Habits of a Highly Effective COO - Ben Marchal

Nov 11, 2023

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Benjamin Marchal is perhaps the most effective revenue operator I've ever met.

We work together, and so I've been fortunate to collaborate with Ben often. I've learned a ton from studying him in action.

However I wanted to go deeper into exactly how he's so effective while shouldering massive responsibility as COO of a $50 million ARR company.

We go deep into his vision of operations and unpack the mindset, routines, and methodologies that help him be successful.

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About Today's Guest

Benjamin Marchal is COO of 360Learning, a learning platform that enables companies to upskill from within by turning their experts into champions for employee, customer, and partner growth.

Ben worked at McKinsey for two years before joining 360Learning, where he started as an Operations Manager and progressed to become COO in 4 years.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-marchal-89a01180/

Key Topics

[00:00] - Introduction
[01:15] - Ben's vision of operations. Ops exists to help each team perform better today and to be ready for the future. Four key activities. 1) Source of truth for KPIs. 2) Identifying improvement areas. 3) Helping teams implement those improvements. 4) Maintaining and running the business.
[02:38] - How Ops teams can balance taking requests from teams they support with proactively pursuing strategic improvements. If Ops teams don't monitor KPIs, then they are stuck in implementation mode and don't partake in strategic discussions. Conversely if they focus solely on strategy, they become disconnected from the field and fail. Both are important.
[05:34] - How Ops teams can make time for reviewing KPIs. Ben looks at them first thing every morning. Creates a sense of ownership. The need to create a KPI tree (first, second, third-level metrics). Creates a clear picture of where to focus efforts. This enables strategic discussion with executives and ability to push back on requests. Importance of being fact-based, rational, agnostic.
[11:24] - Ben's experience at McKinsey and how it's impacted him. Types of projects at McKinsey. The onboarding experience.
[16:48] - Ben's journey at 360Learning, going from Operations Manager to COO. Development of incentives models. Working in Customer Success Ops, fixing churn. Demonstrated that applying the McKinsey model to in-house operations worked well. Began to coach the Operations team. Building the data team. Creating the business plan - demonstrated that he understood the business end-to-end, more exposure to investors and the Board. Move to COO. He isn't a functional expert in every scope, but his job is to make sure the company works on the right things.
[22:19] - Ben's mindset and whether it's evolved as he's gained more responsibility. He believes the mindset has been the same. Four critical things: 1) Being low ego, agnostic. Focused on data and what it shows. 2) Being both big picture and granular at the same time. 3) Ability to cut through noise and prioritize. 4) Ability to communicate at different levels. These are all things he learned at McKinsey.
[26:10] - Looking at a practical example of how Ben prioritizes, given the huge scope of problems that he is responsible for. He thinks about the business in three main areas - demand creation, conversion, and retention. (Product is present in all three.) He identifies what is working well and what is not, then considers what will drive most value for the company using an impact/feasibility matrix.
[28:55] - Challenges of applying this in practice. Justin notes that Ben is also highly responsive to communication, which isn't typical of all execs. Ben explains how he uses a notebook to prioritize the main topics he needs to care about. For "must-do" items, he blocks time in his calendar.
[31:16] - Ben's point of view on go-to-market strategy. First, need product market fit. second, identify who you are selling to - ICP. Could be industry, or size, or use-case. Identify the personas within those companies. Third, how to get the product in front of those people - inbound, outbound, etc.
[36:31] - Importance of qualitative feedback. Ben listens to a lot of calls. KPIs tell you what is happening, calls and voice of the customer tells you why it's happening. Both are important ways of discovering reality.
[38:53] - Challenges of being an international company. Differences in business culture between France and North America.
[43:36] - How the tech world will evolve going forward now that capital is less available.

Resource Links

The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking - Book by Barbara Minto of McKinsey on her communication framework called "The Pyramid Principle." Ben introduced this into the onboarding for everyone at 360Learning.

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