Operations with Sean Lane

The tech industry is definitely one of trends and hype for those trends. Go on Twitter, go on LinkedIn -- you’ll find evangelists for the next big thing.One of those new shiny things in our industry is PLG, or product-led growth. So on this episode, we're going under the hood of product-led growth to figure out how Operators should think about it and what considerations to make in this Go-To-Market motion.Our guide, and our guest on this episode, is one of the foremost thought leaders on product-led growth: Kyle Poyar. Kyle is the Operating Partner at OpenView, the VC firm that coined the term "product-led growth" in 2016.In our conversation, we talk about how to make smart pricing decisions in product-led growth, the burden it creates on Operators, and why he views this approach as less of an on/off switch and more of a light dimmer. 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 @DriftPodcasts

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It's annual planning time, so we decided to throw it back to one of our earliest episodes all about the annual planning process at Salesforce.com.On this episode, we go back in time – to 2012, to be exact – when special guest Bala Balabaskaran first joined Salesforce as Vice President of Go to Market Technology and Operations. At the time, Salesforce was a $2 billion dollar startup going through hypergrowth. Sean and Bala talk about Salesforce's operating model and what it was like to be in charge of the go to market planning process at a large company with a startup mentality. Want to know Bala's step by step approach for building out the annual planning process at Salesforce? Listen to the full episode.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 @HYPERGROWTH_pod

Ever heard of a "boomerang" employee? Someone who left, and then later comes back to rejoin the company? We’ve had a few awesome boomerang stories during my time at Drift, but we just recently announced arguably our most significant one yet.This week's guest is Dave Gerhardt (or DG), who just returned to Drift as our Chief Brand Officer. Dave helped build Drift into one of the most well-known brands in our industry, and then spent the last 2 years as CMO of Privy, which was recently acquired, That’s a pretty good boomerang story. In our conversation, we talk about how his views have evolved on Marketing Ops, how he thinks about measuring the unmeasurable in brand marketing, and which Marketing Metrics book is currently sitting on DG’s bookshelf. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and Dave on Twitter @Seany_Biz @davegerhardt @DriftPodcasts

A lot has been written about the different types of team models and reporting structures in Operations. And, of course, it’s important to be thoughtful about how you design your team and set each individual on the team up for success.But not everyone always has a choice about the team they are joining or where they sit in an org chart. I’ve come to believe that the mindset you instill in your team and 3 other consistent truths matter far more than who you report to. In this episode, we explore those 3 consistent truths and the different models out there for Operations teams.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 @DriftPodcasts

At hypergrowth companies, a pretty common sign that your company is growing up is when it comes time to purchase and implement a tool to help you Configure, Price, and Quote your deals (or CPQ).CPQ tools, though, have a pretty negative reputation amongst both Sales teams and Ops teams alike. So we set out to talk to someone to learn why, and to put together a blueprint for how to approach these tools in a smarter, more successful way.That someone is Eyal Orgil, the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at DealHub, a top-rated CPQ platform. In our conversation, we talk about why CPQ gets a bad reputation, how to implement and use CPQ tools the right way, and how Eyal and his team approach selling and servicing such a complex product.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 @DriftPodcasts

It’s rare that a guest prompts us to completely rethink how we approach the work we do and our roles in our companies.That’s exactly what happened, though, with this week’s guest, Todd Abbott. Todd is the CEO of InsightSquared, the forecasting and analytics platform.Todd has dramatically changed the way he thinks about sales, sales funnels, and what he calls the "science of sales". And on this episode, he shares that evolution with all of us.In our conversation, Todd and I talk about what made him change his views, the power of system-captured engagement, and his mission to get reps out of the data entry business.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 @DriftPodcasts

As operators, we spend so much time thinking about the Day-In-The-Life of the sales reps at our companies.There are so many different things competing for time and mental headspace in a rep’s day in the life. Apps, tools, managers, Salesforce, prospectsOur guest on this episode, Michelle Pietsch, is an expert in helping to cut out the noise and getting reps back to what they want to do most: sell.Michelle is the Vice President of Revenue at Dooly, a tool that helps reps to update Salesforce, take sales notes, and easily manage all their deals. In our conversation, we talk about building sales teams without much instrumentation, how to get on the reps’ level before pushing out processes, and competing for that precious reps’ workspace. 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 @DriftPodcasts

When you buy a new tool, your organization has placed a considerable investment in buying that tool, not to mention the investment made in Operations folks like us to implement and run these tools.So why is it that so many tools go unadopted? Or, just as commonly, why do so many end up only being used for a fraction of what they’re capable of? In this episode, I’m going to outline 4 steps to launching a new tool at your organization that people will actually use. 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 @DriftPodcasts

It’s easy to say that the relationship between Sales and Sales Ops is an important one. We all get that. But how do you make that relationship actually work?In this episode, we sit down with Kelley Chan, the Director of Commercial Sales Strategy and Execution at GlobalFoundries. Kelley has a unique set of experiences that ranges from working at a massive organization like Box to being, as she puts it, "a one-woman band" at People.ai. In our conversation, we dive into the metric categories she created for coaching reps, how she brings business context to data, and why everything we were taught about ratios in Sales planning is wrong.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 @DriftPodcasts