The RevOps Maturity Model: How Does Scale Affect it? With Lorena Morales

During this episode we talk with Lorena Morales about the way her new Revenue Operations role at a large, global, publicly-traded company has challenged her thinking of revenue operations. Previously, she thought the journey was from siloed to centralized/integrated and aligned. Her new role has opened up her eyes that there may be a need (and a business justification) to become somewhat siloed again.

That being said, she also mentioned that she thinks there are different types of being siloed:

  • siloed data
  • siloed functions
  • siloed organizational structures
  • etc.

We also touch on attribution vs ROI and that she sees more marketers moving into Rev Ops and CRO roles.

Recorded live on October 18, 2021.

 

Hi, I’m Michael Hartmann, I’m Naomi Lou, and I’m Mike Rizzo. And this is ops cast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MO Pros. The number one community for marketing operations. As professionals tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you in your marketing operations career.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by the MO Pros and Michael Hartmann. Today I’m flying solo. My cohost Naomi Lewin, Mike Rizzo could not join today. But we’re fortunate today. We’re going to be talking about a revenue operations maturity model with Lorena Morales. She’s a revenue operations executive currently at JLL technologies.

Prior to that, she has held several marketing and operations leadership roles. She is also currently on the advisory board with sync Cari, and is also an active member of several community communities, including women who women in revenue. She also hosts the revenue podcast by Ray got patchy by rev genius, Lorena, thanks for joining us today, even though I butchered all that.

Thank you. Michael Bell sounded a little impressive when, when someone else says it for me, it’s just, I fell in love with this, um, with these worlds that we call marketing, and then I just, I just love her and hardworking. So that’s who I am. Thank you for, for having me here. I’m very happy. Yeah, it’s great.

So I mentioned that you’re, you’re with JLL. That’s a recent thing for you and it’s a large organization and I think, is it safe to say that most of your career has been with smaller companies? I back in, in, in Latin America, I worked for, for, uh, bigger organizations, bigger than the U S and then when I came to the us back in 2012, I almost exclusively work for start ups, um, all the stages and all sizes, probably the, the smallest was a four employee company.

The biggest was up 350 employees is still a startup in very startup mode. Where I was managing managers. So that was a, an entirely different experience. And to your point, yeah, I recently joined a JLL as their director of revenue operations, uh, dealing with EMEA, APAC, and Americas. And it’s been a roller coaster, honestly, we’re kind of the fun ride because I think some people are afraid of getting into a roller coaster, me included, but some of them can be very, very fun.

And so that’s where I am right now, trying to figure out what. Transitioned to revenue operations for, uh, public traded. Yeah, I think when, when you and I talked, one of the things I think for this journey, as you’ve gone to JLL, you you’ve mentioned that, uh, if there was a maturity model for revenue operations, I think historically thought of it as sort of you go from sort of a siloed approach to one that’s integrated and aligned across different teams.

But now you’re like, well, maybe there’s another stage, especially at these larger companies where it goes back to being somewhat siloed or some hybrid model. So why don’t you, like, why don’t you just for our audience, for our listeners to kind of talk through what that meant for you and kind of has actually, since we haven’t talked weeks ago, so maybe it’s even evolved since then, as you’ve really gotten your feet wet at JLL.

Oh, right. And, and I think you’re starting to know me where like everything changes very, very fast in my world. Um, I think, I think Michael, to your point, I. I spent almost four years in consultancy, right? Doing revenue operations for mostly SAS companies and hyper-growth company in like companies in hyper-growth stage.

What that meant was understanding that first of all, there’s different type of silos. There’s the geographic silos. There’s the, the pretty much the demographics, the partnership silos, the, eh, the departmental silos, et cetera, et cetera. So for me, first understanding. What is the problem that we’re trying to toggle?

Because for us, it was a problem seeing that the teams didn’t know pretty much the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. And it was very, very painful for the customer because probably you would have someone from marketing, reaching out in an ordering campaign to a customer that already talked to sales or vice versa.

Someone from sales have having no idea what was the marketing outreach and then reaching to a customer that has been touched probably multiple times. And then at the end, what the customer cares about is not Eve Lorena or Michael reached out. They. The company reached out as a whole. And so that kind of started the journey on bringing the silo no more messaging to my company.

And we were the first revenue operations consultancy. So like rev ops as a service company in this pace, we opened the category even with, uh, G2, uh, at the moment G2 proud. And it was a brain trust. Journey, because we saw that effectively breaking silos resulting around 26% more revenue. Of course. Now there’s other studies around that that Forrester has done and series of decisions as well, which are the, the main, uh, players in this space of, of research.

We kind of, now that number probably has changed and I couldn’t talk. That number is specifically because again like that was back in 20, 20, 19, I’m going to say, even though the company started in 2016, so now fast forward to 2020. Um, for what’s coming for revenue operations, we’re starting to plan for Q1, right?

So we’re starting to see, um, I’m starting to educate my company now at JLL on like, what is revenue operations? And when you, when you, when you and I talked and we, and I said, you know what? I think the solution now is to go back to silos. I don’t think it’s the question is about silos. I think it’s about.

Clarity and an openness. And how CA how your teams work around these because in an organization, as JLL with global teams, we’ve where you have more than one CMO, where you have different budgets, where you have different even cultures. For example, APAC is never going to react the same to an outbound call, then Americas and those things.

Yeah, that’s so true. Well, I like I’m in a company now where we’re talking about potentially doing text messaging, but I was like, well, for our us customers, I’m not sure that they really want that for general marketing. Whereas I think in other parts of the world, it might be just fine. Right. That’s actually what they prefer.

And it’s understanding exactly what you are saying. So I think the piece of revenue operations, where you obsess around your customer and you get the feedback directly from the source in order to operate and make successful operations teams. That’s the key to success. When we talk to silos, I think now I’m pleased people don’t, don’t, don’t be against me, but I think.

It’s a moment where we’re starting to see organizations that work very well in silos. And again, let’s go back to my definition. If the silos happen to be in data or around your data, that’s where you have one of the biggest problems organizations face. Um, however, It doesn’t mean that every single team should be working on the same thing because that’s never going to work.

So for example, I was just commenting this with one of, um, one of my friends here at JLL, and I was telling her if we think about the selling experience and we take, for example, a broker and a broker in the Americas and a broker in AMIA, that person is going to effectively the content and the meat of convincing the customers that you know, their pain points and that you know how to solve.

The conversation is going to be completely different. Most likely they’re going to follow a process on like how to input the information in the CRM, how to follow up calls, how many calls to have, but reality is that there’s already a mini silo there. One rep is not gonna have the same conversation than another rep and another rep.

And I know the rep, especially not global, uh, So that’s, that’s my point. And I think it’s a very interesting conversation what’s happening right now, because I believe it’s more about contagious growth, where the things that happening, one silo that work you can replicate in another one and in another one and kind of create a chain effect around that.

Yeah. You know, as you’re describing that, I keep coming back to, this is why. Try to get go for from a technology standpoint in particular, but it’s technology and process simpler solutions, because then they can abstract them to other, in this case silos, right? Whether it’s geographic silos or whatever. So what is that core information that is common?

You know, most, most of the time across those silos, especially. So if you’re talking about a silo of, uh, you know, in this case, brokers in the U S versus AMEA versus APAC, um, and I wouldn’t even get into like APAC, I think is like actually like 20 different markets. Right. They’re all different. Um, but yeah, I think, I think that’s why I try to always, it’s really, it’s really hard to fight the urge to get.

Every unique scenario solve for across all those in these systems. Because I think your point about the most, if I want, I think I’m going to, I don’t think I’m putting words in your mouth, but the data silos are the most difficult to overcome. Right. Exactly. I would call them the most dangerous situation in your organization because that’s something that you should effectively be braking yesterday.

Like if you, if people are not looking at the same things and they don’t have access, which happens very, very often, that’s where that’s where people can’t make decisions. Because if your data is corrupted or you simply don’t have access to it, There is no way that you’re going to effectively chase revenue after that.

Um, so yeah, you thank you for like your, you said it better than, than I did. Uh, those are the most dangerous ones. So that’s really interesting. The other thing I love that you brought up, like there’s different kinds of silos. The other, the other thing I, I made a note here is that because I think part of this.

You could have organizationally like an organizational structure that doesn’t look like it’s siloed, right? Everybody’s under rev ops across all these different, you know, from, from marketing to customer success, with sales in the middle. And it looks like it’s all one team, but you could still have silos, right.

Or you could have silos organizationally. So you have a marketing ops and a sales ops and a customer success ups. But actually from a functional standpoint, there’s like informal alignment. You know what I mean? Like, so I think you even described right there, places where you’ve been, where you’ve seen, like, even though there might not have been a rev ops organization structure, the teams worked together as if that was the case.

And so I think it’s really interesting to think about this. So all these different dimensions, it’s starting to get really complicated, which is why I think part of what you were going through. Right. Is it like the more layers you add to this with, especially with a global organization, the bigger, the challenges of trying to figure.

Where do we need to organize structurally to have our people in the right seats? And then how do we then regardless of whether or not all those different silos in terms of functional areas are under one leader, so to speak that are we facilitating that kind of communication so that they can be, be aligned informally, at least from that standpoint and focused on the same thing.

And is that kind of what you’re going through right now is trying to figure out how to align across these multiple groups and figure that out. And then what, if any early lessons from that, he’s my face telling you something, because people, I know you can see us, but Michael and I are having here a very intimate conversation.

Um, it is absolutely. It is what I am experiencing right now where, um, for example, pieces of the equation that revenue operations in an, in an ideal world, Managers, for example, compensation models for all the, for all the customer facing teams. There’s no way that I’m going to handle that at JLL right now.

So that’s what I’m saying. Like I would never, never there to go into the rhino. That’s a finance team. I would never go into finances lane to say I’m revenue operations. Let me, let me figure out compensation for Japan. I would be the most.

Right. So that’s what I’m seeing in a global company. You’re going to have challenges that have nothing to do with that with a company, for example, that only serves a nationwide or just in one country, uh, that kind of makes them. As you said more complex, but also at the same time, the sky’s the limit. And I don’t think, I don’t think we are in this stage of knowing enough about revenue patients that we have best practices, which is a good thing.

It’s a good thing for people like me that are, that are making the transition to different organizations, regardless if it’s bigger or smaller, whatever, it’s, it’s a different, it’s a different beast. And so people that are dealing with that, we are looking up that we are the ones that. We’re going to be the trendsetters, whether they like it or not like people like me in, in these new, newer roles are the ones that are defining stuff for the generations coming after us, especially operators.

Yeah. I can see that. So what, um, Yeah. One of the things I always like to think about things is like, when you’re making decisions about how do you organize, you know, how do you affect, um, this kind of alignment, that kind of stuff. Do you, you know, I don’t like to think of it as right or wrong. I actually, I used the term best practice and people who listen to this, know that I have, I have like the, um, that I think those are kind of a myth in some ways.

Right. Cause there’s. It depends on what you mean by it to some degree, but at the end of the day, right. There’s not always a right or wrong way to do all these things, but there’s always trade offs. So from your standpoint, especially if like you probably saw a number of organizations when you were doing consulting, what, like, what do you see.

As the things that worked or didn’t work or the trade-offs that you saw companies making when it came to whether it was how they organized, how they approached their systems. Right. Did they, you know, that kind of stuff when it came to revenue operations, the main one. So, so let’s talk about benefits, right?

Of, of, of, of people, um, actually believing in the methodology and training. To act to, um, to make a break and to make it happen in the organizations. I think the first one was this idea that companies are still being product led companies instead of customer led or human centered companies. It’s a very interesting changes, but some, especially after COVID, I think what the pandemic deed was.

Kind of extrapolate these, these, these notion of, oh, wake up, you need to be focusing on your customer before anything else. Fixing the product and then going to market now, it’s different now, it’s you, you, you go listen to your customer and then you fix the product or you add more features or whatever it is.

So that’s the first one are really laser vision focused on your customer that I don’t think it’s going anywhere. And I’m very happy because of my background. Um, I happen to come from, from the design thinking world and I, I actually, I’m one of the few people that. Spend real money on educating myself around these methodologies.

Um, I think revenue operations is very tied to, to those methodologies and, and that’s one of the things that are working. The second one is how you start talking the language of revenue, the days where marketing and I, and I know we’re going to touch on it on attribution in a little bit, but the days where marketing was just throwing spaghetti to the wall and like, see what steaks.

I’ve gone. Like there’s very few things that the marketer cannot measure. Um, especially now with the technology and like all the things that are, that are around those us as operators. And then the, the, the other thing is, of course, if you, if you apply it, the alignment that happens. On decision-making processes.

It’s absolutely beautiful. Like just being in front of the decision-makers and the potentially the C level suite and see that everyone agrees. Your solution should be delivering value first of all, before function and then saying, okay, after we provide this value, how many dollars we can, we can, we can, we can get from this experience.

I think I, in my almost 11 years as a marketer, I never saw that happening. And I think it’s a really nice time to be a marketer. Um, we are the strategists. We are not a support system anymore. And I think that change was very, very, very heavily influenced by revenue operations. Yeah, I think it’s interesting.

I want to go back. You, you mentioned, and I saw this in your background when we, before we got this, but you talked about design thinking, which I know like a little, those who can’t see it, like I’m putting into like this little space between my fingers saying this is how much I know about design thinking, but I’m actually kind of curious about how.

How you think design thinking applies to revenue ops? Just like, is it, are you, are you thinking of it in the context of forcing us all to be thinking about not just the technology, the immediate problem in front of us, but thinking about a bigger picture about how this is going to affect customers, how it’s going to affect internal stakeholders.

What’s kind of how you, like, how do you apply design thinking to this? This is now I’m really curious about that. So, you know, Much more than what you think, Michael, because that’s exactly it. So it’s seeing things from the lens of the customer, but more than that, it’s also, it has also to do as humans. We tend to look for solutions and we live in a world where, where.

To, to like to too little time in, in focusing on the problem, we don’t even know if we’re going after the right problems. So to my students, because I also happen to teach, um, to my students, I’m trying to make them number one, make a lot of questions like you should weigh design thinking. And with human centered design, all these things, everything starts by being a great interviewer.

And that doesn’t mean coming with a list of questions. It actually means how you become a, um, I’m a perfectionist. When it comes to conversation, how do you get insights from people that not necessarily is going to come from a list of questions because you are, when you come with a list of questions, you’re trying to control a conversation and, and how, how that goes.

Whereas a conversation, you probably have a points already in your mind that you want to guide, but you’re never going to show those to the interviewee. And so. That’s very human centered design. That’s very like, let’s, let’s be ready for the uncertain things that could happen with, uh, with the customer and between the customer and the person that is interviewing.

Um, and there’s a bunch of things like shadowing the customer. Like how do you effectively run a meeting? For example, uh, we think that we know how to, how to step up into meetings. We don’t because most of the meetings are about discussing something instead of action items. Getting out of the meeting with something that you can go to your desk and execute.

We are not executor’s. We are just people that discuss things. We love to discuss things. And that sadly, I am sorry people, but that is a waste of your time. The waste of your time is the discussing things or trying not to try to avoid it. They’re discussing things without having a right north star because this cause we can discuss ideas, we can discuss, uh, strategies.

We can discuss things that are not working. What if you don’t have a goal on like, where do you want to land with that discussion and leaving the room with an actual. You’re doing something wrong. Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s interesting that you, as you, again, I was sort of people who can’t see us now, I was sort of smiling this whole time while you’re describing that about how to do interviews, because I, it was taking me back to my time and consulting.

And one of the things we learned when we’d go on client sites, very often we tag team interviews and there was an important part of that. It was w one was, we would alternate it. So one person was asking a question while the other one was taking notes and vice versa. But the most important thing we learned was.

Before, once we got an answer, we didn’t immediately go to the next question. Right. We just waited because very often, in fact, more often than not, I would say the most insightful and the best information we got was not from the question, but it was from west. Not saying anything because people didn’t want to sit there.

It was silence. Yeah. I mean, it’s so funny because that was, that was our best tactic because it really didn’t even matter what questions were we were asking. I love what you’re saying. I absolutely love it because I also, um, like one of the founders in my previous job, she, he, and she, because there were two people that were being invested in improv and in like the methodology behind it, not, not the comedy.

Okay. People like, I know that when we hear improv, we think like, oh, she’s going to make me laugh where he’s going to make me laugh. Right. No, no, no, no, no. Improv as a theory of how do you deal with, with uncertainty and with the things that, that the world throws at you? It’s, it’s an impressive thing. And the first thing that they teach you is how to accept the offer.

And what that means is how do you effectively listen, which is what you were saying, Michael, with generally. We are in a conversation and we’re so worried that we do have the right answer, that we don’t spend enough time listening. We don’t do enough sight. Like anyways, what’s wrong with silences. I am the person that I don’t care if you’re staying quiet with me because I don’t get uncomfortable.

It, since I was little, I never got uncomfortable with silences. For me, there was no such a thing as an awkward silence because I, I was actually very comfortable with. Shooting up a little bit,

that kind of grew me into the person that I am today, where I pause. And I think about the things that I’m going to say before actually talking. So, I mean, you live on you learn what I love what you said, but I think that is an unusual trait. I think if you, uh, if you observe most people’s. They really don’t like that awkward silence in the middle of the conversation.

They, it just it’s like nature, abhors, a vacuum. Right. It’s just, they want to fill it up. Well, that’s it. So it’s really interesting. I also, I agree with you like customer centric focus. I don’t think that’s gone even though product led growth seems to be a hot topic these days. I think I even saw somebody say it’s like, it’s the new ABM PLG is the new ABM.

Uh, So that’s really interesting. So we also, we, you, you mentioned like how, uh, having, and I think this is a part of why Opsis started to become a little more of a strategic partner. Then you mentioned that it may be in your own way, but is the fact that we can be the ones who are providing that insight into what’s working and what’s not working.

Right. So the, the numbers. So, um, I think you said, right, marketing’s gotta be thinking about revenue. Um, so at my mind, of course, having been mostly in marketing ops and the ops space is I think of attribution, which was supposed to be like the holy grail. Just tell, show how marketing’s adding value to the organization.

And I think for a variety of reasons, it has generally not been that great. Um, that said, I think it’s better than nothing. And I think it’s how you use it as the approach. That’s my take, but what, like, what’s your take on. What is the, is attribution the right thing to be thinking about? Is there something else?

Is it like, what would you like if you were going to come in and say, here’s how I think marketing and let’s, maybe we can keep it to marketing. We could talk about the revenue, the whole revenue organization in general, but I’m curious to get your thoughts about attribution and specifically, but then ROI or measurement in general.

I, I, I think I have a very. Unique view on this because I believe in attribution and I, I said to someone like, if you’re going to do attributions, you need to accept the parts that are not so nice. So like the things that you’re never going to be able to prove, for example, this podcast, how do you, how do you measure this podcast?

Nobody has a really good answer right now. How do you measure a slack conversation? So when you, when you fall in love with a rose, you need to accept the Thrones and that’s the way this works. And if you don’t like the rose, then go and freaking find another flower. So for, for attribution, I would say when it comes to ROI, not necessarily is ROI.

Like let’s stop confusing attribution with our ride because you can talk. When we talk about attribution, we can understand that as two things, sourced and influence. When the first one, the source of attribution, that’s literally dollars. You can tie that directly to revenue. So yes, that is a right. Yeah.

However, when you talk about influenced, that can be Amelie on million different things that not necessarily. In a conversion or a closed one opportunity, but it’s still, that’s going to go into your attribution model because you need to, again, you need to accept the Thrones and you need to accept the things that are not, not so nice.

So I haven’t, I honestly, and I learned this because of other masters in marketing ops, because honestly my background is more in traditional marketing. So like branding and paid acquisition and content and these things. Are they the grail to, to, to how you communicate with the customer rather than how do you measure that?

My brain is also way more creative than analytical, even though I am very, very dangerous, um, in the sales motion or doing dashboards or like these things that now I have to do due to the nature of my, of my position. But, um, that’s how I would say it. I don’t know. You tell me, what do you think? You’re the mastermind here?

I like that you’re making the distinction between ROI and attribution. Um, because I do think that I have, in my, in my view of attribution has sort of evolved. I was a big fan of it early on. And then I started seeing the thorns the way you put it. And I think it was used in a way that it probably, I think it was the attempt was to use it as a way to show ROI.

And it showed all those storms came out. As soon as you started to talk about it with. Yeah, people outside of marketing and in general, and specifically with sales or executives, because it’s at the end of the day, it’s complicated math and it leaves a lot of things out there that could or could not have happened that actually influenced things.

I do think there’s value in it to use it. My, my biggest view on it is that the way to use attribution modeling is not necessarily for ROI, but really as a marketing organization, trying to get a sense for. Directionally what’s working and what’s not working so that you can then place bets in the right places or the places you think are going to be most effective.

The other thing that I would say I’ve come, and I think you addressed this a little bit is that there are going to be, they’re just simply going to be some things we could call them, brand marketing or whatever, right. That you just, you sh you’re not gonna probably be able to measure them from an ROI or even attribution standpoint with any meaningful certainty.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them. And I think that’s where you get to be. You should be creative. And I would, I would argue that any marketing team should allocate, even if they’re heavy on revenue focused marketing, there should be some amount that is out there that is building the brand. It could be podcasts, it could be events.

It could be whatever it is that you think is the right thing. And you just simply have to try to avoid trying to measure it at all. And so you think literally like, just stay out and stay, stay away from it. At least don’t measure it against revenue it’s revenue. Okay. Cause I think, I think because those things really the, the, the impact they have on revenue is so far down the road, even on a relatively short sales cycle, I think they’re still pretty far down the road.

And I’m specifically talking about B2B, I think. Yeah. I think there are probably scenarios in B2C where that’s. It would make more sense to try to measure it on revenue, but it, I just, I, I think it it’s chasing the wrong thing if you’re looking for near term revenue. And I think that is what that is. The part that really hurts people is when you’re still, you know, you’ve got an always on nurture program or whatever, or you’re, you know, you’re doing that.

You’re changing your brand. Um, you really don’t see the impact of that for months and months and months, if not years, That’s true. I mean, I probably are rebranding that’s super close to my heart because I also have been to have an agency on the side, um, that those purely branding. And I like, I, I am biased.

Of course I am one of the few people that I think you can measure brand. Like only if you look at organic against a pale, you can have a really good idea of what’s working. What I, I, I love, what were you saying? See, as I told you, people, uh, Michael is better at this than I am. Um, The other thing that I think marketing attribution started, and this is a personal opinion.

People can come find me on it. I think it started because historically marketing has been a cost. Uh, cost effective function. It was never an investment. So at some point the marketer needed to come and say, you know what, what I am doing is actually working or like, no, it’s not working, but let me move the budget lot.

Let me do something in order to prove you that I can, that I can, uh, move people and that I can move sales and that I can move this and that. So I think it started as a. Let me justify my activities because there’s no other way that I can do it. I totally agree. And that, and I think that’s where the mistake is was made, is looking at it as a way to justify, as opposed to a tool to inform.

How are we going to market from a marketing standpoint and that’s, and it took me a long time. Actually, it’s probably the best spin in the last year or two that I’ve kind of come to that conclusion. And what I fully expect is that conversations like this, I may evolve my view about how, how effectively you can measure branding is tied to revenue.

Right? Maybe there’s a way to do that. And I just don’t know yet. We’ll have that conversation in another time. There we go. That’s good. Um, so another thing let’s, let’s keep talking about measurement a little bit. So one of the other challenges, I think, uh, those of us who have been in operations roles, uh, I know it’s certainly been in marketing ops.

Is how do we measure the effectiveness of our teams or just generally, like what should our teams be measured on? I mean, I would love to say there’s a revenue component from a marketing standpoint, but at the same time, I have so little influence over so much of that process that I, it, I hesitate to take owner, take a responsibility for revenue number as just an ops person.

I’m curious, like, how have you, like, how are you thinking about measuring now, especially now that you’ve got a, kind of a larger rev ops role? Like, how are you thinking about measuring? Like have I, have I done well, have I not done well? Like I don’t even know. Like I think, I think pipeline composition is what I would call it.

What is pipeline composition? So I think that’s, that’s it, that’s a framework that I learned. Very well from my previous company and pipeline pipeline composition. What it is is measuring the through the privacy framework. Good. If it would be volume, valuable All-City and compression rates, as long as you have.

Your, your finger, beriberi closing the temperature of those four metrics. I think you could call a revenue operations program successful or not successful. Um, again, it’s gonna depend on, uh, an organization, a series a is going to care way more about volume than is going to care about, uh, uh, velocity, for example, uh, an organization that it’s a little more mature, you’re going to be caring about.

Well, every single organization should care about value because those are that’s the money. Right. But. But if you are, if you’re in a company that, that the stage is defined by the growth of, of an audience, like growth, pure growth, most likely you’re going to be focusing very early on, on volume. And then the thing that it’s, that it’s.

Unanimous and that it stays as a, as a, as a thing for every single organization is completion rates. If you measure, I mean, I was in a, in a very low-key position or advanced or advanced position where in a consultancy, your book of business, Becomes your ruler or becomes like your, your metric system, because the more you see and the more clients you serve, the better benchmarks you have in order to measure other customers.

Now I’ve lost that because now I’m in another organization. So I really don’t know how to measure ourselves. As I was telling you in a, in a public traded company, I don’t know how success looks like. However, I know that the. For also understanding how sales is. And, and, and this is, this is for us, right?

Like, like we’re talking about pipeline composition, but if we talk about pipeline activation, which is how do I define an MQL or how do I define an AQL or how do I what’s the velocity that is that it happens from becoming an. All the way to an Sal or an SQL for people that, that are not related to these terms is sales accepted, lead sales, qualified, lead marketing, qualified lead, um, et cetera, et cetera.

So that’s where, that’s where I am starting right now at a company of this size. I am starting as. Okay. Let’s be in the same room let’s or let’s organize and let’s document things in a way where everyone can understand and talk the same language. So I think that’s how you measure success. If you are further than line, please, please use tribute.

See, because we have seen the success in using that framework. Yeah, I think, I think getting people on the same page using the same language is so important. I mean, that is half the battle. I mean, I’ve, I’ve literally been in meetings where people were arguing with each other and we would kind of, at the end of the day, we realized we’re actually saying the same thing, but very different ways.

So I call that being in violent agreement. Um, and it happens, it happens too often. Um, So, okay. So this has been like, my mind is like all over the place right now, but any, so based on your experience and kind of your new stuff, like any, any last kind of thoughts about revenue operations and the siloing versus integration and all that, that you, that we didn’t cover already, that you would want to share with our listeners, we cover enough on attribution and how to measure that and everything.

What we didn’t cover that I would love to, for the audience to keep it. Be aware of the marketers coming into revenue, operations positions. Because when we’re starting to see is a lot of sales operators coming to rev ops. It’s not real. That’s organic path. Of course, you’re going to freaking know every single dashboard.

Of course, you’re going to know the you’re going to know Salesforce. Are you going to know a local? You’re going to know Marquetto, you’re going to know, but the people that come from marketing or their CMOs becoming CRO. That’s that’s the moment that I’m going to be extra, extra happy, because that’s the moment that we’re going to realize that Margaret.

Was never a shadow marketing was a protagonist and he separate to a protagonist. So I think let’s, let’s push as marketers because this is our time and this is our moment people. So that’s what I, what I would love to say. Yeah. I love, I love that because it’s funny. We’ve had a Jen Spencer who rose up through marketing as a CRO, as a guest, uh, in early episode.

And then we had, um, we had another episode where someone made the provocative statement that the, you know, feature CMOs are going to come out of ops roles. So it’s like, it’s I think, um, you know what you’re saying, is that going beyond that, right. You’re going to have CRS and heads of heads of revenue that will, will be coming out of marketing.

And it, I would love to see that cause very often I’ve, I’ve thought that, um, this they’re very may plus I’ve been where marketing, I think in terms of thinking. Differently about customers in thinking, how should we measure this stuff has been ahead of the sales organization. So, um, So it’s almost like we’ve been our own kind of worst enemy in some cases that we, you know, we talked about attribution in a way that really didn’t resonate.

And so we’ve, we lose credibility in that way. So it’s going to be really interesting. Okay. So one last question and we do this Mo we try to be fairly consistent about this. So one of the things that the MO Pros community is, is doing is supporting the rest of the community and providing a platform and all that.

But yeah. Yeah. One of the things that we recognize that there’s not really a consistent definition of marketing ops and therefore there’s not really consistent training or certification, but if there was some sort of marketing ops or revenue ops certification, you know, what topics or subjects or things would you think would be most important for that?

For people to go, maybe the top one or two. Top one, because here’s the thing, again, marketing operations let’s remove the Scarlet letter that they are people in the systems. No, no, no, no, no. They are very knowledgeable in the systems. Yes, but they are strategic people. Same thing as, as, as the traditional marketers.

So the first key could be gain insights on the different programs of the organization. Those are the people that bring the insights. Of course, they are going to be managing campaign campaign automation on like all these things. But I think the third one would be lead management. It’s one of those things that people are not paying enough attention to and everything that goes with live management, lead scoring, lead qualification, uh, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, I think those, those could be, uh, the things and then. Equally dangerous on the CRM systems. Like I, again, I believe in being kind of a chameleon at that to the organization that you have, if you happen to be an expert or a Marketo champion, be happy being a Marketo champion, because I think there’s only a contract on something in the entire us, but also.

Go and take a Salesforce course. They are for free, like go and expand your universe, go and understand the different tools that are part of the tool stack. Don’t be just a person that lives in marketing automation live in the world of the tools. I think that’s, that’s what it would be. Ideally for me. So I think it’s, what’s really interesting is you, one of the things you just brought up basically was provide insights, which has been a fairly consistent theme.

When we talk to people about this question is we’re the ones who could be, you know, we have access to all the data. We understand how the sausage is made, right. How it all comes together. And we w if we are smart, we should be pursuing that on our own. Right. What, what, what insights can we find that would provide value to the organization?

So, um, I think that, and we talked about data and the importance of data silos, like all this stuff is connected. Right. So I think that is a really important piece. So, um, this has been a really fun conversation. I appreciate it. Lorraina. Thank you, Michael. I can’t be happier with being here and I really appreciate your time and the audience’s time to listen to us.

Fantastic. So if people want to keep up with you and what you’re doing, your, your podcasts, like what’s the, what’s the best way for them to do that? LinkedIn, uh, I don’t believe on rejecting people on LinkedIn. Um, I believe in, in enlarging my network. So connect there. I never said no to anyone. I mean, except if you’re selling me something that it’s useless, please stop those messages.

But if you are selling me stuff that I want, please be welcome. And, uh, yeah, LinkedIn is the best way to reach out. Yeah. Go listen to our last episode. If you wind up how to get Lorena’s attention or mine, if you’re selling stuff to us, you’ll get lots of, lots of ideas of what to do and what not to do. So.

Um, anyway, so Lorraina, thank you so much for our listeners out there. Thank you for joining us and continuing to support us. If you haven’t already remember to download and subscribe and, uh, send feedback, rate us out there on all the different platforms until next time. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.