If you're looking to transition from a technical MOPS expert to a leader - or if you're an existing MOPS leader who wants to up their game - Jessica Kao is the person to learn from.She built a career as an expert MOPS consultant before becoming an enterprise marketing ops leader. Listen to this conversation and you'll quickly see: she's ridiculously good at the business side of marketing operations. She knows how to plan, how to communicate, and how to lead. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest Jessica Kao is Senior Director, Marketing Operations and Martech at Cloudflare. She has 10+ years of experience inspiring a nation of marketers through authenticity. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesskao/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:40] - How Jessica defines the mandate of marketing ops. It is the accelerant to marketing. Everything flows through the pipes of marketing operations. [03:02] - How to determine if marketing ops is doing a good job. “Winning” means the CMO views you as a strategic partner and when you’re a bullet point in the board slide deck. But all projects should be aligned to the CMO’s initiatives and marketing KPIs. Marketing ops succeeds when the marketing team reaches its goals. [06:03] - Marketing ops shouldn’t just view themselves as the executor of another team’s strategy. Marketing ops can bring clarity, due to their position of visibility, the data we have, to spot trends, to provide feedback, etc. How do we make use of the data that we have to provide clarity to marketing leadership? [08:47] - Learning to be an internal advocate for the marketing ops team and navigating reluctance to be “self-promotional. ” The acceleration leap is the ability to translate what we do into something that provides business impact. Promoting the work we do is a by-product of bringing that clarity to the marketing team and focusing on the right things. Winning is not completing your tickets - it’s prioritization, doing the right things, providing clarity. [10:43] - The roadmapping process. Using an agile cadence, thinking of marketing technology like a product. Think about how you launch a project and create it. Quarterly planning and monthly sprints. Monthly sprints is the right fit. They have an “above the line / below the line” backlog. In a new company, shifting the balance from ad-hoc to roadmap. Being a consultant is helpful as it gives valuable skills in scoping. [13:54] - Learning to communicate incremental value instead of thinking of a project as needing to be 100% done and complete before delivering value. People get discouraged. Think of crawl/walk/run - crawling is still winning. This way people view MOPS as problem-solvers rather than blockers. Continuous delivery of incremental value. [15:46] - How to determine what should be prioritized. Jessica knows where they need to go in one, two, and three years, and that is her North Star. If you don’t have a roadmap, others will make one for you. Get buy-in from your boss and their peers. [17:23] - Translating features to stakeholder speak - what capabilities are you going to unlock. Quick-wins deliverables roadmap vs. plumbing/architecture/non-sexy roadmap. Jess has an external-facing roadmap of quick wins - these are “shiny objects,” which may seem like table stakes to MOPS. But if you position them in terms of the capabilities they unlock, then they can be positioned as wins. MOPS should communicate multiple wins every quarter. For the non-sexy plumbing, keep this on the internal roadmap - e.g., compliance. These things take a long time. Don’t keep communicating that you’re still working on complex projects quarter after quarter. When the capabilities are released, move them from the internal roadmap to the external roadmap. [20:12] - You can’t get money to fix what’s broken. But you CAN get budget to support new capabilities that deliver business value. [21:56] - Translating technical priorities into business objectives vs. translating business priorities into technical projects. This process happens bi-directionally all day long. Your job as a marketing operations leader is to translate up to leadership and down to your team - to provide clarity both ways. [24:25] - The multi-faceted skillset that a marketing ops leader needs to have. Not every leader has all those skillsets. Those that are missing, you need to hire. [26:09] - How to capture the long-term vision. Jess uses a project manager to capture it. She creates a library of “walking decks” for each company - a three-year roadmap, a yearly vision, a quarterly plan, wins. This holds true at every level. You don’t need a director title to be strategic. [27:44] - Developing communication skills as a leader. Jess learned and taught public speaking in grad school. Also learning through experience, trial and error, and mistakes. The marketing ops community helps each other out. Having mentorship, advice, and outside perspective is vital. Building a “board of directors” for your career. Find mentors who will challenge who you are and who will give you what you need. [33:15] - Overcoming imposter syndrome. Things get easier with repetition. But there’s always a next level and there’s always a new thing. The “freak out” period gets shorter. Emotional regulation is a top skill as a leader. You know how to figure it out. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

Everyone is talking about how transformative AI is, but the information is still very piecemeal. There are tons of app focused listicles or cool tricks for ChatGPT, but if you're like me, you don't have time to go looking for ways to put apps to work.So I set out to take a comprehensive look at the business of marketing, breaking it down into the fundamental jobs to be done and creating practical guidance for marketers on how they might incorporate AI into their daily work in each area. This episode covers four main applications that have me excited, but if you visit the link below, you can access an Airtable base with over 35 use cases and over 40 apps. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:30] - Why make this episode[03:17] - Unstructured text analysis[05:27] - Structured data analysis[09:47] - Visual media generation[11:37] - AI and workflow automation[15:09] - AI for creative writing[17:15] - Two visions of AI usageResource LinksA Very Gentle Introduction to Large Language Models without the Hype - A useful primer to AI and large language models.

In this engaging discussion, Emir Atli, the Chief Revenue Officer and co-founder of HockeyStack, reveals his insights into the company's rapid rise in the attribution software space. He shares how HockeyStack disrupts traditional models that depend on Salesforce, offering faster implementations. The conversation delves into HockeyStack's innovative go-to-market strategies, primarily leveraging LinkedIn for high-quality content and optimizing customer experience. Emir also emphasizes the critical role of data management and customer success in enhancing client outcomes.

Jill Rowley is a legend in SaaS, with early tenures at Salesforce and Eloqua. As one of Eloqua's first salespeople, she helped shape the category of marketing automation and was also an early pioneer of social selling. Today she is helping evangelize a new perspective on partner-led growth, which she calls "nearbound." Jill and I talk about what it was like selling cloud-based software in the early oughts, helping the first customers to use marketing automation, and what it means to go to market with partners. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest 23 years in SaaS. Early employee at Salesforce (first 100), Eloqua (#13), HubSpot Advisor (2014-2016), Marketo (2018).Loves startups, especially category creators - - in the trenches building Nearbound.https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillrowley/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:23] - Start of Jill's career at Salesforce. [03:08] - How Jill pitched SaaS in the early days of cloud software. Salesforce's guerilla marketing tactics. [04:47] - Moving to Eloqua as employee thirteen. Creating the category of marketing automation. Evangelizing for the importance of marketers on revenue. [10:05] - Early days of service partnerships at Eloqua. Co-selling with David Lewis. [11:54] - Types of service partner relationships. How there can be power-disparities and bad dynamics between smaller service partners and larger vendors. How many companies still view service partners as a source of leads rather than a way to build credibility and influence with prospects. There are bad fit partners. Need to have organized partner ecosystem data. [15:26] - Definition of nearbound. Living in market with your partners. Differences from inbound and outbound. Looking at a practical, hypothetical example: Clari and Hubspot. [20:41] - Addressing potential criticism of the partner-led approach: that it's too slow. Why you can't go to market with 1,500 partners. [24:01] - Why the value of partnerships is far more than leads. Top-down vs. bottom-up partnerships. Why both are important. [29:50] - Partner ops. Reference to Scott Brinker's article (see resource links). Resource Linksnearbound.com | The future of GTM is here - Official Nearbound website. Partner Ops: The forgotten ops that’s suddenly thriving in the ecosystem era - Scott Brinker's article on partner ops. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

Your GTM message has an incredibly difficult task: to speak to the people who will love your product and take them from a place of disinterest and zero context to a place of understanding and excitement. When done well, it’s pure magic. I think that every GTM and ops professional should be familiar with how to do this, and so I asked my old boss, Mitch Solway, to join me for a masterclass in messaging.Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest Mitch Solway is a 5x VP of Marketing who has led teams at Lavalife, Freshbooks, Vidyard, and Clearfit, among others. Today he works as a Fractional CMO for startups. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchsolway/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:28] - How Mitch defines the hierarchy of messaging. He starts at the end, considering the outcome he’s trying to achieve. Then you can reverse engineer what you need to get to that point, starting with positioning, then copy, then messaging. [02:55] - The end result for Mitch is two stories: one broad, one narrow. The narrow story is targeted at your “Can’t Miss Customer.” This is your ideal customer. You need to understand everything about this person. Mitch calls this “Is this you?” marketing. You tell the prospect a story, and if you know them really well, your Can’t-Miss Customer will identify themselves in your message. Focusing on the person and their world vs. on your product. [04:55] - We don’t tell our customer’s story enough. We need to realize we are only 5% of the customer’s world - important to understand the other 95%. Interview your best customers, then translate those stories back to other prospects. [07:33] - The broad story. This is when you’re introducing something new to the market. You need to educate people to create a vision of an “inevitable future.” Getting the market to see the world the way you see it. Example of doing this with Vidyard using influencers to educate the market with a very low budget. [13:26] - Creating the “narrow story” for Vidyard. The litmus test for the narrow story is, can you get the person from no context to being excited in three questions. Mitch calls this the “context rollercoaster.” Examples of how this works in practices. If you can do this, you’ve found the “nerve center” that you need to touch on. [18:17] - Your product isn’t that important to the customer, most likely. Even if they use it, it’s just a fraction of their world. You need to show them that you understand their pain to spark interest. Example of why this is important in outbound. Example of how Mitch tweaked the messaging at Clearfit to better align with customer truths and how that message was conveyed in radio ads. [21:52] - Example of competing with ZipRecruiter on the radio. They had raised funds and were outspending 20:1. Mitch tweaked the messaging to turn the competitor’s strength into a weakness. [23:57] - Process for creating a messaging framework from scratch. Start with internal interviews with key stakeholders. 90% of that process is about internal alignment. For positioning, he uses April Dunford’s framework and conducts a workshop with key stakeholders. Prior to that workshop he interviews existing customers that the company wants to get more of. Example of doing this with Ourboro, [29:56] - Example of how customer insights also infuse the tone, language, visuals, and emotion of communication. [31:36] - Collecting customer insights is a deep process of understanding psychology and emotions. You need a special type of brain to conduct that research - not everyone can do it. It’s a superpower. But those who are expert in it can help the rest of the company receive those insights. Example of how we brought in a customer each month at Clearfit and the impact this had on the company. [33:59] - Discussion of interest vs. impact as work motivation. How to cultivate an impact orientation. Resource LinksThink Mitch Think - Fractional CMO for Startups - Mitch’s fractional CMO consultancy.Obviously Awesome, by April Dunford - Guide to positioning that Mitch uses with customers. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

Refine Labs has changed the course of B2B marketing over the past few years. Challenging conventions on attribution and funnel tracking and championing new ways of generating demand, this agency has broken pretty much every mold and driven the conversation and debate. Today we're joined by SVP of Marketing Sidney Waterfall, who produces much of the Refine Labs IP and brings together both deep demand gen and RevOps expertise. In this in-depth discussion we unpack the nitty-gritty of the Refine Labs methodology. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest Sidney Waterfall is SVP of Marketing at Refine Labs, with responsibility for GTM strategy, demand generation, product marketing, product strategy, and ultimately driving revenue for Refine Labs services and products.https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidneywaterfall/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:02] - Sidney's background and how she joined Refine Labs.[02:25] - Issues in B2B marketing today. Many people still running a lead gen approach. Lack of focus on data structure and operations, although macroeconomic conditions forcing people to become more data driven. [05:19] - Defining terms - lead gen, demand gen, demand capture, demand conversion. [07:47] - More companies implementing this approach in recent years. But some still struggle with making the transition. How Refine Labs helps companies make that strategic shift. First step is accepting that buyer behavior has changed. Requires deep alignment at the leadership level. Changing measurement and KPIs, from lead generation to higher intent pipeline. This provokes terror in some. Overcoming objections. Indicators to look at. [15:22] - What it means to run a demand creation campaign and how to do it. You don't need a huge evangelist in your company. Only 20-25% of Refine Labs clients have that. It starts with the content that's on your high-value product and solutions pages. This gives the campaign strategy or angle. You take that and package it for both paid and organic. This content communicates problem awareness. You can also work with content teams, take assets like blog posts and repackage them for social. Distribute it in a buyer-centric way - un-gated, designed for the platform, unique. You need some offer in the middle, like a podcast or live event series, that people can engage with. [20:35] - Whether this approach can work for everyone. It requires a basic repeatable sales process and the ability to talk to prospects. If you don't know how to convert a buyer when they are in a sales cycle, you won't know how to create demand. [22:13] - The role of ops in a demand creation GTM strategy. Ops is pivotal. There's a strategic side and a tactical side. If ops is a strategic function in your org, you will have a powerhouse org. They need to offer not just data but insights - that's the step up there. Justin notes that ops leaders need to be revenue leaders in their own right, not just in service of others. [28:13] - How to configure systems for attribution. First step is standardized UTM values. Important to track session-based UTMs - so first touch but also tracking UTMs for each session that results in a conversion. A conversion is anytime your sales team is working something. Tracking meetings and sub-stages, opportunities and sub-stages. Definition of HIRO pipeline - opportunity stage that converts at 25% or higher. Source (offer) is what they engaged with - the destination. Campaign is a detail of that. This is more predictive of outcomes than the channel that referred them. [36:34] - The new Refine Labs funnel model. Traditional demand waterfall is ingrained in everything - an assembly-line approach. This new approach un-blends the funnel into pipeline sources. It's built built around what the customer is doing vs. internal departments. Ability to track how people come in and out of the market at different times. With opportunities, they look at the originating contact as the source. Separating the funnel questions from account journey questions. They are distinct, require different data sets. [47:07] - Definition of "conversion". Different companies have different thresholds for when leads go to sales. This model enables comparison between different conversion sources to evaluate their effectiveness. [50:48] - Looking at the account journey. It's about pattern recognition, seeing what things are more common for personas and stages, and using that to optimize in-channel strategy. This is more loose vs. funnel tracking, which should be black and white. Focused heavily on topics, not just formats. There is no perfect, beautiful account journey. [55:15] - Discussion of The Vault and WatchTower. Resource LinksRefine Labs - Official siteThe Vault - IP database of Refine Labs methodology, including frameworks, experiment reports, playbooks, and community. They have a paid membership, but I highly recommend signing up even for a free account, as there are a lot of valuable resources available to all. WatchTower - Conversion tracking and hybrid attribution solution built on the Salesforce platform. Chris Walker on YouTube - Hundreds of hours of educational content and podcasts. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

In a world where we have so much tech, it's amazing that revenue planning and forecasting remain relatively primitive in most companies. You could have literally a million dollar tech stack and yet still be creating your business plan with a spreadsheet and forecasting results with a best guess from sales. Today we look at how to go beyond the spreadsheet paradigm with the CEO of Growblocks, a revenue planning and analytics platform. We'll explore whether it's possible to have a truly predictable forecast and how operators can spot and fix issues before they become million dollar problems. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest Toni is the CEO of Growblocks. He spent years as a B2B SaaS CRO and revenue operator, achieving multiple exits. Through this experience, he created a revenue operating operating model that helped his company hit targets 12 quarters in a row. This model was later on used as the basis for Growblocks.https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonihohlbein/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:33] - Toni's background. Founding Growblocks. Sharing a focus on data-driven, system-thinking approach to revenue with his co-founders. [04:27] - Most forecasting tools focus on only on the opportunity forecast, ignoring the rest of the funnel. Why there aren't more companies building software for full-funnel planning. Forecasts are split into silos. Once you forecast the full funnel, you can identify how a gap in one stage translates to revenue impact further down. [07:40] - How Toni explains this vision to the market and what benefits people are connecting with. When people finally see their actual revenue engine end-to-end for the first time, it's a huge impact. [10:09] - Flaws with the planning process today. How the planning process should take place: top-down and bottom up meeting in the middle. [14:09] - The impact of the tech bubble on the planning process and how it has distorted expectations and behaviour. You can only be efficient once you are predictable. [18:00] - The factors that lead to predictability. The first comes from understanding your sales engine as a whole through the entire funnel. Not relying on sales people that can pull rabbits from hats. The second factor is proactively spotting issues and jumping on them quickly. [21:39] - Issues with marketing and sales alignment. Why marketing will hit their number but sales misses theirs. Toni doesn't have an issue with MQLs, so long as the company splits handraisers from non-handraisers. Then marketing can't just hit their number with low-intent MQLs. [25:24] - Outbound is still alive and kicking. Think of it as the delivery mechanism for a message. Importance of choosing channels that work for your audience. Someone may not be on LinkedIn but they are listening to the radio all day. [28:32] - Starting to dive into the Growblocks platform. Growblocks works with any kind of funnel design and is also configurable across different dimensions. Solving for garbage-in-garbage-out problems. If data points are missing, it's best to go up a level and exclude that step, then circle back to it when better data is available. [32:58] - Identifying factors that may influence funnel performance but that are not themselves funnel stages. Toni calls them "monitoring notes" - akin to gauges on a machine that show you certain indicators about its performance.[36:00] - Growblocks can connect to different data sources and mash them together. It applies sophisticated math and statistics to forecast results. They are incorporating machine learning, but Toni is trying to keep it as transparent as possible so customers can have trust in the results. [39:30] - Main value props of Growblocks. The first is more predictability, less choppy results. The second is showing things that were invisible to enable to teams to make changes and improve. [42:21] - Toni's vision for the future of the product. Resource LinksGrowblocks Official Site - The Growblocks website. The Revenue Formula - Toni's podcast. The Revenue Letter - Toni's Substack. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

What lies ahead for marketing operations? How can it become more strategic and impactful?Darrell Alfonso has spent the past ten years answering these questions through his work at companies like AWS and Indeed. He's also dedicated himself to moving the discipline of marketing ops forward as an author, teacher, speaker, and thought-leader. In this episode, he shares his vision of how marketing operations can encompass both strategy and technical expertise and describes how MOPS practitioners can level-up in their careers. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest Darrell Alfonso is a 2x Marketo Champion, course instructor, Author of "The Martech Handbook", and frequent speaker and thought-leader. He's held marketing and operations leadership positions at Indeed, Amazon Web Services, Hitwise, and the American Marketing Association. https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[00:58] - Darrell's definition of marketing operations: the art and science of executing great marketing. Key pillars: planning and strategy, technology management, process design, analytics, business alignment. [02:48] - Evolution of marketing ops from being tech-centric to business-centric. [04:59] - Challenges of that evolutionary process. Potential discomfort within ops of moving into a role where they have revenue accountability. MOPS people have an allegiance to craft, but should focus on what the business needs. [07:43] - Risk of feeling powerless or misunderstood. Need for operators to better communicate our value. [09:25] - Darrell's background in communications and how it's impacted his career. The importance of communication within operations and how it's helped him grow as a leader. Internal communication is not about being self-promotional. It's about playing together effectively as a team (analogy of a sports team). [14:43] - How Darrell's role combines both strategy and operations. Strategy is the set of choices we make in service of an objective. Tactics at one level of the business become the strategy for the next level. Discussion of how this applies within Darrell's current company. [26:08] - Description of Darrell's team and how it functions. How marketing technology sits within a separate Business Systems function. [29:46] - What Darrell's ideal org structure would look like. Pros and cons of separating tech into a Business Systems group. Need for technologists to have technical leadership. Similar issue applies with SDRs and whether they report into marketing or sales. [36:25] - Building a personal brand in marketing operations. Benefits and how to do it. Difference between personal branding and cultivating an audience. Resource LinksThe Marketing Operations Handbook: A Complete Guide to Marketing Operations - Darrell referenced this book, by revenue operator Michael McKinnon, several times during the episode. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

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. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak 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 LinksThe 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. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

Sanford (“Sandy”) Whiteman is a legend in the Marketo world. A software developer by trade, he’s one of a small handful of engineers who have focused specifically on marketing platforms and problems - not merely as a one-time project or side interest but as a dedicated speciality. Sandy is the #1 all-time contributor in the Marketo product community with over 23,500 posts and an honorary community moderator designation. He's also been a great friend and teacher to me over the years and a collaborator on many projects. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest Sanford Whiteman is Chief Technologist at FigureOne, a Marketo development agency. Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:05] - Sandy’s background and how he entered the Marketo world. His start as an IT security person. Developing an app for the textbook publishing industry. First Marketo project: to fix Munchkin. Reverse engineering the Munchkin script. Developing fluency in the Marketo UI. [04:58] - Why Sandy took the Munchkin script seriously. Enjoyment of niche knowledge and desire to discover what is currently unknown. Previous experience reverse engineering Microsoft SMTP server. People even at Marketo/Adobe not fully understanding the product internals. They are not front-end people. [08:17] - Justin’s perspective on when Sandy entered the Marketo community. People guessing or speculating at how things worked technically but without a technical background. The contrast when a real developer focused on the same topics. Sandy’s desire to not guess and to spread accurate knowledge about systems. How early developers scoffed at cloud-based systems and refused to support them. How developer skepticism towards MarTech systems may be rooted in a resentment from the IT team. IT questioning why the company would pay for a system they believe (erroneously) could be built in-house. [11:49] - Why “mainstream” developers who are otherwise talented produce bad work in the MarTech world (e.g., poor integrations) and show a lack of curiosity about it. Disparagement of marketing within the developer community. Lack of understanding of core components of marketing automation: SMTP, landing pages, databases. Belief that these are unsophisticated technology. Internal IT resources haven’t had to manage email servers for 15 years or more. That knowledge has died out, leading to lack of understanding. Perceived primacy of back-end developers over front-end developers. Disparagement of JavaScript. [20:49] - The rationale for investing hours of time investigating obscure issues. How mastery of obscure knowledge becomes useful when those situations do arise.[24:32] - The challenge of being a technical consultant to marketers: you’re downstream of strategy. Discussion of how it feels to work on marketing projects where the strategy is flawed or creative seems ineffective. The political challenges of giving feedback as a consultant. Sandy’s frustrating situation with a client claiming the Marketo Lead ID is PII. How there’s also a prestige that can come with being a consultant. [32:19] - Sanford’s perspective on the product outlook of Marketo and whether the glory days of the platform are behind it. Lack of innovation in recent times. If Sandy was in charge, he would shut down imitation / look-alike products (Adobe Connect, Live Chat) as these won’t successfully replace more full-featured applications. [33:42] - Sandy and Justin build a fantasy roadmap for Marketo. The importance of getting ahead of the market and deeply understanding the needs of the customer. Questioning whether anyone at Adobe is filling that role now with respect to Marketo. Lack of focus on effective marketing. Smaller companies with dynamic founders seem more likely to come up with these ideas. [35:55] - Feature idea: ability to customize the UI in Marketo (like a Visualforce page in Salesforce). The challenge of rebuilding an existing app interface using legacy technology. Why Sky failed. [41:59] - Feature idea: ability to analyze records in the database in relation to each other. (E.g., create quartiles.) Discussion of new Activity Stream feature (outbound streaming API). [45:52] - Feature idea: better data manipulation within flow steps (like what is possible to do in FlowBoost). [46:33] - Feature idea: more control over order of operations within the system. Guaranteed ways to avoid race conditions. Question of whether this is solvable within marketing automation architecture. The ability to have visibility of database changes yet to be committed. How Marketo provides a toolkit that requires developer-esque conceptual understanding. [51:13] - Discussion of AI and its potential impact on marketing technology. One potential application is using it to generate documentation. AI beneficial as a convenience tool (like the computer on a Star Trek ship). Justin expresses skepticism about its generative abilities for marketing content. Challenges for AI with generating or explaining humour. Resource LinksTEKNKL :: Blog - Sanford’s blog. A critical resource for the Marketo developer. FlowBoost for Marketo - Sanford’s app providing additional data processing capabilities for Marketo. Data Streams - Marketo Developers - Documentation for the “Data Streams” functionality discussed during the show. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter