Shownotes
One of the most interesting projects I worked on recently was a rebuild of our ABM / outbound / buying signal tech stack at my day job.
I had bought one of the big legacy ABM platforms a few years ago but had never really seen the value we were hoping for, at least not enough to justify the cost.
And meanwhile, there’s been this explosion of new vendors in the outbound space—tracking signals, aggregating signals, powering sales workflows, enrichment, AI SDR assistants, and the list goes on.
I did a really deep evaluation to understand the landscape, and just as I wrapped that up, I sat down with Janis and Philipp who host the RevOps Lab podcast by Weflow.
We had a great discussion and really went into the details on this topic. If you’re thinking about changing up your ABM tech or just want to get oriented on what’s going on here, this is a great episode for you.
Hope you enjoy it, and check out more episodes from RevOps Lab here: https://www.getweflow.com/revops-lab
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Justin Norris, Senior Director of Marketing Ops at 360 Learning and host of the RevOps FM podcast, joins us to dive into outbound strategies and the evolving role of AI in sales. Justin shares his approach to outbound, focusing on experimentation, signals, and leveraging technology to make outbound motions more effective. He also discusses the importance of flexibility in trying new outbound approaches and creating a system where teams can experiment and learn what works best.
We cover:
- The shift from traditional outbound methods to AI-driven strategies
- How signals play a critical role in outbound success
- The importance of flexibility and experimentation in outbound
- Using tools like MadKudu to streamline outbound workflows
- AI’s role in the future of outbound and sales engagement
Chapters:
- [00:00] Introduction
- [01:17] Justin’s Background and Journey in RevOps
- [03:59] Outbound in the Modern Sales Environment
- [07:31] Signals and AI in Outbound Strategy
- [14:39] Building Flexibility into Outbound Motions
- [19:06] The Future of AI and Sales Engagement
- [24:00] Experimentation and Learning in Outbound
- [35:30] Final Thoughts and Advice
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Thanks to Our Sponsor
Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.
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Thanks to Our Sponsor
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.
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Transcripts
Welcome to the RedOpsLab, a podcast exploring the art and
Speaker:science of revenue operations.
Speaker:To find more episodes and resources on scaling your
Speaker:revenue engine, visit getweflow.
Speaker:com slash RedOps.
Speaker:Hello, and welcome to another edition of the RedOpsLab podcast.
Speaker:Our guest today is Justin Norris, senior director of marketing ops at 360 learning.
Speaker:Also, you may know him because he's the host of RevOps AFM.
Speaker:So hopefully you've heard already to his podcast and with
Speaker:us here is also Yanis today.
Speaker:So yeah, warm welcome to everyone.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Great to be here.
Speaker:Thanks for having me on guys.
Speaker:Great to have you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Justin, could you introduce yourself?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I've been in the marketing ops, marketing, RevOps world for about 15
Speaker:years now, kind of moved into marketing ops via the marketing automation world.
Speaker:So spent a lot of time in the Marketo community, worked in consulting
Speaker:there for a while, and then about three years ago, came back in house.
Speaker:So today I'm running marketing ops and BDR ops at a company called 360 learning.
Speaker:So kind of a RevOps scope.
Speaker:Sort of up to where the opportunity is created is how I like to think about it.
Speaker:And I also host a podcast, as you mentioned, RebOps FM, find it wherever
Speaker:you get your podcasts or at rebops.
Speaker:fm.
Speaker:And yeah, that's just a passion project.
Speaker:Something I like to do to learn, get to talk to a fun, smart people,
Speaker:just like what you folks are doing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Excellent.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We're going to link to the podcast.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:We're not afraid of competition.
Speaker:The more the merrier.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And yeah.
Speaker:Could you briefly describe what 360 learning is, what
Speaker:you guys do, how you operate?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We're a corporate learning management software.
Speaker:So companies that want to train their employees, all sorts of different
Speaker:training, whether that's compliance training or their skills that certain
Speaker:employees have, and you want to bring those skills throughout the organization,
Speaker:increase the skills within your company.
Speaker:That's what 360 learning is for, and it's really oriented around collaborative
Speaker:learning, meaning like, you know, if you have 10 frontline workers, you have 10
Speaker:consultants in a particular role, and one of them is really great, uh, you're
Speaker:going to enable them to spread their knowledge to the other people to create
Speaker:a course, rather than kind of a top down approach, which is very often what we
Speaker:see, where you have sort of a learning and development person pushing out course
Speaker:material that may not always be relevant.
Speaker:So it really brings that collaboration into the mix.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Sounds good.
Speaker:Today.
Speaker:We want to talk about, we want to talk about signals.
Speaker:We want to talk a bit about outbound, about outbound
Speaker:technology, how AI is changing that.
Speaker:And also I think like just in general, like how outbound has changed over the
Speaker:last couple of years, I think it's like a space where a lot of stuff is happening.
Speaker:AI, AI SDRs, I think is one of those.
Speaker:Like, you know, click bait, like statements that you
Speaker:see a lot going around.
Speaker:So now just curious, maybe you could explain just to get started.
Speaker:How do you do outbound at 360 learning at the moment?
Speaker:Just to get us started a bit there.
Speaker:Yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker:I mean, So we roll, roll back the clock, like, like, I think everything
Speaker:starts with this predictable revenue playbook that everyone's familiar
Speaker:with, you know, you get so many SDRs doing so many calls and so many emails,
Speaker:you're going to get so many meetings, so many pipelines, like, and that was
Speaker:the playbook for a decade or more.
Speaker:That's the playbook that VCs love because it feels like very
Speaker:predictable and plug and play.
Speaker:You're just going to stack up these Lego blocks and it's going to work.
Speaker:And my experience with outbound, you know, I supported teams on,
Speaker:on some more high touch ABM.
Speaker:Type programs during my consulting career, but really my experience begins, let's
Speaker:say three years ago, working hands on with BDRs, starting off more manually,
Speaker:but with a lot of different signals and just sort of trying to figure this out.
Speaker:And, you know, I've even seen during that time, the change of going from like.
Speaker:You know, X percent reply, like even like 5 percent reply rates
Speaker:and seeing that shrink down.
Speaker:So I think even in that short window of time for me, being able to see the
Speaker:impact of that model kind of breaking under the weight of too many people using
Speaker:it, people starting to tune it out, the market changing, whatever the underlying
Speaker:reasons are, just seeing that outbound model stop working or not working.
Speaker:With the level of efficiency that would be needed to really scale and justify it.
Speaker:So the question really goes like, where do you, where do
Speaker:you, where do you go from there?
Speaker:And I think that's a question, at least personally that I'm still
Speaker:learning about, still trying to answer my operating philosophy right now.
Speaker:If I had to sum it up is how can I give my teams flexibility?
Speaker:To try as many different things as possible, because we really are still
Speaker:learning all the time, like what works in today's market, so have a system where
Speaker:we can have some programs that are kind of like these work, or they work to an
Speaker:acceptable degree, so we're going to keep them on, and then let's try new things.
Speaker:And let's experiment.
Speaker:So that's principle number two is experimentation.
Speaker:So let's have like the biggest menu of options we can and then let's
Speaker:experiment and see what works.
Speaker:And I sort of view my role as a RevOps person in that process as being able
Speaker:to drive those two things and enable those two things for my peers in our
Speaker:business development team and on our demand gen team who I'm working with.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, I think, sorry, I think the stats are quite staggering, right?
Speaker:If you look at, and I mean, it's always a question, you know, what data can
Speaker:you trust here and how many touch points do you need and you know, what
Speaker:exactly are the right benchmarks, but I'm curious within these last three
Speaker:years, I mean, like, Your conclusion of to focus on enablement of flexibility
Speaker:and being able to run experiments.
Speaker:You know, why, why is that focus?
Speaker:How, how did you come, come to that conclusion?
Speaker:I think just because I don't, I don't feel confident to say like, Oh, this
Speaker:is like what works, you know, whereas in the past, maybe like we bought
Speaker:six cents and started using their intense signals and maybe in the past.
Speaker:You know, you could just do that and say, all right, six cents
Speaker:says this company's in market.
Speaker:I'm going to call them and be like, Hey, like this is us.
Speaker:This is what we do.
Speaker:Buy something, you know, and a few emails and that could
Speaker:work to an acceptable degree.
Speaker:And I just don't think that works anymore.
Speaker:And that's not a knock just against six cents per se, but I don't think
Speaker:that those signals are silver bullets.
Speaker:So we want to try different things and Ultimately, if I observe my own
Speaker:like past buying experiences, which are the things that I like to do that
Speaker:they're not universal, but the things that are closest to me when I look at
Speaker:like, what did I buy through outbound?
Speaker:I bought Cognizant.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because they called me.
Speaker:And I was thinking about, Oh, how do I get more mobile numbers?
Speaker:And then my phone rang and it's like, Hey, like we're cognizant.
Speaker:We do data.
Speaker:I'm like, well, they have my mobile number.
Speaker:Oh, it couldn't be that bad.
Speaker:And so we started a conversation.
Speaker:So I bought cognizant that way.
Speaker:They got me at the right time.
Speaker:You know what I mean?
Speaker:And, and.
Speaker:I don't, I think that, I think that to some extent that's good fortune
Speaker:and you'll hit enough people at the right time if you do volume,
Speaker:but I don't think that goes out.
Speaker:I bought user gems through an outbound motion and that was a bit more of, we had
Speaker:a great AE there and they, he reached out.
Speaker:It wasn't the right time.
Speaker:He kept reaching out.
Speaker:He was very, very good at building the relationship over
Speaker:a period of about seven months.
Speaker:In combination with ads in combination with the brand presence that they had and
Speaker:to me, I, I think that's probably the way forward is that it's, it's not about like,
Speaker:oh, there's this magic signal and we're gonna every time we push this button,
Speaker:like, you know, 5 times it's going to work or even 10 times it's going to work.
Speaker:I think it's about building relationships over time, patiently, diligently
Speaker:combining it across multiple channels.
Speaker:Increasing your brand presence and, uh, and then starting to see
Speaker:those things come to fruition.
Speaker:That's, that's at least the hypothesis from what I've seen.
Speaker:Yeah, which I mean, I, I fully agree with, like, you have probably multiple
Speaker:touch points through different channels that will impact the potential of
Speaker:convert conversion to a meeting or a trial, but operationalize, right?
Speaker:So like the underlying technology stack needs to probably significantly
Speaker:change to orchestrate the whole thing.
Speaker:So I'm curious, what were some of the The learnings there for you and how
Speaker:has your view on the technology stack changed throughout these three years?
Speaker:Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker:When we bought Sixth Sense, I mean, at that time, the technology
Speaker:landscape was very different.
Speaker:That was about two years ago and it was kind of like a Coke and Pepsi market.
Speaker:By which I mean, there was like Sixth Sense and there was Demandbase.
Speaker:Maybe you would look at Terminus, but really 600 man base were like
Speaker:the two players at that time.
Speaker:It's like, Oh, you're going to do ABM.
Speaker:You got to buy one of those things.
Speaker:And we did a thorough evaluation as, as best we could, but I have to say,
Speaker:and I've experienced this reaction from other ops professionals too, that
Speaker:you sort of feel like you're going to log into the product and it's going to
Speaker:enable the process in a certain way.
Speaker:Like it's going to.
Speaker:Have like an A, B and C of like, here's your accounts.
Speaker:Here's your context.
Speaker:Here's what you do.
Speaker:And I actually don't feel that it, it really does that, that successfully.
Speaker:Um, it lets you run ads.
Speaker:It lets you define segments.
Speaker:It's pretty good at that.
Speaker:It, it brings in the signals.
Speaker:It has its model, but you're kind of on your own in terms of like.
Speaker:I think their orchestrations product is kind of subpar and and you're kind
Speaker:of on your own in terms of like, how do you stitch these workflows together?
Speaker:And there's a lot of complicated things that need to happen.
Speaker:You need to have a set of accounts.
Speaker:You need to get them into your CRM if they're not there already.
Speaker:You need to assign those accounts to a particular rep.
Speaker:You need to get contacts for those accounts.
Speaker:You need to have some sort of research process.
Speaker:You need to put those contacts into a cadence and then you need to like run
Speaker:the cadence in your tool of choice, sales loft or outreach or any of those things.
Speaker:So that's, that is super hard.
Speaker:Not hard.
Speaker:It's very achievable, but it requires either a lot of uploading
Speaker:lists, which I hate to do.
Speaker:So I'm always like, how do I, how do I automate my way out of that problem?
Speaker:Because it's a problem I personally don't want to have, or it requires a lot
Speaker:of thoughtful, thoughtful automation.
Speaker:And so we've stitched together a few different things in the past,
Speaker:the future that we're working on.
Speaker:We're going towards, I was mentioning to you guys in the pre show that I've
Speaker:moved away from six cents, did a big evaluation of, of the market, which I
Speaker:think is just a super interesting space right now, like outbound tech and lots of
Speaker:different players that are not, we went from like the Coke and Pepsi market to
Speaker:the, you know, you've just got a full.
Speaker:Aisle of like, you know, sort of craft sodas or craft beers, whatever you,
Speaker:however you want to think about it.
Speaker:Just all these different options that are kind of overlapping, kind of not
Speaker:kind of playing in different places and to, to, to spoil the punchline,
Speaker:we ended up going with Matt Kudu, which I think is a great product.
Speaker:Uh, we're just rolling that out, but there's a lot of other
Speaker:interesting players there right now.
Speaker:And, but, but I think what a lot of these newer tools are doing better is,
Speaker:is thinking through like the workflow.
Speaker:Aspect of it and providing interfaces for reps to use and and ways of automating it
Speaker:hooks that you can use either to automate in the platform or send like an outbound
Speaker:webhook to something like Zapier that can outbound a process or automate a
Speaker:process rather so they're they're being more thoughtful I think about that and.
Speaker:You know, we're still, still work in progress over here, but
Speaker:I think we're going to end up in a better place is my feeling.
Speaker:I feel like there's going to be the show where Philip and I have the least amount
Speaker:of opinions because we're so pipeline management forecasting focused and kind of
Speaker:further down the, down the funnel, but you
Speaker:got to get the pipeline from somewhere.
Speaker:Yeah, no, for sure.
Speaker:And I think, look, this is such an important topic.
Speaker:I was so looking forward to this conversation because, you know, I think.
Speaker:We'll learn a lot here today, but if you, if you think about kind
Speaker:of what you just described, right?
Speaker:So you went from kind of a bundled solution to an unbundled solution.
Speaker:There's more best of breed almost.
Speaker:So kind of, you know, the typical cycle of software bundling
Speaker:unbundling is happening again.
Speaker:If you would basically describe the different unbundled segments, right?
Speaker:Like.
Speaker:How would you describe them?
Speaker:How would you draw kind of a software map?
Speaker:Super curious.
Speaker:Now
Speaker:I love that question because that's that's the way that's the way my brain works
Speaker:and it's and it's not easy right now.
Speaker:So the hot word is signals and I think signals is both a use as useful a term as
Speaker:any and also probably very reductive and it will become, you know, a laughingstock.
Speaker:Soon people will, will signals, you know, these terms have these, these hype cycles
Speaker:and they become cringy, but whatever, if we just think of a signal is like
Speaker:a data point about a company, either something that they did first party data
Speaker:or something that we know about them.
Speaker:That they're, that they're doing or that they're thinking about,
Speaker:then I think it becomes useful.
Speaker:And you think about, okay, there's all these different data points
Speaker:and I need to come up with some way or, or think about like, all right,
Speaker:what if we targeted companies?
Speaker:Very simple.
Speaker:They're visiting our pricing page.
Speaker:You know, it's an age old signal.
Speaker:So you're like, all right, you can probably get that in your
Speaker:marketing automation platform.
Speaker:And you say, all right, but what about ones that are like reviewing us on G2?
Speaker:It's like, all right, we've got G2 for that.
Speaker:You're like, okay, but maybe they have like a project in their.
Speaker:And they're 10 K or in their annual report that's related to our value problem.
Speaker:So it's like another thing.
Speaker:So you can see how very quickly that becomes like chaotic.
Speaker:And again, for a rev ops person, you don't want to be like, all right, I
Speaker:got like 10 different lists from 10 different places pulling them in.
Speaker:So where I'm going to at that is some sort of signal aggregation.
Speaker:Platform platform that can ingest first party data third party data i think common
Speaker:room is another great option there they there are doing a great job at making
Speaker:a wide menu of signals available and and bringing them together and kind of
Speaker:showcasing how that works i think my crew is also doing a great job there and
Speaker:one of the reasons we went with them i think user gems is another company to
Speaker:look at they kind of started in the.
Speaker:The job change signal like focusing on that one signal and i think.
Speaker:I've probably seen that the future is going to be like, you can't just focus on
Speaker:one signal because someone else is going to come in and integrate that even if
Speaker:they only do it like 70 percent as good as you, it'll start to feel commoditized.
Speaker:So you need to have more.
Speaker:So they have, they have quickly expanded into a menu of a different,
Speaker:uh, additional signals as well.
Speaker:So I think of the signals as, as one layer.
Speaker:And then there's another layer that you could think of as.
Speaker:Like signal evaluation, signal analytics, like evaluating
Speaker:the efficacy of those signals.
Speaker:And again, this is, I think, more rudimentary.
Speaker:You might think about like Mad Kudu has scoring built in.
Speaker:They come from a scoring place.
Speaker:Sixth sense also has scoring this machine learning driven model where
Speaker:they're saying like, okay, I have all these different data points.
Speaker:We can see these are the ones that we think are important.
Speaker:To make someone either a good fit or have a strong propensity to buy.
Speaker:So that's like another aspect, that could be a separate tool.
Speaker:Or that could be all part of the same tool.
Speaker:And then you have the execution layer.
Speaker:Like how do you actually take these signals and start
Speaker:to do something with them.
Speaker:And this is where like everybody's got something that's called a co pilot.
Speaker:You see it in common room, you see it in Mad Kudu, you see it in a few
Speaker:other places where you have like your hit list of either accounts or
Speaker:contacts that you want to work on.
Speaker:If it's just accounts, some way of sourcing those things.
Speaker:So with Mad Kudu, for example, you can stitch in like your zoom info
Speaker:or your Apollo or they're building a cognizant integration for us.
Speaker:So that'll be good.
Speaker:So you can bring them in through cognizant with common room.
Speaker:They have like their own universe of, uh, Like a prospecting universe that
Speaker:you can use to pull in contacts, you start with accounts that have some
Speaker:signals, you bring in those contacts, and then you connect them into a cadence.
Speaker:And usually then you're moving over into like your sales loft or your
Speaker:outreach or your LEM list or your smart lead, whatever it is that you use.
Speaker:And then there's another piece just to round it out, which is
Speaker:like, where does AI play here?
Speaker:And part of that can be sort of what you might think of as like the clay
Speaker:piece, which is using a combination of AI intelligence and web scraping
Speaker:to go and, and fetch information.
Speaker:Either for the purpose of signals.
Speaker:So, so you could say like, go and read all these 10 Ks and find companies
Speaker:that have initiatives related to whatever buying, buying a certain
Speaker:category of software or doing a certain thing, hiring people or whatever.
Speaker:So that can be used for signals and also be used for the personalization
Speaker:and the writing of the email.
Speaker:So go find me something about this person.
Speaker:We can talk about that.
Speaker:I think it has has mixed results so far, but using bringing
Speaker:the AI into the writing later.
Speaker:So it's kind of the research layer and then the writing and composition layer.
Speaker:And then there's the full blown, like we talked a bit about AISDRs.
Speaker:There are AISDRs, like there really are, that both email and phone.
Speaker:I had a phone conversation.
Speaker:I forget the name of the company or I would give them credit, but it
Speaker:was kind of a fairly credible phone conversation with With an AI speaking
Speaker:to me, like it was weird when I sort of hope the future doesn't, doesn't
Speaker:go there, but it was eerily okay.
Speaker:Like kind of did better than a lot of BDRs would on the phone.
Speaker:So, and then there's the data enrichment piece as well.
Speaker:So sorry, that was a lot of different categories, but it just gives you a
Speaker:sense, I guess, to, let's just collect real quick, just for the listeners.
Speaker:So basically you have the, uh, signal aggregation platforms, right.
Speaker:That essentially aggregate first.
Speaker:Second, third party signals that might also be, you know, then kind of the
Speaker:clay model where you actually kind of have a lot of flexibility around kind
Speaker:of scraping information, then action, basically taking action on that.
Speaker:You have the sales engagement platforms that are usually the execution layers.
Speaker:You have the sales intelligence tools, right?
Speaker:So the data enrichment tools that then sometimes get combined, I think that has.
Speaker:Being the case for, for many years already, some tools like clay make
Speaker:that maybe a bit easier, right?
Speaker:But it also comes with the cost, let's say.
Speaker:Um, and then you have kind of AI co pilots.
Speaker:That sometimes sit in these tools or separately anything else, or
Speaker:is that a fair representation or how would you adjust that now?
Speaker:Um, I'm learning here
Speaker:on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, that was,
Speaker:that was a DC summary.
Speaker:There's the, the analytics piece.
Speaker:So whether you have some kind of scoring or even just a way of measuring the
Speaker:efficacy, like anyone who's run one of these plays have known you, you can
Speaker:say, are, are we got 10 meetings or 10 opportunities from outbound this month?
Speaker:Like what was the thing, which play did they.
Speaker:Come in from, that's actually really hard to track and to measure.
Speaker:So there's that piece as well.
Speaker:Go ahead, Philip.
Speaker:Yeah, no, no, no.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I just wanted to agree, right.
Speaker:Because I think this is typically also with like just marketing campaigns in
Speaker:general, like this, these whole cohort analysis they need to run, which are
Speaker:hard to do, first of all, it's hard to do a cohort analysis, like really
Speaker:rigidly with all like the gaps in data that most sales motions have.
Speaker:And then the other pieces you need to have like a good end.
Speaker:And I would argue like most of the like motions don't have like a big enough N
Speaker:in a short amount of time to actually really be statistically significant.
Speaker:So it's more like always like, Hey, here's like this trend we're seeing.
Speaker:It could be like actually working or not.
Speaker:Like maybe like you never really know, like you need to be like a
Speaker:company at a huge size, like with a very fast deal of velocity to
Speaker:actually really do that properly.
Speaker:That part.
Speaker:Agreed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I wanted to add one more, right?
Speaker:Like, and I think it's then also to have the AI agent to actually do then
Speaker:the, to take care of all the outbound work, at least partially, right?
Speaker:I think the phone calling, that definitely is creepy, but I can,
Speaker:I can totally see use case for this and it will become better.
Speaker:But I think just like in an agent that prepares the emails, Oh,
Speaker:like basically like a service that does this really, really well.
Speaker:So maybe even sends it out, right?
Speaker:Automatically at the perfect time.
Speaker:And yeah.
Speaker:If you can trust that.
Speaker:Looking at that use case, there's another tool that I'll give a shout out
Speaker:to, which is Evobot, and it's a good example of how these are like slightly
Speaker:overlapping, but not fully the same.
Speaker:So like Evobot, really, it's not like detecting new accounts for you.
Speaker:It's presuming that you already have an account universe, and it's presuming that
Speaker:even you already have a contact universe.
Speaker:So it's like kind of downstream from the signal aggregation, the
Speaker:contact sourcing, all that stuff.
Speaker:And what it's doing Hopefully those folks will forgive me if
Speaker:I misstate their value prop.
Speaker:But what I took away at least was it's looking at these contacts and
Speaker:companies and then it's doing that AI research, sort of that clay
Speaker:type web scraping and AI stuff.
Speaker:And it's, it's taking like, all right, I know that Justin works at
Speaker:three 60 learning, we sell an LMS.
Speaker:These are the sorts of use cases they have.
Speaker:These are the sorts of value props they have now for these companies.
Speaker:These are the things that like.
Speaker:Match that.
Speaker:So, oh, this company has this sort of initiative and this sort of thing.
Speaker:So here's the angle that you should take in talking to that company.
Speaker:Uh, talk about emphasize this.
Speaker:So it kind of gives you messages.
Speaker:It does that work of forming those connections and thinking through,
Speaker:and it can do a first draft of the email and whether AI is going
Speaker:to be better or not at a BDR.
Speaker:It's probably only a matter of time till it gets decent at doing that.
Speaker:But I think that that part is really hard.
Speaker:That's the part that a skilled seller.
Speaker:I think has been able to do and give him an advantage versus just somebody
Speaker:who's brute forcing it being like, buy my widget, buy my widget, you know, like,
Speaker:I noticed you went to this university, buy my widget, like, really, really
Speaker:superficial outbound or someone that can be really thoughtful, like, hey,
Speaker:Notice you're in this sort of industry and these are the kinds of pains that
Speaker:you have and we have helped other companies with these very specific pains.
Speaker:I'm showing you that I know you, that I understand you very well.
Speaker:So I can't speak to how effectively it really does that in practice, but I think
Speaker:that is an interesting application today.
Speaker:I call it like forming connections between value props and real world pain
Speaker:points for a very specific company.
Speaker:I think, I think one, one part that is really challenging as an AESDR
Speaker:sort of like what you were alluding to like SDR, who's like really
Speaker:good at building relationships, essentially, or like a full cycle.
Speaker:I'm not sure how you would define that.
Speaker:But I think one problem, at least that I've experienced is like, you're really
Speaker:becoming overwhelmed quite often.
Speaker:And you have so many options of like different sales motions
Speaker:and things you can try out.
Speaker:And it's really hard to just like, nail one really well, or just to
Speaker:have like that rigor and focus to just execute against that.
Speaker:So like when I'm listening to you, when I'm thinking about you, like how
Speaker:I would envision like sort of like how you are thinking about the future
Speaker:of off point and where you would like it to go to sort of like to, to have
Speaker:all these systems plugged together.
Speaker:So that essentially as a full cycle or like advanced SDR, basic, what
Speaker:I do is I have like, I log into my, like, like application or whatever.
Speaker:And then it just tells me like, those are like the 10, like, I don't
Speaker:know, accounts you should focus on.
Speaker:And these are the three emotions that work best in the last 30 days.
Speaker:So try those.
Speaker:And you need to add like a little bit of research here to personalize it.
Speaker:Like to what level do you think, would you see that automated?
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, it's, it's not, it's not far away.
Speaker:So I can sketch out a little bit how we're thinking of it using MadKudu.
Speaker:So MadKudu has a co pilot and the, the cool thing about it is that
Speaker:you can define different playbooks and deploy them to different teams.
Speaker:So let's say you have a team that's mostly inbound.
Speaker:But they do a little bit of like, call it warm outbound reactivation work
Speaker:leads that have come in before that are showing activity or maybe opportunities
Speaker:that were closed loss that we want to reactivate so you can kind of have
Speaker:their inbound plays set up like here's your, you know, hand raisers, here's
Speaker:your webinar leads, here's some leads from a trade show, typically today.
Speaker:These are often like all these different reports.
Speaker:We're kind of sending BDRs or SDRs in all sorts of directions.
Speaker:Like follow up with this hand raiser and here's a report of webinar leads.
Speaker:And by the way, go do this other thing.
Speaker:Like it's very fragmented.
Speaker:I would hate being a BDR for that reason.
Speaker:So this provides a way to bring all those things together.
Speaker:Now for a more senior, it's called enterprise SDR or BDR.
Speaker:Their, their page might look a little bit different.
Speaker:You could have a different set of playbooks for them.
Speaker:Could be.
Speaker:You know, whatever other types of intent signals, or these are companies in a
Speaker:particular vertical, like a vertical campaign could be rip and replace.
Speaker:So companies that we know are with competitors that you might pick
Speaker:up in different ways through web scraping through job posting analysis.
Speaker:And so I think of like the ops function is helping to measure all those
Speaker:different plays, like you said, so not necessarily automatically surfacing them.
Speaker:Well, that's an idea that I'm sure could happen in the future.
Speaker:But doing the analysis and saying, like, these are our champions,
Speaker:let's say we know that these plays are working at an acceptable rate.
Speaker:So this is These are on lock and every day they're going to go in and
Speaker:through some background automation, we're going to be constantly like
Speaker:refilling those buckets with a certain number of accounts all the time.
Speaker:And then maybe we're going to have challengers plays that we're, you
Speaker:know, continually thinking up.
Speaker:Maybe we meet biweekly.
Speaker:And we come up with ideas and we roll them out and we have these
Speaker:experiments that are in motion.
Speaker:And so alongside these champions, we have challengers and those
Speaker:challengers might do really well.
Speaker:Some won't, they'll be discarded.
Speaker:And the ones that do well, maybe they'll join, you know, the ranks of the champions
Speaker:or maybe displace existing champions.
Speaker:So you're kind of constantly running that.
Speaker:That's the vision at least to have, you know, the, the best plays always
Speaker:in motion and to make the best use.
Speaker:Of your team's time, I think that is where ops and then wiring all the
Speaker:stuff together to make that happen.
Speaker:That is where ops can really add a lot of value in this process.
Speaker:It sounds to me like you are still thinking of different motions for
Speaker:different target audiences and accounts.
Speaker:So kind of separating out the inbound versus pure kind of like,
Speaker:let's say like pure, like high intent inbound versus warm inbound.
Speaker:Outbound versus, you know, segments, right?
Speaker:So enterprise SMB mid market, is that, is that right?
Speaker:Or is that also falling apart?
Speaker:I think so.
Speaker:I think, I mean, ultimately the inbound outbound distinction is kind of nebulous
Speaker:because everything that an SDR does is outbound to some degree, you're
Speaker:reaching out to persons for some cases, they, maybe they asked you to do it.
Speaker:Some cases, maybe they're like.
Speaker:More subtly asking you to do in other cases, they're not asking you at all.
Speaker:So I think of it on a spectrum and I think of it as, yeah, you, you want to
Speaker:separate those out because you're going to deal with them in very different ways.
Speaker:If somebody comes in and requests a demo, it's the single most
Speaker:important signal that you can have.
Speaker:It converts it 30 to 40 percent to an opportunity.
Speaker:So you have to put, you know, all of your focus on treating those people,
Speaker:giving them the best experience.
Speaker:Responding to them as quickly as possible, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:And then there'll be a range, you know, of other signals that some are not
Speaker:important enough to deal with at all.
Speaker:And some of them may be.
Speaker:Are much harder and require more work, but because you're really targeting
Speaker:the companies and they're much bigger, it's going to yield a bigger payoff.
Speaker:So we're okay with investing more effort there.
Speaker:So I definitely think about breaking it down.
Speaker:And I definitely think like a mid market enterprise split in your team makes sense
Speaker:because those are different conversations and you want, You want reps that have
Speaker:the business savvy and the acumen to have enterprise level conversations
Speaker:focused on, on the enterprise and penetrating those accounts and then more
Speaker:of a high velocity of in market motion.
Speaker:I think that's a different skill set and probably more of a ladder
Speaker:in terms of career progression.
Speaker:Is, are these signals or plays combined with ads or any type of other touch
Speaker:points you basically add on top?
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, no, I, I think, I think they can be and, and should be, can be combined
Speaker:with ads, can be combined with marketing, like events, you know, ongoing events.
Speaker:Yeah, like newsletters, like marketing newsletters, content, it's all, I'm not
Speaker:suggesting you could, I think it's very impractical to like orchestrate it.
Speaker:Like first we do like two ads and then we do a webinar, like, like something
Speaker:like really, really sequenced, but I just think if you're surrounding them.
Speaker:With with value and and appearing on the radar i think i go back to that user
Speaker:gems example when i recently did a case study like internally of just like really
Speaker:analyzing that sales cycle from my point of view because i thought it was really
Speaker:really masterful shout out to chase who's the either that sold us that but
Speaker:one of the reasons why i was responsive to his message in the first place was
Speaker:i was really familiar with the brand.
Speaker:You know and so we underestimate how much brand opens doors on the outbound side and
Speaker:is the difference between like or oh you know this company is cool and they reached
Speaker:out to me like that's kind of neat so it's it's all working together in other words.
Speaker:Yeah and then one other question the anonymization i
Speaker:probably pronounce that wrong.
Speaker:But I hope everybody knows what I mean.
Speaker:Like, and of course, I mean, you can do it kind of in the RB to B way.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Where, um, like, you know, it's, it's, it's not an opt in, which is for example,
Speaker:in Europe, it's not possible, but then there's many other ways how you can
Speaker:basically get an email address and try to, you know, understand who those users
Speaker:are, how important do you think this is for, for this, for, for these plays?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Yeah, it's an interesting question.
Speaker:It's I really, I really don't.
Speaker:And that comes back to the experimentation.
Speaker:Like we've had, you know, de anonymization for years.
Speaker:From a first party perspective, if you have marketing automation, as
Speaker:soon as somebody fills out a form, they are cookied and they are known
Speaker:and every subsequent session in that browser, you know, you were going to
Speaker:have that history of what they did.
Speaker:And so that's been a part.
Speaker:And then there's the company level de anonymization, which, you know,
Speaker:people have mixed results with and the rb2b stuff, which is, which
Speaker:is, you know, illegal in some countries and controversial, at
Speaker:least in others from like a privacy and ethics point of view, I think.
Speaker:My take on it just from not even alluding to any of those factors beyond
Speaker:just what makes the most sense if you want the web stuff is to think of it
Speaker:in terms of a waterfall the same way you do with data enrichment because no
Speaker:one vendor is going to cover all your bases and I think back to the you know
Speaker:tech evaluation I did I think warmly is clearly the strongest player there they
Speaker:really focus on the de anonymization piece and they they do exactly that they
Speaker:layer their own de anonymization they do.
Speaker:Oh, we have success data.
Speaker:They bring in our B to B.
Speaker:And so they're very focused on, like, revealing to you the largest percentage
Speaker:of your, your web traffic, whether that's right to do, whether that's right to
Speaker:do for, you know, for either from an ethical perspective or from a, an efficacy
Speaker:perspective, like, does it actually work because someone's on your website?
Speaker:Are they going to be more responsive?
Speaker:Like, yeah, maybe sometimes logically, if I'm like checking something out
Speaker:and someone calls me, like, at least I know who you are, presumably, but
Speaker:does it mean that you're ready to buy?
Speaker:Probably not.
Speaker:Like, I, I look at a million vendors all the time, like, just out of interest.
Speaker:I see somebody post something.
Speaker:I'm like, Oh, who are they?
Speaker:Who do they work for?
Speaker:I'm just like a tool junkie.
Speaker:So I look at.
Speaker:You know, I look at tech all day long.
Speaker:It doesn't mean I'm going to buy anything or that I have budget
Speaker:or, so I think it's one factor.
Speaker:You know, if you see a big surge from a company, all sorts of
Speaker:different people visiting your site, maybe that tells you something.
Speaker:Does every, or I'll, I laughed at this meme for like days, but there's
Speaker:a fellow named camel Rexton who runs a marketing dimension agency called
Speaker:42 and posted, you know, the meme with The despicable me guy where he's
Speaker:doing this presentation and he's like, you know, this and this and this.
Speaker:And then he like looks like at the last slide and he's kind
Speaker:of like, wait, wait a second.
Speaker:So it was, it was about like, we're not going to do lead scoring.
Speaker:We're going to focus on signals instead.
Speaker:Signals like visits pricing page.
Speaker:Then he's like, this is which is of course one of the things that
Speaker:you always used in lead scoring.
Speaker:So it's kind of.
Speaker:Ultimately poking fun of the fact that we're sort of just coming
Speaker:full circle back to where we started, um, with these, you know,
Speaker:simplistic things and will they work?
Speaker:Who knows?
Speaker:I think that's why we need to experiment.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and like, like from a reverse perspective, right?
Speaker:Like listening to all of this, like basically, I think, how do you actually
Speaker:operate operationalize this then?
Speaker:In your organization, how do you enable people to really do all the
Speaker:experimentation like to a certain extent, but not too much because you still need
Speaker:those like, you know, that that that base stuff that actually works that
Speaker:foundational stuff that actually gives you all the revenue that you need to
Speaker:keep things going, but also to continue to invest into experiments so you can
Speaker:actually also be successful in the future and also plug all these tools together.
Speaker:I mean, that that's in my mind, at least in sort of like the job of.
Speaker:Yeah, wrap ups here to really make those decisions and, um, to orchestrate.
Speaker:At
Speaker:least that's a solvable problem.
Speaker:Unlike, you know, finding out who's going to buy your stuff, which sometimes
Speaker:doesn't feel like a solvable problem, but no, the, but it is a complex problem
Speaker:and a hard one, so the things I would think about there, I don't think.
Speaker:You should have reps kind of independently, unless you have very mature
Speaker:sellers who have a knack, who have a talent for figuring those things out, then
Speaker:maybe you, you do want them figuring out, trying their own experiments that you can
Speaker:then scale out to the rest of the team.
Speaker:But generally speaking, maybe you want to work with like the manager of
Speaker:that team, maybe Dimension, maybe Ops.
Speaker:So I think of almost like a council of like, all right, what are we going to try?
Speaker:What ideas?
Speaker:Oh, I saw this.
Speaker:Let's try that.
Speaker:Let's do this.
Speaker:Deploying those as playbooks.
Speaker:And then that gets locked down.
Speaker:So you deploy those playbooks and you can think of like, you know, A screen
Speaker:with like different buckets and each bucket is its own rules based segment.
Speaker:So rip and replace could be like companies that are in this particular,
Speaker:you know, above a certain size and these geographies and these verticals that we
Speaker:believe are already using a competitor.
Speaker:So we're going to approach them with this messaging and you.
Speaker:link it up to a cadence and mad kudu's co pilot does a really good
Speaker:job at that, uh, enabling that.
Speaker:Now, how do those accounts or contacts wind up in those playbooks for the reps?
Speaker:You know, that's all happening behind the scenes, but there's a
Speaker:whole other process to do there.
Speaker:Bringing a cat like six cents has the capability to bring accounts
Speaker:into your CRM automatically.
Speaker:Did not have good success with that.
Speaker:They have improved some of their matching logic, but the big issue is
Speaker:like creating duplicate accounts or that their, their data wasn't that great.
Speaker:So you brought an account that like has been closed, you know,
Speaker:shut down for many years, like just stuff like that, roughly speaking.
Speaker:So our approach, I think is going to be like, let's build out our TAM.
Speaker:Already in Sierra, like do we've done this sort of a few times over
Speaker:the years, like do a big load from zoom info, build it out, clean it up.
Speaker:We use ringly zoom infos ring leader with I think they call it operations OS now
Speaker:to to dedupe and do that sort of stuff.
Speaker:So get that nice and clean.
Speaker:So you've got your accounts identify when those accounts are
Speaker:ready to fall into those playbooks.
Speaker:And maybe they're not assigned to anyone yet.
Speaker:So the way I'm thinking of that is you might have like a Operational version
Speaker:of each playbook that is just looking for accounts that meet those criteria,
Speaker:but isn't assigned and then based on that you can have an automatic.
Speaker:Workflow.
Speaker:So basically essentially when an account matches that playbook, it can
Speaker:trigger a zap or a ricotta recipe or a tray rest, whatever, whatever tool
Speaker:of your choice that then can kick off the assignment workflow, which for
Speaker:us, we use a tool called distribution engine, which I love they're fantastic
Speaker:and they can assign accounts.
Speaker:So it can basically just like update a data value that triggers the account to be
Speaker:routed account can be routed to the rep.
Speaker:And then it will appear in their version of the playbook.
Speaker:So it's all ready to go.
Speaker:And then the contact sourcing, like you can automate some of that too.
Speaker:So like, these are the titles we look at, go and do that.
Speaker:I generally so far prefer the reps to do that, to be a bit more thoughtful,
Speaker:to be a bit more researched.
Speaker:I think, you know, unless you're really high volume, low ACV and you just need to
Speaker:do it at scale, then that's more like you might as well just have a growth engineer
Speaker:doing that in clay and be doing the.
Speaker:You know, the AISDR thing and just having them do that.
Speaker:And then you'll probably burn out your TAM and it'll probably stop working.
Speaker:Um, if you, if you're not really good at it.
Speaker:Um, but, but so having the reps be a bit more thoughtful.
Speaker:Yeah, that's, that's it.
Speaker:So you can see that's like a lot of, a lot of steps, but I think that people don't
Speaker:really think about what goes into that.
Speaker:If you want to avoid spreadsheet hell and I do, I think something, you know,
Speaker:some variant of that is what's required.
Speaker:And then the reps select the contacts and then you basically have specific
Speaker:signals against those contacts or how I
Speaker:think at that point, like the, they, they have been pulled into a specific playbook.
Speaker:So it could also be like a contact based playbook or a lead based playbook.
Speaker:There's both flavors.
Speaker:Um, but you could, let's take a very simple one, close one opportunity showing.
Speaker:Interest again, or being active on your website.
Speaker:So you had an opportunity, it was closed last and all of a sudden that
Speaker:company's like back on your site.
Speaker:So maybe they're revisiting their options and that's one that, you know,
Speaker:from some feedback in the market, a lot of companies see success with.
Speaker:So in that case, you kind of know the company, maybe you already
Speaker:have the contacts, maybe you don't, but it's like very tactical.
Speaker:And but it's also not scalable.
Speaker:You're sort of just like if a fish pops up in that spot, like you can try to
Speaker:scoop it up in a net, but you can't control how many fish pop up there.
Speaker:So it can be a component of your strategy, but not the whole thing.
Speaker:I sort of think of it as like a portfolio approach, like an investment portfolio.
Speaker:You want to diversify your portfolio rather than be like, all right,
Speaker:this is, we just go all in on.
Speaker:This is pricing page signals and that's it
Speaker:i think this was also what philip alluded to earlier right you want to
Speaker:have a few place that just work that are always on right this could be one
Speaker:obviously demo bookings one right like there's like a bunch of place that
Speaker:are like super high intent and most likely in market accounts and then you
Speaker:basically go down down down down down and uh and yeah super super interesting.
Speaker:Phillip, where do we go from here?
Speaker:I think, firstly, I think this is the perfect moment to end.
Speaker:Uh, like we talked about so much stuff and I hope that the people who listen
Speaker:to this are now inspired to go and build their own outbound motions in
Speaker:the way that also Justin is thinking about it, which I think is fascinating.
Speaker:Like the way you structured it and the way you framed everything and
Speaker:sort of like how you think about how to build these processes.
Speaker:I think that's That's a really good way to get inspired.
Speaker:And, and I, and I think you did that today, the audience, at
Speaker:least that's what I'm hoping for.
Speaker:Um, we always have one final question to ask our guests.
Speaker:And that is like, what is a book that you would recommend to our listeners?
Speaker:So right now I'm working my way through revenue architecture by Yakov Vendikoy.
Speaker:Uh, winning by design.
Speaker:It's a big, it's a big, it's kind of like a textbook thickness and,
Speaker:uh, and weight hardcover book.
Speaker:But yeah, I think he's, he's been on my show before he's, you know, anyone who's
Speaker:heard him speak knows he's a special kind of guy and it's been really interesting.
Speaker:So I'd recommend folks to check that out.
Speaker:Next time I'm asking this question, I will ask what book
Speaker:other than Revenue Architecture do you recommend to our audience?
Speaker:Not everyone, but it's a great book.
Speaker:It's a great book.
Speaker:I actually
Speaker:have it, so you know.
Speaker:Yeah, you know where it is.
Speaker:I'll think of one other one.
Speaker:That isn't revenue architecture, it's more business than, than go to market,
Speaker:but the hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz, my boss got that
Speaker:for, uh, our team, uh, the beginning of last year and, and yeah, that
Speaker:was really more just about like what goes into starting a company and the.
Speaker:Grit and determination that is needed to succeed with it.
Speaker:I thought it was super interesting.
Speaker:Fully agree.
Speaker:Love that book as well.
Speaker:Revenue architecture as well.
Speaker:I've been thinking of, you know, I don't know if you know, the John Henderson
Speaker:meme where I think three girls sit in the car and say, Hey, let's do this.
Speaker:Let's buy tools.
Speaker:Anyways, you know, like I've been thinking about this for so long.
Speaker:I think we'll add it to the show notes.
Speaker:I think it fits very well because I think everybody listening to this show is going
Speaker:to be like, Hey, let's buy some tools now.
Speaker:So it's good that we're going to release it still this year.
Speaker:So you can budget
Speaker:that in for next year.
Speaker:But no, honestly, so much.
Speaker:I learned a ton.
Speaker:This was fascinating.
Speaker:So good.
Speaker:I hope we can actually use some of that here at Weflow and yeah,
Speaker:I really appreciate you coming on and sharing this with our audience.
Speaker:Thanks for the chat guys.
Speaker:It was a lot of fun.
Speaker:Oh, thank you.
Speaker:Thank you very much for listening to this episode of the RevOpsLab podcast.
Speaker:Please consider to like and subscribe our show and give us a five star
Speaker:rating on wherever you're listening.
Speaker:If you have feedback or suggestions, let us know at podcast.
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Speaker:com we read and reply to every email.
Speaker:Thank you.
