Aligning RevOps with C-Level Priorities - Jen Igartua

Oct 28, 2023

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Today we're joined by Jen Igartua, a RevOps leader and 10+ year operations consultant.

We discuss her vision of the go-to-market engine as a product, how to ensure the work of RevOps is aligned with C-level priorities, and the importance of focus for enabling deep work.

Jen shares some awesome knowledge here for how RevOps teams can achieve greater impact and how operators can level-up their careers.

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About Today's Guest

Jen Igartua is CEO of Go Nimbly, a revenue operations consultancy for scaling businesses.

From Jen's LinkedIn: "I’m...working with high-growth companies to create a frictionless, human buying experience with RevOps."

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-igartua/

Key Topics

[00:00] - Introduction
[01:02] - Jen’s consulting background. How she helped start Go Nimbly.
[02:37] - Definition of RevOps. Metaphor of a business as a film studio, where the goal is to make a movie, GTM teams are actors, and RevOps is the director.
[03:56] - How operators can step into this director role. If you’re mid-to-junior level and in a company that doesn’t get RevOps, you likely won’t make a huge impact and need to find another environment. Or it may be more a matter of you needing to improve your skills. These include the ability to say no, having an intake process, and keeping priorities aligned to the C-level.
[07:31] - Whether operators have a self-limiting mindset, focused on their craft vs. business impact. Growth mindset is important. A lot of this is new and people are still figuring it out.
[08:34] - RevOps as a product and whether the “customer” is the GTM teams or the literal external customer. Jen’s point of view is that we need to understand what RevOps truly brings to the business and to the things the CEO cares about. Sometimes that may be solving for customer needs, but in other times it could be something different (e.g., data readiness in preparation for an IPO). Ultimately we achieve our customer-facing goals via the GTM teams, so we need to care about their experience and happiness.
[14:52] - How Go Nimbly interacts with the different GTM teams. Whether RevOps is just sales ops rebranded. How silos form and evolve in companies. People are good at aligning vertically but poor at aligning horizontally.
[18:13] - People align themselves based on how power and authority flows in an organization. If the CMO and CRO aren’t aligned, their teams won’t be either. Justin’s experience on the importance of having a unifying force, like a COO, to bring them into alignment. Jen thinks this is ideal, although not something every company has. Ultimately a company is like a complex system. All systems have weaknesses, and so we need to mitigate those weaknesses somehow.
[20:22] - Gap-first thinking: how to identify initiatives with the biggest impact. Start with the business gap vs. with ideas in a backlog. When you have your goal, then identify what levers you can pull to reach it. Typically these levers include “3VC” - volume, velocity, value, and conversion. You can identify where your weaknesses are via reporting or through durability testing (aka stress testing). Go ahead and become the customer.
[24:32] - Why gap-first thinking is hard. Lack of time for operators to step back and audit their work.
[26:13] - The importance of focus at work. Distractions are pervasive. How we can create space for deep work. Completing tasks quickly gives a dopamine hit but doesn’t always yield the impact of deep work.
[28:43] - Machine work vs. innovation work. Both are necessary. It’s a great exercise to audit the effort needed to run business as usual. Then you can explain to the business what your capacity is. The innovation work is how we transform the business.
[31:11] - Pros and cons of outsourcing RevOps. Companies can dial up skillsets when they need them or manage case work that internal resources may not want to do forever. The importance of having an internal champion at a company that can help connect the dots with their own leadership. The challenge for consultants of context switching. Why Go Nimbly tries to keep consultants on only a few accounts at a time.
[36:32] - Jen’s journey growing Go Nimbly. There are people who have figured out professional services firms - important to learn from them.
[38:28] - What innovations is Jen seeing in the marketplace? Product-led sales is a major focus. Data is also important. Companies no longer putting every piece of data into Salesforce.

Resource Links

The Boutique: How To Start, Scale, And Sell A Professional Services Firm - Amazon - Recommended resource for running a professional services firm.
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - Another resource on systems thinking.
Thinking in Systems - Amazon - One of Jen’s recommended resources for systems thinking.
How RevOps Teams Find Gaps - Go Nimbly article describing durability testing and 3VC.
What is Gap-First Thinking for RevOps Teams? - Article on Go Nimbly’s website describing their philosophy of gap-first thinking.

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