RevOps FM

Every company pays lip service to privacy. But few seem to really value it in practice.

In marketing and sales, we rely on personal and behavioural data for so many commonplace tactics, and this reliance is only increasing.

It's a kind of arms race. Even if you wanted to, it feels like you can't afford to give up the perceived advantages of using personal data.

And even as we continually hear about the "death" of this or that type of tracking, the reality is that hundreds of billions of advertising revenue are on the line. The incentives to keep collecting and commodifying our data are huge.

I wanted to dig deeper into the current state of privacy in marketing today, and I could think of no better person to reach out to than Stephane Hamel.

He is a legendary practitioner and thought leader in the digital analytics space and one of the foremost advocates for privacy and ethics in marketing.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Stephane Hamel is a digital analytics and marketing expert with over 35 years experience. He has spoken at over 150 industry events and was named one of the Most Influential Industry Contributors by the Digital Analytics Association. As an educator, he’s taught thousands of students at institutions including UBC, SimpliLearn, ULaval, Harvard, YorkU, and others. In recent years, he’s focused his attention on the ethical use of data in a marketing context

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamel/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:49] - Current state of privacy in marketing
• [03:30] - Vision of a truly privacy-oriented company
• [08:20] - How a 100% consent-based model would work
• [10:59] - Is privacy-respecting marketing better marketing?
• [13:26] - Analogy of seatbelts
• [17:32] - Getting people to care about privacy
• [20:50] - Advertising in a privacy-first world
• [24:21] - Conflict between privacy and commercial interests
• [31:41] - Google and the “death” of third-party cookies
• [36:47] - AI literacy
• [41:44] - Career impact of being privacy-oriented

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Refine Labs has had a seismic impact on B2B marketing.

Whether you agree with their philosophy or not, it's hard to deny its influence. They've set the agenda, defined the terms of the debate, and challenged many aspects of the status quo.

Former CEO Chris Walker catapulted the agency to prominence with his LinkedIn thought leadership. But behind the scenes, there's also been an intricate operational odyssey to scale Refine Labs from scratch to nearly 100 employees.

Today's guest, Megan Bowen, partnered with Chris from the beginning as COO before taking over as CEO in January of 2024. In this no-holds-barred episode, she shares an operational perspective on building Refine Labs, with candid stories and insights about scaling a service-based business, riding the hyper-growth rollercoaster, and weathering economic storms.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Over her 20+ year career, Megan Bowen has built and scaled go-to-market teams at eChalk, ZocDoc, Grubhub/Seamless (IPO: 2014), ManagedbyQ (WeWork Acquisition: 2019) and Platterz.

In 2020, she teamed up with the Founder of Refine Labs to change the way B2B companies go-to-market.

Today, she is the CEO of Refine Labs, A B2B Demand Generation Agency.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganwhitebowen/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:32] - Megan’s background
• [07:06] - Building Refine Labs
• [14:15] - Stepping into the CEO role
• [16:34] - Prioritizing the health of your team
• [21:56] - Segmenting clients and service levels
• [23:54] - Packaging, pricing, and service design
• [25:46] - Transparency in the sales process
• [27:43] - Achieving consistent service quality when scaling the team
• [31:21] - Onboarding process
• [31:59] - Balancing supply and demand in agency staffing
• [35:23] - Transparency around layoffs
• [37:12] - Evolution of Refine Labs methodology
• [40:36] - Partnership with Aspireship

• Refine Labs | Leading B2B Demand Generation Agency
• Refine Labs x Aspireship - Get subsidized access to the Refine Labs IP library with Aspireship.

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I think marketing is one of the toughest functions to lead successfully.

Your job is part art, part science. You need to hire, coach, and retain talent with a huge range of skillsets that you may even not be master of yourself—from the creative to the analytical to the technical.

And then your job is to simultaneously create demand, capture demand, help sales convert that demand, help customer success retain and expand that demand...your job is never done.

Today we chat with one of my favourite marketing leaders, Thao Ngo. We'll explore her unconventional marketing strategy and also her leadership playbook—how she grows her team and creates an environment where people do their best work.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Thao Ngo is a senior B2B marketing leader with 20+ years of experience in building world-class teams, generating sales-ready leads, and creating brand awareness for tech companies of various sizes. She's led marketing teams at Elastic Path, Vision Critical, and SensorUp, and is currently SVP of Marketing at Uptempo.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaongo/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:09] - What makes a great marketer?
• [02:40] - Evolution of marketing skills
• [04:48] - How to use data
• [06:25] - Marketing leadership and operating rhythms
• [09:30] - Trust and psychological safety
• [12:49] - Coaching and feedback
• [24:32] - First hires on a marketing team
• [25:43] - Division of labour between CMO and VP
• [28:05] - What keeps Thao up at night
• [29:47] - The marketing planning process
• [36:24] - Influencer / community marketing programs
• [47:13] - A day in the life of Thao

• Live MOps Huddles

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More and more marketers are embracing demand creation as a strategy, at least in principle.

But making a fundamental GTM change is HARD.

You need to build executive alignment, define new KPIs, identify how to educate your target audience, fine-tune your content engine, and a whole lot more.

As VP of Demand Gen at Refine Labs, Sam Kuehnle has been a big part of the movement evangelizing a shift from lead gen to demand gen and has helped many companies make the transition.

Now he's leading a similar shift as an in-house marketing leader.

We go deep into what it takes to actually implement this strategy in practice, go beyond leads, and deliver real revenue impact.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Sam Kuehnle is VP of Marketing at Loxo, the Talent Intelligence Platform. From working in-house at a publicly-traded company, to advising seed stage companies trying to figure out how to crack their first $1M in ARR, to everything in-between, Sam is passionate about learning and sharing better ways to do marketing.

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:37] - Sam’s marketing experience before Refine Labs
• [06:33] - Joining Refine Labs
• [08:11] - Refine Labs onboarding process
• [10:21] - A typical engagement + aligning with customer teams
• [13:36] - How to communicate a demand creation strategy
• [20:26] - Identifying the right mix of channels / platforms
• [25:02] - Leading indicators for demand creation
• [26:45] - Brand awareness vs. demand creation
• [31:32] - Evolution during Sam’s tenure at Refine
• [33:33] - The band-wagon effect and how to identify the best practices of tomorrow
• [35:11] - Joining Loxo
• [37:10] - Sam’s first priorities after going in house
• [41:38] - LinkedIn ad strategy
• [45:09] - Experiments with Connected TV
• [51:35] - ChatGPT as a marketing channel

• Sam's Marketing Meditations - Sam's Substack

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I've worked with a bunch of different sellers. Some were good. Some not so much. But one or two were truly next level.

They had consistently better results. They brought in bigger deals. They closed accounts no one else could. And they just seemed to "get it" in a different way.

They were switched on—you didn't need to tell them what to do. Whatever challenge you threw at them, they found a way. They seemed built just a little bit differently than other people on the team.

I've always been curious about what makes those great sellers great.

To help answer that question, I sat down with true superstar of the sales world, 5x President's Club winner Brian LaManna, Strategic AE at Gong.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Brian LaManna is a Strategic Account Executive at Gong and Founder of Closed Won, where he offers resources and playbooks for sellers. He is a 5x President's Club winner and regularly achieves 200%+ of quota.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlamanna/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:28] - Role of a seller in the revenue process
• [03:11] - Sales is not convincing
• [04:03] - Defusing prospect defensiveness
• [05:48] - When to break the sales process
• [07:21] - Are good sellers born or made?
• [09:26] - Attributes of a great seller
• [11:25] - Developing a “CEO” mindset
• [13:17] - Cultivating real relationships with customers
• [16:11] - Mindsets, strategies, and routines
• [24:18] - Benefits of selling Gong
• [25:28] - The sales / sales ops relationship
• [28:53] - How ops can get sellers to cooperate
• [31:45] - What does Gong’s RevOps team do well?
• [33:43] - Why AEs should always be prospecting
• [39:02] - Current state of outbound
• [41:39] - Live example: creating a tailored cold email
• [44:47] - Personalization vs. relevance
• [46:45] - How sellers can win at “social selling”

• Closed Won | Systematizing Outbound
• LinkedIn Post: Personalization vs. Relevance

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SaaS companies spent the past decade optimizing for growth and customer acquisition at all costs. For many, the plan to actually retain and grow those customers has been foggy.

Now with many businesses facing the reality of massive churn, it's become incredibly clear that helping customers succeed is just as important as acquiring them in the first place.

So we're here today to discuss the third leg of the RevOps stool: customer success ops, and by extension, the discipline of customer success as well.

CS Ops doesn't get as much love or attention as marketing or sales ops—one of my past guests jokingly referred to CS Ops as the "red-headed step-child" of RevOps. But I think, and hope, this is starting to evolve.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Stephen McBride is a Customer Success and CS Ops leader dedicated to helping companies grow better. His career has spanned in-house and consulting roles, and he’s spent over seven years in total at Hubspot, five of them as a leader in their Customer Success Org. He recently returned to the agency world with Go Nimbly as a RevOps Delivery Director.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcbridest/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:49] - Defining the role of customer success
• [02:51] - Role of CS in a PLG motion
• [03:37] - Strategies of a great CS team
• [06:00] - CS strategy at Hubspot
• [07:56] - Why do some big companies neglect CS?
• [09:29] - CS as cost center vs. growth driver
• [11:38] - Balancing the mindset of customer support vs. upselling
• [14:09] - Defining the mission of your CS team
• [15:36] - CS as a point of leverage in the customer experience
• [17:28] - Impact of macro-economic factors on CS strategies
• [20:06] - Identifying the impact of CS, factors you can A/B test
• [21:35] - Scope and mission of CS Operations
• [23:23] - CS Ops as a its own function vs. part of RevOps
• [29:09] - Who should a unified RevOps function report to?
• [31:52] - CS Ops vs. MOPS and SOPS
• [34:42] - CS tools and systems
• [40:19] - A best-in-class CS tech stack
• [42:34] - Churn forecasting
• [44:35] - Getting truly useful health scores
• [48:34] - Reducing churn

Big thanks goes out UserGems for sponsoring today’s episode. 

We all know running outbound is a huge pain—you need to manage a dozen different tools and data sources and it takes ton of manual work to keep it all going.

UserGems solves that with one platform to capture signals and automate next steps with workflows and AI.

You get a library of the most impactful signals in one place, automated playbooks to make sure your team executes consistently, and Gem AI to create personalized messaging for each prospect. 

So stop wasting time and start targeting your most promising buyers with less headcount. Click the link below for a special offer just for my listeners.

Try UserGems

• Net Revenue Retention Hub - Go Nimbly - Go Nimbly's excellent hub on NRR and CS topics.

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Prioritization is probably the biggest challenge for ops teams.

Say yes to everything—you pretty quickly become a service department.

Set your own priorities without input from the business—you can quickly find yourself irrelevant, even out of a job.

The best model that I've seen for tackling this problem is what we could call the product management approach to managing MarTech.

This is where you effectively treat your stack as an internal product and ops as a product management team working on delivering features for internal customers.

Today's guest has practiced this approach at enterprise scale, with an ops team dozens strong.

Josh Hill shares his insights and lessons learned, as well as his journey as one of the earliest and well-recognized experts in the Marketo community.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Josh Hill is a GTM operations and systems executive who builds revenue accelerating GTM platforms, global teams, and processes in partnership with Product, Sales, and Marketing. He has a strong track record of turning business strategies into live enterprise capabilities and impactful customer experiences.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhill2/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:37] - Josh’s professional journey
• [04:19] - Development of automation pro as a professional identity
• [06:48] - Scope and scale of the teams Josh led
• [08:54] - Definition of a product management approach to martech
• [15:45] - Should marketing ops be oriented around business impact?
• [21:03] - Reasons why ops teams need to say “no” sometimes
• [27:38] - Solving for the internal vs. external customer
• [30:39] - Asking tough questions about adoption and ROI
• [33:53] - Building your roadmap
• [35:53] - Communicating your roadmap internally
• [40:10] - Cultivating resolve around prioritization and triaging requests
• [42:43] - How to transition to a product management approach

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Every marketing team  wants attribution. But weirdly, it's often not that satisfying when they actually get it.

I led many multi-touch attribution projects as a consultant, and we got really good at implementing tools, creating taxonomies, and making sure that data was clean.

But I found that when you actually showed these reports to a C-level executive, it was usually kind of underwhelming. The data didn't always pass the common sense test.

Today's guest thinks there's a better way — Marketing Mix Modelling. It's basically the application of mathematical techniques to model relationships between different variables.

However, technology now enables it to happen faster and more cost-effectively than ever before.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Mark Stouse is CEO of ProofAnalytics.AI. With over 26 years of experience in marketing communications and strategy, he has a passion for transforming GTM performance with data-driven insights and agile decision making. Prior to founding Proof, Mark was CMO at Honeywell Aerospace, CCO at BMC Software, and a marketing leader at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstouse/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:15] - Clarifying the acronym “MMM”
• [02:39] - Mark’s background and how he founded Proof Analytics
• [07:57] - Limitations of multi-touch attribution (“MTA”)
• [14:16] - How MMM avoids the shortcomings of MTA
• [16:42] - The Fischer Price definition of MMM
• [19:56] - Demand vs. brand investments and their impact
• [24:09] - A/B vs. multivariate regression
• [25:21] - MMM is aggregate modelling, no reliance on PII
• [27:12] - Simple explanation of multi-variate regression
• [30:29] - Incorporating third-party data sources
• [31:48] - Historical ROI vs. forecasted ROI
• [32:52] - Is MMM just for enterprise?
• [34:51] - Marketing as a non-linear multiplier
• [38:02] - Getting started with MMM
• [41:18] - Updating models to include new data sources
• [42:07] - Competition in the marketing analytics space
• [44:41] - B2C marketing is more advanced in usage of multi-variate regression

• Proof Analytics - Official Site
• Econometrics // Lecture 1: Introduction

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For most of us in B2B, the marketing automation platform - aka "MAP" - is the anchoring piece of technology in the martech stack.

When I was first buying a MAP, there were way more options than today, but generally they all bundled a few core features together — sending emails, segmenting audiences, and creating workflows.

But is there a reason why you need to do your lifecycle processing in the same tool that you send emails with? What does a Martech stack look like where these roles are distributed differently?

Today's guest has answered that question and built an elegant and high-performing composable stack.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Niels Fogt is Sr. Director, Automation Solutions at tray.io. He's led and participated in a wide variety of initiatives within growth and marketing. Strong technical acumen. UX roots.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/uxstrategist/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [02:31] - Niels’ journey as a martech architect
• [06:06] - Challenges with the traditional martech stack
• [09:13] - Developer mindsets and service-oriented architecture
• [12:10] - Applying automation capabilities across the organization
• [14:09] - Components of Tray’s martech stack
• [15:02] - The role of a customer journey tool
• [16:07] - Centralized lead processing in Tray
• [17:23] - Event collection
• [19:09] - Streaming events into automation tool vs. data warehouse
• [22:21] - Native vs. custom integrations
• [29:15] - Benefits of having a workflow layer in Tray vs. in a MAP
• [32:02] - Economics of using an iPaaS as a workflow layer
• [34:50] - Composable martech stacks
• [39:03] - Skillsets needed to operate a composable stack
• [40:01] - Future capabilities
• [41:25] - Relationship to business stakeholders

• Why low code is the future of lead management (and RevOps)
• Introduction to the lead processing pipeline on Tray.io
• Open source RevOps: Taking a closer look at the first few steps of the lead processing pipeline

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Kyle Coleman is one of the most prominent revenue leaders on LinkedIn and a long-time champion of sales development.

So there was no one better to chat with about the future of the SDR function, which some claim is facing imminent demise...

Spoiler alert: Kyle doesn't share that view. But he DOES think that it needs to change.

We look at how sales development will evolve in 2024 and beyond, discuss his SDR to 2-time-CMO journey, and examine how AI will impact sellers and increase productivity.

Perhaps most importantly, we also go deep into the mindsets, routines, and strategies Kyle has used to enable his professional growth and productivity.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.

You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.

What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.

Try Knak

Kyle Coleman is a sales and Marketing leader with a passion for people development, identifying and solving problems, creating and optimizing processes, and unifying departments across the revenue org. He's currently the CMO at Copy.ai and was previously CMO at Clari.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyletcoleman/

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:39] - Role of SDRs in B2B GTM
• [04:47] - Strategic partnership between SDRs and AEs
• [07:43] - How does a junior SDR offer value to an executive?
• [11:20] - Qualities and skills of a good SDR
• [14:05] - Providing space for SDR autonomy
• [16:28] - Replacing SDRs with AI?
• [19:25] - Kyle’s mindset for professional success
• [24:21] - Importance of documentation
• [26:08] - Figuring out what to say “no” to
• [28:52] - Keeping calm in the face of big targets
• [31:43] - Daily routines and prioritization
• [35:32] - Benefits of being a LinkedIn creator
• [39:38] - Core job of a marketing leader
• [41:35] - Why Kyle joined Copy.ai
• [43:19] - Core capabilities of the platform
• [49:29] - Kyle’s predictions on the future of AI in GTM

Big thanks goes out UserGems for sponsoring today’s episode. 

We all know running outbound is a huge pain—you need to manage a dozen different tools and data sources and it takes ton of manual work to keep it all going.

UserGems solves that with one platform to capture signals and automate next steps with workflows and AI.

You get a library of the most impactful signals in one place, automated playbooks to make sure your team executes consistently, and Gem AI to create personalized messaging for each prospect. 

So stop wasting time and start targeting your most promising buyers with less headcount. Click the link below for a special offer just for my listeners.

Try UserGems

• The only AI platform purpose-built for outcomes - Copy.ai official website

Visit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter:

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