Let’s face it: prospecting is really really hard. In 2022, there is more information than ever before at our fingertips to help us prospect, but there’s also more information than ever before to distract us from doing the work that matters. Often, the burden to find that balance falls on SDR teams.In this episode, we talked to someone who knows what running a successful, modern SDR Organization looks like. That someone is Melissa Raber, the Senior Director of Revenue Operations and Sales Development at Workiva.In our conversation, we talk about the 3 C’s of SDR hiring, how to design the SDR "Day In the Life" to remove distractions, and why she views an SDR Team not as meeting setters, but as the air traffic controllers of an organization.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz and @DriftPodcasts.

We can get caught up sometimes in what the most ideal and advanced versions of an Operations team can look like.It can be easy to forget the early days of start-ups when an Operations team can be responsible for just about anything and everything that doesn’t yet have a home.That’s exactly what happened with our guest, Zubin Teherani. Zubin is the Co-Founder and COO of LeagueSide, a company that makes youth sports sponsorships easy by bringing together over 16,000 youth sports leagues with big brands.Zubin and his team have used Operations as an incubator for every core function in the company. In our conversation, we explore how and why they used Ops as a catch all, we talk about the UI/UX of Operations, and why Zubin’s stint outside of Operations was what unlocked a whole new way of doing things inside Operations.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz and @DriftPodcasts.

How each of us learns is a pretty fascinating thing, isn't it? How we retain information, or more frequently, how we don’t retain it.Our guest on this episode, Marcela Piñeros is an expert in learning. Marcela is the Global Head of Sales Enablement at Stripe, the online payments provider most recently valued at $95 billion.Marcela and her team enable a rapidly growing Sales organization and in her time since joining Stripe, Marcela has set out to transform the way the company enables its reps. In our conversation, we talk about how to avoid the hamster wheel of enablement content, the way she reinvented Stripe’s new hire program to democratize tribal knowledge, and why she thinks the word Onboarding is a lie.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz and @DriftPodcasts.

This week, we're throwing it back to the most popular episode of Operations ever.It's hard to take what looks like a perfect plan on paper and translate that to real life. It's even harder inside of a hypergrowth company. In this episode, we go inside one of the fastest growing companies out there: Snowflake.Our guest Rachel Haley spent two and a half years at Snowflake as their Senior Director of Sales Operations, and is now the co-founder and CEO of Clarus Designs, a consulting firm focused on operational efficiency.Rachel saw Snowflake explode from 30 reps to 450 during her time there. In our conversation, we talk about the insane growth she saw, how they were constantly planning and re-planning at Snowflake, and why Snowflake’s CRO once told her he wished they had invested and hired in Sales Ops even sooner.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz and @DriftPodcasts.

For our 75th episode, we wanted to focus on you, the Operators. What makes you tick? What are the characteristics we see in each other? What do we aspire to be?On today’s episode, we’re going to answer those questions, and identify the 3 common traits of the most successful Operators.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz and @DriftPodcasts.

There’s an “aha” moment when you’re teaching someone something. You become more clear in your own point of view and you realize how much you know about that particular topic.That moment of realization is exactly what happened to this week’s guest, Mallun Yen. Mallun is the the Founder and General Partner of Operator Collective, a VC fund and community comprised of tech’s most sought-after operators from diverse backgrounds.Her “aha” moment led her to approach the unapproachable world of Venture Capital in a whole new way: through the lens of an operator. In our conversation, we explore that “aha” moment behind The Operator Collective, why venture didn’t feel accessible to her and Operators like her, and how we all can become like the 137 Operator LPs in Operator Collective’s fund.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and Mallun on Twitter @Seany_Biz @mallun and @DriftPodcasts

What if someone told you they could increase your company’s bookings by 20 - 40%? Not a bad hook, right?The strategy to support that hook comes from this week’s guest, Greg Callahan. Greg is a Partner at Bain & Company, and the Founder of Coro Account Planning.In his work with Bain’s portfolio companies, Greg has developed a blueprint for getting the most yield out of your customers that have the most potential: Strategic Account Management.In our conversation, we review the four core components of strategic account management, we offer specific plays you can steal to run within your customer base, and Greg explains why if you’re being strategic on everything, you’re being strategic on nothing.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz and @DriftPodcasts.

What does it mean to create category? A lot of companies say they are creating their own category, so we wanted to talk to someone who is an expert in it.That expert is Allison Pickens, former COO at Gainsight and now an investor and advisor through her work as the Founder and General Partner of The New Normal Fund.In our conversation, we talk about how Allison and the team at Gainsight created the Customer Success Category, why she believes it’s all about elevating a community of like-minded people, and we end up discovering that the next wave might just be tailor-made for Operators like us. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️  review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and Allison on Twitter @Seany_Biz @PickensAllison and @DriftPodcasts.

It’s that time of year when everyone is taking stock of what they accomplished (and didn't accomplish) last year, so we decided to bring back one of our earlier episodes all about setting goals.Luckily, self-proclaimed goals nerd Karen Borchert, formerly COO at Flywheel and current COO of ROKA, is here to help. In our conversation, we go deep on the goal-setting framework she used at Flywheel, the special quadrant she built to help you plot all of your goals, and if you stick around until the end, you’ll get to hear about how Karen was inspired by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda (seriously).  Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️  review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz and @DriftPodcasts.

On this episode, we're taking you inside a recent LIVE panel hosted by Drift and Modern Sales Pros on a topic everyone in Operations has likely wrangled with at one point or another: alignment. And not just any type of alignment: Sales and Marketing alignment.And to tackle such a meaty topic, we were lucky to be joined by two people who have been in different, important roles in creating that alignment: Kate Adams, the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Validity and Jaclyn Balben, the VP of Operations at Bamboo Health. In our conversation, we talked about the bipartisan role Ops can play in this alignment, how Sales and Marketing can show they are truly looking to be partners with each other, and what Kate has found to be true in the best Operators she’s ever worked with. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️  review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz and @DriftPodcasts.