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 Kira 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_02 0:28

So today we're talking with Emily Milanis, Director of Enterprise Technology and Revenue Operations at Northwest Bank. Welcome, Emily.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Hello, thank you for having me today.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Nice to meet you. Thanks for giving up your time and we appreciate you joining us on the podcast today. So we always start nice and early. And if you did your homework and listened to a few episodes, you would know exactly how we start. So first and foremost, just tell us a little bit about you, your background, how you got into Salesforce, all the good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Yeah, absolutely. So I've been 11 years in the industry, leading revenue ops with a specialty in enterprise CRM strategy and digital transformations. I have led several full-scale CRM implementations and modernization initiatives. So from supporting organizations from 3,000 employees to 10,000 employees, kind of everything in between. I've got a lot of extensive experience integrating technology during mergers and acquisitions. I started in my career basically through just being a Salesforce user and kind of walked my way up through the CRM ladders to really understand, develop, administer, and then overall build our strategy and then all of our revenue operations processes. It just happened.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

Yeah, there we go. We know it's not just as easy as that. So your first role, right? Set the scene, your first role 12 years ago. Tell us what you did at a high level and then how that led to Gallagher and then current role at Northwest.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, absolutely. So I was part of a company called Buck Consulting, and that company had gone through many owners, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures over the 11 years that I was there. And so it ended up being Gallagher at the end of its time. But I started as each region sales operation support. And so I just worked in supporting our sales folks and our producers in the business, anywhere from building deal pricing models to championing Salesforce to helping with activity entry to building some reports and dashboards, kind of whatever they needed in the Salesforce, I was there to support them.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Perfect. And you touched on some of the users over that time fluctuated, right? So I guess what was the smallest, what was the largest?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Yeah. So at the smallest, I think that team was maybe 2,500 people. And at the largest, there is probably 120,000 people. Um, and I was in a division, and so my division kind of floated around, ending up anywhere between three and 30,000 typically in that group. But we had many owners through that period. So from the likes of Conduit to Xerox and Gallagher, right? You had some big names with a lot of people in those organizations.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

We're gonna get into MAs shortly, but before we do, just to set the scene, do you remember roughly how many companies the business acquired during that time?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Over 100.

unknown 3:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

So from anywhere between really small acquisitions to very large acquisitions, they kind of span all over the place. We're really kind of dependent on what the niche was and what they were looking to support. So I was an acquisition of about 3,000 people, one of the largest in the division at the time when I was there. And we saw some upwards of 10,000, and then we saw others with 50 people. So it kind of was all over the place.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

And for those that might not know, Gallagher, how would you describe Gallagher to your 10-year-old niece or nephew?

SPEAKER_01 4:02

They were an insurance brokerage and consulting firm. I was in their benefit services divisions, but they did lots of different things from property and casualty to benefit support. They were really great with meeting our clients where they were at to really drive solutions that best fit their tailor. So it was a really exciting place to work. I had a great leadership team there and kind of led me to where I am today and gave me so many great opportunities. But they have very large and complex ecosystems. I learned a lot. So it was great being there.

SPEAKER_03 4:31

Good. We're going to come back on to Gallagher shortly. But you touched on today. So you're no longer there, but you're a company called Northwest Bank, new in the role, three, four months in. Why don't you just kind of tell us a 60-second version of what you're up to and what is to follow for the rest of the year in that role?

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Yeah, I was really excited to start at Northwest. So one of the things that gave me was an opportunity to kind of start my own team and work through digital transformation with their business here. So I've spent the last couple months kind of just understanding where they're at today, working through a short-term strategy, developing a long-term strategy, and partnering with the business to really understand what they need and where we need to go.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

Fantastic. All right. So we are called a CRM Success Show for a reason. So let's dive into it. So tell us a bit more about your general experience with the CRM space. You've been in it over a decade, but where where was your first, I guess, first exposure to CRMs? And you've had the pleasure, and maybe some people call it uh a pleasure, but you've had the pleasure of working with many different CRMs, growing, scaling, consolidating, etc. So just give us the context so we could dive into the topic a little bit further. What was your first interaction with the CRM and since then, maybe some of the high-level CRMs that you've worked with?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, absolutely. So my very first interaction with a CRM was Salesforce. And so that's kind of what started my CRM journey right around implementing Salesforce. I implemented a HubSpot instance as well. And I had kind of acquired through many of the acquisitions that we had Microsoft D365, Sugars, ServiceNows, Practifies, Red Tail, Smart Office, you kind of name it. I've worked through several different CRM instances, probably about 15 different CRM instances I've worked with in the past. And all of them have a different place for a home. So the best CRM isn't one with the most features. It's really the one where your people actually use it because it fits how your organization serves its customers. And so each CRM is really best fit for different organizations and what works for them.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

Let's talk about, let's say you are going through a CRM selection process. How do you even get to that initial point of what your users want? Do you know again? Most companies already have a CRM and they selected that CRM for a reason. And at that time, they probably went through, maybe they went through a similar exercise whether it was formal or informal, or you know, we saw this advert and we we had a pushy salesperson and sold us this CRM, right? They shouted the loudest. So how would you go about that? In an ideal world, if there's no CRM in place currently, how would you go about that process? What would you do?

SPEAKER_01 7:22

So the first thing I would do when thinking about it is I have five pillars in my mind that I kind of work through for finding the right fit of a CRM for you. And the first thing I'm gonna look at is the institution that you're part of. Each CRM kind of can be best fit for your financial institutions versus consulting firms and really see what works for you. And then I want to understand the organizational structure of where we're at today. And that could be based off of what do we sell? How are the products that we offer or their business lines or product structures that we really need to implement and who is using that CRM today? And then we're gonna look at customer experience, right? So, how do we make sure that we have digital onboarding, 360 views, and really make sure that our customers have the experience that they want as part of that? And then I'm gonna overlay that with what our sales and service strategy is. So not just the structure of the business that we talked about before, but really how we're going to market. And so if it is business to business sales versus business to consumer versus maybe there's an advisor or broker in between those agreements. And then the last thing that is really important when you're working at is compliance and regulations, because different institutions and industries have different regulations that you have to comply with. And so you really need to look at all five of those pillars to determine what may be the right fit for your CRM out of the box, what you want to consider to include during a bid process.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

Is there one pillar, in your opinion, that carries more weight and should be considered more important than the others? I may say in an ideal world, you'd consider all five, but let's say you could only pick one, which pillar would you say is the absolute pivotal pillar that somebody should select and go through that exercise?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, I actually think the institution is really important. And the reason for that is because a lot of CRMs are tailored to the niche of the institution that you're actually selling to. So if you think about like financial services, a financial services CRM has totally different objects and modules that come installed in it versus kind of an out-of-the-box standard sales CRM. And that makes a really big difference when you're going through a selection process.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

So in today's world, the entire CRM world is changing rapidly. Salesforce, specifically, particularly with their pushback agent force and headless, to a lesser extent, data cloud. Did that change how you think about product selection or roadmapping or anything you just said?

SPEAKER_01 9:48

I think it should definitely be considered in your roadmap, right? Those two things should all be kind of built out in your roadmap and how you have to meet your organization's specific needs. Every organization is on its own AI journey at a different speed in time with different regulations that they have to comply with. And so it's important to build those into your roadmap to make sure that you are giving your users and your customer base the best and newest experience, but also something that isn't just throwing something out there that's shiny and new, really making sure it meets their needs and it's built for them successfully.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

So Salesforce kind of right said this, but they seem to be thinking almost like agent-first type thinking, right? So you think your use case through the agent almost before you think about it through the user the UI. Do you think that's realistic at this point in time, or should you should it be that front and center, or should it really be more roadmap? Let's get through our core use cases in a traditional way and then go back, pivot, and try to automate that a little bit more with flows or intentic user.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

I think user experience should be first and foremost. I think the first thing that you should think about when you're looking through a CRM is how is it used, right? How can your audience really navigate it, make sure it's intuitive, make sure that they understand the value that they're getting out of it. And then AI should really be supplementing those processes for what their day in a life is like, right? It should be, in my opinion, right, more of a here's how I help you, here's how I advance your progress, here's how I can drill down and consume data to make it easier for you to figure out what's the next best move for me and where should I focus my attention on next.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Do you feel that if you're going back almost to the product selection side of things, right? You're picking the right CRM, that that becomes a big driver in there.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

It is a driver, but I wouldn't call it the main driver in selecting a CRM. Because there are so many tools that are using AI today and supplementing on AI today. I think that it is just one piece of it. What's driving it should be your business. It should be what matters to your business, how you're growing, what your specific areas are that we kind of talked about from sales and service strategy to customer experience and org structure. That can all be supplemented and supported with AI, but AI isn't a pillar for those because it's about meeting your organization where they're at today. And AI should be used as a driver across those pillars to help you accelerate your growth.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

All right, awesome. One more question. I'll give it back to you, Kiro. You're a little bit more focused on sales and services that as opposed to marketing, which is the third big pillar of CRM. Is that just because of your personal background?

SPEAKER_01 12:39

No, I do love marketing as well, right? I've worked in and built marketing CRMs too. And so I think marketing is a really important part of the structure as well. But there's a lot of teams that do separate sales and service into one CRM and marketing into another CRM, right? Or they'll integrate the two of them. It is useful to have them together, but at the same time, they do operate independently in a lot of ways. And you really just need to integrate them back together. I think it's really important that based off of what your company's needs are first, if they are a marketing first forward company, then you need to drive that first for it. If they are a sales forward first company or a servicing forward first company, you need to focus on where your company's expertise lies.

SPEAKER_03 13:29

So you have your five pillars approach. I guess if we go into that five pillars methodology a little bit more. So you're doing discovery workshops, you're working with the businesses and users to map the processes. Are these processes fit for what we need going forward in this new CRM selection process? You also managing upwards with executive alignment, getting sign-off. That's all before you even select the system of choice, right? So as you're narrowing down your selection of potential fits, you got your demos and so on. Who would you typically have in that room? Would you bring in with you an executive, a power user? Talk us through that because I'm sure that decision isn't solely just yours, especially in a bit multi-billion dollar revenue organization. So talk to us about okay, you've done that internal work, and even before you get there, how much internal work are you doing? Is that a quick exercise over a couple of weeks? Is that like a six-month contract uh project in itself? Like talk us through that and then the RFI process.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Yeah, absolutely. So technology alone won't solve poor processes. So the first thing you need to do is really complete a CRM assessment of where your current base is today. And then you need to develop some short-term priorities as well as a long-term vision. Within those short-term priorities, you're really going to need to gather 360 feedback and establish a governance model. That governance model should really ensure that you have executive feedback in the voice of the business represented so that they're part of those discussions and they feel like what their needs are are being heard and that we're developing technology to support and drive their business priorities and their business needs. The priorities of a CRM should really be the priorities of a business so that you can manage those milestones effectively versus just seeing technology milestones. It's really overall what our goals are of the business. I would have a variety of different folks included in those meetings, anywhere from folks in leadership to operations to day-to-day superusers and champions, to really make sure that we have the perspectives from different users across the business that we've established reflected as part of those committee meetings.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

And has there been times when you've gone through that CRM selection process where you've maybe got a bit of a negative Nelly or a negative uh Nathan? Let's not be uh, you know, um, where maybe they're like, I don't see the point of us moving to a CRM. What we got, it's working fine. And they just like torpedo the demos and just constantly like look for issues that maybe don't exist, or just highlight the negatives, and then that process then becomes way longer than it needs to be. Has that ever happened before?

SPEAKER_01 16:13

I think a good product owner keeps the people on track. And so you will prep with your teams beforehand, right? And you want to make sure that we're giving constructive feedback and constructive criticism versus just kind of pointing out the negatives. I think that people, like anybody, don't know what they don't know until they see the possibilities in front of them. And a really good leader preps their people ahead of time to ensure that you have good demos and you receive the outcomes that you need. On a demonstration, that's not really the time or the audience to be kind of debating over is this the move for us or not, right? That's where you really establish that governance model where you give them a forum to have those conversations and to air those grievances and concerns without deterring away from the process.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

So how do you balance the the goals of the business to the goals of the user, right? Because they're not necessarily aligned. The service rep might want to be closing cases relatively quickly, getting the answers that they need, and maybe servicing the customer. The business might just care about time to close and customer satisfaction ranking. They don't necessarily line up. That's dramatically more contrast when you're looking at a sales organization, right? They just care about I don't say not all, but they heavily care about their commissions, right? Not necessarily selling the right fit. You actually see that within Salesforce now that they're stressing the adoption rates as part of the commission structure, right? They're changing it because they felt that they're incentivizing things wrong. So when you're doing these kind of analysis, how do you balance the needs and wants of the managerial team or the business as a whole as opposed to the person on the ground, frontline individual doing the work?

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah, so it's a pretty common challenge, right? Different business units want different outcomes. So sales might want pipeline and commissions focus versus servicing wants case management, marketing wants campaigns, IT wants stability, right? How do you bring that all together? Those executive sponsorship meetings and establishing kind of an enterprise-wide governance objective before discussing features, as well as then creating those committees with decision-making authority, help us measure success against business outcomes, not milestones. And so you're not seeing then, hey, I'm just focused on this one aspect. You're really bringing everybody together where they can come to a common ground with the business objectives that they want to accomplish. Because there are a lot of overlap in meeting individual needs with also kind of bringing our arms together around what are our objectives outside of those individual goals of those groups.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Mass, that answer your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's shift slightly to you selected your CRM of choice, you start the implementation journey, you might be using a partner, you might be using some of your internal teams. You've had to build teams over time. And I know you're doing that a bit more in the current role today, but previously, when you've had to hire and add Salesforce talent pools versus skill sets from other CRMs, the Shuggers, the Dynamics 365, you mentioned a couple, Hubspot, maybe. Um, maybe you didn't mention that, maybe I made that up. But but um yeah, so um how does a talent pool for Salesforce compare, in your opinion, as a hiring manager, to these other CRMs for better or for worse? What's your experience been?

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Yeah. There are some CRMs that are more expensive when you think of talent pools, right? I think Salesforce and D365 oftentimes have more expensive talent pools. It's more competitive in the space. And so you need to really be thoughtful about who you're bringing on and how you're bringing them on. I don't think you can hire somebody necessarily without knowing what CRM you're gonna go after or you're gonna work through when it comes to an app developer perspective, because that expertise does widely vary from CRM to CRM. Not many people can float in between more than one. And so you need to be thoughtful about what direction you're moving.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

And in terms of I guess in your expertise, would you hire and source for specific CRM expertise, or do you feel like going CRM generalist admins, developers? What have you had more success with? And again, no, maybe this question might have been different for your prior organization where you've got so many different CRMs involved and different systems versus maybe selecting just the one primary platform. So I guess the question would be: would you go CRM Pacific or would you favor more generalist developers, admins, BAs, et cetera, that maybe have used a couple of different CRMs over their career?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Very much depends on the role. So I'm gonna give you a different answer for a developer than I am for a BA, right? When you think of a BA, they can float often more so from CRM to CRM because they really understand the business requirements and they can learn and kind of translate that into a CRM. I think developers are more specific to the expertise of that CRM specifically. You have different coding languages in different CRMs as you build through it. And you want to be really specific that somebody is comfortable with that language when they're developing some of those customizations and those orgs. I also think that you want to start with configurable before you customize. And so you want somebody who really deeply understands what is configurable and how it can be configured from the out of the box structure before you start customizing features and functions, and to have somebody. With that knowledge ahead of time is really important. I think administers are similar, right? You want to have somebody that's going to administer the platform that understands or has experience in that platform. If they've administered more than one platform, fantastic, right? We love that. But at the same time, you don't necessarily want to say, hey, let's start from somebody who has no experience in that platform. You really want to make sure they've got either, depending on the role, a specific area of expertise, or they have, you know, BA, for example, they've kind of had experience in multiple of those different systems.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

So I guess two-part question. So for the BAs, my personal experience is I tend to value industry knowledge quite a bit more. I mean CRMs, they're pretty much the functionality is pretty much the same, except for the industry core, particularly when you talk about specific industry clouds or industry-specific CRMs, like you mentioned, I think Practify and Red Tail that you mentioned. And then from the talent side of the build side or the developer side, there's that classic, you know, config versus custom dev versus using the CRM right, knowing the best practices in it there, right? So how do you approach it from that perspective in terms of finding the right talent, but also what's right for your organization, as well as the flexibility of someone who can pivot when needed?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

So I think there's a couple things with that. I think there is a lot of value in having industry knowledge and expertise in that area when you're thinking of a BA. But when you think about the experience they have in the CRM, I would look for specifically like Financial Services Cloud or Interact or some Practify, Red Tail, very specific financial services CRMs, right? That kind of have that expertise in lane. So I think it overlaps a lot with what you're saying. I think it's just kind of taking it down one level further. And then when you're really looking for talent across all of those areas, I think a lot of it's the person you meet to, right? You know when you meet somebody, if they are resourceful and have a drive and kind of a yearn to learn to a certain extent, right? To really understand and kind of drive growth forward. And that makes a really big difference. Even if they may kind of come with a different set of qualifications that don't perfectly align to these boxes that you've checked off. If that person is really good, you know they're gonna check that box off and they're gonna learn to check that box off with you.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

Awesome. Let's talk MAs. So you said over a hundred in I think a nine-year period, which is like one a month on average. How do you so let's talk general approach first? That's I think it's a great place to start. So I've done a ton of MA stuff, particularly from the system merge perspective, from the technical side of things. I tend to look at it from two perspectives. One is the system functionality merging, right? What features do I need to build? Can I take this acquired company and just layer them into our existing processes? Do I want to force them into our existing processes? And then, of course, you have the data side of the movement, right? How do I move this data into the current state of RAM if that's even what I want to do? I've had one where they acquired the company and then they like that CRM better, so they went the other way. Um then there's also the change management side of things, right? And then the timing of it. So if you have so many going on, how do you balance that not even accounting for new feature bills in your current roadmap?

SPEAKER_01 25:48

So there's a couple of different things. So I've been on both sides of the MA fence, right? And there is a lot of weight around the size of the acquisition, right? Or the size of the ID investiture that's happening across, you know, we see anywhere between 50 and 10,000 people in some of those acquisitions that we've worked through. And what I've noticed that really helps me succeed in those roles is start with the business, not with technology, right? Immerse yourself in that business. Really understand how that business is operating and what their processes are today, and stay open-minded, right? So just because it's been done this way in the past doesn't mean that this is the way we should do it in the future. MI creates a really great opportunity to redesign processes rather than simply merging them. But you're gonna have to bridge some organizational gaps to get there. The biggest issue in challenges isn't technology, it's people and bridges. You really want a gap between that is business, technology, operations, leadership, and compliance and create some shared ownership between those teams, really truly making them feel like one culture. That's gonna really help you drive that acquisition forward. The other things that I have seen been really successful are building governance early so that you make sure that you've got those executive sponsorship, steering committee, prioritization process and change management can't be underestimated enough when you think of changing, when you think of an MA, right? It is so important because it's not just one side merging the other, it's taking the best of both worlds and creating something together. And being in a role, kind of where I was coming into that, I think what helped me personally was anticipating the needs of both the people that were using the CRM I was supporting as well as the leadership team to really understand what problems they were gonna have before they encountered them and coming up with solutions ahead of time. Because taking that in initiative and anticipating their needs before will really help you drive that growth and cohesion between blending the teams into one team and building a technology that really pulls the best processes from both sides of the fence because we have something to learn from each other.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

So I mean, a hundred a hundred mergers is is a lot. Generally, when you when you're seeing this kind of of the acquisition rates, right, where they're buying companies, buying companies, buying companies, they're generally buying client-based, right? They're not necessarily buying the people. I mean, the people too, usually the owners who have the relationships, buying companies that are very similar to what they do, right? It's literally competitors, smaller competitors that's just gobbling off. Do you really find that there's that much difference in how they operate and how they think when you're doing acquisitions at that scale? Financial services, right? That tends to be the case. If you're looking at technology companies, SaaS companies, they're often buying very different verticals, they sell very differently, right? It makes a lot more sense to have like, you know, steering committees and all kinds of changes to how you governance and rethinking your business model and your operations. But is that really the case when you're dealing with constant acquisitions of the acquisition?

SPEAKER_01 29:18

So there were a couple things that I've encountered in my past. One of which is kind of what you were saying is a lot of small acquisitions, you know, anywhere between 10 to 200 people, right? Where you're kind of moving quickly through. Those ones don't have as much shift in impact, right? But what you do see a big shift in impact, for example, the acquisition, one of the acquisitions I was a part of where I was acquired, they were actually buying a new business line that they've never sold or serviced before. And so then they started to add more companies like that company to expand the services that they offer. And when something like that happens, you're not just kind of saying apples to apples, you're saying, I want to buy apples and now I want to also sell grapes because grapes complement apples and we should sell them together. And when you start to experience it in that way, it really does change the way that those systems operate because you might have a consulting agency, right, that has completely different process for how they bill and manage and service clients and what the actual services are that they're offering versus what has previously been serviced by those companies. But they usually have a bit of what I would call like a best class partner, or you can say they fit together, but they aren't the same thing we've done in the past. And that makes a really big difference when you're combining technologies because let's say you spun up a call center and you've never had a call center before and you've never serviced clients in that way. That's gonna be a brand new way of thinking about things that you haven't looked at in the past.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

You mind giving us like a specific time that happened? Just it just sort of crystallized it in our listeners' minds, you know?

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Yeah. So I would say if you look back at some of the acquisitions that some of the companies have been a part of in the past, right? I would say, for example, I came from Buck Consulting. And Buck Consulting was a 125-year-old actuarial firm. We did a lot of actuarial service in the financial space. And when we were acquired by Gallagher, we had a very small financial arm and they were drastically building out their financial services in a really big way. And it was really exciting for a lot of things that they were working through. And so as they were building out some of those financial services, they started to add on additional areas to drive that growth. And so we had done different things in defined contribution consulting versus defined benefit consulting versus 401k. And that supplements a lot of that brokerage services and support. But at the same time, they are different and they're consulted differently. And so it really is adding on to kind of a perfect package to kind of bring like an overall people strategy together versus just one leg or two legs of that strategy to kind of make it kind of a whole living piece. And that was a big difference. And so we had a lot of areas that were new to that kind of realm and that space. And that similar could be said for communications as well, right? They also added a really big communications and changed management arm in a bunch of different areas that I think really helped them kind of round out who they were in their people strategy. And it really helped kind of enter and really expand into some markets that they hadn't seen as much action in before, which is really exciting. And it really kind of made the best of both worlds and found those people there forever home there in something new and different.

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Well, I think at the time that was the largest acquisition the business had made 660 million for context for our listeners. We're not talking about a small company here. A lot of people often, when you talk about MA environments, especially if you're the acquired, it can often mean negative news. It can mean job uncertainty, it can mean a reduction in forces, it can mean consolidation, etc. etc. Not many people view it as an opportunity, and you kind of touched on that towards the end of the prior question. So I think your philosophy, and just from speaking with you, the time we've spent together so far, you're somebody that has grabbed the ball by the horns and created your own destiny, let's say, and sort out new opportunities, even post-acquisition. You stayed extra couple of years, you continue to take more of a senior role, bigger responsibilities, etc. On the people side, where do you think people fail? Is it just purely as simply as outlook? Maybe they don't take a chance or a risk. But can you control any of that as well? Like, I guess what I'm getting at is what can be controlled and what cannot, what is out of somebody's control in an MA environment to protect your job, right? Because that is like a default. Well, we got acquired and you know they fired everyone. Yeah, sometimes that happens, but not every time, right? I think it's your value to the company and how vocal you are about demonstrating that. But you've survived and navigated and excelled in that environment. So I want listeners to hear from you versus my thoughts. So what do you put it down to?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yeah, so there's a couple things. I think that when companies acquire, they don't just buy your clients, they buy the people. They buy you and your intellect and what you bring to the table. And you shouldn't undermine your own value of what you bring to the table. What I think gets in people's way is we've always done it this way. And I like it this way. And they're not open-minded enough to challenge themselves to say, how can I really be better? Maybe I do have something to learn from them. Maybe they have something to learn from me. And that's where I've seen kind of the biggest hurdle with individual people, is they don't embrace the opportunity with truly open-mindedness to stop fighting the current, but go with the current and drive the current in a new direction by kind of taking the best of both worlds and really merging it together.

SPEAKER_03 35:33

Beyond mindset and embracing, is there an argument to say that those who understand the process and who's who, where the political power divisions sit and who do I need to know kind of thing? Let's call it networking, internal networking. Is there an argument to say those who internal network better and more effectively and more assertively, they're more likely to find a new role in the new look of the company than those who maybe are a bit more introvert, they kind of keep themselves themselves. Maybe they naively rely on their managers to look out for them, but they're probably still just trying to look out for themselves. They're also worried about their job. What are your thoughts there?

SPEAKER_01 36:15

I think that there's a couple things in that space. I think that it's always good to network. You should always meet new people and be open-minded to them and hear what they have to say across some of those different areas. I think that alone isn't going to be your make or break race to what's going to drive you forward. It's your mind. It's how you think about things, it's the way you process and solution. And really, are you jumping two feet in to what the new culture is and to what some of these different areas are that you want to help drive growth in, right? Think of your expertise. Lean into your expertise and your knowledge. And yes, make new friends and go and network with folks, but it's the combination of it all together. It's not just one thing that really kind of leans into success. And I don't think you should rely solely on your manager or somebody else. I do think that you should take the initiative yourself and anticipate the needs of what you see coming down.

SPEAKER_03 37:18

And what about? I mean, not all acquisitions are total, complete secret, right? Some are very public, and you there's bodies that have to approve them. And they can be, you know, even when they're announced, they can be 12, 18 months until they're fully in effect. What can you do once you're aware that you're going to be acquired or you're about to merge with another company, but it's not quite official yet? Would you start the networking then and look to seek out somebody of a similar level to you and just say, how proactive would you be? Where would when would you start? Would you wait until the ink's dried? It's official, or would you start sooner than that? What is because again, your background, you've gone through 100 plus acquisitions and mergers, and that's quite tiring. Um, but again, realistically, a company might go through one or two in a lifetime of an employee, right? It's different business models. But um, what would be your advice on when to start that two feet in forwards kind of thing? On what timeline?

SPEAKER_01 38:14

You gotta follow your company's direction on that because there are some guidelines out there and federal guidelines that you really do need to be thoughtful about, right? You can't just be kind of jumping in ahead of announcement. That is not the right move to make necessarily. So you want to talk to your companies internally and make sure that you're following along with their guidelines. I typically wait for them to announce it and truly say, you are good to go before I start kind of reaching out or communicating with other people. One, it could be really overwhelming for those people being acquired. They may not know the full picture. And you might want to make sure that their companies are crafting the message for them from a change management perspective so it lands smoothly and that they can kind of absorb it and nest into the company correctly. I think if you jump the gun, that you could kind of rock the boat a little bit sometimes unexpectedly, because you don't know what you don't know walking into that. And it's important to kind of follow what your company's guidelines are and kind of timing. And they might even give you some tips and tricks, kind of give you some background about that company of what to expect and how to approach them.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

Some companies prior to the acquisition being official, they actually start the system integration process. They don't turn the key, but they start a lot of the planning. Did that change things if you're involved in that?

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Closed door planning with closed door people, right? That doesn't mean just reach out to anybody. Yeah. Um, typically I would say, even if you're starting to plan that, like there's a team of people that are planning that, right? That doesn't mean everybody in that organization, right? It means you've got a team of people on your side and they've got a team of people on their side, and you're working through due diligence together. You might be giving each other reverse demos, you might be talking through things, but that doesn't mean just like call up anybody at that company and say, hey, we're talking about this and we're doing this, right? There are other pieces to the chessboard that are being moved, and you don't always see all the pieces being moved at the same time. So I wouldn't kind of overextend into some of those areas off the bat. I would be thoughtful to what teams you're a part of, what companies you're part of, who you're being introduced to before you jump the gun. I also think like federally, we gotta be really careful with that, right? Especially based on like the size of the acquisition that you're going through and what that looks like, right? You don't want to get yourself into hot water. And so everywhere I have been, we have really always waited until after it was formally announced.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

To start even the system readiness.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Yeah, yeah, 100%. You might be in due diligence with them, where you kind of talk through what are some pros and cons, but that does not mean that the company is 100% going to be purchased by them, right? Things fall through, things change, right? And you really need to be thoughtful about that, right, as you're working through it. And if you're part of one of those groups, you've probably signed an NDA. And so you need to be considerate of that.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah, it it happens a lot more than you would think. I think because you're coming from a little bit more of a public, publicly traded company, right? Um, when you're talking about a lot of these smaller acquisitions, particularly like in the wealth management space, right, where they they just apply or asset managers too. A lot of these financial firms, they're probably held, they're buying lots of really small, privately held companies too. Um it's just not a big secret. Um so I think that does change things quite a bit. I do agree with you, though, you shouldn't just be randomly calling up people there when you don't know you know the company's culture and how they would react or you know, competitionally stop it.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Generally, and this is anywhere, right? People care about their clients, right? And they want to protect their clients and they want to do what's best for them. And so oftentimes you may encounter people that can be very protective over those people in their accounts because they've worked with them for a long time and they want to make sure that they're still being serviced in the best way possible, and that is with the best intentions, but you need to approach that with some thoughtfulness and some tact as you're working through that because the client comes first.

SPEAKER_03 42:54

I'm gonna pivot slightly to our final topic of the podcast for today sales ops and revops. I know that's something we discussed. You you've held that in your titles. Let's start real simple. Is there a difference between the two? What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Personally, no.

unknown 43:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

I don't think there's a huge difference between the two, at least where I've been. It's been called pursuit operations, sales operations, growth operations, and revenue operations. I'm pretty much doing the same thing, no matter what any of those roles are. It just becomes more industry standard to really think about things as revenue operations in that way. I feel like when I first started in this role, RevOps was not a thing. Um, it really didn't become a thing until I was probably halfway through it. And then everybody all of a sudden started changing their titles to revenue operations specialists or revenue operations leaders. The big thing I noticed is that sometimes when you think of revenue operations, It spans sales and marketing. Our sales operations always spanned sales and marketing on the teams that I worked for, but some people do differentiate them. And that's where you could see a little bit of a difference.

SPEAKER_03 44:15

I think that's RevOps, from what we saw, really gained popularity around the pandemic, right? 2019-ish, 2020. You had all these SaaS remote companies pop up out of nowhere. And I think that sales ops. I share your philosophy. I think the sales op title got a makeover. I think whoever started the trend maybe got fed up of being slumped with just sales teams, right? And like you said, revenue, I think the general takeaway, revenue encompasses a lot more channels. It's more of a full 360 versus sales ops is generally seen as sales enablement, in my opinion, working directly with the salespeople, more on a one-to-one basis, one-to-many, whereas revenue encompasses the operations, the marketing teams, everything else that is thrown into that. So what about? I guess might be easy to ask, perhaps, is there a clear differentiator between the two, in your opinion? Anything that you would say, okay, if I see if I saw this or wrote this in one of my job descriptions, I'm looking for more of a sales ops background versus someone who might be labeling themselves as robots. There's a lot more in common than maybe differences. So it might be easy to tackle the other way. What is the difference, if any?

SPEAKER_01 45:26

So I think it depends on the organization, right? From my perspective, because I've done both, I would describe them in the same way because that's the kind of role that I will be looking for, right? That really spans operations across anything that drives revenue. And that could be sales, it could be marketing, it could be proposals, right? It could be kind of bits. There's a lot of different aspects to that. It also could be strategy and growth development, right? That you think of across that. In some companies, they do differentiate them a little bit. Whereas revenue needs to be in a title of someone who owns a PL versus sales can be somebody who doesn't really sit in a group that owns a PL. And that is different based off different organizations and how they title and structure. And just because you have an organizational title internally that kind of matches with that job grading doesn't always mean that that is your external business card either, right? You oftentimes see there are two titles that individuals have as they're working through it. I do think that there is a really big difference between sitting somebody over that sees revenue ops as a whole versus maybe like a branch revenue ops role or a smaller revenue ops role, because it really should span digital transformations, the off the actual processes, helping drive growth on those PLs, whether you sit on that PL or not, right? Depending on the organizational structure, you've got five PLs, you don't want somebody in each group. You want someone who's separately structured, supporting all of them and wrapping their arms around it. And so it may be different based off your org structure and really what you're looking for.

SPEAKER_03 47:18

Where do you think? And again, the answer might vary depending on industry, size of company, but where do you think RevOps and sales ops sit? Does it vary? Like does sales ops sit with a chief revenue officer and that chief revenue officer sits with the CEO, for example, right? I mean, it always means everything reports to CEO. So maybe that's a better example. A COO or a CFO, right? Where do you think it should sit?

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Very much depends on the company. So every company structure, not everybody has a chief revenue officer, right? So I have worked for chief revenue officers, right? Also worked for chief sales operations officers that sit under the COO, also working for chief data officers, right? So it's depending on the organizational structure and how those are defined. If you see organizations that are built more in verticals or like different silos by their business lines, I often think it makes sense to like sit outside of that to kind of bring it all together. But if you only have one, it should really be under that chief revenue officer that kind of rolls up into it. So it kind of depends. I think today, where I say it's important that I'm neutral and that I'm not in one group or another, I sit independently, kind of with our chief data officer, so I can support everybody equally without really kind of picking one side or the other. I think that's really important because I want to give them all equal weight and have an equal voice as part of these processes.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

How much is the AI piece coming into that as well? Because you might have a chief data officer, you also might have like a senior director at AI Center of Excellence, right? I mean, you would argue all of it contributes to revenue in different ways. Maybe the AI teams building agents for that support RevOps. So again, do you do you with that, do you see? I guess the the better question is, do you see the positioning of RevOps changing with the more power shift of AI and data teams and you know their influence on a business? Or do you think it will always stay where it is today?

SPEAKER_01 49:27

I think it may change. I think AI is so important right now. It really is. Um, but at the same time, it can't just be operated in a silo. AI has to be incorporated through the different areas of the business and really make sure that it's driving growth and it's driving productivity and it's enabling the workforce to be better, to think smarter, to kind of take some of the administrative legwork out of it for them to make it happen. And as you start to really lean into AI and what it can be, you don't want to lose the importance of the individuals that are actually prompting AI and the individuals who have to validate the AI is correct. Because you can't just trust AI by just having prompts and say, okay, I've got somebody who's a prompt writer, right? That's in sales ops or web ops. Yeah, sure, they should be building use cases and they should be helping, but they should be partnering with the developers who really need to go through and read that code to make sure that it's working correctly and responsibly. So it still does need quite a bit of human intervention to support it, but that role is going to start to sit on both sides of that fence more, where they're gonna have to partner really closely with the technology teams to not just put use cases and prompts together, but to really make sure that the technology is doing what it needs to do in a safe and secure way.

SPEAKER_02 51:03

Would you would you at this stage in the game allow AI to do cold outreach or any kind of outreach? Or are you in the camp of we gotta keep our AI internal and not let it spawn outside? So you can help with operations, help us automate some tax, but I don't want to talk into a customer. So there's kind of these two camps. Some people are like, it's okay for service, but not sales. And some people like cold outreach, let it let it do email blast, let it must respond to my emails. Where do you send that, Camp?

SPEAKER_01 51:32

I don't want it responding to your emails, but I do think that it can start some initial outreach emails in like wave number one, where it could say, hey, you know, I saw these intent signals, I saw you were a match for this, right? And basically do the kickoff of an email nurture with some merge fields based off what you're seeing in the CRM. I think it should always CC kind of who the sales rep is that's responsible for that, and that it shouldn't be making follow-ups from a sales perspective because I don't think it's really meeting them where they're at. It's more trying to sell instead of just truly finding the best fit for a service or a partner between the two of them. And if it misses the mark, you can burn that bridge pretty quickly with a potential lead, right? If they're kind of it oversteps or it kind of misinterprets something in a different way. So it's really important to have human visibility on it. I think there is a different piece of it, which is like AI chatbots for servicing, fantastic, right? People love them, they use it all the time, right? You call in from a service center and people got questions and it prompts them through to a certain number of kind of questions that they can feed back and forth to, that's also great. But those are already customers being supported by a service, and it's not making outreach to sell and prospect in a different way. And so I would draw kind of a line between the two of those and how they operate.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

So I tend to think that the reason it works in sales in service, but not sales, is because the people talking to service, the customers know they're talking to a bot, where the on the sales side it feels deceptive, like you're trying you're trying to pretend you're you're a person. Um, so so my my personal take is fine for sales as long as you identify on hey, I'm a robot. The problem is, it's a big problem, that if the AI identifies, if the AI says, Hey, I'm a robot, it gets flagged by spam automatically. So it's like almost saying, Hey, I'm spam. So uh yeah, it's somewhat of a problem.

SPEAKER_01 53:47

It is, but if you think about like when you're building a marketing CRM and you're doing like automated outreach, you put people into like an email nurture flow, and you send them a mass email with a generic statement to try to kind of loop them into this email nurture flow. How much different is that than an initial kickoff for AI? Right?

SPEAKER_02 54:11

Much different. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you exactly why because they know it's a template, right? It's not personalized, and the personalization from a robot becomes creepy, yeah, right? When it says, when a robot tells me that it read my book and it loved it, particularly this chapter, I'm like, no, you didn't, you're lying to me, and your flattery is not going to help. That's really the difference. It makes a big difference when you feel like it's trying, you know, it's almost used core sales, you know? It's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

It's how you're using it, right? If you're using AI to just do email templates and like a nurture flow that kind of just like automatically enrolls people without customizing and tailoring their responses to specific individuals, I think it kind of fits in the same box. What you're saying, I feel like it's completely different, right? It's more of like an individual dialogue. I personally am not a fan of individual dialogues on AI. I do agree with a lot of things that you're saying, but I think it's important to separate the two and say you can use AI responsibly with email outreach in a templated fashion, right? And kind of have a salesperson then pick that up and then really do the personalization versus you're having AI do the whole process.

SPEAKER_03 55:33

I think you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. As the salesperson on the call, I think, look, I think just the sheer volume that's required to get a response in the first place. If you go too generic, you're never going to get that response anyway. I think the personalization piece, Maz, in that scenario, would be if that person was then to follow that up with the human in the loop aspect and physically call you and say, hey, I was a dude that referenced your chapter, and you might be like, Oh yeah, I remember you, you associate it, you read the email, you might have thought it's a bot, but at least a reference point that that person could then leverage, right? And you might be like, Oh, I thought it was a bot. You'd be like, Well, it was, but I will read it, you know, kind of thing, right? I think it's a numbers game. I think it's almost you have people talking about AI adoption and the fear of losing the race and so on. And I think it's the same for companies and their sales teams, right? If we don't do it, someone else is gonna do it. I think that's what it comes down to. And ultimately, whoever's gonna do it more effectively is gonna have more market share, right? That's a topic on itself, I think, for the day. But lastly, on the topic, you talked a little bit about predictions for RevOps in the future. Any other kind of hot take or thought that, you know, um, or even like just tips in in general about some of the topics we discussed, final closing thoughts on what we've discussed. Any must-avoids, any must-do's, general kind of just knowledge that you want to share?

SPEAKER_01 56:58

I think that's fair. I think hot take on RevOps, you can't grow in the business without RevOps. I think that they really drive growth and make such a big difference. And the people that aren't using RevOps effectively are falling behind.

SPEAKER_03 57:17

Okay. Well, on that note, I would just like to say thank you. Uh thanks for getting involved and uh giving up your time to share some of your thoughts with our listeners today. Uh, we covered a lot of ground, different CRMs, acquisition and merger environments, sales versus revops. Uh so just a big thank you from uh myself and our listeners, and uh we had a blast, so thank you.

SPEAKER_01 57:41

Thank you guys. I'm happy to be here and really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.

SPEAKER_02 57:46

Yeah, thanks.