Partner with RevOps To Exceed Your Growth Targets

In this episode of Demand Gen Chat, Rosalyn Santa Elena, Founder and CRO at The Rev Ops Collective shares her insights on how working closely with Rev Ops can be key for marketers to succeed, especially in tough times.

Rosalyn talks about the rise of revenue operations as a function and how it is being talked about more in a marketing sense.

She recommends that revenue operations should support the entire customer lifecycle, from top of funnel through being a customer, driving customer success, renewals, growth, and post-sales. She also shares her thoughts on how companies can learn from their customers and feed that knowledge back into their demand gen engine.

The Power of Revenue Operations for Marketers ⚡️

Revenue operations (RevOps) has become increasingly popular in recent years as a way to streamline the entire revenue process.

From top of funnel to post-sales, the RevOps team is responsible for aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams to drive revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

In this podcast summary we will dive deeper into the importance of RevOps for marketers and how it can help them succeed, particularly during challenging times.

Gaining Valuable Insights 💡

One of the most significant benefits of RevOps for marketers is the ability to gain valuable insights into the customer journey.

By analyzing why customers buy and stay with a company, marketers can better understand their target audience and create more effective messaging.

As Rosalyn Santa Elena, Founder, and CRO at The RevOps Collective, explains, "unlocking the power of RevOps is having that holistic body of operations looking at the entire customer journey."

RevOps can also help marketers refine their ideal customer profile (ICP) and target personas.

"You can really hone in on the messaging to those personas around what resonates, why did these customers buy and how do those use cases resonate with your prospects," says Rosalyn.

Another area where RevOps can help marketers is in churn and renewals.

By understanding why customers leave and why they stay, marketers can improve their retention strategies and reduce churn.

Rosalyn notes, "there's so much to learn there, not just from a sales perspective, but also from a marketing perspective."

The Role of RevOps in Tough Times ⚙️

During challenging times, RevOps becomes even more important for marketers.

"A lot of times organizations...talk about, oh, we need to focus on our customers, oh, we need to focus on retention. But they talk about it and don't really do a lot of the things that we should be doing." Rosalyn explains.

RevOps can help companies stay focused on their customers and take action to improve customer satisfaction and retention.

RevOps can also help marketers address the pressure to generate leads and revenue quickly. By streamlining the sales process and improving the efficiency of the sales team, RevOps can help sales teams close deals faster and more efficiently.

In addition, RevOps can help companies identify areas where they can cut costs without sacrificing revenue growth. By analyzing data and identifying inefficiencies in the sales process, RevOps can help companies reduce expenses and improve profitability.

Leveraging Customer Insights 🔍

According to Rosalyn, "All of that data about why did we win, why did we lose at the deal level...should also be leveraged by the marketing team to feed into your messaging, your content, your website, all of the things that you do to reach out to your customers, as well as to drive interest in your brand.

By leveraging customer insights, marketers can create more effective messaging and improve their marketing campaigns.

However, Rosalyn notes that sometimes these insights don't make it back to marketing, which can be a missed opportunity. "Which really is...a shame, because it really can help you redefine and kind of iterate your ICP.

You can start to iterate on your personas. All the messaging, the collateral, the content, all the things that really help drive the marketing engine," she says.

The Importance of Metrics 📊

Metrics are also critical to RevOps, particularly in terms of understanding where to focus time, energy, and resources.

"It's more important about looking at what are the things that are really going to give you an indicator of how your business is performing," says Rosalyn.

One of the key metrics that Rosalyn focuses on with clients is conversion. "It's all about conversion, but not just MQL to SQL or SQA, right...it's about measuring incrementally across the entire deal cycle or lifecycle and understanding all this kind of each stage of the customer lifecycle on what's converting," she explains.

By focusing on metrics across the funnel, companies can make incremental changes and optimize their sales process

 Instead of trying to "boil the ocean" of just generating more top-of-funnel leads, companies can focus on the areas where they can make the most impact.

Collaboration and Alignment in RevOps 🙌

RevOps should not be limited to the sales team and should have equal accountability across all go-to-market teams.

"Having a true RevOps team that's accountable across the funnel and really accountable to the customer experience is much more powerful." Rosalyn explains.

If RevOps does not sit within marketing, companies can still leverage their marketing operations team to gain insights into the customer journey. It is important to have alignment across goals, strategy, and metrics to ensure collaboration and a shared understanding of the data.

The Importance of Pausing ⏸️

In the Demand Gen Chat podcast, Rosalyn Santa Elena emphasized the importance of pausing to reflect on the data and insights gathered through RevOps.

"I think it's important to really pause and reflect and say, okay, we've done all this work, we've gathered all this data, we've looked at all these insights, but let's take a step back and really think about what we've learned and how we can apply that to our business," she says.

This pause allows companies to make informed decisions and avoid rushing into new strategies without fully understanding the implications. By taking the time to reflect and analyze the data, companies can make strategic decisions that will drive revenue growth and customer satisfaction in the long term.

The Future of RevOps ✨

As more companies recognize the importance of aligning their sales, marketing, and customer success teams, the future of RevOps looks bright.

"The last couple of years, we've kind of seen that rise of where everyone is like, what is this (RevOps)? Why do we need it? How do we go and implement it? How do we build it?" says Rosalyn.

One trend that is likely to emerge in the future is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in RevOps.

By analyzing large amounts of data and providing insights in real-time, AI and ML can help RevOps teams make more informed decisions and improve the efficiency of the sales process.

Another trend that is likely to emerge is the integration of RevOps with other departments, such as finance and operations.

By aligning these departments with the sales, marketing, and customer success teams, companies can create a more cohesive and efficient organization.

Conclusion

RevOps has become an essential component of modern marketing strategies, particularly during challenging times.

By gaining valuable insights into the customer journey, refining the ideal customer profile and target personas, and focusing on critical metrics, marketers can improve their marketing campaigns and drive revenue growth.

Collaboration and alignment across go-to-market teams are critical to the success of RevOps, and companies should take the time to pause and reflect on the data and insights gathered through RevOps to make informed decisions.

As the future of RevOps looks bright, companies should continue to explore new trends, such as the use of AI and ML, and integrate RevOps with other departments to create a more cohesive and efficient organization.

Episode Links

Follow Tara Robertson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taraarobertson/
Follow Rosalyn Santa Elena on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosalyn-santa-elena/
Check out The RevOps Collective: https://therevopscollective.com/
Follow Udi Ledegor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/udiledergor/
Check out the Revenue Engine podcast: https://www.growthforum.io/podcasts/revenue-engine

Episode Transcript

[0:00:00] (Tara Robertson): Welcome back to demand gen Chat. I'm your host. Tara Robertson, Head of Demand Gen at Chile Piper. And in this episode, I'm joined by Rosalyn Santa, Elena founder and CRO at the Rev Ops Collective. We chat about how working closely with Rev Ops can be key for marketers to succeed, especially in tough times. What's top of mind for her Rev Ops clients right now, and what teams should know before they bring on a dedicated Rev Ops team.

[0:00:25] (Tara Robertson): Hope you enjoy my conversation with Rosalyn Roslyn. Thank you so much for joining me on Demand Genchat.

[0:00:31] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[0:00:33] (Tara Robertson): Of course. I'd love to start with, I know you've been running Rev Ops Collective for over six months now. How are everything's going?

[0:00:41] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, it's been really, really fun. It's exciting. It's definitely not something that I had I wasn't really expecting to kind of be a solopreneur, but I am really, really enjoying just bringing Rev Ops to more organizations as well as to more people. So it's been great. Thank you for asking. Very cool.

[0:00:59] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, it's been fun to watch from LinkedIn, which is how I've been keeping in touch. So it's been great. Is there anything just right off the bat to dive into it? Do you have either a marketing hot take for audience or something that you feel like people are maybe getting wrong on social media right now around Rev Ops?

[0:01:18] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, I think around Rev Ops, I think that there's such a hot demand for Rev Ops. Everyone's talking about it. I think the last couple of years, we've kind of seen that rise of where everyone is like, what is this? Why do we need it? How do we go and implement it? How do we build it? And so it's been really great to see sort of the rise in the maturity of revenue operations as a function, as sort of that I would like to call it the strategic differentiator in companies.

[0:01:49] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): But I'm really excited to just kind of see where it's going, and I love the fact that it's being talked about more in a marketing sense. Right. When people think about Rev Ops, a lot of times, unfortunately, some companies have sort of rebranded Rev Ops to more sales ops to Rev Ops, forgetting about top of funnel and marketing ops, as well as kind of post sales. So it's been really great to see this marketing being more in the discussion around Rev Ops.

[0:02:17] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, that's interesting you mentioned that, because I've definitely seen them as separate in the past. I think it is a newer trend to have Ops as kind of its own standalone department. Is that typically how you recommend companies you work with structure their operations team?

[0:02:30] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, absolutely. I think revenue operations to me, is really the end to end operational infrastructure to support, really your entire revenue process. If you think about mapping that to the customer journey, we talk about customer journey a lot. I think about customer lifecycle, whether it's initially from top of funnel, there's interest through being a prospect, through being a customer, but also in SaaS, especially important is once they become a customer, driving that customer success, their services, implementations, renewals, growth. So it's entire lifecycle of a customer that really revenue operations should support and that's from a people process, tech perspective, but also from data and insights and then strategy as well as enablement.

[0:03:18] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): So I think in its true form, it's really to support the entire customer lifecycle. But a lot of companies, as you kind of alluded to too, is that they're still focused in on certain pieces of the funnel and I think unlocking really that power of rev ops is having that holistic body of operations looking at the entire customer journey.

[0:03:40] (Tara Robertson): One thing I'm hearing, you brought up kind of the customer success side, so I'm curious to touch on that. One thing I'm hearing a lot this year, specifically from marketers is we used to focus on MQLs bringing leads in, but all of a sudden my exact team wants me to also care about churn and renewals and I have no idea where to approach that. So is that typically something that you help companies out with and how do you approach that? Because it's such a new kind of piece of that funnel.

[0:04:07] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, it's funny because it's funny you ask because it's pretty timely. I've been on my soapbox a little bit the last couple of weeks just really talking about the customer, right. Because I think a lot of times organizations, especially in a downturn market, we talk about, oh, we need to focus on our customers, oh, we need to focus on retention. But they talk about it and don't really do a lot of the things that we should be doing.

[0:04:30] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Right. And I think from a customer perspective, there's so much learning for marketing. Think about when a customer actually signs a piece of paper, decides to be your customer, like, why did they buy and why do they stay, why do they renew, why do they expand? There's so much learnings there that you can very easily feed back into your demand gen engine, back into your top of funnel activities and understand so many different things. I mean, you can refine your ICP, you can start to really understand your target personas. You can really hone in on the messaging to those personas around what resonates, why did these customers buy and how do those use cases resonate with your prospects.

[0:05:15] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): But also, even if a customer leaves, there's a lot to be, a lot to learn there, not just from a sales perspective, but also from a marketing perspective. Was the customer just not a good fit to begin with? Should we not be marketing to these folks, right? Or is there something different that we could have done throughout the early stages of the customer lifecycle to be able to better support them and drive value so that they do stay.

[0:05:43] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): But there's so much learnings there to feed back into marketing.

[0:05:48] (Tara Robertson): I know it's a bit overwhelming, but I think to your point, obviously the more insights we can gather, the more customers we can go get that are ideal, fit, so super important. But how would you recommend marketing work with Operations if taking on that customer piece is new for the team?

[0:06:05] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): One of the things, I guess, that Ops is really good at, I think, and that has been probably one of the reasons why a lot of companies focus in on we need Ops and the first thing they think about is either Tech Stack, right, or they think about data. Although Operations is a lot more than that. But I think that that's where a lot of the pain comes from. So if you think about the data, a lot of times we're flying blind. We don't have the insights we need, we don't have the data at the right time.

[0:06:32] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): And that's where operations can really come in and help. And from a marketing perspective, when you think about the customer, all of that data about why did we win, why did we lose at the deal level. But also, again, why do customers stay with us, why do they renew, why do they leave, what value are they seeing? So a lot of those insights that operations is gathering for sales as well as for customer success, to keep driving more customers and keep customers, all of that should also be leveraged by the marketing team to feed into.

[0:07:09] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Your messaging, your content, your website, all of the things that you do to reach out to your customers, as well as to drive interest in your brand. Those are all learnings that you should be leaning in on operations for.

[0:07:22] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Because at least in my experience, our customer success counterparts work super closely with Ops. Because, again, to your point, they need those insights to grow things like headcount. But they also need to know why are customers churning and have a solid story behind that, where sometimes those insights don't make it back to marketing. Which is a shame.

[0:07:41] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, which really is, because it really can help you redefine and kind of iterate your ICP. You can start to iterate on your personas. All the messaging, the collateral, the content, all the things that really help drive the marketing engine. Those are the insights you need to be able to coupled with other insights, of course. But learning from your customers is I mean, what better information than from the folks who actually are using your product or your offering?

[0:08:10] (Tara Robertson): You mentioned tech stack and I was laughing because I feel like a lot of the time that's what execs think that Ops does. Maybe not rev Ops, but marketing Ops a lot. Yes, I'd love to hear just at a high level on more, the metric side. But what do companies that you advise come to you for help with initially? And has that kind of changed moving into 2023?

[0:08:31] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, I think the metric side is so important because we think about everyone's talking about kind of like, oh, doing more with less or doing better. I like to think of doing better with less. But how do you figure out where you should be focusing your time and energy and your resources, right? And that is where you have the right metrics. And it doesn't mean that you want to measure everything. And this is another thing I think that companies do wrong is they try to measure every piece of every data point, which ends up meaning that you're measuring nothing if you're measuring everything.

[0:09:08] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): And so it's more important about looking at what are the things that are really going to give you an indicator of how your business is performing. Right. And so you think about what are those high level goals that you have and then what are the performance metrics that are actually going to tell you more of as a leading indicator than just a lagging indicator of how you're progressing towards those objectives.

[0:09:33] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): And so one of the things that I've been really focused in on with clients is conversion. It's all about conversion, but not just MQL to SQL or SQA, right. People talk about that a lot. Or about just close one.

[0:09:48] (Tara Robertson): Right.

[0:09:48] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): When an opportunity moves to close, everyone can measure that. But it's about measuring incrementally across the entire deal cycle or lifecycle and understanding all this kind of each stage of the customer lifecycle on what's converting, whether that's converting from an NQL to something that sales accepted is one piece of it. But then as it starts to move through, you think about every stage of the sales cycle, things are converting.

[0:10:21] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Right. And being able to really look at that and look at the number of conversions and the percentage of those wins and deals closed and how many customers. But understand, I think if you really focus in on the metrics across the funnel versus just the big numbers, then you can start to make incremental changes. Yeah, maybe it's one or 2%, maybe it's 5%, but those all add up. Instead of trying to boil the ocean of just, I just need more top of funnel numbers and then I need to convert more deals. Right. Because there's a whole lot of stuff that happens in between that where you can start to optimize and start to focus it on.

[0:10:55] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, and I think every marketing team wants more top of funnel. I think that's kind of the dream. But when you have maybe a smaller team than last year, maybe less budget, that's usually not so likely. Are there any other conversion points that you see people tracking as just key indicators that they could have an impact on.

[0:11:14] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, definitely. And from a marketing perspective, you think about we'd always talk about people coming to your website, people attending your events. So there's lots of things that downloading a paper and filling out a form. There's all of these activities that happen that you can obviously measure in terms of are you gaining followers on social? Are you gaining more engagement on some of your content? More people are attending, but if you really take sort of that, you can drive that number as the first piece of it. But diving into who's attending your event, is it the right people?

[0:11:50] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Who are those folks that actually attend and then drive subsequent activity? So being able to dive into a lot of that, it may not be something that people typically think of, of conversion, but it really is right, because you're getting people to be interested in your product and then taking the next step. So to me, when you look at conversion, it's all about moving people forward, moving buyers or prospects forward in the cycle.

[0:12:15] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): So whatever you can do in your business to help not only ensure that they do convert, kind of move into the next cycle, but to expedite that cycle and shorten that window, that's where we should really be focused on. And a lot of that has to do with making sure that you get the right people to begin with, that you're reaching the right people. I can't tell you how many times you've probably seen this too, but how many times businesses aren't really sure who their ICP is.

[0:12:43] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): They say, oh, I sell to B, two B SAS, or I sell to technology. And that's like, okay, that's tens of thousands of customers. But to your point about when you don't have as many resources and you don't have this unlimited amount of budget, you have to spend your time and your money and your resources in the right place. So you have to be laser focused on what is the best ICP, the best accounts I should be going after, right? The best people?

[0:13:09] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, I've definitely gotten a handful. I can think of some recently of outreach emails that were just whatever they had their data pulling from was just completely off. Just mentioning that we're using marketo when we're not. Just little things like that, where they clearly I'm just not their ICP. That's who they're going after. So I feel bad that it seems like they just have something off on either the operation side or the data that they're pulling, but they're just casting too wide of a net and I'm not going to be useful.

[0:13:38] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, definitely. And I think I'm seeing that too, where they're either casting too wide of a net or it's just completely wrong. Right. It's a completely wrong industry where I'm seeing a lot of outreach emails that are trying to sell me something that I have absolutely no need for because I don't do that, or they're actually selling me competitive services, things that I would actually offer. So, yeah, it's been really interesting, but when I see that, I'm always like, oh, maybe they need some reboots help.

[0:14:05] (Tara Robertson): They probably need some you could turn that around.

[0:14:07] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah. Make it into us, make it into an opportunity.

[0:14:12] (Tara Robertson): You mentioned doing better with Wes. I really like that. It sounds much nicer than what everyone else has been saying right now. Yeah. Part of what that means to me is really just pausing the things that aren't working so we can double down on what is. So I'm curious if any companies that you advise have had to make tough cuts or pause things recently, and how does Ops help out with those decisions?

[0:14:34] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, so I think going back to kind of Rev Ops being the right holistic body, looking across all the different pieces of the funnel and really providing the right data at the right time, right to the right people, I think that's one of the big plays if you have a really strong operations team and operations infrastructure. So it's really, as you said, kind of focusing on what's working and what's not.

[0:15:03] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): So from an Ops perspective, if you're constantly reviewing some of those leading indicators of what's working, then you can dive in. And it's not about waiting till the end of the month or end of the quarter and kind of reporting the news, but it's about doing that in the now and constantly being analyzing, looking at those points in time, but also doing that constant kind of a B testing that we talk about a lot.

[0:15:28] (Tara Robertson): Right.

[0:15:28] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Marketing, you always want to be testing and then seeing what kind of results you're getting. Are you directionally moving towards the right outcomes? Are we seeing what we expected? And then be able to pivot really quickly? And I think that's where Rev Ops really helps, is bubbling up those insights so that you can figure out, okay, this isn't really working. I need to pivot. And maybe it's just a slight iteration or it's a complete pivot, or it's at least don't do as much of that, and let's do more of this. Right. So if something is working really well, you want to lean in and you want to do it now versus waiting till the end of the quarter or the end of the month, because by then it's too late. By the time you get your results, you start to analyze it and you start to make some decisions to make changes.

[0:16:11] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Likely you're already one more month into the next quarter.

[0:16:15] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, quarters fly by these days.

[0:16:17] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Every month, every week goes by really fast.

[0:16:20] (Tara Robertson): If Rev Ops doesn't sit within marketing, say they're totally separate teams, how would you recommend marketing approach that relationship to get those insights? Because it sounds great to be getting those insights every week, every day. But often marketing isn't Rev Ops top priority so how can we kind of get in there and get that support?

[0:16:39] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, so I definitely think that some of this is because, like I said, I think companies make the mistake of rebranding Sales Ops to be revenue operations, right? And that's kind of not the intent or in the spirit of revenue operations because Rev Ops should really have equal sort of accountability across all of the different go to market teams. And I think that's where we see a lot of mistakes, where they have Rev Ops sitting under ahead of sales and then they're very sales heavy, right, and then marking sort of like a second citizen, right.

[0:17:12] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): They're not prioritized properly. And that's why I think having a true Rev Ops team that's accountable across the funnel and really accountable to the customer experience is much more powerful. And so having if you don't have Marketing Ops sitting in Rev Ops because again, it's always less about structure and more about alignment and collaboration. So leaning on your marketing operations team and pulling in Rev Ops should be well, sales Ops should definitely be very well aligned with Marketing Ops anyway.

[0:17:48] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Right, because before, even in companies that I've worked at where if I didn't have Marketing Ops under my Purview, I was very tightly aligned with our Marketing Ops folks, right. And so that's really important. Whether they report into the same leader or not, it's important to have that alignment. But it is about making sure that you have that alignment across the goals, the strategy, the metrics and then making sure you have that collaboration that you're all looking at the same data.

[0:18:16] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Right? I think that's one thing that we talk about a lot that I think all of us have probably been there where we're in a pipeline meeting, for example, and then sales comes in and marketing comes in and they both have a different number of what pipeline looks like, right? And then you spend the entire time discussing whose number is right, where did you get this information and comparing the two numbers versus spending the time strategizing on how do we increase pipeline and convert that pipeline.

[0:18:44] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): So, yeah, I think marketing, if you have your own Ops team and even if it doesn't sit under a Rev Ops umbrella, but it's Marketing Ops, you should be leveraging them. And not just about marketing automation or running your campaigns or sending out your emails, but it's about leveraging them as a strategic partner and that business partner that can really help you get those insights and understand what's happening in your business and be able to really we talk about Ops being kind of the person that helps you see the blind spots. Kind of helps you see around the corners through telling the stories that the data is telling us.

[0:19:21] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): And so, even if you don't have Rev Ops, marketing Ops leverage them. They're not just campaign Ops, right? They shouldn't be. They should really be that marketing thought partner and business leader.

[0:19:33] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, I love that analogy of Ops seeing around the corner or seeing the blind spots because often, especially in demand gen, we're the ones either launching campaigns or with our idea for a campaign. So if it's your baby, it's hard to see this probably shouldn't be running anymore. It's not really pulling its weight.

[0:19:50] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, exactly. And then if you don't have a formal kind of marketing Ops, but leveraging kind of back to your question about how do I pull in Rev Ops, it's all about, hey, here's the data I see. What are you seeing? Right. Because it matters to the sales team as well in terms of what's happening top of funnel. And at the end of the day, it's about how do we get better? Everybody at the end of the day wants more revenue faster.

[0:20:15] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): So I think by kind of being able to share those insights and see, hey, what am I seeing? And then talking and saying, what are you seeing? And kind of putting that together, you get a full picture, which is kind of what Rev Ops is trying to do. But even if you don't have it, there's nothing holding marketing folks from talking to salespeople and sales kind of talking to marketing. So. Yeah, I love that.

[0:20:38] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, and you're right. About? I'm sure all of us have been in that meeting where the head of marketing and the head of sales have a totally different dashboard, different numbers. And instead of spending the time productively on the Insights piece on what customers are saying, people are refreshing dashboards trying to figure out what the numbers don't match.

[0:20:55] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah. And then they spend all their time, all their time figure out where's the delta right. What's different? Like, your data is different from mine because of what right versus, like you said, versus kind of strategizing on how do we make this better. Yeah.

[0:21:09] (Tara Robertson): And then the team obviously doesn't get much direction from because their exec is just in that kind of back and.

[0:21:16] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Forth looking ahead to the future.

[0:21:19] (Tara Robertson): I know companies are coming to you looking for not just tactical advice, but strategic as well. So I'm curious, other than what we've already talked about, about making Rev Ops more of a strategic partner, is there anything else that you really think are looking forward to this year that you think will change on the Rev Ops side?

[0:21:37] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, I definitely think that the last couple of years we've seen this kind of rise of Rev Ops. We've seen it be better defined and more folks embracing it. But one thing that I'm more excited that I've seen recently is I've definitely seen we kind of touched on this a little bit already, but I think we've seen companies realizing that marketing has a huge driver of revenue. It's no longer about pretty brand templates and nice logos and things like that.

[0:22:11] (Tara Robertson): Right.

[0:22:11] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Marketing has such a huge hand in driving revenue. And I think having that rev Ops presence and bringing more Marketing Ops folks into the fold around revenue operations and letting them be exposed to the entire funnel is only going to continue to accelerate business for all organizations. Because then now you have the power of not just Ops in the middle of the funnel or post close of the funnel kind of tail end, but now you've got top of funnel as well into the fold.

[0:22:41] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): So I think it's really exciting. I think it's a challenge because marketing and sales have always been very separate. And I think from a Marketing Ops perspective, too, they're kind of suspicious about this rev Ops, what's going on with this revenue operations function. So there's a little bit of that. But I think it works if you have a rev Ops leader, truly understands Marketing Ops and Sales Ops and post sales Ops.

[0:23:08] (Tara Robertson): Right.

[0:23:08] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Kind of the CS Ops world where it doesn't work is when you have a Sales Ops leader who just gets promoted into a rev Ops and all of a sudden they have Marketing Ops but they don't know how marketing Ops runs. Right. And so, similarly with us on the sales and marketing side, when you have a CRO who just only understands sales and doesn't understand marketing, that's where you have that friction as well. But I am very excited about I think we're going to continue to see more alignment around Rev Ops. I think we'll see more marketing CMOS as well, embracing rev Ops as they start to figure out how do we work better together and kind of break down those silos and have more of that synergy and holistic view across the funnel.

[0:23:49] (Tara Robertson): Yeah, I think, like you said, it's a little overwhelming for some marketers, but knowing that we can have visibility into that full funnel and getting that feedback loop is really exciting for some of us to prove targeting everything that we can do.

[0:24:02] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Top 100%. Yeah, I love that. Great.

[0:24:06] (Tara Robertson): So I know we're coming up on time. I'll move on to our quickfire round. Is there another marketer you follow that our listeners should go check out?

[0:24:14] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah. When I think about marketing, I mean, I know he's no longer a CMO, but I think so Udi lettergor is like my I think he's like one of those folks in marketing who is just like he's always doing something totally different. So I would say anyone in marketing at Gong for sure. They're big about creating sort of these raving fans. Right. But I think there's definitely some great there's so many great marketers out there, it'd be hard to kind of pick one. But when you mentioned, I'm like, oh, I always think of him just because they were doing things.

[0:24:45] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): First company to do like a Super Bowl ad, right. And some of those other things. So that I was just always thinking about out of the box, right. Kind of thinking things that are sort.

[0:24:54] (Tara Robertson): Of out of the box.

[0:24:55] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): I love that. Great.

[0:24:57] (Tara Robertson): Yeah. I'm sure a lot of our listeners know Udi, but great recommendation for sure. What's in under the radar could be a channel or a tactic that either you or one of your customers is really excited about right now.

[0:25:08] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, I think everyone's talking about social, right. And kind of the dark social that we all talk about, which I don't know if it's under the radar because I think it's way above the radar now.

[0:25:18] (Tara Robertson): Everyone's talking about yeah.

[0:25:20] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): So let's come back around, right? Because we see all these folks that are now social evangelists, right? This title has become really popular. But I'm really excited about it because I do think that a lot of teams that are doing it right, they are building such a brand presence that no amount of dollars can really cover or kind of replace.

[0:25:43] (Tara Robertson): What?

[0:25:43] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): They're doing in terms of social, whether it's LinkedIn or TikTok or Instagram, but just kind of being Twitter, kind of just being really present on all of these social media platforms and being creative. Right. I think people are using video a lot more and doing things that are fun and sort of creative, but fun and really bring in people that are just interested in like, hey, what are you doing? This is funny, this is interesting.

[0:26:09] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): And then they learn about your brand that way. Great.

[0:26:12] (Tara Robertson): And lastly, where can our listeners go to find out more about you and follow your content?

[0:26:16] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, so definitely LinkedIn is probably the best place. I'm not on TikTok yet, but all I know I don't know if you are, Tara, but I'm not brave enough yet. But I know a lot of folks talk about kind of going on these other platforms, but definitely follow me on LinkedIn, check out the Rev Ops Collective website for more information. And then also I host a podcast called the Revenue Engine Podcast. You definitely learn more about that.

[0:26:40] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): And your CEO was on our show as well. Right. So definitely check it out. Great.

[0:26:48] (Tara Robertson): Well, we'll add all those links in the show notes. Everyone can check those out. Thank you so much for your time, Roslyn.

[0:26:53] (Rosalyn Santa Elena): Yeah, thank you for having me.

[0:26:54] (Tara Robertson): And thanks everybody for listening. We'll be back in about two weeks with a brand new episode.

[0:26:59] (Nolan McCoy): Thanks for listening to Demand Gen Chat. Demand. Gen Chat is a Chili Piper podcast hosted by Tara Robertson and produced by Me Tara Robertson. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast, it only takes 5 seconds and helps other marketers like you discover Demand Gen Chat. Also, if you'd like to have a question answered in a future episode, you can connect with Tara Robertson on LinkedIn, send her a DM with your question, and it could be answered. On a future episode.

[0:27:28] (Nolan McCoy): Finally, if you've gotten this far and are wondering what Chili Piper even is, chili Piper helps B two B marketers book more qualified meetings for their sales teams. You can't afford to leave opportunities on the table, so let your lead self qualify and schedule a time with the right rep instantly. And that's just one of the many revenue impacting things that Chili Piper does. Visit Chiliper.com to learn more.

[0:27:51] (Nolan McCoy): And thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next episode of Demand Gen Chat.