 00:46:08

It's a great vision.

Justin Norris: 00:46:09

I love it.

Justin Norris: 00:46:10

I have one more random question that I want to talk a little bit about what

Justin Norris: 00:46:12

you're doing with RevTechReview, because I think it's a really cool idea and,

Justin Norris: 00:46:16

something that's needed, um, but it's run product consulting because I'm a little

Justin Norris: 00:46:19

bit jealous if I'm being honest, because.

Justin Norris: 00:46:21

When I use a tool, all I want to do is like tell them how to change it.

Justin Norris: 00:46:24

Like, like fix this, do that.

Justin Norris: 00:46:26

Like you just feel as a user, like you really know.

Justin Norris: 00:46:28

And when you've used enough software, you can really see it.

Justin Norris: 00:46:30

So it feels like a really plum job.

Justin Norris: 00:46:32

So is it, is it as much fun as it sounds like getting to

Justin Norris: 00:46:35

help some of these companies?

Justin Norris: 00:46:36

I

Mallory Lee: 00:46:36

It has been for sure.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:38

how do I describe it?

Mallory Lee: 00:46:39

So, at exact target and part, well, part out specifically, I had some

Mallory Lee: 00:46:43

pretty strong opinions because I was a user and they were receptive.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:48

But again, it was like, we had just been acquired by Salesforce.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:52

Who knew what was going to happen with the product?

Mallory Lee: 00:46:54

Like everybody was a little hesitant to say, yeah, let's just

Mallory Lee: 00:46:57

dive in and change everything.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:59

and at Terminus, I was always trying to get them to pursue some product

Mallory Lee: 00:47:03

ideas that would give us better data for our customers and better ways

Mallory Lee: 00:47:06

to like prove the ROI of doing ABM.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:11

And sometimes they just didn't get prioritized.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:13

and so as an employee, I think the.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:17

Opinions that you bring to the table.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:19

A lot of times they are listened to and valued, but they're not

Mallory Lee: 00:47:22

the same as a customer opinion.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:23

And so we're always kind of like favoring the roadmap for the customers.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:27

being a product advisor specifically, I should, clarify for A young product, like

Mallory Lee: 00:47:34

for a startup, it has been, just so cool because you describe your pain point.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:40

you help people understand what you personally are going through and

Mallory Lee: 00:47:43

like why you want to see a thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:45

And if you can describe it well enough, and if you can, get your

Mallory Lee: 00:47:49

point across in a way that someone can actually go and build that.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:52

And then they go build it.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:54

And then a couple of weeks later, they show it to you has like mind blowing.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:58

it's the coolest thing that I've probably done, so far, which

Mallory Lee: 00:48:01

has been really, really fun.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:03

So it's not a full time gig.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:05

I'm never going to be like a chief product officer.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:08

but to shed that light for someone who wants your expertise

Mallory Lee: 00:48:11

and to see them go act on it.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:14

And, then to hear, Hey, we demoed your new feature and they loved it.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:18

You know, like That's really cool.

Justin Norris: 00:48:19

feel you a hundred percent.

Justin Norris: 00:48:21

well, hopefully it's something you can keep doing, uh, you know, as a, Side gig,

Mallory Lee: 00:48:25

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:25

Except I keep telling them that Rev Ops is not the buyer.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:27

So I, I might be like working myself out of a gig here, but

Justin Norris: 00:48:33

Of the bar, but we can speak on behalf of

Justin Norris: 00:48:35

the buyer quite often, which

Mallory Lee: 00:48:36

yes.

Justin Norris: 00:48:37

just maybe just as good maybe better than they can speak on behalf

Justin Norris: 00:48:40

of themselves let's talk rev tech review and I love maybe just in your own words

Justin Norris: 00:48:44

what the vision is why you started it?

Justin Norris: 00:48:46

I working with molly who I also know molly bodensteiner so it's

Justin Norris: 00:48:50

a small small world in rev up.

Justin Norris: 00:48:51

So yeah, tell us about it

Mallory Lee: 00:48:52

Well, first Molly's just so cool and awesome.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:55

and the way that this got started was, I was continuing to see on LinkedIn,

Mallory Lee: 00:49:02

all of these different founders posting about their tool and their product.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:06

And we have the best data and so and so lie about our data and ours is better.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:10

And we did a study here, look at our study.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:13

And how can the vendor put out their own study of whose data is better

Mallory Lee: 00:49:17

and expect us to just believe it?

Mallory Lee: 00:49:19

cause it's totally biased.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:21

And it

Mallory Lee: 00:49:22

And I literally had just left a comment on one of Linda's posts from common room.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:27

And I said, we need an unbiased, open platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:31

Rev tech review to do this stuff.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:34

so that's just kind of where the idea popped into, um, my head and, talk

Mallory Lee: 00:49:39

to Molly about it and she liked it.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:41

So the whole premise is that we have purchased a lot of technology and.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:48

We are not the expert in everything, but we're not afraid to have an opinion.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:52

And I think that is a little different than some of the review sites out

Mallory Lee: 00:49:56

there who don't necessarily try to advocate one way or the other.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:01

They just kind of put it in the hands of customers to, you know, get those ratings,

Mallory Lee: 00:50:05

get that volume, get their scores.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:07

And I don't know about you, but I've worked at several companies that have

Mallory Lee: 00:50:13

been in meetings talking about their bad rating and how can we fix this?

Mallory Lee: 00:50:18

How do we send gift cards to the right people to get them

Mallory Lee: 00:50:22

to go and change our rating?

Mallory Lee: 00:50:24

And it's just really frustrating.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:26

Like it's not the right way for people to learn about technology.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:30

and it's easy.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:31

Easy for me to sit back and try to, but anyway, so what we decided to

Mallory Lee: 00:50:35

do about it was, the RevTech review.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:36

So we meet with the vendor, we get a demo, we do a lot of research.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:41

We try to talk to their customers.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:43

and we try to use it ourselves if, if we can, if there's like a trial or something,

Mallory Lee: 00:50:47

or if we have that past experience.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:50

And then we just do one editorial style review to give

Mallory Lee: 00:50:53

people, our perspective on it.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:55

And so it's been really fun so far.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:58

It's, a passion project, I guess you could say.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:01

and we're not doing much with like any kind of monetization.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:04

So it's a slower growing thing, but it's been great so far.

Justin Norris: 00:51:08

Well, something that's very much needed.

Justin Norris: 00:51:10

As you noted, I mean, the G twos of the world are useful.

Justin Norris: 00:51:13

are ways to influence with gift cards with things.

Justin Norris: 00:51:16

and something that's objective, something that's also coming from a.

Justin Norris: 00:51:20

An operator that's putting their, face on it and stamp on it.

Justin Norris: 00:51:23

I think is, really useful too.

Justin Norris: 00:51:24

So very cool.

Justin Norris: 00:51:26

congrats.

Justin Norris: 00:51:26

I know, uh, from experience, how much, passion projects can take a lot of

Justin Norris: 00:51:30

passion and a lot of work and a lot of free time, wish you good luck with that.

Justin Norris: 00:51:33

And yeah, I just want to say, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Justin Norris: 00:51:36

And we, we went through a lot of different territories, but yeah,

Justin Norris: 00:51:38

just super, super interesting, really appreciate all your insights

Mallory Lee: 00:51:42

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:42

Thank you.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:43

Appreciate your time too.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:44

And there are some really good questions in there.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:47

It felt like memory lane for a couple minutes, but, uh, I appreciate it.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:51

It was fun.