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 Mastri 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_03 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 Mastery.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Hero Witsi.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

And today we're talking with uh Maxwell Moses, or Max for short, uh Director of Revenue Operations uh at Walmart Business. So uh welcome, Max. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Appreciate you being here, Max. Um, you know, thanks thanks for your time. Um very exciting uh to to have someone of your background on the show. Um and uh you know I'll let you start with uh an intro about yourself, uh your your career to date, um, some of the some of the companies that you've worked for uh up until now.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Sure. Again, thanks for having me. Uh going on 15 years of sales and operations experience. Right now I'm the director of revenue operations at Walmart Business, which is a B2B division inside of Walmart. Uh coming up on a little year and a half at Walmart Business. Uh prior to that, I was I've been at a couple other companies. Most uh relevant to sales operations and the B2B world uh was some time that I spent at Amazon Business. I spent almost 10 years building out Amazon's B2B division and the sales operations that go along with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Nice. Um so in in terms of your journey so far, um, let's let's take a second to focus on that. So you you started out in you started out in sales. In sales, selling. Yeah. So you were the enemy as as as we say, a pesky salesperson, cold calling. Um but you were doing more strategic, right? You you were doing like key accounts, that that type of type of role.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Uh it was when we really started in sales in my time at Amazon Business, it was at the beginning of a uh the the start of that business unit. Prior to Amazon, I was at a smaller startup uh called Level Up. That was focusing on key accounts, making sure that some of the larger partners were being handheld as we rolled out some uh white label and and white glove implementations. Uh, that's how I moved into sales at Amazon Business. And so I joined Amazon as an individual seller uh managing B2B companies and their relationships with Amazon Business. And I was a good salesperson. Uh there are other people who are maybe better at the selling part of it. My my skill set and and the uh thing that I was good at was mechanizing and understanding the process and the data around it, which is what I use to my advantage to make sure that I was hitting my numbers.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Nice. Okay. Um, so strategic selling, a little bit more kind of uh selling with insights as opposed to here's a list, here's a KPI number of cold calls to make, uh a bit more strategic.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, understanding what was working well and the insights from the wins that you would get, and then being able to replicate that by looking across the prospect base to understand who you can go after that would be as good of or a better fit based on what you had success with.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Good. So so would you say that kind of approach was a good segue into being moving into from sales more into that kind of sales ops mindset, being that kind of a bit more analytical in your go-to-market sales approach was it was a good platform to then dive more into sales ops and then eventually RevOps?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Which is how it happened. So I didn't sales, uh, they're of course using Salesforce um as our CRM. And I was good at understanding the systems, right? How do you use Salesforce to your advantage? How do you utilize the reports or the dashboards? And the benefit with Salesforce is if your organization has set it up so that you as a user can build those yourselves, like the it you have the keys to the kingdom to build whatever you need to dive into the data that you you have. So I utilized that and would build reports or dashboards that I'd share out to the rest of the sales team and say, hey, here's the best practice that worked for me. Here's a report and a dashboard that pulls in the respective accounts that were successful for me. And if you go here, I've built it for you. You can go and it will pull up your own. Okay. So it was helping to scale the sales team and say, hey, this worked for me. Why don't I share this out to everyone else? And when they started having success with it, then they're then you start down a conversation of, okay, this individual as a salesperson is good at understanding the systems and at sharing the practices there. So is there an ability or an opportunity here where as the sales operations organization expands to utilize that? Right. So I took took it upon myself, got Salesforce certified. I got ADM 201. And then as the sales operations team grew, when there was an opening, I raised my hand and said, look at the skill set that I have here. Here's the credentials that I actually have. And here's how it's been benefiting the sales team. So instead of utilizing me as an individual seller, which there's still deliverables there that were good. If it's focused, then you can dive into the work as a sales operations individual and lean into that. It's a multiplier across the entire organization versus just particularly driving my sales.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yep. Makes sense. So so there's a couple of takeaways I take from that. One is going the extra mile, um, doing a little bit more outside of your day job per se, um, being naturally curious and taking initiative. Um, and the second is backing yourself when an opportunity presents. Um those two aspects arguably played a large part in in you, securing that kind of more of that sales ops role, um, where you got involved with integration, CRM implementations. I know you used part art account engagement at the time as well. Um, and then and then moving up over the years. I I'm guessing the same mindset, just kind of going from you know, sales ops to manager to senior manager over a course of nine years during your time at uh at Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Yeah, so you you mentioned something which uh is important about uh taking on scope outside of the role. The reality is any company is gonna have more work available to do than is being assigned to the individuals, and the people that say identify that of that work that isn't being addressed or even asked of and take it on generally end up with more visibility across the organization because they're increasing their scope by on their own without being asked for it. So if you can assume the responsibility, it's helpful to one put a couple more feathers in your cap. Uh and and if it's aligns to the business goals, when those deliverables come through, it's easy for leadership to say, hey, who who helped us out with that? Who who was behind that? Right. So you have to look for the areas that maybe aren't being addressed in the company, uh, but are out there and in need for someone to take on, you just step into it, right? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

No, I I think it's important. Um, I think we're all guilty of sometimes maybe going through the motions and you know, but if you're what if you want to control your career or let your control your your career control you, I think they're two different things, right? Um, you know, sometimes you have to give before you get and and take that initiative. So I like that. So so just very quickly, um out systems, spend a year there now, and then and now obviously you've you've hit the year mark at Walmart Business. Um we're gonna dive into a little bit more of defining RevOps in a second, but just for our listeners, very quickly, Walmart business. Just tell us a little bit about where that sits with with Walmart, the business side. What does that kind of role as director of RevOps entail?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

So if if you look at Walmart, there are endless business units. Okay, you have Walmart Business, you've got Walmart Connect, there's Walmart Data Ventures, there's I I could go on, right? Each one of these business units is effectively its own company, right? They have a senior vice president or an executive vice president that's responsible for the entire entity and manages the top line PL for that. So Walmart business for us is the business-to-business version of Walmart.com. You and I might go to Walmart to buy, and I'm looking at a pencil holder or a post-it note or anything like that. Um but companies in the United States, of which there's 33 million registered business entities, they need to buy things from in this case, Walmart business. They can treat Walmart business as their vendor of choice to come and purchase anything that they need. The the real benefit that we offer to them is if you look at a business, companies generally spend about 10% of their total annual revenue on things to run the business. Okay. There's more that they contract, and there's more that they may have planned through uh vendor engagements. But if they need to go as needed, grab something on an order because it's out of stock or not available, which is where we do well with playing in the industry right now, is called indirect spend. Around 10% of a company's annual revenue that is spent on indirect. When a company is spending that revenue, they often are the 80-20 rule. There are a hundred different vendors that they're going to to get you know 20% of their product that they need. There's a couple other vendors that might fill the other gap, but Walmart can Walmart business can have we we have the assortment of all of that, that that entire range of vendors. So if a company right now is going to 50 different sites or 50 different stores or resources to purchase the business-to-business goods that they need, Walmart's SKU lineup is millions, tens of millions of available pieces of product. So they can come to Walmart, have all of that available. And for the business, they have visibility across how it's being spent, who at the company is purchasing it. They can set up approvals or share payment methods. So it's a consolidation and visibility potential for the company to have better financial visibility, understand how much they're spending on shipping, and save time and hassle on their day-to-day operation so that they can focus on their business.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

Yeah, wow. So before we jump into the RevOps, um so you you were in sales, right? And then you switched because you said you knew you knew the systems, you understood the process. Um, can you give us a little bit more about that decision-making process? Were you like just fed up with sales? Or like generally people who are good at sales, and it sounds like you were good at it, tend to stay in that because it's heavy commission based. It's very clear performance-based, and if you can accelerate, that's great. Um, so a lot of people, I would think, maybe I'm wrong, of course, that they wouldn't want to leave that. So, what was your driving factor in saying, look, I I think I want to move out of sales and more into the operation side?

SPEAKER_01 14:10

So I definitely say that I was good, not great at sales. I think I could do it. Uh, there are, if I looked across my peer group, there were and are people that are just incredible sales individuals. They have a knack for owning a conversation, driving follow-up with the customer or prospect, and allowing the customer to walk down the path towards the sale with them. I was good at that. Uh, for me, the way that I find the most enjoyment is by continuous learning. And at the time, Salesforce was the CRM of record for us. I was able to play in it on my own, build reports, build dashboards, get a certification, kind of scratch the itch for uh continuously educating myself. And that's what opened up the world for sales operations for me was hey, here's an industry with lots of opportunity to continue to challenge myself in something that's really interesting and intriguing to me. Uh, and with a at the time when I was getting when I got certified in Salesforce, there's there's a long path in front of that uh where you can choose kind of your adventure to decide what additional skill sets you want to build as a Salesforce admin or program manager or architect. And that that's what was really interesting to me was at that point in my career trying to continue to round out the areas of knowledge that I had in the sales world versus become a specialist.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

Okay, very interesting. So uh one more question on this. Um so how do you know what's system and what's raw talent? So, in terms of like if you're looking at your top performer, um, and you might say, I'm okay, what's working for you, or you knew what's working for yourself, how do you really know that this is really I can I can attribute this success either partially or wholly to the system or to the operations that it can then systematize as opposed to this is just pure talent of the individual?

SPEAKER_01 16:42

I think I might need a little clarification there. So is it you're saying are it is it that they know how to mechanize the system that they're using to drive the sales, or do they just have raw sales talent?

SPEAKER_03 16:57

Right, exactly. Because if you talk to a lot of salespeople, they're gonna say, I'll pull the same numbers regardless of what tools you need. Give me. I'm just great, right? And sure. Um now obviously there's some middle ground there. That's not that's not entirely true, but that tends to be the ego, the typical egotistical, let's say.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Sounds like something I would say.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

So I'll give you that one. Well, you we know it's all talent, hero.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yeah, so I I think it takes an understanding of the sales individual too, right? So you need to have uh you if you're looking at it just on the dashboards, it's not gonna give you the answer. Uh there's it gets into the practices that the individuals have. And the ones that excel have what's interesting is uh, and this this is still kind of a trope in the industry. Uh oftentimes there's two, but the it is not uncommon that you see the the top sales reps sometimes don't log all of their activity regularly. Okay. And they do that because they might say, like, what do I need to log my activity for? I I I know I'm closing the deal. Maybe they have a process at the end of the week where they go back and log it all. Um, but in in in my past experience, uh there's uh it takes some training for, hey, this is our process with our system. So if you have just raw skill set and a seller mindset, we need you to document that so that we can train the rest of our team on it and the rest of our org on on how to replicate that for you.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Yeah. Um I I think I think as someone who's very concerned with user adoption, I'm sure you are, uh myself too, as someone who implements systems. Um one of the biggest pushbacks you get is you're making me do this work so someone else can benefit. And I think that's kind of what you're what you're hitting on there. So um we always try to push, at least I do, um, no, this benefits you. Um and then and then you have the sales guy. There are some of them incredibly talented that just never forget anything. I'm sure you've met these people, right? Um, definitely not me, right? I I I gotta write everything down. But some they just never forget anything, and they know every sale um and every person and every conversation, and I'm like, and um, yeah, so uh yeah, so it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Um I find the ones that really excel are particularly process oriented, they have their day planned, and they yes, you have to explain why it's beneficial for sales to utilize the tools that are in front of them. They also take it upon themselves to dive into it, understand the use case, and then share why to their peers. So they're champions of the systems and the technology, and they talk about why they're successful and how they reach that success, and and have a plan around their approach for it, and and it's regularly um repeatable.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

Yeah, awesome. All right, let's hop on to uh to let's say our core subject. So um RevOps. So um a lot of people when they think of RevOps think of different things. Um, why don't you let you tell us you know what you think most people think of when they think RevOps or revenue operations um and you know what it means to you?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

It's kind revenue operations is kind of this term that in the la from what I've seen, it's been around for a while. In the last five years, maybe even less than that, a lot of organizations are using it as an expanded catch-all for a handful of functions within an organization. Okay. Uh if I'm if I'm stripping it down, for me, revenue operations is ensuring visibility and efficacy behind all of the efforts and motions that drive revenue for a business. Okay. So it's supporting the sales team, supporting the finance team, supporting the marketing team, and supporting any areas of the business that are tied to deli I identifying, capturing, and then owning. And retaining revenue.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

So that sounds like all of CRM, customer service, marketing, sales. So is there anything in CRM not?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

So I don't know if I would say so much customer service. Um, I I I think I do partition that a little bit um where the service aspect of the customers, I do like to treat that as a wholly contained entity. Customer success, absolutely. And it's another term that is still evolving. And you can talk to five leaders and they'll give you five definitions. Uh, but for for me, if we're looking at the areas of RevOps, like within customer success, it's pretty self-explanatory. Making sure your customers are successful, right? Some of that includes when you have a customer join as a customer. They when they move from a prospect to a customer, how are they brought onto the system or platform? So ensuring it's a dedicated team, right? That is separate from sales but supports and is involved in the pre-work to deliver that customer. And it's ensuring that they have a good onboarding onto the platform and that they are walked through what the benefits are of utilizing the partnership and that they understand where they can go to or how to best use the relationship going forward.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Okay, cool. So um, so it's interesting, and maybe you can clarify a bit, um, that you would say customer service kind of falls out. Because I I I would think anecdotally that customer service really defines the customer satisfaction. Because when you have an issue, you call in, and if that's a miserable experience, that's how you loot that client like forever. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah, so the they are a parallel partner. Okay. So if we're looking at customer service or customer support or customer care, as some customer, as some companies might define it, those are functions of the customer relationship that sales or the customer success team might not have the permissions or the access to to solve. So if there's a back-end issue from a technical perspective with a customer's relationship with you, that's customer support and that's customer service. There's absolutely a channel of communication between the sales team and the success team on that customer's experience. And if there needs to be an escalation, the loop in sales or customer success. But the resolution of the customer's problem in some of our cases, where did my order go? Or I need my tax exemption applied correctly. I'm speaking specifically to B2B retail in this case. That is a customer care and customer support function for how do we resolve this issue and process or refund or locate an item on behalf of the customer. Sales and the customer success individuals, their time is most valuably spent on pursuing and maintaining the relationships and helping grow those relationships and accounts. And the customer care team's time, which is where their expertise is, is most valuably spent on resolving the customer issues.

SPEAKER_03 26:08

Yeah, that that's actually quite brilliant. I never thought of it like that. So essentially what you're saying to summarize is you have the customer service rep who's just dealing tactically with the issue, but then there's a let's say an account executive customer success person who, if I'm not happy, I can override the customer service rep, go to my main contact, and they'll maintain that relationship. And even if the even if the customer service rep is completely fumbling the ball, that relationship manager will be like, oh, I'm so sorry, we got it, I'm on top of it, don't worry about it. Um, and that will, I guess, recover and maybe even build a relationship more than it was before that. Um, because they know you care.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah, and oftentimes the relay or the handoff to customer care is happening through that individual, through the sales individual or through the customer success individual, right? Customers do not like being told, hey, you got to hang up and call this other line. And from there, we don't know what happens, right? It's got to be a handoff or a shepherded conversation where both of the parties are involved. And once there's confidence that the customer care individual is resolving it, then the account executive or customer success manager they can fade back to their work.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

While we're on the topic of defining RevOps, um, I want to try something slightly new. Um so um surprise to both of you, but just on the topic of common misconceptions uh around RevOps, and we I want to get a strongly disagree, disagree, no opinion, agree, strongly agree type type response um to a couple of statements. Um first is RevOps is just sales ops with a new name. Disagree, strongly disagree. Uh let all right, let's I'm gonna say give give a uh a sense of give an example of why, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah, so uh professional services or customer success is not sales ops, right? But revenue operations does have an umbrella over those areas, okay. Sales operations as I see it is the these titles and these job functions are self-explanatory, right? It's the operations behind sales. What are our SLAs and SOPs? What are our rules of engagements? How do we define the opportunity flow and mechanize Salesforce? And within sales operations, there's of course an admin and a dev team and a technical team. Uh, but there's other pieces there for revenue operations that spans customer success or professional services if your organization has grown to that level of complexity. And outside of that, RevOps also has an umbrella across go-to-market strategy or enablement. And in our case, and this is this is within my team at Walmart Business, there's learning and development. So there's continued education for our sales team. How do we educate our sales organization, make sure that they're trained on products and understand our approach to market and the value proposition? And that is not in the silo of sales ops. I I see sales operations as operationalizing the sales team's day-to-day activities and what they're working on.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Okay. Um, just to point Devil's advocate, uh, Amazon, back at your time at Amazon, a lot of sales ops titles, uh, whereas whereas uh Walmart is RevOps title. Yeah would you say was was there any black and white difference between the two roles and companies um as a follow-up to that um you know uh common misconception that they're the same thing?

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah, so at my time at Amazon, there it evolved and it at one point started with sales operations. Then as Amazon grew and they established a professional services division and professional services management to maintain customer relationships with the complex offering, professional services came under sales operations. Eventually, the pro serve organization grew large enough that it was appropriate to have a senior leader own the entire professional services function and it came back out. And sales ops was uh focused on CRM and program management and uh day-to-day mechanizing and operating the sales team. Professional services was it its own. So and and now, uh, this is post my uh time there, now they've brought in effectively a vice president. And the the vice president now owns what they've titled uh go to market, I think GTMO is what what they titled it, go to market operations. Okay, and they Amazon business is using that as their umbrella term for sales, professional services, customer success, right? So it's where you see some customers, some companies call it go-to-market ops, some companies call it sales ops, and it does everything. And some companies have said, yeah, we're gonna call that revenue operations, because and this is in my opinion, too, like it works at Walmart business calling it revenue operations because all of the functions underneath that purview drive revenue.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Got it. Okay, thanks for that clarification, Max. Um, all right, strongly agree, strongly disagree, agree somewhere in the middle. Um, RevOps is only about tools and dashboards. Strongly disagree.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Strongly disagree. It's it's it's also about process and enablement and providing insights. And you can take a report or a dashboard, it doesn't mean anything unless you're gleaning something from it. So you have to translate what the report and the dashboard is showing you into an actionable insight that you can do with the company, right? What are you gonna do with that report or that dashboard? What's it saying outside? What's the chart saying, right? They're not speaking to you, uh, but they're that's why you have minds inside of the revenue operations organization that focus on sales insights and performance that you can glean that and say, what are we gonna take forward here?

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Okay. RevOps is only for large enterprises. Now you've done it in two large enterprises, so um maybe they're gonna bias there, but do you think it's only for large enterprises?

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Uh no, it's it of course not, right? Like revenue operations is going to be for an enterprise of any size. I think it does make sense when you have a large enterprise calling it revenue operations because there's enough functions within the organization that can be rolled up under a single-threaded leader or director. There are a lot of times at a smaller organization, and this is just from me speaking to individuals in my network, uh, but there's probably a one at a at a startup that is 20 or 50 people, it's a one-person show. They're owning all of the functions that I defined in my organization, right? Customer success, sales data, and performance reporting, sales operations, go-to-market operations, and go-to-market planning and market planning and enablement. It's they're a one-person show for it, but when you get to the enterprise size and you have teams of people that are owning those functions, that's where I see it helpful to call it a revenue operations division. Versus at a small enterprise, it might be called RevOps, it might be called sales operations, and they're wearing 10 different hats.

SPEAKER_03 35:02

So, how how would you advise a small company that to start thinking about operations instead of just sales? I need to hire a salesman, I need to hire uh, you know, sure.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Yeah, the the uh so the the look, I think the industry best practice is that you hire operations ahead of sales because who's gonna build it out? Right. It's it's very common for an organization to have a sales team, and as they expand their CRM function or their operations function, the person who's raising their hand becomes the Salesforce admin or program manager, right? Which is not so different than how I described my growth path at Amazon Business, right? I was the sales individual, I raised my hand, I took on some additional responsibility, and it grew into a division that we were able to build out, right, with the resources that Amazon had. Uh the you need top line like senior leadership team needs to be aligned there, right? So the chief operating officer or chief sales officer or at a small company, it might just be the CEO and the uh COO that are looking forward, they need to understand the needs of a sales organization and what it takes to deliver results. Okay. Uh of course it's hard to scale, but you need somebody whose time. I mentioned this before, it's about how time is valuably spent at an organization. So sales is best focused on pursuing and maintaining customers, right? That's their skill set, and that's where you'll see the most value delivered back to the organization. You also need an individual who is not having the uh switching cost of changing their focus, but can think about what systems do we need? How do we need to structure our data model and what mechanisms do we need to put in place? Somebody needs to be focused on that and a partner and peer to the sales individuals and sales leaders. Um, but having that back and forth, if it's one individual, can slow down rate to speed speed to market.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

We're gonna cover a little bit about the data model uh with some examples, how how Walmart do it uh next. But uh, since you're having a little bit of fun on the uh misconceptions, I've got I've got three more for you and then we'll we'll move on. Um and we'll we'll whittle whittle through these a little bit uh back to back. So um you can hire one person and call it RevOps. You kind of answered that question just then, but what's your what's your thoughts? Who do I hire for that? Or what the statement was you can hire just one person and call it rev ops.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Oh that oh, is do I agree or disagree with that? Yeah. Uh I disagree with that. I I I disagree with that because the because that's asking too much of one person, to be honest. Um you you could call you I might call that something different. Um I might call that I don't really know what I would call that. I I I having one person with a title of RevOps is difficult. It it puts a lot on that individual's shoulders and doesn't allow them to focus on an area that they can drive forward. Uh, you often need team identified programs and initiatives and resources behind those to combine something and say, hey, this is a revenue operations function.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

I think I think you were about to say it's a team sport, right? Um you know, the the again, the analogy, jack of all trades, master of nonsprings to mind for that. Um okay, cool. Uh RevOps own revenue. Yeah, I agree. Agree with that. Good stuff. Um, nice and easy. Uh and finally, RevOps. This is gonna be an interesting one for you. RevOps is just a trend or a buzzword.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Oh, I strongly disagree. I strongly disagree. The I mean, we see it in the market where it's more and more companies are identifying this as a needed function. I think revenue operations was one of the faster growing titles across the take take the LinkedIn stat um for for new individuals in the market with those titles. Uh, companies are recognizing that it's a holistic function within the organization that needs to partner and drive across the business. Um, so it's here today.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

Yeah, I'd agree. Um, when we was doing a bit of prep for this this episode, actually, I was I was curious as as well around kind of when RevOps really started to take take off. Um, the earliest use I could find for it was was kind of 2015-2016. Um and um I saw a white paper, I think it was Forester Research, I think, or or Bain, one of the one of the bigger kind of market research uh companies. I think they it was like late just before pandemic, 20 2019, I think, where there's starting to see like white papers, the the ideology, the philosophy on on uh RevOps, what that looks like, what it actually is, and and so on. So I think you nailed it, you know, last five, six years, it's really kind of taken off. Um and and I'd agree with you as well. It's it's here to say here to say I was talking to Maz uh yesterday and um you know saying like it's one of the skill sets that we're seeing um you know, after admins and devs, maybe it's like the next quick next demand, highest demand, or we need a RevOps analyst, or uh so on. So or this role sits in our revenue operations team, right? It's that's something we're starting to see a lot more um on a daily basis, let's say. Good. Um thanks for playing along, Max. Um, so um so so moving on to um let's talk a little bit about Walmart. Um and um, you know, just just in general, like how are B2B companies using Salesforce? Um, you know, how how do Walmart use Salesforce? And then let's move into the kind of four areas that you oversee and we'll we'll tackle them individually um relating back to Salesforce. But let's start nice and easy. How how how are Walmarts currently using uh Salesforce?

SPEAKER_01 42:16

So uh we use our Salesforce instance. Sales isn't just the well we are not the sales is not the only user of it, right? Um the primary user, um, and that's something that I drive internally is primary user of our CRM is our sales organization. So core function is to make sure that we have our database of prospective and existing customers inside of it, that we utilize it to manage and forecast and drive our pipeline of opportunities, and that we use it in partner with other systems that go outside of Salesforce to conduct our business report. Okay, we also use it for a product relationship. Uh, we use it for our uh legal reviews, um, for customer legal reviews, right? So there's other teams across the organization that are stakeholders and have process or flows built into Salesforce as it relates to sales, right? Sales is always the primary user of it. And then if there's functions or ways of working that tie into the sales process, those stakeholders are involved and utilize it in in their day to day to conduct their side of the house.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

So taking the four areas, I know there's four areas just rather. Who maybe haven't checked out your LinkedIn prior to the episode? Four areas that you mainly have responsibility for: customer success and onboarding, number two, go to market strategy and operations, three is sales planning, four is data technology reporting. Let's start with the first one. Customer success and onboarding, what does that entail? And again, how how, if any way, are you leveraging the Salesforce platform to achieve that?

SPEAKER_01 44:28

So our customer success and onboarding team makes sure that when a new organization or existing organization, but when when somebody comes in and establishes a relationship with Walmart Business, customer success team, onboarding team, they make sure that they have a good first experience, right? First impressions last. So we need to make sure that that customer has a good step into their relationship. Do they know how to use the offering? Have they been given a walkthrough if they want it? And if they have questions in the future, do they know who their point of contact is for a complex customer issue? Can we make sure that long term our customers are successful? Okay. We have our customer success team assigned across our territories. So there's dedicated customer success managers that support sales individuals across the territories and become a known point of contact that's customer facing for the accounts in those regions.

SPEAKER_03 45:36

Um the next one I think is go-to-market strategy and operations. Yeah, so what exactly did that entail? That more than just um marketing?

SPEAKER_01 45:51

So we as you move into new markets or as you move into new segments, there's an approach of like who are we going to go after? Why are we going to go after them? And what's the size of the opportunity? So go-to-market strategy and operations focuses on the segments and the verticals of our customers and how we're gonna approach them. So if we're moving into a new industry or new vertical that we're targeting our customer as a new prospective uh customer base, what's the market opportunity? What's the total addressable market? How do we approach it? So, do we do a uh do we go with direct sales? Do we do events? Do we partner with marketing to pursue into the market? And what's that messaging look like from a marketing and uh automated approach? On the other side, our sales team needs to know how to speak to that. So the operations behind go to market is do we have the correct talk track and the scripting and the tools available to our sales team so that when we pursue into that segment or that vertical, sales knows how to talk to the value prop, that they've been versed on the market itself and the benefit that those customers would get from a relationship with us, and is their consistency in how each individual sales rep goes about their day to drive into that market, right? What what would not be a great experience is if you had 10 sales individuals all approaching their uh uh their prospective customer base in a different way. So it's when we go after a segment or an in go after a new market, how are we gonna message them? And what's the process and who are we gonna go after so it's consistent across our territories?

SPEAKER_03 48:02

So um just to put an example on this, if I'm understanding correctly, you'll say something along the lines of we're going to target hotels and motels, and we're going to pitch them with sheets, pillows, blankets, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

That that's a very that's very specific. I think in our case, it's uh you using the hotel example, which isn't far off. Okay. Um hotels are a type of customer that we serve pretty well. Uh it may be that we're talking to them about specific product categories that we can help fulfill. Um, but it's also that we want to make sure that we're going after that our sales team is pursuing the correct type of profile of a hotel that we know we can serve. So is it a multi-location? Is it a chain? Is it and when we have conversations with them, not so much hi, this is the product or the category that you might be able to purchase? Um, but this is how you as a hotel can look at Walmart business and have a relationship with us for your needs. What do you need as a hotel from business to business supplies? Right? Do you need a unlabeled bag? We do grocery pretty well. Do you need unlabeled food product so that you can stock it in your cafeteria in the hotel? Right? Under understanding what their use cases are and then giving them the tools and the talk tracks to manage those relationships.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

So obviously, there's a lot of uh overlap between these four areas. For example, go to market strategy that you just talked about, um, with sales planning and enablement um as well. Um so so again, for for context, we're talking about sales cloud primarily, um, you know, Salesforce Sales Cloud, um, which has a lot of native planning tools, um, for example, um territory to help with territory design, selling quota, one of them being, for example, Salesforce maps. Uh, is that or maybe it's rebranded since uh to territory planning, I'm not sure. But um is that something that you're you're using? What what what from a technology stack goes into the sales planning piece with Salesforce? What are you using? What are some of the products?

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Uh we do use we're we're at we use Salesforce maps. Um a lot of territory planning, regardless of how large the organization is, is uh initially managed in an Excel file. And you're mapping that out, and it is a grueling Excel file. Um, but you have to have a trade-off between where you decide to put yourself on the hook for a recurring bill for technology, or if you can do it yourself with resources that are available. Um we utilize Salesforce maps and and we cut our territories um based on region and state. Uh, but the but I'm also comfortable if we can do it um correctly with uh other types of file file management.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Would would you or do you use products like Salesforce SPIF, for example, on the commission side? Um is that something that's maybe come up?

SPEAKER_01 51:46

Right right now that's homegrown. Okay for for our incentive management. Uh we might get to a point uh where we drive forward with that, uh, but but right now our uh the the way that we manage that is is homegrown based off of the performance metrics and and reporting that we drive.

SPEAKER_02 52:09

Nice. What about like um any like AI stuff? Are you using like Einstein AI to help sell sellers with um you know risk deal gap analysis or or additional support, quick common, frequently asked questions, that type of stuff?

SPEAKER_01 52:26

The when I can get security approval to integrate an AI tool, we utilize it. Uh that's a large that's a big win. Okay. Uh there's a few established partners that we have. So for Walmart business, like Walmart has a relationship with uh Microsoft Copilot, and that's an adopted AI tool. Um took a while to get there, and there's of course pursuit of some other tools, um, but we're we're particularly cautious around that, and and also like to do our own homegrown for that.

SPEAKER_03 53:12

Yeah, so that comes to your last segment, sales data technology reporting. I would think you guys have a whole AI team, a fairly big one.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

We do. Uh so the sales tech and performance reporting and and data management, that part of my revenue operations organization focuses on systems and integration. So so you're right. Um we are still we're we're treading pretty carefully into what types of technology we give access to our data, uh, for for us, like our our customer's number one, cut customer first always. Um, and we have pretty rich data that is sensitive, right? So so looking at it from that perspective, it often is a question of, hey, do we want to integrate something? Or would we rather build our own? And we there's an entire silo at Walmart that focuses on tech and data engineering, and they sit parallel to my sales performance and data team. Uh, but they help us when when we need to go down the path of a security approval for for that.

SPEAKER_03 54:34

So isn't that more lax because you're B2B? I would think.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

No. No, it it's it's not. Really the the yeah, the it's one of those types of relationships or or approaches, rather, where yes, we have B2B, we have B2C, we're treating it as one approach for how we look at integrating AI tools, and the default is the more sensitive, which is B2C, right? So even though it's B2B, we still have people's names and contacts and phone numbers and their business data, and we want to make sure that it's protected, right? Like it's it's in the best interest of making sure that our data is sound and stays ours. So we keep a pretty there's some it's pretty stringent for us. Um uh yeah, but I think which can be a challenge, right? Like, but but there's but but um I I've I've adopted that that uh mindset of like it's for the greater good of our customer base.

SPEAKER_03 55:53

Right. So there are two parts to it, right? Obviously, you want your data secure, you don't want it getting out um because a malicious user can use that data in a malicious way. It's somewhat different than using it to train AI um in one, a responsible way, but then two, in a way that doesn't offend your consumer base. Um, let's say I'm sure you've heard this story, it's probably 10 years old. I don't believe it was Walmart. I don't remember the retailer that it happened to. Um, it was something along the lines of product recommendation engine. It's a product recommendation engine that was built. Um and they sent out recommendation for like prenatal products to a young girl who's like 16. And his father was absolutely irate and called called uh called the company, and it's a big company, I don't remember who it was, um, and like really, really blast them, like just really gave it to them. Um, but the funny part was that they were right. She was pregnant, this kid, um, unfortunately, or fortunately, um, depending how you look at it. Um, but it's interesting. So even though they were right, they were spot on, it was still an offensive, uh, an offensive messaging. Um, and that's one of those stories that kind of goes hand in hand with the the story of you know, the kids two go into a bank and they they push them out, but their father has a ton of money at the bank, right? That kind of stuff, which is big in the in the banking industry, that really, really kind of epitomizes, you know, you know, how aggressive do you want to be with your how do I say, your knowledge of your consumers, and like sometimes it gets a little bit um scary.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

Yeah, and I think for us, we're still using an analytical approach to that. So there is an analytics team that sits parallel to me. I've got a peer who runs our entire analytics division, and they glean insights like what you're describing, uh, and then action a seller, a sales individual to manage that conversation, right? We're we're not at the point where uh we're activating an AI technology to do that for us. We're still making sure that we understand what insights and analytics are being seen and uh surfaced, and then we're making human decisions behind it, which is often the best combination just to lead with. Like, let's look at our data. Can we use some data and insights there? And maybe some AI to source and compile the data, and then a human uh measure against it to drive that further.

SPEAKER_03 58:45

Um, so for more some of a more technical focused uh listeners, myself included, um, you tell us a little about your your data stack. Uh what do you use for your data warehouse, your pipes? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Uh so I will probably get some of this wrong. Uh so I'll I'll ask for forgiveness from my data engineering partners who sit parallel to me. Um we I believe it's called Apache, and Kafka are the tools that are our data store, right? Their data lake, data warehouse, I'm gonna get those wrong. Okay. Um, but we have upstream data that feeds all of dot com. Okay, we pull that down into a B2B specific database or data lake. Okay, and that gets organized and tagged and associated, and from there it actually comes down from a secondary into a tertiary database that then feeds Salesforce for us. Right, we do that so that there's a it minimizes uh holes, right? We don't want Salesforce, which is a third party for us, should not be touching anything that's close to housing our primary source of data, right? We should pull out just the data that we we should identify what data from our master data warehouse is business to business. We should pull that into another database downstream that is business to business data and only relevant to our sales and marketing efforts, and from there that should feed Salesforce. Uh, we have from an analytics perspective, uh, we are a user of Looker. Oh, cool. Which is an analytics tool.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:56

Yeah, by Google.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

Uh and we from a sales perspective, we utilize from something for something like content management. I mentioned we use sales dialer. Okay. Um every sales organization uses LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a prospecting tool. Uh, and we utilize Sales Loft, which is a content management and engagement platform.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

Uh just a quick follow-up question to that before we move on. Um, if you're only allowed to use uh one tool, um, let's say mass budget cuts, um, you can only use one tool. What do you think your sales team would want to keep hold of?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Aside from Salesforce.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:41

Yeah, aside from Salesforce.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

If I'm only using one tool, I'd probably go with huh uh regardless of tool, if it's for sales activity logging or prospecting or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:05

Let's say to identify prospects, engage prospects.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:10

It's gotta be LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:13

Yeah. Nice. All right. Um, so so just to just kind of wrap up, Max. Um let's talk about we we talked about kind of the the past, the current. Uh let's let's quickly focus on the future. Um where where do you see the role of RevOps um in in the general market, but also for you at Walmart um changing, if at all, over the next couple of years?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:41

I see it getting more financially driven. It it's in the name, revenue operations, okay. Uh right now, for Walmart business, for a lot of companies, that's about driving revenue through a sales channel, through a marketing channel. Where I see that changing or evolving into the future is enhancing the understanding of how that revenue affects the business. So, like getting deeper into where the revenue hits the PL sheet and how that revenue affects the top line and bottom line reporting of the organization versus just having it as a holistic, here's the revenue that we're bringing in. Like you need to understand and drive uh insights and evolution into what the meaning is behind the revenue that you're bringing in.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:51

Cool. So um if you're a small shop or have a small company um and you're looking uh to take your advice and say, okay, I need to hire RevOps before I hire a sales team. Um what do you look for in that in that crucial first hire? What should they be looking for?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:10

So I this is RevOps. Uh it's in the context of RevOps. I think this is just uh maybe a comment for for me as just as a hiring manager who conducts hundreds of interviews. I I look for agency. So the the individual should have agency themselves, right? They should be able to be shown. Here's the goal. You're at it, you're you are here. The goal, you can define the goal from the business perspective. Business leadership needs to be able to tell everyone what the goal is, and the individual needs to show that they have the ability to figure it out. Like everything can be figured out, and individuals that excel, particularly in RevOps, can identify the stakeholders to loop into the conversation, drive the initiative from identifying the root cause or the goal, and saying, here's who we need to take into the conversation, here's the next steps that these people need to take. And I'm gonna hold all of these people accountable along that journey so that we can make sure that we're making progress towards delivering it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

Have you heard of uh Joel Spolowski? No, no, um, he actually wrote a book based on a blog article is called uh Smart and Get Things Done, which is exactly what you're describing. You need to have a brain on their head, sounds like I'd like that book. Yeah, they need to be able to get things done. There are some people that are very smart but seem to never accomplish anything, and then you have people that will work and work and work, but in a in a in a in a kind of dumb way, let's say. Um, yeah, you want the balance between those two. So I guess what you would look In any solid hire. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:02

Yeah. Look, the background behind that is that they also need to have the mindset for revenue operations, which is thinking about the customer experience, having a data-driven mindset, and understanding how you can interpret results and what you can do from those results. And then anticipate the next step, which kind of goes back to just getting things done. But knowing if we take this step, what then what happened? Then what? Then what? Just looking around corners is important to know what's coming and have something ready so that when something comes up, you can act on it versus get caught unawares.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:45

How would you interview for that, Max? Would you would you be looking at candidates to um kind of tell you a story, or would you be going more kind of scenario uh hypothyticular if you were given uh scenario ABC? How would you go about it? Is it those types of questions? Because you're not going to see that in a resume. So how would you go about making sure someone has that mindset?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:09

Yeah, I I'm not a practitioner of I'm not a major practitioner. I think it is helpful to have scenario-based questions where you say, hey, here's what you have. How would you approach this? I think that does give some insight for understanding if people can just get stuff done and if they have agency. I am a student of behavioral questions. So tell me about a time. Give me an example when, things like that. And for me, it's helpful to understand times that people may have made a trade-off between delivery and quality. So, did you have to move up a deadline or move a deadline back? And how did that affect the quality of what you delivered? Uh, talk to me about disagreements and how you worked through those disagreements with individuals across the organization. Uh, talk to me about times that you had a sense that something was off, but no one really knows what's going on. Maybe it's that a metric isn't showing up as you would expect because the business hypothesis was slightly different and the result isn't there. It's not that there's an answer, but everyone's spidey sense is kind of tingling. How do you how did you drive to the root cause and figure out what was the problem there? And through an answer from that, like a great answer, says, here's how I drove the root cause. And here's what we actioned after we figured out what the problem was. So here's here's how I peeled back the layers. We identified this was the problem. Then I brought in this group to solve it. We resolved it in this way, and from there, our learnings from that allowed us in the future to address it going forward and uh learn from that experience. Like that to me shows if an individual can have critical thinking and work across an organization to drive resolutions.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:21

Last question. Um AI. How will AI change RevOps, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:31

So right now I'm asking my team all members of my team to use it in their day-to-day. The the current use case for us, uh, I I like to use it as an assistant, okay? Like to to do um things like build Excel sheets or to forecast out and do mathematical calculations or to build slides. Okay. Um, so so the current use cases, given the security um sensitivity that I discussed for what I can give it access to, the use case for me and my team right now is use this to do to accelerate your job, right? What are the tasks that are repeatable and manual? Set AI after that and mechanize it for you. Okay. Uh, I think where we'll go is once we can confirm the access that the AI has to our sensitive data is okay, it needs to drive insights and analysis and serve up suggestions on where we can continue to go in the market and how we can pursue into different customer segments.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:47

Awesome. All right. Well, uh, thank you. Big thank you, Max, uh, for for your time and sharing your uh story, uh, your personal story and some of the uh I'll guess uh beliefs on on RevOps and where RevOps is and where it can go. Um really appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Um for our listeners, do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show uh for more episodes featuring awesome leaders like Max Um who are uh living and breathing uh the Salesforce ecosystem. Uh, you can follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube uh for exclusive content and uh future episodes. Thank you.