Operations with Sean Lane

Ian Mesey spent years in consulting until he made the switch to the practitioner side...and landed smack in the middle of a company in hypergrowth as Head of Revenue Operations at Bloomreach. In this episode, Sean and Ian talk about operational debt, the value of unsexy projects (like governance), and his unique approach to problem-solving.

How much time are you spending thinking strategically about the talent on your team? If you’re Maribel Olvera (SVP, Operations at The Predictive Index), then the answer is pretty much all the time. PI is a company that specializes in how you can tie your talent strategy to your corporate strategy (and the 17 unique reference profiles that they’ve created to help the rest of us do it too). About four years ago, the company was acquired and changed the trajectory of the business. Sean chats with Maribel to learn how this dramatic shift in corporate strategy led to a big change its talent strategy and – you guessed it – its operational strategy as well. Is there one PI profile that shows up more often in Ops candidates? Listen to the full episode to find out.

On this episode of #Operations, host Sean Lane talks with Auvik Network's CMO, Jacqui Murphy. Jacqui and Sean talk about how she's scaled from a marketing team of one to now oversee marketing and business development teams totaling more than 50 people. Plus, why she's banished vanity metrics for good, her belief that the magic comes from the people on her teams – not just the data and much more. Tune in for their in depth conversation now.

On this episode of Operations, Sean interviews a post-sale ops pro focused on customer operations. Together they talk about the direct impact operations can have on the customer experience. A lot of hypergrowth companies focus on short term wins versus long term gains. But for Cole Schofield, Gusto's Head of Customer Experience, that just won't cut it. Because short term wins never justify the long term sacrifice. It's better to invest in the future. So Cole and his team avoid taking shortcuts at all costs and take ownership of the customer journey from the very beginning – from implementation, into servicing, and all the way through renewal or upsell. Cole says it's his job to have the best understanding and the best analysis of that customer experience. To learn how Cole and his team solve for the long term, create target personas, and bring a data driven approach to prioritization and decision making, listen to the full episode.

On this episode of Operations, Sean interviews Michelle Palleschi, the COO of Sendoso, the world's first sending platform. Because, as Michelle puts it, sending stuff is hard. But that kind of complexity is what Michelle lives for – she previously worked in finance at Cisco and Apple. Ever wonder how Apple forecasts new product launches? Well, re-engineering that process was Michelle's job. She shares a few stories from her time there – including how her team was able to predict the success of the rose gold iPhone in China. Michelle and Sean dig into the level of planning required when you're launching brand new products where the market demand is completely unknown, what the decay curve means for ops, and why it counts to take out the trash. Want to learn about the behind-the-scenes operations that enable Michelle and her team at Sendoso to send out 10,000 handwritten notes in any given shift? Listen to the full episode.

On this episode of #Operations, host Sean Lane sits down with VC and former Salesforce EVP and GM, Brett Queener. Queener joined the company when it was at $11 million in revenue. Today, Salesforce's market cap stands at $123 billion. This monumental growth is due in large part to Queener's focus on specialization and segmentation – essential for the success of any ops pro.

On the very first official episode of #Operations, host Sean Lane sits down with Will Collins, VP of Operations at Drift. Together they look inward to focus on operations at Drift – Will was employee number 13. So what exactly does it mean to work in ops at a hypergrowth company? You'll find out in this episode.

Today on #Operations, host Sean Lane sits down with Okta's VP of Business Operations, Jake Randall. Okta's market cap is now $9 billion...not a bad company to learn from. Together Sean and Jake discuss how to actually measure your ops team's performance, scaling through hypergrowth, Jake's career path at Okta, what he's reading now and much more.

Marko Savic, CEO of FunnelCake, shares insights on structuring Ops teams for revenue growth, challenges in sales follow-ups, bridging marketing and sales with data analysis, aligning incentives for success, and emotional challenges in job roles.

On this episode of Operations, Sean meets with Sylvia Kainz, VP of Global Revenue Operations at Eventbrite. Sylvia joined Eventbrite when the company was 12 years into its existence and on the brink of going public– and was tasked with creating a RevOps team from scratch. No small feat. Sylvia shares what that experience was like and what she learned from it, as well as her definition for RevOps, how to give ops pros a home, and her recipe for the best way to organize and structure your RevOps team.