Treating Marketing Ops Like a Cleanup Crew is Killing Your GTM

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr. And we have another amazing episode for you today. Treating marketing operations like a cleanup crew is killing your go to market. And it's happening far more than most leaders realize when the ops team is brought in. After the fact that to patch holes, untangle messes, you are not only slowing down execution, but you are setting your entire revenue engine up to fail. And today we are challenging a broken norm that's wasting millions in pipeline potential and exploring how giving ops a seat at the go to market table early can unlock faster, cleaner, more predictable growth. So if you think you can build high performing go to market without elevating operations, think again.

Brandi Starr [00:01:33]:
Today I am thrilled to be joined by Leah Russo. Leah is the founder of Novara, the consultancy B2B leaders call when they are done duct taping go to market together and pretending it's a strategy. A veteran marketing and rev ops executive, she spent over a decade building scalable revenue engines and and torching old playbooks that burn teams out. Creator of the Anti-Hustle Manifesto, Leah partners with CMOs, CROs and go-to-market leaders who know chaos isn't a badge of honor, it's a business risk recognized for her. No BS clarity. She's on a mission to end burnout as a strategy and build smarter, saner, high performing go to market teams. Leah, welcome to Revenue Rehab. Your session begins now.

Leah Russo [00:02:29]:
Thank you, Brandi. So happy to be here.

Brandi Starr [00:02:32]:
Yes, I am excited to talk to you. I have known you for many, many years and it is exciting to get to have on air the conversation that we've had multiple times. You know, one on, one off air. But. But before we dive into our talk, our industry loves its fancy jargon. And let's be real, most of the buzzwords are just fluff and can hold us back more than they help. So here we like to banish buzzwords. So tell me, what is one overused buzzword you'd like to get rid of forever?

Leah Russo [00:03:13]:
I don't think you'll be shocked about this, but I definitely want to banish hustle.

Brandi Starr [00:03:20]:
I. I definitely get it and I hate hustle culture, but go ahead and tell everyone else why you want to banish that.

Leah Russo [00:03:30]:
So I want to banish Hustle because it really has created this mindset that speed is everything. Right. And that strategy can wait. And what I'm seeing day to day is that that reactive OPS that was created from Hustle is what's killing your go to market. So that's why I created the Anti-Hustle Manifesto. To really call BS on the burnout as a strategy and really build this new standard where hey, like let's take a breath and look at what we have. Be strategic, make sure that we align things from a true opps at the table seat of looking at, hey, like what actually needs fixed before we get to X, Y and Z. And so for me, it's not about doing less, it's just about doing what matters in the right order.

Leah Russo [00:04:30]:
Right. And with the right people in the room. And spoiler alert, that's ops.

Brandi Starr [00:04:36]:
Yes. I was just saying that is a perfect segue. Now that we've gotten that off our chest, we can transition into our topic today. And this issue impacts so many companies. I think there has been a rise over the past few years of having conversations about marketing ops, rev Ops, you know, all the go to market ops. But it is still very misunderstood and for a lot of companies big and small, overlooked. And so my first question is, what is the most damaging myth about treating OPS like a cleanup crew that's holding companies back in their go to market execution?

Leah Russo [00:05:21]:
It's, it's really that that ops is an afterthought, right. That we're here to clean up the mess once your strategy's already put in, been put in place. But when you build without your ops team in the room, you're not really moving fast. You might feel like you are, but you're actually moving blindly.

Brandi Starr [00:05:45]:
Yeah, I would agree. And you know, thinking about the biggest blinder that I see is you have the air quotes strategist in the room and people assume that operations people aren't strategists, but because they aren't coming up with, you know, messaging and creative campaign ideas. But there is a strategic component to operations and how we actually deliver on that bigger picture strategy. And so I'd love to hear you talk about that component more because it's easy to say don't leverage ops to just be a cleanup crew. But there's a key nuance there that I'd love to hear you talk about, about really leveraging OPS strategically.

Leah Russo [00:06:37]:
Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is back in the day, right, Ops was very much tactical support. But as all the new tech has come in especially in the B2B SaaS space, you've got AI coming in. Who, who is the first one at the table in taking all of that tech, interweaving it together, making sure that it aligns to your plans, making sure that, that your numbers are hit or miss. Right. It's, it's your ops team that is doing that. Not only are they doing that, but they're interweaving all of the different departments together, whether it's product and marketing or sales and cs like they are that bridge, that glue between all of those departments. So not only do they see all of what's happening, they're architecting everything from the back end and they really are at a parallel position to be a strategic driver for you.

Leah Russo [00:07:38]:
And a lot of the great ops people that are out there today are being treated like tactical support or a cleanup crew after the fact to the point where it's burning them out. Right. But ops isn't a band aid. Ops is truly your blueprint for scalable growth, but you have to treat it as such to get there. Right. Don't come to us with your problem after the fact, like bring us in before you're building or as you're trying to scale and let us architect for you what that looks like. Because we're going to know what levers to pull to kind of get those things aligned in the correct order so that we only have to do it once, we don't have to go back and do it and fix it and re architect things over and over and over again.

Brandi Starr [00:08:27]:
Yeah, and I agree. I love that you use the phrase architect because if we think about like if I'm a future homeowner and I want to have my house built, I have all my requirements of what I want to accomplish. I need this many bedrooms. I need, you know, laundry upstairs so I don't have to carry my basket downstairs. I need a room for my mother in law that is away from us. You know, there's like all of these things and it's very easy to think about like, yeah, this is our strategy. This is the strategy for what we want in a house. But in order to make sure it's structurally sound and can meet all the requirements and all of those things, you need the architect who is not just coming in.

Brandi Starr [00:09:18]:
You know, it's not the builder, it's, it's before you get to the building of how do we take what we're trying to accomplish and make, make it actually sustainable, what materials do we need, etc. And what you described is like, that's kind of how that visually comes to life for me. And so I'd love to hear you expand on that analogy a bit.

Leah Russo [00:09:40]:
Yeah, no, that's, that's perfectly said. Because that's. It's more than just the order taker. Right. Like, we can take your order. Absolutely. Can we bring it out? Absolutely. But there's so much more to that.

Leah Russo [00:09:55]:
Like, yes, we can. We can build you a suite for your mother in law. But don't you also want to make sure that there's no steps to get to that suite so that she's not falling down while she's trying to make it to that suite? Right. It's the little things like that that Ops are literally our brains are programmed to think through. Right. Where we're trying to make sure that things are set up so that they maintain long term. Because ultimately, like, let's be honest here, if we don't, we're only hurting ourselves, right? Like, if we don't set it up correctly, who's going to fix it? Nobody else is going to fix it. It's going to be us fixing it.

Leah Russo [00:10:36]:
So why wouldn't we want to take the time to do it properly? Like we're incentivized because we're going to be the ones fixing our mistakes. But we also know where all the bottlenecks are. Right. We understand what can scale and how it can scale. Um, we understand what parts of building that house can be done quicker than others. So we know how to sequence the build. Right. There's things like that that we don't necessarily always have to slow down.

Leah Russo [00:11:08]:
There are pieces of it that can move faster, but it's about setting up the team to move faster with slower breakdowns overall. So when you really think of, okay, I'm building this house and I know I want to suite for my mother in law and I know I don't want stairs going to her, but also know I want a laundry shoe and I want a coffee bar. OPS is going to be like, okay, we can do this, this and this, but let's sequence it in this way forward so that we can get this portion of it done quick because we know that's a fast turnaround versus, hey, maybe for your mother in law's suite, like let's take some extra time there and make sure it's done correctly because you know that's a long term investment. She's going to be living with you for a long time, potentially the rest of your life. Right. So let's make sure we do that one right. And if we need to go back and adjust the coffee bar later, we do that. But let's prioritize the big stuff.

Leah Russo [00:12:01]:
And OPS knows how to do that.

Brandi Starr [00:12:03]:
Yeah. And I think something else that you hit on just because I love to beat a good analogy is because Operations is the one that owns and understands the technology. OPS also knows what are the capability, what the capabilities are that that can expand the strategy. And that is something that I see, you know, thinking about it with the house analogy. Like, I know when I built the gym in my house, my contractor was like, hey, we should probably use a different insulation so that when you've got the music cranked up, like, you don't hear it throughout the house. And that is a capability that me, you know, just as a homeowner, I didn't know there were different, you know, insulations for different purposes. And I see the same thing with capabilities that exist within the technology that can be used to better execute the strategy. Have you seen the same?

Leah Russo [00:13:03]:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the OPS teams know that tech. They also are on the cutting edge of what's up and coming on that tech, because OPS is, we have to be in the forefront seat of anything new and upcoming just to keep up with the trends and be able to do the best job for our companies. So I think for, for me, what I see is that not only do you know what's possible within your current system, you also know what is it, what could potentially break from other systems impacting that. Right. Because you've got outside factors happening. And then in addition to that, they know what is potentially coming in the tech in the future. So they say, okay, if you're thinking about doing X, Y and Z, I'm going to recommend we do it in this tool because there's more scalability to grow with the tool versus doing it in tool Z.

Leah Russo [00:14:04]:
Right. I think that's the biggest differentiator I've seen, and that's where we really get into the weeds of messiness and chaos, is when a strategist like you had said will come into the to a table and say, we're going to do it X, Y and Z Ops will be brought in after the fact most, most of the time to clean it up or to build it, but not have a say in the strategy of it. We'll build it as described because we're just doing our jobs. And then six months down the road, it's not working the way it intends. It doesn't scale the way it's meant to be, and it's back on our plate to fix it. Right. It's back on our plate to make it work. But even then, sometimes the OPS teams aren't in control of how it's being built.

Leah Russo [00:14:52]:
And I think that's what really, truly leads to burnout and neglect from an ops team is really feeling like, wow, like, I know how to do this better. I just can't get my voice heard.

Brandi Starr [00:15:05]:
Yeah. And it sounds like. Or it's a very common challenge of the right voices not being listened to. I feel like this has come up in so many conversations recently. And so I want to shift a little bit and talk about how to make sure we've got the right voices, because in talking to marketing leaders, especially those, you know, you think about someone who's been a CMO, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, these ops roles didn't exist at one point. And so one of the big challenges that I hear often is not knowing how to hire for good OPS people because they don't speak the same language. They. They don't have, you know, the.

Brandi Starr [00:15:57]:
The CMO doesn't have the technical skills to validate that this person knows what they're doing, and they've been burned. And that is one of the things that has led to not inviting ops into some of those conversations. And so how do you hire for OPS if you are not, you know, if you're not like us, that has an OPS background, how do you effectively hire so that you can trust that person to be that additional voice to better enable the strategy?

Leah Russo [00:16:33]:
That's a really good question and one that I get asked a lot, especially for CMOs that are less on the technical side. Right. A lot of times they're using an agency or they're outsourcing. What I typically recommend is that you go to the most senior technical person you have on your team and have them help you lead the search. I oftentimes also try to have the CMO partner with the CRO on it because it's really a partnership between CRO and CMO to get that pipeline and the revenue piece tied together to make OPS truly work. And a lot of times, if the CMO isn't as technical, sometimes the CRO will be. I've seen that, at least within C suites, that. That there's somewhat of a balance there.

Leah Russo [00:17:31]:
If you don't have that, if you have a performance marketing team or a growth marketing team that is good with numbers, that is good with tech, that is good with metrics, definitely Lean on them and honestly start prompting and be like, here are my challenges. Tell me how you would go about solving this. A good ops leader is going to want to know all the challenges coming in so they can figure out what they're up against, how they would set it up to scale. They're going to want to know what your tech stack looks like. They're going to want to know, like, how the team is structured to figure out where those bottlenecks are. That's what a good ops leader is really positioned for. They're gonna come in, figure out all of that. We treat everything like a puzzle, so we're all puzzle nerds at the end of the day, let's be honest.

Leah Russo [00:18:22]:
But yeah, I lean on the. The team that you have existing. If you don't have a team existing, if you're a startup and you just aren't sure where to go. That's why I have Navara Brandi. Your company does so tons of stuff like that as well. Like we. There's great resources out there and people that are willing to help you lean on your community.

Brandi Starr [00:18:46]:
Yeah. I definitely like the idea of leaning into like the most technical person you have access to.

Leah Russo [00:18:53]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:18:53]:
Because, you know, whether that's someone that's in Rev Ops, someone that's in it, you know, it's. You're really looking for a bullshit detector.

Leah Russo [00:19:02]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:19:02]:
You know, at the end of the day, like, you need that person that speaks enough of the language to, you know. I think AI is making it worse because it is.

Leah Russo [00:19:11]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:19:12]:
So many people now can just ask AI and sound intelligent enough. I do think you hit on. One thing that I want to highlight is you talked about great ops people being puzzle people and really looking at things as a puzzle. And that is something that as a leader, it's easy to tease out in an interview. Even without knowing the technical asp. Excuse me, technical aspects, it's really easy to try to assess, like, is this person a puzzle solver? Or how, you know, or even asking like, I do puzzles as a hobby, like the actual ones with pieces.

Leah Russo [00:20:00]:
You do.

Brandi Starr [00:20:01]:
Yeah. And you know, even if I thought about, even if a rev Ops person doesn't do puzzles, if I said, I'm going to give you a 5,000 piece puzzle, how are you going to approach getting it done? They're going to have a process. Like I, you know, I have my baskets, I do the outside. Like, you know, there's a logical way of approaching it. And I think that, that, like, that's a key point that you made in that something that a cmo, even without having a technical resource and as a support, can really tease out if that's a natural thought process.

Leah Russo [00:20:37]:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:20:40]:
I want to shift again, because talking about it in theory and driving home the point that this is important is one thing. But the other thing I hear a lot is people don't know what this looks like in practice. Like, they have their process today. You got these people get in a room, they come up with a strategy, they do some form of documentation or request. It goes to OPS to build. You know, they. They have this kind of assembly line, this process that they have today. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts of if we are going to reimagine how getting things done is going to work more collaboratively.

Brandi Starr [00:21:22]:
What does that actually look like?

Leah Russo [00:21:25]:
Yeah, I mean, so for me, the biggest thing has been getting it. Getting OPS AC at the table, even just to listen, right? Just to sit there and listen in and intake it. Because sometimes even hearing it, at least from a senior leader, they can go back to their team and realign the sequencing of upcoming work in their queue to support that strategy. Because that's the other piece of this, right? Is like, it's not like you guys go into this room, you make this big beautiful strategy, and then that's the only thing we ever do that is just not reality, right? Like, we have a massive backlog of things that we have to get done. Campaigns that we need to support, right? Revenue targets we need to hit, pipeline targets that we need to build. There are systems that need working. And admin, the work never stops, stops for an OPS person. And I think that's why.

Leah Russo [00:22:27]:
Well, actually, I know that's why I'm so passionate about it, because I've been burnt so many times of like, I'm doing all these things, people like, what do you want from me? But I think at the end of the day, at least listing or having a good ear with a C suite member that sits in the executive leadership team meetings and understands the strategy of the direction the company is headed in. As long as you have a good feedback loop on that as an OPS leader to start with, that will give you enough bandwidth to be like, okay, here's what we need to do to rework the team strategy to be able to support this and scale in some buffer time so that we actually have time to accomplish all these things. Because what leaders might think is one project that doesn't seem like a big lift from an OPS perspective, sometimes it's a massive lift. And they don't understand all the little intricacies that go into it until you make it visual and show them for that. So for me the biggest thing has been getting, getting an ear or being able to listen in and then getting a way to visually show them the amount of work that it's going to take to get there and why it matters that we strategically sequence things. So a lot of times we'll show. Okay, well if I do this first, like you're asking, all these other things will fall apart or they're not going to be teed up and it's going to extend the project out six months. Right.

Leah Russo [00:24:03]:
So I have to show consequence and tell them, hey, if you brought me in to begin with, I could take this nine month project and make it six weeks. Right. There's things like that where it's reshaping and reframing the power that OPS has as a lever.

Brandi Starr [00:24:22]:
Yeah. And I know one of the things that I've always wondered and I mean, I guess time will tell, is how long before we get a more senior role for operations. Like I've come across a few VP of RevOps or you know, at that level. But it's like if we think about go to market operations as a whole, like marketing, sales, product success, like how all of that fits together because with AI and all the tech that we're using, like very similar to how you have a CTO or a CIO that looks at more of that, you know, back office type tech. Like I feel like we are going to get to a point where we've got to have a leader that is the puppet master of all of the front office tech and I wonder how far out we are before we get there.

Leah Russo [00:25:26]:
I'm with you. I, I, it honestly like I am shocked that we kind of don't already have something and I know they're, they've really positioned like vp Head of Rev Ops go to market. Right. To be that role. But even then some of those roles are still very sales ops focused. They're not true going to market ops or RevOps and but I'm seeing that we need it more and more, which is why I stepped out of my own and started to do my own thing because I felt like there's such a gap and honestly each department is so siloed these days and has their own goals and are up against immense pressure to produce what they need to produce that there really does need to be like a puppet master of sorts. To your point, that kind of goes across those departments and pulls everybody together as like the true glue or the wizard of Oz behind the, behind the curtain. Right? Because at the end of the day, like, you want all those departments to work seamlessly.

Leah Russo [00:26:41]:
And ops is that it is that they are the architect. They are the one that can do all of that. But if you're. If you're leaving them behind or you're leaving them out of the room, then you're just, you know, you're. You're basically flying blind. Right? Like, yeah, you. You gotta make sure that you bring them in as a strategic lover or someone on your C suite understands what a strategic lover they are. And have ops report into that someone, because it doesn't really matter where they sit as long as they're under someone that gets what they bring to the table.

Brandi Starr [00:27:23]:
Yes. And I do see that that is probably the biggest challenge I see right now. And, you know, we're still fighting in some companies for there to be a ops person and have that be the whole job. And then so often, because it's not a department or a team, you've got this one person reporting to someone who sort of gets it, but not fully. And so they're not able to block and tackle and all those sorts of things. And I do think that it is very much like going back to our original point. It is killing go to market when companies don't have senior leaders that actually understand.

Leah Russo [00:28:09]:
Yeah, totally agree.

Brandi Starr [00:28:12]:
Well, we've talked about the problem, so let's talk about how to fix it. Welcome to the lightning round. So this is fast answers only. Let's make sure our listeners leave with some actions that they can take right now. So number one, if your com finish this sentence, if your company sidelines marketing ops, instead of involving them early and go to market planning, the first thing.

Leah Russo [00:28:39]:
You should do is stop trading ops like the help and start treating them like architects.

Brandi Starr [00:28:47]:
What's one red flag that signals a company is treating ops like a cleanup crew, but might not realize it when.

Leah Russo [00:28:55]:
Ops is the last to know but the first expected to actually clean it up?

Brandi Starr [00:29:01]:
What is the most common mistake people make when trying to fix this problem?

Leah Russo [00:29:07]:
They hire more ops people to clean everything up faster instead of changing how they strategically plan.

Brandi Starr [00:29:14]:
What's the fastest action someone can take today to make progress?

Leah Russo [00:29:18]:
Bring ops into your next go to market strategy meeting and ask them what's broken before you decide to do what's next. And listen.

Brandi Starr [00:29:32]:
All of that hardest part of the lightning round is not responding because I am over here doing a happy dance with the jazz. Hands because I echo that so, so much. And every good session ends with a plan for progress. Leah, this has been such an awesome conversation. Glad I finally got you on the couch. Before we go tell our audience how they can connect with you and definitely do the shameless plug for Novara.

Leah Russo [00:30:06]:
Okay. Okay. We'll see how I do with this. Thanks, Brandi. So yeah, if you, if you need OPS help, if you're not sure how to bring ops to the table, if you're burnout, just reach out to me at NovaraGTM.com. Also you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on there. And also, if you are done being burnout and you're done having OPS be a duct tape cleanup crew, come sign the Anti-Hustle Manifesto at NovaraGTM.com we just launched it and we're asking people to sign and join the movement.

Brandi Starr [00:30:50]:
Awesome. Well, thanks so, so much. You can check the show notes wherever you are listening or watching this podcast to connect with Leah. And thank you for joining me. This has been fun. Fun.

Leah Russo [00:31:04]:
Same. I'm so happy I could come. Brandi. Thank you.

Brandi Starr [00:31:07]:
Awesome. So thanks everyone for joining us. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Leah. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time. Bye. Bye.