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. 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 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 LinksThe 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. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

Note: I've also shared a full video version of this episode, where you can see me screen share everything I'm describing. You can find it here:Documentation Episode - Full Video I’m incredibly (absurdly? ridiculously?) enthusiastic about documentation.Part of that is just my personality, but it’s also because I’ve seen what a game-changer good documentation can be.This first hit home when I started consulting. It was incredibly stressful (in the very early days) to work on poorly documented projects. They were filled with assumptions, misunderstandings, client disappointment, and re-work.We quickly improved our documentation game, and it was transformative. We now had a clear source of truth for what each project should be, approved by the client before we started building. It also created space to think things through in more detail.However, each doc existed in isolation. We never had the mandate or scope to create a complete knowledge base for any one client.Creating the Knowledge Base of My DreamsWhen I started my next in-house job and we began a company-wide Confluence implementation, I finally had the chance to go beyond disconnected documentation and build a true RevOps knowledge base.This video shares everything I’ve learned, including a screen-share walk-through of my team’s knowledge base and tips for overcoming the time deficit that every team faces when trying to create docs.Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter 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

Data is the raw material we work with in marketing. You can come up amazing campaign ideas. You can even build them out. But if your data is junk, everything falls apart. Today's guest spent a decade building Digital Pi, a top marketing automation agency, and is now making a pivot to customer data ops.We chat about the data problems facing revenue teams, the issues with traditional data warehouse approaches, and why Syncari is his data platform of choice. 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 Ryan Vong is a marketing technology leader with over 20 years experience. He was the founder and CEO of Digital Pi, a global marketing automation agency acquired by Merkle Inc. in 2020. In 2023, he founded Helix CXM, an agency providing data operations for revenue teams. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanvong/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[00:45] - Evolution of marketing operations over the last decade. [03:08] - Marketing ops vs. sales ops. Need for marketing operations to become more strategic. Campaign execution becoming commoditized. Limits on the size of MOPS teams. [05:59] -Marketing operations as a force for accountability, evaluating effectiveness. Approaches and challenges in interpreting the customer journey. Not all the data is there. [08:24] - Ryan's pivot to customer data ops and founding CXM. The pains he saw that led him in this direction. How marketing automation was limited by dirty data. Helix is data operations for the revenue team. AI requires clean data to function properly. [13:02] - Data operations involves both technical and process / strategy components. How Ryan aims to address those. Three phases of data - as a utility, as an enabler, as a driver. Data as a utility is the first priority.[14:49] - Perspective on traditional data warehouse/lake. Centralized system is needed, but with current approach it's too slow. Everything is outdated by the time it's ready.[18:25] - Deep dive into Syncari, why Ryan selected it, what makes it unique. Single source of truth vs. distributed truth. Ability for users to work where they are already comfortable. Having a data store incorporated into the tool. Similarity to how the Marketo/Salesforce sync works. Ability to revert to previous state. [24:02] - Ownership of the customer data engine within the organization. Natural home is within revenue ops teams. Collaboration with IT department. [25:36] - Structure of a data ops engagement. Ability to preview data before turning the system on. Importance of speed/agility. Build vs. run components of the engagement. Data monitoring - similar to home security monitoring. [29:29] - Lessons learned and plans for taking the agency founder's journey a second time.Resource LinksHelix CXM - Ryan’s agency website.Salesforce Shouldn’t Be Your Single Source of Truth - Top Reasons Why - Syncari article about a single source of truth vs. distributed truth. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

Operations can be difficult in organizations of any size, but in large companies, there are special challenges. What does it take to succeed as an ops leader in the world's biggest enterprises? Today's guest is a former marketing ops leader from Marketo, Adobe, Slack, and Salesforce. He delivers a master class on navigating enterprise complexity. 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 Paul Wilson has been a sales and marketing leader, consultant, and marketing operations executive at some of the largest companies in the world, including Marketo, Adobe, Slack, Salesforce, and OneTrust. Today he is the CEO of GTM Systems. From Paul's LinkedIn: "GTM Systems is dedicated to reinventing the intersection of marketing, sales, and customer success operations into a unified go-to-market operations framework."https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwtoday/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:24] - Which type of work/company size has been most rewarding for Paul. Enjoyment from working with people to solve challenges. [03:54] - What to do when joining a new enterprise. Establishing the mandate of the role and what resources you have. [05:54] - The role of marketing ops in the enterprise. Important distinctions between MOPs and Sales Ops. Lack of sandbox environments in the MarTech stack creating greater risk. Everything is in production. Marketers are reliant on their tools to deliver experiences and are more impacted by issues.[09:00] - Why we can't we have sandboxes in MarTech. Possible perception of finance that this is less critical. Proximity of CRM to IT. Growing distinction between operations and technology in many companies. Business Systems / IT teams absorbing sales tech. [16:09] - Relationship between marketing operations and marketing strategy. The right way to relate to stakeholders. Need for campaign engineering and MOPS to have a voice in marketing planning discussions. Analogy to a structural engineer in discussions of building construction.[23:50] - The biggest changes someone should expect moving from a smaller org to an enterprise company. Big companies don't move quickly. Importance of establishing relationships with navigators who can teach you. The experience taught Paul how to communicate effort, developing tiered messaging for different levels of the organization. [36:28] - Inevitability of dysfunction in an enterprise. Will all enterprises approach being a real-life Dilbert strip? Some dysfunction comes with the territory. [40:21] - The coolest/most complex projects are in enterprise. Paul's experience doing large projects and the thrill they bring.[43:04] - Is Paul a lucky charm for M&A? [43:41] - The implications of AI be for marketing. Justin sees some benefit as a convenience / efficiency tool but is skeptical of generative capabilities. Paul believes AI will be revolutionary, but we are still in the "dot-matrix" phase. Discussion of ethical concerns. [48:56] - Paul's new firm, GTM Systems.Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

B2B Marketing can be broadly grouped into eras based on specific go-to-market strategies that were dominant at the time. Today's guest played a pivotal role in the development of not just one but two (!) of these era-defining strategies: lead generation / content marketing and account-based marketing (ABM).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 Jon Miller was the co-founder and first CMO of Marketo, CEO of Engagio, and CMO of DemandBase. From Jon's LinkedIn: "Jon has played a pivotal role in shaping the world’s most disruptive marketing technology platforms, with a focus on thought leadership, category creation, and strategic go-to-market."https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/Key Topics[01:30] - Founding of Marketo, positioning against Eloqua[05:25] - Jon's early use of content marketing, around the same time as Hubspot. Definitive Guides. [10:45] - Marketo's early revenue process. Lead scoring. SDR qualification. [13:50] - Issues with the lead generation model. [21:13] - Rise of ABM. Founding of Engagio. Relationship with Terminus and DemandBase. Flip My Funnel. Acquisition of Engagio. [29:06] - Effectiveness of ABM. Challenges. Importance of seeing ABM as a spectrum vs. a binary. [34:05] - Jon's axioms of marketing[35:50] - Development of marketing operations. RevOps. What marketing operations needs to do to be more strategic. [45:05] - What's next in GTM? Potential impact of AI. Resource LinksThe Marketing Playbook I Helped Create Doesn’t Work Anymore. Here’s the New B2B Marketing Playbook. - Jon's article on the issues with the lead generation playbook he helped create. Learn MoreDiscuss this episode over at the Revops FM SubStack community: LinkedIn - General

Hi I'm Justin 👋 - creator and host of RevOps FM. In this short trailer episode, I walk through why I created the podcast and what you can expect. There's lots of RevOps content out there - so why listen to this show? One unique feature is that I'm not selling or representing any particular product or point of view. My main goal is to figure out what works and how to be the best RevOps leader/practitioner I can be. That curiosity and desire to learn is the driving force of the show, and it means I can be as honest and objective as possible. Three motivators for creating the podcast: Thinking out loud about RevOps and GTM strategy, in dialogue with some of the smartest folks in the industry. Sharing knowledge at scale. Looking critically at what works and challenging conventional wisdom. If you want stay in touch, head over to the show website, where you can subscribe to our newsletter. This gives you access to new episode notifications, podcast clips, and other bonus content. RevOps.fm