RevOps as a Growth Driver: Why CMOs Need to Invest

Intro VO  00:06

Welcome to Revenue Rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita, Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:35

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. I am joined by Rosalyn Sansa Elena. Rosalyn has over 20 years of experience leading go to market and revenue operations at several enterprise companies and high growth startups. As the founder and chief revenue officer or chief revenue Operations Officer of the Reb ops collective, Rosalyn is on a mission to elevate empower and enable revenue operations to be the strategic differentiator of every organization to optimize the end to end customer journey and the power of the revenue engine. Rosalyn is also an advisor for several high growth startups, an active leader in multiple communities, a Reb ops instructor, a keynote speaker and the host of the revenue engine podcast, Rosalyn, welcome to Revenue Rehab, your session begins now.

Rosalyn Santa Elena  01:42

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Brandon. Wow, what an introduction to

Brandi Starr  01:47

Yes, absolutely. I feel like I have Reb ops royalty on today. I am so excited to get a chance to talk to you. Yeah, thank

Rosalyn Santa Elena  01:56

you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Brandi Starr  01:59

Awesome. Well, I like to break the ice with a little whoosah moments that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me what industry buzzword? Would you like to get rid of forever? Oh,

Rosalyn Santa Elena  02:13

boy, I, I have probably a list of them. And I'm sure a lot of them have probably already been featured. I'm sure other folks on your show have probably mentioned these. But lately, one thing that I think I hear too often that I'm a little tired of is just this concept of doing more with less.

Brandi Starr  02:32

Oh, yes. That. That is it is a hot topic. And you know, we've seen so many reductions in in staffing lately that I do feel like a lot of people are definitely feeling the pressure to get more accomplished with less people and less budget. So why don't you like that one?

Rosalyn Santa Elena  02:56

Yeah, I just think that, you know, just when you hear do more with less, it's like, okay, we're asking you to now not give you enough resources, give you insufficient resources, but go and achieve these type of outcomes. And so what I've been trying to get folks to say is doing better, with less, just to give it a bit of a different tone, and good because I think it is about optimization. It's about being more efficient, and then also doing more of the things that are actually driving the outcomes that you want. Right. And then I think it's the same, it's the same messaging, it's just a little bit of a change of the, the wording to give it a little bit different perspective.

Brandi Starr  03:33

Okay, I can support that. I'm going to try and change my use of the phrase to say, do better with less because you are right, it is about it's not about just, you know, cranking out more of something it is about the optimization, where do you focus your efforts? So greater results with less as opposed to just doing more? Yes. Awesome. Well, now that we have gotten that off our chest, tell me what brings you to Revenue Rehab today?

Rosalyn Santa Elena  04:04

Yeah, so being a champion, sort of evangelist and my passion for revenue operations, I really want to talk about why CMOs and marketing really need to invest in revenue operations.

Brandi Starr  04:19

Awesome. And I've got lots of thoughts around that, you know, the the ops side of things is where my passion lives. But before we dive right in, I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it tells our audience what they should expect from our discussion today. So tell me what are your best hopes for our talk today?

Rosalyn Santa Elena  04:44

Yeah, so I'm really hoping that, you know, folks will take really come away from the conversation with really having a better understanding of, I think what revenue operations is versus what it isn't, but also how revenue operations when leverage properly can really help not just the overall revenue engine or the overall customer lifecycle, but really enable marketing specifically, and really help marketing to achieve its goals and also contribute to the overall revenue process.

Brandi Starr  05:18

Awesome. And you hit on where I want to start, which is, what is it in was what isn't it? I know, there are, you know, lots of discussions around marketing operations is this resident revenue operations is really just sales operations, revenue operations is a finance function. And, you know, there's all these different thoughts around what Reb Ops is. So I'd love to hear your definition in summary of what it is and then also what it is.

Rosalyn Santa Elena  05:51

Yeah, yeah, that's great. I think a lot of and I think some of the confusion, of course, is because many organizations, I think, have rebranded their sales ops to be Reb ops. And I think that's not in the spirit of revenue, what revenue operations really should be. When I think about revenue operations, I really think about it as the infrastructure to support your entire process end to end that supports driving and retaining revenue. Right? If you think about from top of funnel from, you know, from interest to prospect to actually closing a deal, someone becoming a customer, and especially in SAS, you know, as we know, once they sign on that dotted line, that's just the beginning of the journey, right. And so that that customer experience, the Customer Success Services implementation, all the way through renewal and expansion, to me is that entire end to end revenue process. And so rev ops, where revenue operations comes in, is really supporting that journey from, you know, people process tech that we always talk about, but also data and insights, as well as enablement and strategy to really support that customer lifecycle, but also the ability to support revenue and all of the teams that support revenue.

Brandi Starr  07:03

Yeah, and I agree, I do think that there has been this rebranding of sales in general, to be deemed revenue, like a lot of times the CRO title, really is just head of sales and not head of the full revenue function. Reb ops, is sales ops rebranded Why do you think it's like, it's almost a little bit of a battle, like because of our book, which I know you and I have discussed, right here. You know, we have seen like this debate, and the the underlying debate that people have is not that they agree with our fundamentals, or even a lot of what what you talk about in terms of revenue operations, but they just disagree with like terminology, like, oh, marketing, ops should be marketing ops, and revenue is sales. And I'm like, sales is not revenue. Like it's probably, you know, if I think about my buzzword, banishment, and we've been waiting, sales and revenue, but like this happens, and like, it's almost like, how do we get here? Like, did sales just decide we're gonna rebrand and steal the word revenue? or what have you seen in the industry in terms of how we've gotten to this disconnect of defining sales as revenue?

Rosalyn Santa Elena  08:29

Yeah, I think that, you know, I want to say like, we move towards revenue, versus talking about sales, or marketing, or, you know, even post sales, and because of the fact that we realize that revenue, it's a team sport, right? I talk about this all the time. And I know, you understand this, it's, you know, revenue, everyone contributes to revenue, what we do, and everyone in the go to market organization, anything in product and in finance, everyone is, you know, a contributor to revenue. And I think that's why it's so important that we've kind of shifted to this revenue title, versus just talking about sales, and especially going back to kind of that SAS model, it's not about the next, you know, that first net new, you know, customer and that acquisition in that first time sale, it's about the ongoing revenue that we can acquire initially, but also how we retain it and how we grow that revenue. And everyone takes part in that, right, everybody's in the in the go to market organization, because marketing is not just about acquiring new customers, it's also about so much more about the customer lifecycle. And so I think everybody needs to have that hand in that, you know, everybody in the big boat, right? We always talked about kind of the little boats, everyone has their own boats. And the key is to bring everyone into the boat so that we are all, you know, rowing towards the same goals and in the same direction, efficiently, right and really effectively.

Brandi Starr  09:54

I like that analogy of that, you know, when we're separate we're all even though we're headed towards the same destination, we're all in separate boats, which means, you know, some of us may be going straight, some of us may be, you know, veering off. But if we all get in one big boat, then, you know, we get there, you know, more effectively, we get there together with the same focus. So that's another great analogy. The other thing that I see that gets debated a lot is if you are putting all the operations functions together, where does that live within the organization? Because I do know that that is one of the hesitations is, you know, the head of marketing is like, well, I don't want to lose my operations people. If I put them in this other team, then you know, my priorities are no longer the most important things are gonna slow down. There's this perception. So where do you see that the operations function should live?

Rosalyn Santa Elena  11:00

Yeah, I get asked this one quite a bit. And I think this is one of the main reasons why, you know, when revenue operations fails, right, or isn't done properly, is when you have revenue operations reporting into a head of sales, right? Because there's a natural bias towards sales, right, kind of that middle part of the journey of the customer, versus prioritizing what's happening in marketing. And so that's a natural, I think that's a natural concern, and definitely a consideration. So when people ask me, it's like, where should Reb ops report, right, and the to me, revenue operations should report to whoever owns revenue, right. And revenue, again, not in the context of revenue is just sales, because we know it's not, but really, to whoever owns all of revenue. And if that's a CRO, who is truly in a Chief Revenue Officer role where he or she owns all of revenue, then the Reb ops person or leadership report into that function. But in the absence of that, you know, revenue ops should report to even the CEO, right, or a CEO or a different role, whoever is really owning revenue. And I've seen that and I think that's why we're starting to see a shift of some Reb ops reporting into the CFO right now. And I have my own thoughts about just just talking about that earlier today, because there's a, there's a, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too, because I think, you know, putting Reb ops reporting into the CFO, I think there's some, some perception as a benefit to that of, oh, it's independent body, it's outside of marketing, it's outside of sales. But I actually my history has told me that there's a healthy friction, right between finance and go to market, it's a healthy friction, that I think is important. And so I think if you do sit revenue operations in finance, you start to get some of that, that same kind of bias that you do when you have them reporting to a head of sales. Right. And also, I think that, you know, there's a, there's definitely a perception of, you know, having revenue operations, sit in the revenue team, you know, in that same boat, right, with your sales leaders, and with your marketing team, and with your, you know, post sales and customer success folks, and being part of that organization and being seen as really that support that proponent that champion of that team, but obviously working very, very closely with finance and every other team in the organization.

Brandi Starr  13:28

Yeah, no, I am of the same mindset, like I do think that finance has to be a key partner. I mean, honestly, to all functions of revenue, but having revenue operations live within finance, in my opinion, does create a gap. Because, like, the the metrics piece of the operations is only one piece, and that's, you know, what finance is gonna care most about is how are we tracking and reporting, you know, how it ties in to the finances, and that is an extremely important piece, but I do feel like it does miss the mark. And it does create the wrong kind of friction when, you know, the decisions are being made coming out of finance, you know, being made by the head of finance, as opposed to in collaboration with like, that I do think is a different dynamic. But I think that gives a good foundation of what it is where it should live. And so I really want to shift and talk about rev ops as a growth driver. And this is something that, you know, I am always preaching to clients, you know, email marketing is our bread and butter and the operational process of everything that that flows through that communication journey. But I know that a lot of times that I am talking to heads of marketing, and not that they don't see the value in rev New operations. But going back to limited resources, when they think about where they are going to put their budget and their headcount, rev ops, most often does not fall in the number one category or in some cases, not even top three. So what is the importance here? Like help, like, Let's just cut to the chase of why this is so important that CMOS need to pay attention.

Rosalyn Santa Elena  15:27

Yeah, yeah. So I think I think for operations, if you think about ops, a lot of times people think about marketing automation, right? They think about campaign ops, if you will, folks that are actually running some of those campaigns, whether they're email or events or things like that. But if you think about having operations be your eyes and ears and those deeper insights of what is actually happening in your business proactively, and what's working really well, because when we look at our marketing budgets, we want to spend our money in the places that are going to give us the best results in the best outcome. But how do you know, right? A lot of times you're doing a B testing, you're testing things, and then you're waiting for results, right? It's after the quarter after the month is over, and then you're looking back and you're already one month into the next quarter. And then you're like, Okay, I need to go pivot, I shouldn't I need to stop doing this. But you're already so far into a launch. And so you already have invested money. But think about having visibility, real time into what's working and what's not, and somebody who is dedicated to looking at your business, and how you're performing towards the your marketing strategy and the goals that you're trying to achieve. And then being able to bubble up those insights to your leadership team as they come up, right? And not just like, Oh, here's a report, or here's a dashboard to go look at, oh, here's the number of, you know, net new leads that we have, you know, some of those very high level lagging indicators, but more of the deep insights in terms of what's actually coming in the funnel, where's it's coming from? Where do we need to lean in? And where do we need to pivot, right, and especially as we're talking about doing better, with less and being more efficient, with our dollars and our resources, this is when you really need somebody, as a business partner, doing that for you, your eyes and your ears, identifying those blind spots, and looking, you know, I was talking about ops being the ones who kind of look around the corners and kind of see what's coming, versus what everyone else can see. That's right in front of your face.

Brandi Starr  17:33

Yeah, and I think what that lends well to is there's, you know, been this kind of movement of dropping the NG in marketing. So being the chief marketing officer, and really being the person within the organization who truly knows and understands the market. And I think a lot of what you're talking about that comes out of Rev ops, is an enabler for that, like the insights of what's happening, you know, like being able to bubble up those things that you're seeing in, you know, more real time is a key component of that. But when you don't have that you don't have that person or team that is really constantly looking at those things. There was a gap there. Yeah. Go ahead.

Rosalyn Santa Elena  18:24

Oh, no, I was just gonna say the other. The other thing is when you think about process, and I know you're a big process person, as I am as well. And you think about that repeatability. Right, and having, you know, I think about companies that I've worked out where I'm joined, and just the just to get an email out, you know, out the door requires so many steps and so many cycles and so much back and forth, right? But when you have somebody focused from an operational perspective on process, then you have intake forms with all of the information you need, it's automated, it's, you know, it's just the efficiency and just the ability to scale and the ability to just do better, right, we keep talking about doing better with less.

Brandi Starr  19:02

Yeah, and that that actually is in the direction of the question that I was going to ask because I know initially, we talked a lot about the data and the insights, which I think is one flavor of revenue operations, that is really important. And that process is the second because I think the other thing you know, with being able to do better with less is you know, a process that streamlines things, and allows you to turn things around quicker with fewer hands having to touch it is always great for everyone. But then I think the other piece is like how we are able to react to the market and get things in market and be agile. You know, I have talked to clients where they've seen they've had someone whether it's an analytics team or in operations or wherever it lives. They have seen some change in the market that day. It stated there that there needed to be a response. But to your point, that process of getting anything out there is so lengthy, that, you know, that early insight that you had turns out to be, you're actually, you know, coming into the conversation late, because it takes so long to get everything, you know, to actually get things out there. And like, to me, that's a huge missed opportunity, especially if you're in a really competitive, you know, space, and you've got competitors that are, you know, kind of beating you to the punch, you become the me to messaging, as opposed to being more of that thought leader, which I know is a buzzword that several people have vanished. And that all comes down to process.

Rosalyn Santa Elena  20:47

Yes, yeah. 100%. And I think people, you know, people tend to kind of hear process and they think of gatekeepers and things that are going to slow you down. But when process is done, right, it actually makes things move faster, right, and you're able to scale and, you know, as you mentioned, to be able to pivot, right, because you're not creating everything one off, you're not reinventing the wheel every single time when you have to do something different is said you have a process that's iterative, right, you're going to improve the process and continue to refine it as your business changes. But you have a process that's going to be repeatable. And it also sets the right expectations for everyone. Right? Think about internally, everyone knows what to expect, they know who's got the ball, right, there's no dropping of the ball, because there's clear rules, rules of engagement and clear roles and responsibilities. And it just drives a much better internal handoff process across all of the teams as well, where again, everybody in the same boat, right rowing at the same speed and being efficient about it.

Brandi Starr  21:50

Yeah, and that is another key thing when it comes to time. Because in any marketing organization, you know, there's going to be different functions involved, whether it's one person that handles each of the things or, or whole teams, and I have seen situations where one part of the process is able to accelerate something, but then it becomes a bottleneck, like it gets here, and it just sits, and there's no prioritization or, you know, I, we had a client where every time they put an email out, it went to design first. So like, they were designing new emails, every single time. And it was like, Why, like, there's so many variations. And it's something as simple as that, that, when you don't have someone that is of an operations mindset, that, you know, one exists within the Oregon and two is empowered to drive process across the board, then you do get those things that are happening that, you know, the creative team is like, Sure, we'll design something every time like, that's our jam, but nobody's going ah, like, you know, that's not the best use of your time or mine. Like that is important. And it seems like the roles are starting to show up in marketing, you know, for at least a Reb ops person. But it seems like a lot of people are still late to the boat. And so I'd ask, you know, for those people that don't have marketing ops, or a Reb ops person, like, what do you do? Like, how do you get some of these things moving? If you're just like, yeah, process insight, those things don't really exist here. Like, where do you start?

Rosalyn Santa Elena  23:38

Yeah, you know, I would be, I actually think that in a lot of organizations that say they don't have ops, they actually have some kind of form of ops, right. And that may not be optimized, or maybe not in that sort of coming from an operational mindset. But you probably have your demand gen person doing some of this, you have your content person doing some of this, right maybe and, and maybe even you have your head of marketing, doing some of these things that really, you know, are taking away from their time and taking away from their expertise, doing the things that are that they're really good at, and that are really meaningful for them. And then, you know, not having an operations person who has that operational mindset who maybe can do things in a different way. That's actually setting it up better for success. I think a lot of times, you'll see that and I think if you don't have, you know, a dedicated operations support, maybe they just don't have the budget for it. Right and you but you need to get some of this, some of this rigor in place. There are things obviously that you can start to do, right, even as a demand gen person, if you're putting together things, you're probably building some repeatable process, right? Or if you find yourself recreating the wheel, like in your design example, if you're doing that every single time, it probably tells you that hey, there's there's a better way to be doing this. And I need to take a step back and think about have that because think about the time wasted, just recreating every single time. You know, and, and starting in the example that you gave of starting with creative and kind of doing the design, think about all the other things that have to go into that email before it's even ready for design, right design sort of the last kind of the bow, make it, get it out the door, right, make sure that it's compelling to your audience, but the content and you know, who's the audience and all of the things that have to go into that those are things that could be done much earlier in the process?

Brandi Starr  25:31

And so my last question, cuz she talks about headcount. And if I'm a head of marketing, you know, I hear everything that you're saying, I agree. And I feel like I'm at the place where I need a person or a team. How do we build that case? Like, how do we make that clear connection to revenue and growth? And why that this is an important expense for the business? Like, how do I justify to my CFO or my CEO? That I need to invest in this? What's the business case there?

Rosalyn Santa Elena  26:07

Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think about revenue operations, when people ask me, like, why do I need to invest? How do I build up a case? You know, what's the ROI? And I always think about it like a, like a selling cycle? Almost right? You have to think about the business challenges that you're facing, and think about the pain, right? What are the pain points? Because chances are if yes, any leader in marketing, they'll probably if yes, that's what things keep you up at night, you know, what are the things that you're not getting that you wish you had to be able to better, you know, to run your business better. And they'll probably have a list of at least five, six things, maybe a dozen things that they're like, Oh, I wish I had better, you know, better visibility into attribution or better visibility to this, or I wish I had these insights sooner. I wish I knew what was actually working. And so I think when you think about all the things that you're not getting, or where there's very painful areas that are causing a slowdown in your ability to execute, that's those are some of the things that can go into sort of your use case for why you need operations, right. And especially in this market, I think in a downturn market, but also in a growth market, you know, when things are growing, in either case, having that strong operational infrastructure is going to support you. I mean, if you're in a big growth, a growth market, and you're taking off, we know that you can get there faster, right? If you have that operational rigor, and in a down market, similarly, you need to have that operational excellence in order to help you do do better with less. So from a marketing perspective, I think if you think about what are the insights, what are the things that I want to have to be able to really drive more revenue faster. And that can easily build a case of probably a dozen things of why you need it.

Brandi Starr  27:58

Awesome? Well, talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes, if nothing changes. So in traditional therapy, the therapist will give the client some homework, but here at Revenue Rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So I'd love for you to give us our one action item. If we are a CMO that recognizes that we need to invest more in operations. What's our first step? What's the one thing that you would recommend that we do in order to move the needle in the right direction?

Rosalyn Santa Elena  28:34

Yeah, I think it's maybe goes back to what we were just talking about, about thinking about that nice to have right, think about what are the things that are the top two or three things that would really help accelerate my business and help me achieve and exceed my goals the fastest. Because I think if you think about those couple of things, a lot of times, it's going to not point to necessarily more money or more campaigns or more, you know, anything other than if I had the right operational structure to support my business, I can be much more effective and much more efficient.

Brandi Starr  29:13

I like that, because that's a good action item for even those that have operations, you know, people or teams in place to just be able to identify right now, what are the two to three accelerators, like, you know, being able to do better with less? What are those two to three things that I could do that would allow me to do so and to really accelerate growth and efficiency? So I really liked that as an action item. So we've all got our marching orders now. Well, I have enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. But before we go, how can our audience connect with you? I know you've got a community and a podcast US. So tell us about all of the things.

Rosalyn Santa Elena  30:02

Yeah. So the best way to find me is on LinkedIn, I'm always there. Definitely connect with me on LinkedIn, if we're not connected, check out the Reb ops collective, our website is up and true scrappy startup mode, I built my own website. So check it out. It definitely is iterative, and it's evolving and lots to do. So they're still to check it out. And definitely look into the community. We'll be launching the community next month. And so it's really going to be a Reb ops community for Reb ops by Reb. Ops. So for folks who are interested in learning more about revenue operations, or up leveling themselves as web ops professionals, it's a great place to be to be able to learn and grow. And of course, check out the revenue engine podcast and check out Randy's episode.

Brandi Starr  30:49

Yeah, it has been a while and we'll make sure to put the link to the community, and to the podcast and my episode on the podcast into the show notes. So wherever you are listening to this episode, just check the show notes. And all of those links will be there. Well, thank you so, so much for joining me today. I have enjoyed as I say, as always, I love talking to you and learning from you. So I'm glad that my audience is having the opportunity to do so as well.

Rosalyn Santa Elena  31:22

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Brandy, and as always, always a great conversation with you. Thank you.

Brandi Starr  31:27

Awesome. And thanks, everyone for joining us today. I have enjoyed my conversation with Rozlyn. I can't believe we're at the end. See you next time.

Outro VO  31:38

You've been listening to Revenue Rehab with your host Brandi Star. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenue we have dot live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at Revenue Rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.