RevOps FM

There comes a time in every marketing ops professional's life when they wonder if the grind of an in-house job is worth it after all.

Whether it's politics, overwork, lack of resources, lack of respect, a toxic boss, or one of a million other things...it might make you think, "maybe I'd be happier as a consultant."

But is the grass actually greener? What does it take to get started in consulting? Are you better off at an agency or as an independent? How do you find clients?

To answer these questions (and many more), I'm joined by Lauren Aquilino and Sydney Mulligan. With over 20 years of consulting experience between us, we have a no-holds-barred discussion on the pros and cons and how to succeed.

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

Lauren and Sydney are co-founders of EMMIE Collective - a for-hire collective of the most sought-after independent consultants and boutique firms in the marketing ops and ops adjacent space - and co-hosts of the Pretty Funny Business podcast.

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

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:08] - Origin story of EMMIE Collective
• [10:45] - Has the reality of the agency model met their expectations?
• [12:48] - Becoming an independent consultant vs. joining an agency
• [15:05] - The experience of transitioning from in-house to consultant
• [17:20] - In-house career growth limitations for technical marketing ops
• [18:34] - Challenges of moving from an IC to a manager
• [21:44] - Finding clients and financial planning as a consultant
• [24:16] - Layoffs pushing people into consulting
• [26:42] - Commercial arrangements - hourly vs. project vs. retainer
• [28:50] - Challenges scoping fixed bid projects
• [30:23] - Fractional consulting models
• [32:38] - How to ensure quality / consistency with a team of independents
• [36:57] - Client management skills and dealing with challenging clients
• [41:45] - The tattoo booth at MOps-Apalooza

• EMMIE Collective Official Site
• Pretty Funny Business: The Podcast

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B2B communities are everywhere these days.

It's easy to forget that 10 years ago, it wasn't nearly so easy to connect with peers, ask for unfiltered recommendations, celebrate wins, and commiserate about dumpster fires.

Mike Rizzo has made community his career - both in developing B2B customer communities and in building the top community of practice for marketing operations.

In this episode, we examine how B2B companies can leverage community as part of their GTM strategy, what makes a community tick, and the inside scoop on what it took to host MOps-Apalooza.

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

Mike Rizzo is a career marketing operations professional passionate about community. In 2017 he also founded the growing community of MO Pros - a place where thousands of Marketing Operations Professionals connect, collaborate and help elevate the practice of Marketing Ops. He is also the co-host of the podcast called Ops Cast.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:42] - Why start a MOPS community?
• [05:17] - Community is like a product
• [08:40] - Each community is a vibe
• [10:40] - Maturity of marketing ops vs. sales ops
• [16:37] - Lack of strategic MOPS leadership roles in the marketplace
• [19:13] - MOPS pros should be like product managers
• [21:08] - Community-led as a GTM motion
• [25:40] - Balancing community and economic concerns
• [33:22] - MOps-Apalooza
• [39:59] - What motivated Mike to put on the event?
• [42:26] - The future of marketing operations

• #1 Marketing Ops Community & Private Network | MO Pros - Official site for the MO Pros community
• Ops Cast - The Ops Cast podcast
• MOps-Apalooza 2024 - Marketing Ops - Website for MOps-Apalooza 2024

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Every B2B company has a funnel tracking process. And quite often, that process is seriously limited or broken.

Leads get lost, data is inaccurate, and businesses struggle to produce insights and accurate reporting.

I've seen this first hand, and so has this week's guest - Charlie Saunders. We've both spent years as consultants fixing broken funnels.

In this episode, we talk about the many reasons funnel tracking goes wrong and dive deep into the architecture of the scalable solution Charlie's team has developed.

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

Charlie Saunders is co-founder and the Chief Revenue & Operations Officer at CS2, where he builds Revenue Growth Architecture for growth-stage B2B tech companies that powers efficient and predictable revenue growth.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:35] - Why funnel tracking matters
• [05:05] - How funnel metrics and attribution interact
• [08:21] - Key funnel metrics
• [10:18] - Accuracy vs. perfection in funnel tracking
• [14:06] - Why we can’t rely just on a Lead Status field
• [19:03] - Using a Salesforce custom object for funnel tracking
• [20:23] - Explanation of using a lifecycle campaign to bridge leads and contacts
• [21:01] - Should everyone start with a custom object?
• [26:55] - Why a custom object doesn’t need to be that intensive to implement
• [29:34] - Custom object impact on sales process and UX
• [33:25] - Tipping point = the initiation of the sales process
• [34:58] - Multiple tipping point types
• [36:14] - Different stages in the pre-pipeline section of the funnel
• [39:28] - Build vs. buy when considering a custom object solution
• [40:38] - You need a strong foundation for any funnel tracking to work
• [42:56] - Deeper discussion on attribution
• [45:47] - Significance of the the "tipping point" touch

• CS2 | B2B Marketing & Revenue Operations Consulting - Official CS2 website.

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Many entrepreneurs dream of creating categories. But few have actually done it - much less built a category worth billions of dollars.

Mark Organ is one of those rare few. As founding CEO of Eloqua, he pioneered marketing automation in the early 2000s, paving the way for other players and selling to Oracle for nearly $900 million.

Mark and I chat through how he co-founded Eloqua, the pivots and experiments needed to achieve product-market fit, and how category creators may be wired a bit differently.

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 Organ is the founding CEO of Eloqua (the first successful marketing automation platform) and Influitive. His greatest professional passions include creating new billion-dollar categories in technology and developing new leaders. Today he helps CEOs achieve their full potential in their businesses and their lives as the CEO of Categorynauts.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:05] - Founding Eloqua and marketing automation
• [07:47] - Origin of the lead generation playbook
• [10:39] - Getting to product-market fit
• [16:03] - Genesis of lead scoring
• [19:08] - Toolkit software vs. opinionated software
• [24:25] - Pivots and brushes with death are the norm
• [27:09] - When is it right to build a category?
• [30:14] - Building a category around an under-served hero
• [33:51] - Creating a category for the second time
• [36:42] - Challenges with churn at Influitive
• [41:05] - Alternatives to VC funding in SaaS

• Categorynauts - Categorynauts is the leading global community of category creating leaders, helping CEOs looking to discover, develop and dominate their category.

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Historically, Product-led Growth (PLG) companies have been underserved. Marketing automation platforms, growth playbooks, reporting frameworks, and “best practices” have been largely designed around the needs of their sales-led cousins.

But PLG has had a renaissance in the past few years, and all that's changed. PLG now has its own communities, methodologies, frameworks, and tools.

Today's guest, Dave Rigotti, has quickly become one of the godfathers of PLG as a thought leader and co-founder of Inflection.io.

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

Dave Rigotti is an entrepreneur and marketing leader dedicated to furthering the B2B marketing industry. Dave was VP of Marketing at Bizible (acquired by Marketo), Director of ABM at Adobe, and now is co-founder and marketing leader at Inflection.io.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:39] - What is PLG?
• [04:00] - Why PLG has gotten so popular recently
• [05:50] - Reasons Dave focused his new company on PLG
• [07:26] - Why sales-led software doesn’t scale for PLG
• [07:40] - Playbooks of top PLG companies
• [14:34] - Inflection’s data structure
• [19:12] - Opportunities and challenges of PLG ops
• [22:46] - Funnels, attribution, and PLG
• [25:31] - Scoring in PLG
• [26:47] - Top-down vs. bottom-up PLG motions
• [29:34] - Dave’s journey from startup to enterprise to startup
• [33:17] - Sustaining product agility as a startup
• [35:01] - How it feels to see Bizible not evolve after acquisition
• [36:06] - How to break the cycle of product stagnation as you scale

• Inflection.io - Product-Led Growth Software - Official website for Inflection.io

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Martech continues to expand and shift at breakneck speed.

Hot startups from five years ago have become legacy incumbents. Some platforms consolidate into monolithic suites while other categories break apart into specialized point solutions. AI looms over everything, with potential to disrupt virtually every established paradigm.

Who better to guide us through this landscape than Phil Gamache, one of the humans behind the awesome Humans of Martech podcast?

Join us for a deep dive into the future of Martech and a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how Phil and Jon produce their show using the latest AI tools.

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

Phil Gamache is on a mission to future-proof the humans behind the tech and help them have successful and happy careers in marketing. During the day, he runs all things Growth at Pelago and during the weekends you can find him behind the mic on humansofmartech.com.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:40] - Origin of the Humans of Martech Podcast
• [03:42] - Importance of soft skills in becoming a martech leader
• [04:33] - Growing an audience for the show
• [08:00] - Importance of having a specific approach for the show. Enjoying the process of learning through being a host.
• [11:00] - Use of AI for creating podcast imagery and transcription
• [17:32] - What do we consider AI-generated imagery to be?
• [20:30] - Point of view on martech and being platform agnostic
• [25:21] - Phil’s ideal stack
• [26:47] - Benefits of a composable CDP architecture
• [30:17] - Definition of composability in martech
• [34:27] - Challenges of troubleshooting a composable stack
• [38:19] - The relative recency of the cloud-first warehouse and the transition to warehouse native tech
• [40:22] - How much does the tech matter, in the big picture of business?
• [42:19] - Phil’s take on the role of AI a year from now
• [44:20] - Propensity modelling
• [49:03] - Finding balance in life

• Humans of Martech – Future-proofing the humans behind the tech - The Humans of Martech website. Click on "episodes" to browse the huge back catalogue by topic.
• Midjourney - Image generator Phil uses to create the AI artwork for the show
• Insightface.ai - App Phil uses to incorporate photos into AI-generated photo.

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If you're looking to transition from a technical MOPS expert to a leader - or if you're an existing MOPS leader who wants to up their game - Jessica Kao is the person to learn from.

She built a career as an expert MOPS consultant before becoming an enterprise marketing ops leader.

Listen to this conversation and you'll quickly see: she's ridiculously good at the business side of marketing operations. She knows how to plan, how to communicate, and how to lead.

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

Jessica Kao is Senior Director, Marketing Operations and Martech at Cloudflare. She has 10+ years of experience inspiring a nation of marketers through authenticity.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:40] - How Jessica defines the mandate of marketing ops. It is the accelerant to marketing. Everything flows through the pipes of marketing operations.
• [03:02] - How to determine if marketing ops is doing a good job. “Winning” means the CMO views you as a strategic partner and when you’re a bullet point in the board slide deck. But all projects should be aligned to the CMO’s initiatives and marketing KPIs. Marketing ops succeeds when the marketing team reaches its goals.
• [06:03] - Marketing ops shouldn’t just view themselves as the executor of another team’s strategy. Marketing ops can bring clarity, due to their position of visibility, the data we have, to spot trends, to provide feedback, etc. How do we make use of the data that we have to provide clarity to marketing leadership?
• [08:47] - Learning to be an internal advocate for the marketing ops team and navigating reluctance to be “self-promotional. ” The acceleration leap is the ability to translate what we do into something that provides business impact. Promoting the work we do is a by-product of bringing that clarity to the marketing team and focusing on the right things. Winning is not completing your tickets - it’s prioritization, doing the right things, providing clarity.
• [10:43] - The roadmapping process. Using an agile cadence, thinking of marketing technology like a product. Think about how you launch a project and create it. Quarterly planning and monthly sprints. Monthly sprints is the right fit. They have an “above the line / below the line” backlog. In a new company, shifting the balance from ad-hoc to roadmap. Being a consultant is helpful as it gives valuable skills in scoping.
• [13:54] - Learning to communicate incremental value instead of thinking of a project as needing to be 100% done and complete before delivering value. People get discouraged. Think of crawl/walk/run - crawling is still winning. This way people view MOPS as problem-solvers rather than blockers. Continuous delivery of incremental value.
• [15:46] - How to determine what should be prioritized. Jessica knows where they need to go in one, two, and three years, and that is her North Star. If you don’t have a roadmap, others will make one for you. Get buy-in from your boss and their peers.
• [17:23] - Translating features to stakeholder speak - what capabilities are you going to unlock. Quick-wins deliverables roadmap vs. plumbing/architecture/non-sexy roadmap. Jess has an external-facing roadmap of quick wins - these are “shiny objects,” which may seem like table stakes to MOPS. But if you position them in terms of the capabilities they unlock, then they can be positioned as wins. MOPS should communicate multiple wins every quarter. For the non-sexy plumbing, keep this on the internal roadmap - e.g., compliance. These things take a long time. Don’t keep communicating that you’re still working on complex projects quarter after quarter. When the capabilities are released, move them from the internal roadmap to the external roadmap.
• [20:12] - You can’t get money to fix what’s broken. But you CAN get budget to support new capabilities that deliver business value.
• [21:56] - Translating technical priorities into business objectives vs. translating business priorities into technical projects. This process happens bi-directionally all day long. Your job as a marketing operations leader is to translate up to leadership and down to your team - to provide clarity both ways.
• [24:25] - The multi-faceted skillset that a marketing ops leader needs to have. Not every leader has all those skillsets. Those that are missing, you need to hire.
• [26:09] - How to capture the long-term vision. Jess uses a project manager to capture it. She creates a library of “walking decks” for each company - a three-year roadmap, a yearly vision, a quarterly plan, wins. This holds true at every level. You don’t need a director title to be strategic.
• [27:44] - Developing communication skills as a leader. Jess learned and taught public speaking in grad school. Also learning through experience, trial and error, and mistakes. The marketing ops community helps each other out. Having mentorship, advice, and outside perspective is vital. Building a “board of directors” for your career. Find mentors who will challenge who you are and who will give you what you need.
• [33:15] - Overcoming imposter syndrome. Things get easier with repetition. But there’s always a next level and there’s always a new thing. The “freak out” period gets shorter. Emotional regulation is a top skill as a leader. You know how to figure it out.

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Everyone is talking about how transformative AI is, but the information is still very piecemeal.

There are tons of app focused listicles or cool tricks for ChatGPT, but if you're like me, you don't have time to go looking for ways to put apps to work.

So I set out to take a comprehensive look at the business of marketing, breaking it down into the fundamental jobs to be done and creating practical guidance for marketers on how they might incorporate AI into their daily work in each area.

This episode covers four main applications that have me excited, but if you visit the link below, you can access an Airtable base with over 35 use cases and over 40 apps.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:30] - Why make this episode
• [03:17] - Unstructured text analysis
• [05:27] - Structured data analysis
• [09:47] - Visual media generation
• [11:37] - AI and workflow automation
• [15:09] - AI for creative writing
• [17:15] - Two visions of AI usage

• A Very Gentle Introduction to Large Language Models without the Hype - A useful primer to AI and large language models.

I follow the attribution software category pretty closely, and sometime in the last 6-12 months it felt like I started seeing HockeyStack everywhere in my LinkedIn feed.

They have multiple team members and executives posting regularly, producing unique and engaging content, and they are building in public, sharing tons of juicy details about their GTM strategy.

How did a relatively young startup come to appear so dominant so quickly? I invited HockeyStock's CRO to chat and unpack all the details.

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

Emir Atli is the co-founder and CRO of HockeyStack, the a B2B GTM Analytics platform.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:27] - Origins of HockeyStack.
• [02:42] - What they saw that could be disrupted in the attribution space: a platform that didn't depend on Salesforce data and that was faster to implement. People buy these tools for two reasons: proving contribution and optimizing. There is most room to innovate around optimization.
• [04:56] - HockeyStack's go-to-market strategy. Starting with a goal to dominate LinkedIn, with co-founders posting daily. All GTM team members are expected to post. They focus not just on brand awareness but on making marketers smarter. Each team member has their own personality which shapes the content strategy. Finding the balance between entertainment and education.
• [09:53] - The Flow, HockeyStack's content platform.
• [10:39] - Sales strategy and process. Importance of the interactive demo. Use of a virtual sales room. Taking a consultative approach to selling. Working with the buyer's pace.
• [15:41] - Implementation and onboarding process (typically takes two weeks).
• [17:10] - How to be differentiated in showing value from the product once people buy it. Emphasis on flexibility - no-code dashboard builder, not locking people into templates.
• [18:59] - Data cleansing and data structure.
• [20:10] - Using data to tell better stories. Demonstrating what's actually working.
• [24:51] - Definition of incrementality reporting.
• [26:26] - How HockeyStack positions itself against competitors.
• [27:55] - Flexibility of the data model and dashboarding platform. Bringing in Snowflake data.
• [29:18] - Incorporating self-reported attribution. How many "dark social" touchpoints actually can be tracked.
• [33:12] - How HockeyStack innovates rapidly on the product. Impact of being in Y-Combinator.
• [35:49] - Marketing Mix Modelling - what it is and how to use it.

• HockeyStack - Official Site

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Jill Rowley is a legend in SaaS, with early tenures at Salesforce and Eloqua. As one of Eloqua's first salespeople, she helped shape the category of marketing automation and was also an early pioneer of social selling.

Today she is helping evangelize a new perspective on partner-led growth, which she calls "nearbound."

Jill and I talk about what it was like selling cloud-based software in the early oughts, helping the first customers to use marketing automation, and what it means to go to market with partners.

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

23 years in SaaS. Early employee at Salesforce (first 100), Eloqua (#13), HubSpot Advisor (2014-2016), Marketo (2018).

Loves startups, especially category creators - - in the trenches building Nearbound.

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

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [01:23] - Start of Jill's career at Salesforce.
• [03:08] - How Jill pitched SaaS in the early days of cloud software. Salesforce's guerilla marketing tactics.
• [04:47] - Moving to Eloqua as employee thirteen. Creating the category of marketing automation. Evangelizing for the importance of marketers on revenue.
• [10:05] - Early days of service partnerships at Eloqua. Co-selling with David Lewis.
• [11:54] - Types of service partner relationships. How there can be power-disparities and bad dynamics between smaller service partners and larger vendors. How many companies still view service partners as a source of leads rather than a way to build credibility and influence with prospects. There are bad fit partners. Need to have organized partner ecosystem data.
• [15:26] - Definition of nearbound. Living in market with your partners. Differences from inbound and outbound. Looking at a practical, hypothetical example: Clari and Hubspot.
• [20:41] - Addressing potential criticism of the partner-led approach: that it's too slow. Why you can't go to market with 1,500 partners.
• [24:01] - Why the value of partnerships is far more than leads. Top-down vs. bottom-up partnerships. Why both are important.
• [29:50] - Partner ops. Reference to Scott Brinker's article (see resource links).

• nearbound.com | The future of GTM is here - Official Nearbound website.
• Partner Ops: The forgotten ops that’s suddenly thriving in the ecosystem era - Scott Brinker's article on partner ops.

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