SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Mossri and Kiro Whitey, will be bringing you real stories, real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_04 0:28

Welcome to the CRM Success Show where we deep dive into CRM success and failure, delivering real stories with real impact. I'm Dave Masri. And I'm Piro Witsi. And today we're talking with Imani Chopin, Director, Senior Director of Revenue Operations and Enablement with Brings Home. So welcome, Imani. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_05 0:50

Absolute pleasure. We're going to start nice and easy for you, Imani. Give our listeners an uh overview of your RevOps journey today. Tell us a little bit about you and where you're currently at in terms of your RevOps career.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Yeah, I've been doing business ops, RevOps, sales ops, you know, whatever the new current coin termed is for the past 10 years. Started out outside of college doing sales and marketing and just kind of fell into more of the operational role, really more focused towards process automations and efficiencies and leveraging tools like Salesforce, tools like Pardot and other functionalities to really drive success and efficiencies within the go-to market world.

SPEAKER_05 1:36

Fantastic. So in terms of your current role as senior director uh for revenue operations and enablement, um, what what are what are some of the kind of activities that you're you're responsible for?

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Yeah, um always scoping out new process efficiencies. So if there's a process that we see is causing a lot of gaps, especially in the funnel, uh we take that and assess that deep dive into what's truly going on and look at ways to solving that, whether that's people, is it the data that might be wrong? Um is it truly something wrong in the process? Does it need to be manual or can we simply automate it? And if it's not, how do we bring this in and leverage our IT resources to truly, you know, fix the issue at play? Um, that's really what I do. They kind of call me a doctor, a fixer, um, more so on the RevOps side. Um, that brings home and really leveraging our um sales systems and our marketing technology to truly drive efficiency from hey, I'm aware that I want to be a customer to hey, I'm I'm a customer in that regard.

SPEAKER_05 2:38

Fantastic. And um uh we we we saw um you're also a member of the RevOps uh co-op group. Um what what what what is my understanding that's a community for Revops professionals? Could you could you share a little bit more about that?

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Yeah, I joined it once. I haven't, and this is really bad to say, I haven't really opened the slacks or anything like that. I've just been so busy. But um, one thing that I know that they do for sure is that it's a really good networking tool to leverage more of your RevOps resources. Like I said, you know, there's local groups, you know, there's a Salesforce of North Dallas, uh Cairo, that you um and Robert does. But you know, the RevOps co-op is a really global community that you know anyone can leverage. You know, you can pop in a question and say, hey, I have I need help here, or anything like that. And it also gives you like good, you know, um resources of, you know, here's a best practice to I don't know, implement Salesforce, or here's the best practice on looking at your forecasting categories or anything like that. So it's really a powerful force, and there's so many different ones. There's Pavilion, um, there's the RevOps collective that it's just a such a growing network of RevOps um professionals coming out, and it's really exciting to see. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 3:49

Okay, awesome. So uh RevOps means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Um, can you tell us what it means to you?

SPEAKER_02 3:59

I what it means to me is more of how I see RevOps and how I think of it is really that transformation in architect uh from the uh customer journey perspective. So, like I said before, I look at, you know, hey, I want to be a customer to hey, I am now fully a customer, right? And that is what you that's RevOps does. That's the bread and butter. They look at it from you know, what's the data behind it? How do I manage the programs if I have to do any type of changes? You know, are these processes working well? No, yes, all right, let's go fix it. You know, what's the tools that we leverage? Salesforce, pardon, you know, recap, all these different aspects, especially for B2B, there's so many different, you know, tools that you need to leverage, right? And then, you know, like I said, the people, you know, enablement is a huge thing too. You know, how do you train people? What's the change management? You know, how do you make sure that everyone is on par with what the change is going on? So there is a lot to RevOps, and I think RevOps to me is more like how I usually um tell people is like think of a chief of staff, but for revenue, um, generating teams. Um, and that's really how I see it, how I view it, that's how I describe it to people. Because you know, if you think of a chief of staff, you're thinking about, you know, the White House, you're thinking about like the vice president's office, like that person that's that day-to-day operational person that's kind of giving the readouts and everything. And that's what I think RevOps is. They're they are that driving strategic powerhouse. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't see them that way, but that's what they truly are, and they leverage the operational five pillars program management, data, systems, um, processes, and people. And what we're starting to see now is especially the systems part, and especially, you know, with the podcast, the CRM is that hub. And that's really what to me, um, RevOps is is a chief of staff to revenue generating and leveraging the tool sets to bring efficiencies and scalability to any organization.

SPEAKER_04 5:53

So I know this is a little bit of a loaded question. Is it more revenue focused or more ops focused? So, for example, would a RevOps person, not necessarily asking about yourself, but would a RevOps person in general have sales quotas, let's say? Or or would they get penalized if revenue takes a hit, or are they just more focused on streamlining process?

SPEAKER_02 6:19

So it's a load of question, you're right, Dave. Sorry. And what I've no, it's not, it's I think this just needs to be addressed because I think a lot of people, when they think of RevOps, you know, if you see like a um a job app um job description out there saying, like, oh, we're hiring a RevOps person, you read it, you're like, that's like a CRO. That's someone that has to be a part of the quota, has to be in charge of it and really driving it, right? But it's kind of twofold, right? I personally think RevOps professionals should be held accountable because when you're streamlining those processes, you should be looking at the data. You should be saying, okay, why are we not hitting quota? Because what they're doing is they're looking in the back end to say, you know, hey, we are doing super successful. Yay, we are hitting all quota. But if, you know, how can we do better for next year? Because you're always gonna try to look for a level up. So to me, it's both, right? You're looking at how do we drive more revenue, but you're also looking at how do we become more operationally efficient. And it's kind of like a Libra scale for the RevOps world. Um, and what you're gonna see over time, for my opinion, is you're gonna see RevOps professionals getting penalized for, hey, we missed two quarters and you're saying it was X, Y, and Z, but looks like it's not. We really need to look at the funnel and break this apart to figure out what's going on. Because if you don't have that operational efficiencies and you're not, you know, helping out with the enablement, you're not helping out with, okay, maybe there's something going on in Salesforce that we're not picking up, that is impacting revenue. So it's a loaded question, but it's a general question that needs to be answered because I think that's gonna be something coming up in the next few years that people are gonna be looking at. Um, especially as you know, the economy is changing and markets changing as well. You know, you really need if you're gonna be that chief of staff to revenue, you you have to also take a hit with the revenue as well, too.

SPEAKER_04 8:08

Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, such a new term, I think, uh less than 20 years old, probably, or about 20 years old. And I think it's still being defined. Um, and a lot of people, I think a lot of our listeners could really benefit from the understanding what it is, which is exactly why we have you here today. Um, so an another question on this is um, so we have the question almost slipped my mind so again, right? Going going back to the the the revenue generation side of it, right? So you're looking at your funnel and are you are you turning your funnel to processes and steps in the sales cycle? So you're saying I'm running a marketing campaign, and then I'm getting a lead list, and then I'm qualifying the lead, and then I'm and like like step by step, or are you actually going down to like the website level? This is my landing page, this is the flow from and like like how granular do you get with looking at your revenue?

SPEAKER_02 9:12

I think when you look at your revenue, it really depends on the company. I for me, I always recommend going more of the process steps. Um, I know a lot of people are like, okay, let's look at MQO, what's the SAL, what's the SQL? And what I've noticed over time is that that doesn't work because you're just so it's so high level that you do have to kind of drill down into it. Um, how I would look at it is more from a sales channel perspective and looking at their process step of hey, person signed up. It doesn't care how they signed up, they can call in, they can do a web form, they can co you can cold call that person, right? Okay, someone is interested. All right, cool. Then you kind of break it down into that bow tie effect. Um, I know winning by design has you know that really cool bow tie to check that says awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, then onboarding, and then it's kind of the retention and the kind of the customer success piece to that. And I think if you look at it that way and you have your process kind of aligned to that, then you know, like for example, okay, why am I dropping off from interest to consideration? And then a RevOps person is going to know, oh, there must be something going on in the demo phase that we need to look at. I think if you really break it down that way based on your process and then really drill down into okay, this is a subcategory to interest, interest, you need to do X, Y, and Z. Because if you have that bucket, then you know, okay, something's going on. Let's figure out what's going on with this and then really drive it in. Because if the more granular you get, the more you kind of stay in the weeds, and the more you just kind of stay stuck in the weeds. That's just my opinion. I could be wrong, but that's how I treat it.

SPEAKER_04 10:47

No, that sounds right. Um, again, for our listeners, and correct me if I'm wrong. This is not my area of expertise, right? I'm a techie. Um, MQO marketing qualified. No, MQL marketing qualified lead, and then you what was the other one? SQL sales, yeah, SQL sales qualified lead. Yeah, not to be confused with the data language, structured query language.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Uh yeah, it's I sometimes I forget. So there's you know, there's a funnel, it's like marketing uh accepted lead, marketing qualified lead, sales accept and lead, and like marketing qualified to sales acceptance. That's where you want to do your handoff, and it's the sales qualified lead, and then that's when it's like an opportunity and then a booking. Typically that's what happens in B2B.

SPEAKER_04 11:32

Okay, so it's a pretty standard funnel, not heavily customized towards the I mean, obviously it depends, but yeah. Right, yeah, okay. Um, all right, taking a step back. So like what makes a great RevOps leader.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Someone that understands the customer journey. Um if you're especially if you're new to an industry, if you come in, you know, I started home security about four years ago, I didn't understand it at all. The more I got into it, the more I'm like, oh, okay, that makes sense, right? Um, someone that can really grasp processes, um, someone that can really truly look at data to kind of say, look at it at half-hand and be like, someone's not right about that, right? Um, someone that truly understands how a CRM is supposed to work and how you design your processes and how you design your system to relay what your process is, and someone who's really good at change management. And I say that because RevOps, while they every day, they have to, you know, create efficiencies, they have to look at data, they have to communicate, right? And they're trying to break down those silos. And as you break down those silos, you really have to have a good skill set in change management. So those are things that you can look at in a good um RevOps leader. A lot of people like to tend to say like they have to be super analytical, they have to know the financials, but it's like, great, you could teach anyone to do that. You know, you could take any type of course on YouTube or Udemy, or you can go get an MBA for that, right? But if you don't have the good skill set on change management and really understanding process efficiencies, you I mean, it's it's kind of a love loss, right? And what I've seen over time is that people kind of gear towards that and they lose that luster from the change management, and then you're trying to launch these big initiatives and it's just really chaotic. So um, to me, you really have to understand change management and you really have to understand process efficiency to truly be a true revops leader.

SPEAKER_05 13:34

From a process standpoint, are we going as deep as like applying the lean six sigma type mindset? Um, are we going as far as that in the RevOps role or is that overkill? Do you think?

SPEAKER_02 13:46

I would say just in the past few years of me being a RobOps, I would say like a Six Sigma would be a good skill set to have under your belt. Not saying that it's totally necessary to have, right? But it's a good mindset to have because then when you're getting these requests from your your like your CRO or any type of sales leader or your marketing leader, you know, a lot of people, especially what I've seen in RobOps, they'll just go and do it, right? But then it's like, okay, let's take a step back here. Why are you asking for this? What is the what is your ultimate vision and what is your solution? I think Six Sigma helps kind of plant that process and like the linear way to think about it. And I think that's like I said, that's a lot of things that RevOps need at least needs to do, is really think of it that way and not just saying, okay, well, this is a request, I need to put this field in Salesforce. And then months later you're like, okay, I just created tech debt for no reason. You know, thinking about it from that perspective, Six Sigma for me is a good skill set that any RevOps leader should have.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

I think I should go take it too, but yeah, no, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_05 14:46

And you know, obviously the next generation of RobOps leaders have to come from somewhere, right? And maybe it is more of those traditional Lead Six Sigma type um, you know, backgrounds that we're gonna start to see more of that skill set move into that RobOps role. So it'd be an interesting one to watch.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Um I think there's another skill set too that we're gonna see with product management and program management. I mean, change management goals and process improvement goes hand in hand, but I think another thing to think about is you know, in the future, right? You have all these RobOps leaders today. You know, once you hit that VP role, that head of RevOps role, there's nowhere else to go, right? Um, you could do CRO, you could be strategy, you could do transformation. But I think another skill set that people are gonna see is product management because Revop is managing a product, you're creating all those different aspects to the quote unquote product, which is revenue recognition. So I think another skill set that people are gonna start wanting to get in the future would be product market product management in how to truly manage a program, how to truly manage a product, success and creation, the visionary, because you're managing roadmaps, you're managing the transformation, you're taking feedback, and you're really aligning on the vision, but also you're looking at what is those okay, what is what are we doing? How are you making sure that we're hitting those um skill sets, but also managing um what is it called? Um, those initiatives that you're trying to do as well, too. Because that's what a lot of RevOps leaders do, especially depending on the size of the order you're in and depending on the maturity of that organization. You could be like the nitty-gritty one person just going in and building it. You're still doing product management to, hey, I have a team of 20 people, I have to lead this. How do I leave this to success to make sure that we have change management, to make sure our product is aligned with everyone else? And also make sure that you know, from awareness to churn, there is clear efficiencies, there's clear documentation, there's clear mapping, and a clear vision for everyone else in the organization. So that's another one I think everyone is gonna have to start looking at as well, too.

SPEAKER_05 16:46

Exactly. What about um so so I think it's important as well for our listeners, um, you know, when we talk about RevOps, it's different to sales ops, right? The two are completely different things. So um my my understanding and and I'll lean on your expertise is sales ops is more of a focus on uh efficiency of teams and increasing productivity of sales teams, whereas RevOps is is is breaking down the entire journey of uh you know sales and revenue, looking at anything from deployment to you know how cash is collected and and everything in between, right? Customer success, alignment of teams, um, and so on. Is is that I know that's a very basic differentiation between the two, but is that something you'd agree with? Anything else you would kind of add to differentiate the two? Because we see the titles, you know, people get confused, right? You see like a customer ops analyst, but really it's a rev analyst or or whatever, right? So and you talk as well.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah, I would say even you know, with sales ops was around since the um the Xerox days in the 80s, and now we're moving into the RevOps kind of transformation because it's it's more efficient to have you know someone that can oversee the marketing piece of it, the sales piece of it, and the customer success piece of it, right? Um, but when you look at like, for example, marketing operations, you're looking at campaign management, you're looking at the overall communications and leveraging the technology and also helping with the execution and the strategy behind, okay, this is how we're gonna have to do it. How do we kind of implement this and how to move forward with it, right? So that's really kind of the key piece. Your sales ops, I like to say sales ops is kind of that handover from you know the MQL and SAL, so the sales acceptance all the way down to a booking of a close one booking, or why did we lose and how do we do better? So it's kind of that in between, and really what you see a lot of is sales ops owning the CPQ, um, and that process as well, too, because that is your quoting that's how you're getting your initial revenue, right? Um, so to me, sales ops is more like an initial revenue creation, and then what you see in RevOps is it kind of takes that key of marketing ops of looking at, okay, this person, how do we get people in? So looking at demand gen, great lead generation and that operations behind it. Okay, great. Now they're in the sales ops realm. They're looking to get a configure price and quote contract and everything like that. Great, the booking is done, great. So, how do we make sure it gets implemented? All right, cool, they're implemented. All right, when is there a renewal coming up? How do we get more white space and what's the upsell and how do we get them transferred? So it's really kind of taking a look at it and saying from a high level of um putting all those big pieces in play and tying it together. And I think that's what everyone needs to realize. And I think when everyone thinks of RevOps, they only think of sales, but RevOps really truly encompass the backbone of marketing operations, and then saying, okay, how do I do this from a um lead to cash perspective? And then great, we have that revenue recognition. How do we keep that revenue recognition going? Um, and I think over time people are gonna get to that um space, but because RevOps is so new, people still think of it as a sales ops function.

SPEAKER_05 19:59

Yeah, and I and I think um, you know, more terminology around uh customer adoption rates and satisfaction scores, that scores, et cetera, maybe not as at the forefront from a sales ops standpoint, definitely are from a RevOps standpoint, right? They're their metrics that you're tracking um as a leader. So good. Okay. Um couple of questions on um kind of RevOps and Salesforce combined, right? So um in your opinion, uh not necessarily saying it's the right way or the wrong way, there's kind of one device fix all, but in your personal opinion, where does Salesforce sit within the RevOps umbrella?

SPEAKER_02 20:39

In RevOps, there are a couple of pillars that I've seen from just different org charts and everything. You know, as I, you know, presented the RevOps, you know, strategy within the current organization I am in, you know, I took a lot of time and asked Chat GPT, which is my best friend, unfortunately, um, whether it likes it or not. But looking at the org charts, and you kind of have a strategy team within RevOps, and that's really the data analytics and really the program management in a sense, or you can break out program management into its own bucket, and that's really focusing on okay, what is those sales channels? Okay, you have a different one for each sales channel, really depending on the um the um size of the organization as well as the organization's industry. Um, you also have a systems team that's really sits within um revenue operations. Um, you can call them tools, um, platforms, um, systems, but that is the team that truly manages and runs um Salesforce because you have strategy, you have the program management, um, you have the process team, um, and you also have your systems team, and then you also sometimes have your enablement team with if it sits within RevOps, right? Um, but your systems team is the team that should be managing your um Salesforce or even HubSpot or whatever you want to use, um, the CRM of choice. Um, Because you have all those players within that RevOps team and they all work together. Um, and they're gonna be the ones to kind of take the process to say, Hey, there's a process issue. It's like okay, I guess we need to look at you know what we need to do in Salesforce to kind of get that aligned and move forward. Because when that sits within your RevOps org, the RevOps leader is the go-to-market architect, right? You're the business process architect. So having that within that systems team and having a true person that truly understands it makes it more powerful for you to have quicker decision making, but also at speed to market, right? Because that's why a lot of companies are building out RevOps teams, unfortunately, as well, too, thinking, okay, it's gonna get me faster, right? So when we think about where the Salesforce should sit within a RevOps org, it's always gonna be the systems pillar um in that organization. And that was a really long answer to get to the point. But just wanted to break down for everyone um listening that you know there's so many different pieces within RevOps, it's not just like one big conglomerate and you know.

SPEAKER_05 23:03

What about um if you're a customer looking to implement Salesforce for the first time? Um, and let's say you've got an IT team, you've got a service team, you got a marketing team, you got a RevOps team, and it's a blank slate, you get to choose where Salesforce should report into. What work stream would you say it should sit with RevOps as a work stream, or is it still an IT-owned system?

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:30

In an ideal world, right? Starting from scratch.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Uh depends on the industry, to be honest with you. I would say if it's a super, super mature company, and I hate saying it, but I think it should report to IT from a development perspective, but Revox from a strategy perspective.

SPEAKER_05 23:52

Good.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

But it also depends on if the company has that one tool and Salesforce is that CRM. Because if Salesforce is not that CRM, there's multiple different tools. Yes, it should be in IT. But if it's like one and all and you have a night, a tight operation, and IT is really there from like a security and truly coding and developing, it should sit in a RevOps board. But really, depending on the maturity of your company as well as just really how um your customer journey and the tools within it kind of fits in, then it's kind of you know, I don't know why I'm oh, I'm putting my thumbs up. Um it just really depends, like I said, on the industry and the company.

SPEAKER_05 24:37

Yeah, got it. Okay. Um, and for those that aren't watching and was wondering what we were talking about, we uh we had some floating thumbs up on video uh as Amani uh put a thumbs up. So um, so so in terms of Salesforce and RevOps, a lot of alignment given Salesforce's stance as kind of the number one go-through CRM, right? So we expect to see RevOps and Salesforce continue to be associated together. A lot, which which therefore means a lot of RevOps leaders are coming from a Salesforce background who have gone into management, leadership, and then into RevOps, right? Do you think it's better for a RevOps leader coming from the Salesforce ecosystem specifically to come from a sales background or a service background?

SPEAKER_02 25:23

I would say marketing and sales background because like I said, marketing ops is that backbone to RevOps. Um, and marketing truly looks at the funnel sometimes, especially if they're creating campaigns, you know, or they're creating, you know, different, you know, digital ads and everything online, and you're trying to beef up your SEO, you want to see exactly what happened downstream and how those customers are performing, right? So that's really your backbone. But um just from us, or if we're talking about just strictly sales or service, I personally think it should be sales.

unknown 25:56

Good.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Because if you go straight service, service is only going to think about just the customer side of it, but not truly the overall process, the overall you know, orchestration layer of how it's happening from like lead handoff all the way down to when the booking is done.

SPEAKER_04 26:14

Okay, wow. So when you think TRM, right, it's it's generally you're thinking sales, marketing, customer service. Um in RevOps, it looks like they copied that, but then they changed and said to customer service, customer success. Yeah, right? Um, so I know you've spoken a lot about sales and marketing, obviously, because that's really the revenue driver. Um, customer success will keep your customers coming back, or if your subscription type, recurring revenue type customer keep them around. Um so how much focus do you do you put on that? Because at that point, it's almost like you got to get into the entire organization of you know delivering the service that that's provided by you know the company.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Right.

SPEAKER_04 27:07

So how does that tie in?

SPEAKER_02 27:11

I would say customer success ops, just from what I've seen, hasn't gotten a lot of love over the last few years, especially with RevOps, because everyone is so sales and marketing focused, right? Um, and what everyone has seen is that okay, it used to be called customer service, now it's called customer success. And from what I've picked up, just all the reading and kind of the um research I've done just over the last few years, is that mostly that change came from you know establishing customer success or the customer operations piece being more of a strategic and a partnership rather than just being an order taker, right? And a lot of people, especially from the sales op side, um, they only see customer success more of like, okay, well, you're just gonna make sure my customer's happy, give me the renewal, you know, at the end of the day, and I get credit for it, right? Because there's some orgs do that. Um, but the power of a true customer success operations team, especially in RevOps, marketing ops, you get the people hooked in, right? And you keep them coming back because you're getting the communications and you're really making sure you're dripping those campaigns, you're dripping the messaging of, hey, we're doing this and you're helping with the upsell with the customer success team in the future, right? Always goes back to sales, right? And that's why I always say sales is the best place to really try your RevOps because sales is gonna always look for a way to make more money in a sense from a revenue operation perspective, right? But when we talk about customer success, I say that um, you know, sales ops is a really good key piece to that to kind of move into that because sales ops, you're always gonna look at the initial customer acquisition, right? But customer success is always your recurring revenue, right? And you have to make sure you keep that happy. When you look at a B2B perspective, right? You have to do those monthly or quarterly business reviews, right? You have to make sure, hey, this sales rep Cairo said that this was your action plan. Let's just make sure that action plan is going successful. And Dave can say, no, Cairo messed something up. Sorry, like that's not what I want to do, or hey, we want to move because we're not getting that value, right? And that's what a lot of organizations saw before they started customer success operations. And customer success operations is that key piece to kind of keep that all together. And I think what you're gonna also see over time is you're gonna have a lot of people coming from customer success operations kind of moving towards more of the RevOps role and actually being that head and that leader because they're gonna understand, all right, cool. Well, yes, I'm gonna think about the customer at the end of the day because you should think about the customer at the end of the day, right? But when I think about the customer at the end of the day, um, I want to make sure whatever Cairo said in the beginning, we got to get clarification, we got to sharpen that up, right? Um, but a lot of people want like I said, when they think about RevOps, they think about truly sales and marketing. But what you're gonna have to see over time and what you're gonna have to start pulling in is that customer success piece because that is the whole thing, I call it the holy trinity, right? That's your holy trinity to RevOps. And I think once people start learning that and understanding that, I think that's when that whole 360 of the customer truly happens.

SPEAKER_04 30:11

Yeah, so um in the CRM world, uh, we tend to think, at least at the LI differentiate, customer service really is customer driven. I call in, I have a problem, I open a ticket, and then I'm looking at case resolution times, which ties into customer success. I think of customer personally, I think of customer success is customer satisfaction. Um, how smooth withdraw on boarding process, right? You know, um, if I'm going to upgrade my internet, do I experience a four-day outage, right? Uh, which happened to me two weeks ago. Um, right? Or or is it just a smooth, you know, they click a button and you have double your speed? Um, so that's how I tend to think of it differently. Now clearly ticket times very easy to measure. Right. Um customer satisfaction, not so much. Uh so so how do you how do you recommend people go about doing that? Is it just surveys? Is there something more to that? Is it business based?

SPEAKER_05 31:19

Also, is it as simple as just saying they're a recurring customer, they must be happy, right? Or else they'd go elsewhere. Um that's not always true. Um right.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

I mean, like you can be a recurring, you can do recurring revenue, and then you can also hate the the tool and you're like, damn it, I gotta go pay for this again already here. Oh wow, they did a three three percent uh PCI price cap on me. Right, great. Now I gotta pay an extra four percent. So it's like things like that. Like there's some people who just do it and pay, and you have that recurring revenue, and you will just never know if they're happy or not, right? Sorry, now my dog is here. Um, but when you want to look at like NPS, right? You know, look at um CSAT, a lot of people do leverage surveys. Surveys is a powerful tool to truly understand the mind of your customer, um, and to also understand where you're going. So, for example, you know, you call in for a rest like your internet, right? For example, did you get a survey at the did you get a survey at the end of the call, or did you get a survey as an email or text message? They only send the survey if they know you're happy. Or sometimes they send the surveys like, hey, how did we do and how did we do better?

SPEAKER_04 32:27

And there's a I I know that was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, right? Oh, okay. But it does it does feel like that that they're very strategic in who they send the survey to. Um, I'm sorry, I I I cut you off for nonsense.

SPEAKER_05 32:38

I think as well though, because I I've got an interesting thought on surveys. Um, I I I'll receive surveys from companies and it's like five, ten minutes, which is way too too much time. I'm not going to fill that survey. I'm as a consumer, I'm more likely to provide a survey if I had a bad experience, right? Um so I wonder, unless you're incentivizing your customers, what's in it for them to take the time to fill out a survey, how how much quality of data is actually coming from that survey, how many people are actually responding? Is it skewed? Because you're only going to do a survey if you have a bad experience or an exceptionally good experience, right? If you're in the middle, you're probably not going to hear from that customer.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Yeah, but also there's powerful AI tools that people are leveraging that they could pick up if you're calling in and saying, hey, this sucks, or you're chatting in and saying, Hey, this sucks. They'll pick that up as well, too. And that can go into the CSAT or the NPS numbers. Because if yours, let's just say we have a hundred cases that came in for the month, okay, but why is 75% of them all bad? We're not doing something right. Let's figure out what's going on, or it's like we did 100 and 95% of them are all positive. Oh, great, okay, cool. We have something that we can kind of benchmark and kind of go from there. So there's a lot of different avenues like surveys, you know, listening to AI, having AI bots kind of listen in, um, you know, chat bots can also pick that up as well. Too, there's just so many different aspects in the customer success, customer service or customer satisfaction space that we don't really talk about, especially in RevOps, that people are gonna start tapping into more and they're gonna have to start tapping into more to kind of get that overall what is your MPS, which you're CSAT and kind of keep that um occurring and also looking at forecasting that as well in the future.

SPEAKER_04 34:26

Right. Yeah, it's a tough nut to crack because you're relying on an interaction when a lot of times the best is non-interaction, right? Um uh you're currently you said in I think home security, right? Nobody wants their home to be broken in. So if nothing's going off, I guess they're happy. Um right? Right. I don't know. So yeah, I mean, I mean that could be ca right, it it's difficult to know why people are satisfied. It's it's really, really an interesting subject. Um, I will say that in the SI space, the Salesforce SI space, CSATs are heavily are heavily advertised. And then there's a secondary incentive to the to the uh to get those marks up. I look at that as a positive, honestly, not that they're cheating because the Salesforce kind of oversees it um somewhat, which is nice, so that if somebody really does have a have a uh great CSAT, they advertise it. Um but they're the incentive to drive those scores off for sure. Um and they can either obviously drive it off by actually having excellent customer satisfaction, or um you try to you try to tweak.

SPEAKER_05 35:45

Good. Um so so in terms of measuring success, is it as simple to say a successful Robox practice is is one that sees an increase in revenue and customer success, or is there more to it than that?

SPEAKER_02 35:59

There's more to it than that. Like I know everyone want to hear RobOps or like money, and it's like, yeah, I understand. Um, but you know, you do want to have that increase in revenue. Um, you want to make sure your conversion rates are at a stable state. So, for example, if you have a benchmark at 25%, you're still hitting that revenue, but it's kind of at 15% you didn't do right. Like there's something totally going on there, right? And that's process efficiency. Um, but then also, like I said, there's some metrics that you can't even measure, like I said, change management and making sure, you know, hey, you know, we drove this big initiative, right? But is everyone aligned to it? Is everyone using it? Does someone not understand the new business process going downstream, right? Because you, like I said, you could have all the revenue you want, you can increase that, you can increase the CSAT rates, but if there's something fundamentally broken even with an internal operation of, hey, I don't understand this or hey, I don't want to do this, then from a metrics perspective, you're not doing well. Like you can be externally facing doing well, but internally you can't as well, too. So that's why I say it's like a leaper scale for RevOps because you're always trying to balance out the business performance, but also trying to balance out the internal inner workings performance and making sure everything's aligned.

SPEAKER_05 37:14

If you were, I guess, in a position where you had to replicate what you've done so far in your current role over the last you know four or five years, um, and do it again. Any key learnings you would take away from your current experience of building a Roblox team that you would instantly apply into an into a new environment, into a new company?

SPEAKER_02 37:37

Yeah, I think there's a lot of things, you know, that anyone would do different, especially myself. Like there's a lot of things I'm like, ooh, maybe I should have done this and that. Um you know, the first thing I should I will do with a next company is really assess the talent that I have, um, truly assess the business process and not just say, oh, they have Salesforce, we can do this easily, you know, coming in and not truly understand the energy. You're like, ooh, okay, that's kind of not what I thought it was, right? And actually truly making sure you're breaking down silos. Those are the things that I really think when I go to the next company, I truly want to do is making sure those silos are broken. Because, like I said, change management is a huge thing. And if you don't have everyone aligned in that customer journey process, you know, you think you have someone aligned, and it's like, no, I still don't understand. And it's like, oh, okay, well, we just launched this. Like, how do we, you know, make sure we go back and get that align alignment with everyone and making sure everyone's kosher with what we're trying to do, right? Um, so really like assessing talent, assessing your team, especially if you have a team, you're coming and you're taking over something, or assessing the needs that you need to have. Um, and the last thing I'm gonna say, and I know a lot of RevOps individuals, you know, a lot of people see them as a cost center as well, too, right now, because it's so new. Um, you know, going to a new company, you know, making sure you understand that it's an investment. And those investments also are the people that you bring in, um, especially like looking at analytics and strategy, especially looking at um systems like the CRM, like truly bringing in, you know, if you can't find anyone, okay, what is a good Salesforce partner I can bring in to truly kind of drive this for me as a fractional um RevOps consultant or RevOps analyst for me while I try to go look for someone or build someone up in my my team that can truly take that over. So um that's what I would do differently next time. Um, like I said, everyone's kind of different, but for me, um, really just looking at, you know, the different lessons I've learned over the last five years and really just saying, you know, when I go somewhere else, you know, how do I do this better and how do I, you know, make it better for that next work?

SPEAKER_05 39:40

That's great. I think change management's a really interesting notion. Um, it's something that, in my opinion, having recruited both the UK, European markets, and in America for the last six years, I was placing change managers eight, nine, ten years ago, even within the non-profit public sector space, which is usually seen as being a bit high on the curve, right? Whereas there are individuals that this is all they do is change management. Um, whereas in the US, I I don't really feel like it's a role that's maybe respected as much or as available, you know. I think it's usually an afterthought. Whereas in Europe, it's a bit more of a we're doing a project implementation, we're gonna need a change manager, right? Do you think the role of a change manager will increase as more businesses move to a RevOps first mindset?

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Yes, RevOps find it as well as if they're doing transformation. Um, that's another key term that's coming up is you know, digital transformation, digital transformation, um, as well as RevOps, right? And, you know, a lot of these projects go and there's no alignment, like I said, no alignment. There wasn't a good change management. And I think when people in the US they think of change management, they think of trading, right? Sales enablement or revenue enablement. It's like, okay, well, you know, you do that, but it's like, no, ACTAR, you know, is a whole different acronym than you know, really making sure that we have an enablement plan. Um she got really excited about that one. Um that you know there's an enablement plan. Um, you know, and you know, enablement and change management plans are completely different. So I think what's gonna happen is over the next you know few years, you know, when a lot of RevOps professionals figure out that change management is and not just the analytics and driving revenue. Um, because like I said, RevOps is really becoming that chief of staff for the for revenue organizations, right? And you know, as they kind of progress in those C-suite roles in the future, they're gonna really kind of look back and say, ooh, okay, we really need change management.

SPEAKER_05 41:51

Thank you, Omani, uh, for joining us today and sharing in your showing your incredible insights into RevOps. Um, it's certainly a a concept, uh topic, uh, and a practice that is gonna go continue to grow in the CRM journey. I think that's clear and obvious for us all to see. We appreciate your time. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

Anytime, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_05 42:09

Yeah, thank you. Uh for our listeners, please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show for more episodes featuring leaders uh who are truly shaping the space of the rowps and CRM space, uh, such as Imani. Appreciate it.