This week we sit down with Mallory Lee, a seasoned RevOps leader whose career spans transformative roles at Pardot, Terminus, and more. Together, we tackle the realities of RevOps today, from debunking the myth that RevOps is the buyer for tech tools to navigating the challenges of unified operations.

Mallory reflects on her time leading teams through the rise of ABM platforms, highlighting lessons learned about hype, strategy, and staying grounded in reality. She also shares her candid perspective on the role of RevOps as the backbone of a company’s strategy. We explore how RevOps can bring alignment across go-to-market teams, why getting the ICP right is a never-ending challenge, and how tech platforms like marketing automation must evolve to keep up with modern demands.

Whether you’re a RevOps practitioner, a SaaS vendor, or just someone who loves geeking out over strategy, this episode is packed with unvarnished truths and actionable insights.

Thanks to Our Sponsor

Many thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.

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

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

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

Try Knak

About Today's Guest

Mallory Lee is an experienced Revenue Operations professional with 15 years of experience collaborating across the GTM Org and C-Suite to scale B2B SaaS revenue. She's held marketing and RevOps leadership positions at companies like Terminus and Nylas, is a product advisor for RevTech companies, and co-founder of the RevTech Review.

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

Key Topics

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [00:57] - Favourite RevOps career path
• [01:34] - Why you shouldn’t build software for RevOps
• [05:26] - Iterating on your go-to-market message
• [07:50] - Shortcomings of ABM tools
• [16:21] - Signal-based selling and the role of RevOps
• [25:52] - Marketing automation landscape
• [33:58] - Unified RevOps
• [46:09] - Product consulting
• [48:41] - RevTech Review

Thanks to Our Sponsor

Marketers: it's planning season. Time to live in your office with the world's biggest spreadsheet and hope that finance doesn't slash your budget.

Planning is tough, but at least you can put your best foot forward with a structured framework that covers all the bases. Our friends at Uptempo have just launched the Blueprint for Marketing Planning.

It's a totally free and comprehensive guide for enterprise marketing teams. You'll get a seven-step planning process that integrates top-down strategy with bottom-up execution and gives you a crystal clear picture of how you'll hit your number.

Get your free copy now:

Uptempo Planning Guide

Resource Links

• The RevTech Review

Learn More

Visit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter:

Newsletter

Justin Norris: 00:00:14

Welcome to RebOps FM.

Justin Norris: 00:00:16

Today we're speaking with Mallory Lee and Mallory, one of the really cool

Justin Norris: 00:00:19

things I noticed about your CV is you've kind of done it all when it comes to all

Justin Norris: 00:00:24

the different RebOps hats you can wear.

Justin Norris: 00:00:26

You were internal strategy consultant at Pardot.

Justin Norris: 00:00:29

You were a RebOps and BizOps executive at companies like Terminus and Nihilus.

Justin Norris: 00:00:34

I did a tour of duty with an agency, worked as a solo consultant, RevOps

Justin Norris: 00:00:38

product advisor, and most recently co founder of the RevTechReview,

Justin Norris: 00:00:43

which is a no BS way to understand revenue technology tools.

Justin Norris: 00:00:48

I also find Mallory sharing a lot of knowledge on LinkedIn.

Justin Norris: 00:00:50

You can look up and follow her there.

Justin Norris: 00:00:52

Mallory, so excited to dive in.

Justin Norris: 00:00:54

Thank you for coming on the show.

Mallory Lee: 00:00:55

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:00:55

Thanks for the invite.

Mallory Lee: 00:00:56

I'm excited too.

Justin Norris: 00:00:57

Maybe just to start, you know, I listed all of these

Justin Norris: 00:01:00

different things what is your favorite?

Justin Norris: 00:01:03

Which of those areas have you found, the most fulfilling?

Mallory Lee: 00:01:05

I think that's hard.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:07

think that I have the most fun as an in house operator, getting

Mallory Lee: 00:01:13

to be part of an executive team.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:15

So those roles tend to be my passion.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:19

helping to steer a business and grow it.

Justin Norris: 00:01:22

there's pros and cons.

Justin Norris: 00:01:23

It is fun as a consultant to kind of come in and tackle a very focused

Justin Norris: 00:01:26

problem and move on to the next thing.

Justin Norris: 00:01:29

There's something very gratifying though, about, growing with the business, uh,

Justin Norris: 00:01:32

long term you mentioned, in a recent post, so I thought it was really interesting.

Justin Norris: 00:01:36

I've been seeing this too.

Justin Norris: 00:01:37

I've been going through some renewal cycles right now.

Justin Norris: 00:01:39

So it's kind of been top of mind for me as a, buyer, but you mentioned an interesting

Justin Norris: 00:01:43

trend in, RevTech buying behavior.

Justin Norris: 00:01:45

about rev ops, no longer being the buyer.

Justin Norris: 00:01:48

And maybe we just started there.

Justin Norris: 00:01:49

I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit, because I think a lot of

Justin Norris: 00:01:51

sellers, they sell like a rev tech tool, that is a persona that they focus on.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:56

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:01:56

It's been kind of a fascinating realization for me, honestly.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:00

I've been in a position before where I owned the technology

Mallory Lee: 00:02:05

budget and made a lot of those decisions on behalf of the business.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:10

I still anticipate that that is a role that RevOps people need to play.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:16

But I don't think that there's very often a budget for a revenue

Mallory Lee: 00:02:20

operations dedicated tool.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:23

And most of the time we are spending money on behalf of other departments

Mallory Lee: 00:02:27

and trying to make sure that the holistic stack makes sense.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:33

however, you know, in the last few years, the rev ops profession and the role

Mallory Lee: 00:02:39

has been like the number one fastest growing job it's become very popular.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:44

And so a lot of founders rightfully.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:46

So have wanted to create technology to make the rev ops

Mallory Lee: 00:02:50

profession better or easier.

Mallory Lee: 00:02:53

it's this contradiction because, as a rev ops team, We spend all of our time

Mallory Lee: 00:02:58

thinking about how to make everyone else's lives easier very few times.

Mallory Lee: 00:03:03

Do we try to make our own lives any easier or better?

Mallory Lee: 00:03:07

So I believe there is a need for some Rev Ops technology, but I don't think that

Mallory Lee: 00:03:12

we're in the kind of economic climate where people are going to be able to

Mallory Lee: 00:03:16

make a case to say, Hey, this is going to make my rev ops team's life easier.

Mallory Lee: 00:03:21

Can we purchase this?

Mallory Lee: 00:03:23

and even if you're getting that approval from your CFO and, and yourself, people

Mallory Lee: 00:03:28

are having to make really hard choices about where to spend that budget.

Mallory Lee: 00:03:32

And I think that a lot of us just kind of default to, you know,

Mallory Lee: 00:03:36

sales and marketing efficiency for most of the rev tech budgets.

Justin Norris: 00:03:40

I totally know what you're talking about and it's hard.

Justin Norris: 00:03:43

Cause I would love to buy technology to make my life easier, but I think if you

Justin Norris: 00:03:46

look at like how companies are going to market, it's kind of like a week.

Justin Norris: 00:03:49

Positioning, to be like, oh, we're going to save your rev ops team time.

Justin Norris: 00:03:52

It's like, well,

Justin Norris: 00:03:53

maybe, maybe if you've got a, 500 person rev ops team that becomes

Justin Norris: 00:03:57

compelling, but usually not.

Justin Norris: 00:03:59

Is this a message that you've delivered, to any of the companies

Justin Norris: 00:04:01

that you're working with, maybe that are playing in that space, like

Justin Norris: 00:04:04

have, companies understood this or are people still trying to like,

Justin Norris: 00:04:07

Go this route and struggle with it.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:09

I think that almost any company out there has to spend

Mallory Lee: 00:04:13

a lot of time and it takes a lot of iteration to figure out, what's

Mallory Lee: 00:04:18

the pain point we're solving.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:20

How do we connect that back to the major impact on a business?

Mallory Lee: 00:04:26

How do we make it tie into a big enough and expensive enough problem that people

Mallory Lee: 00:04:32

are willing to invest budget on this?

Mallory Lee: 00:04:34

And it's not easy.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:35

And, and I've been there as a marketer trying to make that case, for the

Mallory Lee: 00:04:39

businesses that I've worked for.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:40

so the way that I think about it is take the feature set, take the problem

Mallory Lee: 00:04:44

we're solving and just keep following it all the way up the chain until we

Mallory Lee: 00:04:49

figure out what that ultimate impact is.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:52

And then let's try to tie into that.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:56

In our value prop, easier said than done.

Mallory Lee: 00:04:58

Like it's, very complicated, but people are really open to the feedback.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:02

They're open to hearing, okay, saving time's not enough.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:07

We need to also be, growing or scaling or making more revenue somehow.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:13

So how do we make that argument without everyone just sounding the exact same,

Mallory Lee: 00:05:19

I think is the challenge.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:20

Uh, and I, can't pretend to have that figured out, but it's an interesting one.

Justin Norris: 00:05:25

I'm curious, like the, the process of iteration that you

Justin Norris: 00:05:28

described, I've experienced it too.

Justin Norris: 00:05:30

And it's a really interesting, also sometimes kind of painful

Justin Norris: 00:05:33

and frustrating process.

Justin Norris: 00:05:35

if we look at like some of your in houses experiences, either as a marketer or

Justin Norris: 00:05:38

maybe as like a revenue operator, like working with sales teams on iterating that

Justin Norris: 00:05:42

pitch, like, what does that look like?

Justin Norris: 00:05:43

How do you kind of diagnose and how do you know when you're

Justin Norris: 00:05:45

starting to hit on something solid?

Mallory Lee: 00:05:47

I hope that data can help guide the story there.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:51

lots of data can be collected by just talking to customers, really

Mallory Lee: 00:05:55

understanding and interviewing them.

Mallory Lee: 00:05:58

What are you doing with this thing?

Mallory Lee: 00:05:59

How is it helping you?

Mallory Lee: 00:06:00

How is it making your life better?

Mallory Lee: 00:06:02

even if you learn something that sends you in a different direction, that's progress.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:08

So being able to get in front of customers, I think

Mallory Lee: 00:06:11

is the most important thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:13

second, having your platform instrumented in a way that you can understand

Mallory Lee: 00:06:18

what product usage is happening.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:20

And, um, Is vital and a lot of tools that have been around for a little bit

Mallory Lee: 00:06:24

longer, that have struggled in recent months or years might not be able to

Mallory Lee: 00:06:31

really see that They might know why someone bought it 4 years ago, but they

Mallory Lee: 00:06:35

might not know what's getting used today.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:37

What impact is this having today?

Mallory Lee: 00:06:39

what kind of buyer personas are deeply engaged with our product

Mallory Lee: 00:06:43

right now to keep evolving that, that value prop as they move forward.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:48

in the case where you have a very open and extensible product

Mallory Lee: 00:06:51

that can be used a lot of ways.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:53

That was the case at Nihilist.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:55

It was an API product that could be used a million ways.

Mallory Lee: 00:06:59

we really were attempting to dig into the data to see what Okay, this customer

Mallory Lee: 00:07:05

is in this industry, their office size, their product looks like this.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:09

And here are the 14 features they use the most.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:12

What can we kind of derive from these combinations to get a

Mallory Lee: 00:07:17

real sense of like what they're doing with it in their use case?

Mallory Lee: 00:07:20

that might be an extreme example because APIs are.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:24

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:25

Just inherently building blocks.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:26

They're very open to any use case.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:29

So hopefully it's, not quite that crazy for a lot of businesses out there that

Mallory Lee: 00:07:36

started with a hypothesis of what the product was going to do and going out

Mallory Lee: 00:07:41

there and proving, that it's working.

Mallory Lee: 00:07:43

But I guess I would just circle back again to like making sure that, the customers

Mallory Lee: 00:07:48

are getting to tell their stories.

Justin Norris: 00:07:50

you know, you were at Terminus, I think during a time when

Justin Norris: 00:07:53

the ABM category was really exploding and I've been thinking of this category

Justin Norris: 00:07:58

a lot in light of the, demand creation debate that I see happening in a lot

Justin Norris: 00:08:04

of posts in my LinkedIn feed, at least, um, around, is this a real thing?

Justin Norris: 00:08:07

Is that, is that not a real thing?

Justin Norris: 00:08:09

And I think of that as a category where like nobody had an ABM platform budget.

Justin Norris: 00:08:14

Like it just wasn't a thing.

Justin Norris: 00:08:15

And then all of a sudden that, emerged, there was a lot of great messaging around

Justin Norris: 00:08:19

flip my funnel and all this kind of stuff and everybody, you know, had to have one.

Justin Norris: 00:08:23

was that kind of like a gold rush to experience that?

Justin Norris: 00:08:25

Or were there any challenges that you saw?

Mallory Lee: 00:08:28

Yeah, there certainly were a few challenges.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:30

you know, I've gotten lucky to be in the right place at the

Mallory Lee: 00:08:33

right time a few different times.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:36

And I was at exact target when email marketing took off.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:40

I was at part out when marketing automation took off and then I was

Mallory Lee: 00:08:43

at terminus pretty shortly after everything just went insane with ABM.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:48

And I think at first we really needed to repurpose the advertising budget to

Mallory Lee: 00:08:52

get budget for something like terminus.

Mallory Lee: 00:08:56

That was the beginning of somebody spending money on technology

Mallory Lee: 00:09:00

for advertising purposes.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:02

So we were kind of taking program dollars and repurposing them

Mallory Lee: 00:09:05

toward software budget, but both components happened in the platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:09

You had ad spend and technology spend.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:13

So I think it was incumbent on companies like Terminus to Continue

Mallory Lee: 00:09:18

to broaden the platform, make that technology piece much more valuable

Mallory Lee: 00:09:23

outside of advertising alone.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:26

And so that's when you saw a lot of the intent data come in, a lot of account

Mallory Lee: 00:09:30

scoring and prioritization types of things, they needed to continue to add

Mallory Lee: 00:09:34

features to make that platform fee.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:39

You bigger than the ads themselves.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:41

And so it was, just a really neat experience.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:45

And I think this would go back to the idea that you have to keep iterating

Mallory Lee: 00:09:50

on the value prop, especially as competitors come in and begin.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:54

Doing similar things.

Mallory Lee: 00:09:56

let's say in the advertising world, how are you going to

Mallory Lee: 00:09:58

continue to differentiate?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:00

How are you going to help your customers progress and evolve?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:03

And something that we talked about a lot at Terminus was being this

Mallory Lee: 00:10:06

trusted partner to help someone with their account based strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:12

It can't just be about using the tool.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:14

It has to be about.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:16

Their overall ABM strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:18

how are they effective?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:19

How do they work with sales and have sales and marketing alignment?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:24

Those were very front and center for us because we knew that the

Mallory Lee: 00:10:26

stronger, the ABM strategy, the better.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:28

The better retention that we would have for our, product.

Justin Norris: 00:10:31

And when you think about that, category of ABM, as a

Justin Norris: 00:10:34

concept, ABM makes a lot of sense.

Justin Norris: 00:10:37

My observation on the category, not necessarily specific to Terminus,

Justin Norris: 00:10:39

cause I've never used that tool, but on some of the other players.

Justin Norris: 00:10:42

Um, and speaking to people in the community that hasn't always delivered,

Justin Norris: 00:10:46

on what it was intended to do.

Justin Norris: 00:10:47

A lot of people frustrated.

Justin Norris: 00:10:49

what's your observation there?

Justin Norris: 00:10:50

Is that something that you've seen too?

Justin Norris: 00:10:52

And if so, where do you think it fell short?

Mallory Lee: 00:10:54

Yeah, I've seen it and I've experienced that myself as well.

Mallory Lee: 00:10:57

and I think that there is a time and a place for account based ads.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:04

for sure, but I don't know if we ever quite had the right

Mallory Lee: 00:11:09

expectation for what that kind of platform should be doing for us.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:14

And so that is probably the underlying issue is that.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:19

We were trying to create something that was going to deliver on an

Mallory Lee: 00:11:22

expectation that never made sense.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:25

And when I had used ABM platforms prior to joining Terminus, I used demand based

Mallory Lee: 00:11:32

and I used Terminus at Cheetah Digital.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:36

And when I was at Cheetah Digital, I was leading marketing operations.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:41

So I was in the ops world, but I was laser focused on marketing and spending our

Mallory Lee: 00:11:45

budget effectively and generating demand.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:49

And my biggest message to everybody in the room was like, we should

Mallory Lee: 00:11:53

not expect leads from this.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:55

This is not a lead generation platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:11:59

We need to have the appropriate expectation about how it influences,

Mallory Lee: 00:12:03

and we need to think through what we really want to get out of this thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:07

And I always have a story, back from my exact target days.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:11

so I'm based in Indianapolis and exact target was in Indianapolis downtown.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:16

We had an office right on like The circle in the center of, of downtown.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:21

and when I started working there right out of school, they were just, you

Mallory Lee: 00:12:25

know, starting to really take off.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:27

And everyone I talked to, if they asked me where I worked, I said, exact target.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:31

And he said, Oh, I just see you everywhere.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:33

I see exact target everywhere.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:34

What do you do?

Mallory Lee: 00:12:36

And a lot of people didn't even know what the company did, but they were so

Mallory Lee: 00:12:40

familiar with the brand exact target had.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:43

an amazing product and such amazing people, it still

Mallory Lee: 00:12:47

had its sharp edges, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:12:49

everything does.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:50

It was really hard to use, back then.

Mallory Lee: 00:12:52

And the brand just helped us overcome so many of those potential issues.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:00

And so I think it's easy for people to overlook the importance of brand.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:04

And when it comes to something like account based marketing, it should

Mallory Lee: 00:13:08

encompass your entire demand gen strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:11

But those specific account based ads, they're banner

Mallory Lee: 00:13:15

ads, they're branding, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:13:18

They're not magical portals that people can jump to, to

Mallory Lee: 00:13:21

like get to your salesperson.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:23

And I think that we just put too much pressure on what we

Mallory Lee: 00:13:27

thought they would allow us to do.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:29

So if you think about them as a branding mechanism, and just a way to

Mallory Lee: 00:13:35

more correctly target the companies you care about with your branding, I

Mallory Lee: 00:13:40

think people see it very differently.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:42

And I think that you can start to justify pretty quickly.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:45

For it to make sense to just have impressions for those

Mallory Lee: 00:13:48

certain companies that you want to sell to on your target list.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:51

And you can see if you're engaging your target list, you can see

Mallory Lee: 00:13:54

if they're getting impressions.

Mallory Lee: 00:13:56

hopefully you start to see those companies respond to your emails

Mallory Lee: 00:13:59

because they see you everywhere.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:00

And that's the idea.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:02

So I think that's the best way to use it.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:04

And I think it's pretty easy to make a good case for those kinds of technologies.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:09

if we're setting the right goals.

Justin Norris: 00:14:11

one of the things that you just said that really resonated

Justin Norris: 00:14:13

with me was around, the lack of clarity on like what an ABM tool could do.

Justin Norris: 00:14:18

Like this concept became so powerful and yet there was like.

Justin Norris: 00:14:23

Almost like this magical black box of like, we're going to do

Justin Norris: 00:14:25

ABM and ads are a very important component of that, obviously.

Justin Norris: 00:14:30

But I've, at least personally, like using those tools, I've often like, you know,

Justin Norris: 00:14:33

open the box and been like, this is it.

Justin Norris: 00:14:35

where's the part where you actually help, do ABM and.

Justin Norris: 00:14:38

I remember, um, being in some like early design sessions, with the team at Engageo,

Justin Norris: 00:14:43

you know, it was later acquired by demand based and they were trying to solve this

Justin Norris: 00:14:46

problem around orchestration and how do we orchestrate multiple sellers and multi

Justin Norris: 00:14:50

thread and it never fully came to life, but it feels like that's the piece that,

Justin Norris: 00:14:55

you know, still doesn't exist very well.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:57

you're exactly right.

Mallory Lee: 00:14:58

And I remember back when I was working with, Cheetah digital, I really wanted

Mallory Lee: 00:15:04

to pair ABM and Engagio together.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:07

And I was always such a big fan of Engagio and that approach,

Mallory Lee: 00:15:11

didn't work out budget wise.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:13

We never pulled the trigger on that, but I agree with you.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:16

Like there's, there's a planning component, there's

Mallory Lee: 00:15:18

targeting component, there's.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:20

There's so much work to be done and just defining your ideal customer and figuring

Mallory Lee: 00:15:25

out who is the right fit for your product.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:28

that's a big part of the iteration on the value prop, you know, because

Mallory Lee: 00:15:31

the closer you get to understanding that the closer you will find the

Mallory Lee: 00:15:35

people who have those problems.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:37

And so obviously a lot of work to do and it's all, very intertwined.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:42

but I think that was part of the struggle with terminus back to your question

Mallory Lee: 00:15:48

before is it took off so fast and it became something that you just have to do.

Mallory Lee: 00:15:55

And it's almost like the hype, became more than what it was ever intended to be.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:01

And so, there were a few things that we almost had to like.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:06

Not walk back, but just go deeper on and explain to people like this,

Mallory Lee: 00:16:10

platform can't be your whole strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:12

Like you have to have strategy and then the platform helps you execute it.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:16

And, a lot of people make that same, mistake with a lot of different tools.

Justin Norris: 00:16:20

I think if we fast forward today, to some extent, we're probably

Justin Norris: 00:16:23

Probably repeating that mistake in many places with like signal based selling and

Justin Norris: 00:16:28

everything that's going on here.

Justin Norris: 00:16:29

and so I'm, I'm curious for your take, if you have a perspective, on the,

Justin Norris: 00:16:34

problem still exists and companies are still trying to go outbound.

Justin Norris: 00:16:38

Something I think about a lot just in my, my day job.

Justin Norris: 00:16:41

what tools out there do you like, what do you see?

Justin Norris: 00:16:43

That's interesting.

Justin Norris: 00:16:43

How do you see like tech and strategy marrying as part of executing that?

Justin Norris: 00:16:47

It's

Mallory Lee: 00:16:47

So I do have a tool in mind.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:49

I'll tell you a very quick story first.

Mallory Lee: 00:16:51

So when I started to see all of these signal based platforms come to

Mallory Lee: 00:16:57

life, there were some integrations that happened, on the tech side

Mallory Lee: 00:17:01

that just made it very compelling to understand when someone changed jobs.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:08

Right.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:09

I think that's one of the very first signals that people

Mallory Lee: 00:17:13

started to really lean into.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:15

And I remember specifically back at Terminus, we pay a contractor every month.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:21

To go find those job changes manually, and we would upload that list

Mallory Lee: 00:17:27

and we would go work those leads.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:29

and it was very manual.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:30

And then before you knew it, the software started to support that and back it up.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:36

And I still think that it's a powerful signal, but it's

Mallory Lee: 00:17:39

also probably like the most.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:42

Misused signal, and it's the perfect example of why the technology cannot be

Mallory Lee: 00:17:48

the only like savior because I am someone who, you know, wears a lot of hats.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:55

I've had a lot of roles.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:56

anytime I add an advisor position.

Mallory Lee: 00:17:59

To my LinkedIn profile, I get these messages from people trying

Mallory Lee: 00:18:03

to sell everything under the sun.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:06

Hey, I saw you joined rattle.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:08

Are you interested in buying this thing?

Mallory Lee: 00:18:11

I'm thinking to myself, you didn't even look at what my position is.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:15

I don't work there, you know what I mean?

Mallory Lee: 00:18:17

And so they're wasting this opportunity to, find out what that

Mallory Lee: 00:18:21

signal really means and approach with the correct message and the correct

Mallory Lee: 00:18:25

strategy from an outbound standpoint.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:27

So I think that is an example of where it gets ahead of you, that, signal

Mallory Lee: 00:18:34

platform is getting ahead of us.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:35

If we're not careful, we will back off of it completely because, you

Mallory Lee: 00:18:39

know, The outbound signals aren't working and it's because we're not

Mallory Lee: 00:18:42

using the information correctly.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:44

one way that I really think people should use it is to just

Mallory Lee: 00:18:50

make it a component of timing.

Mallory Lee: 00:18:53

Now there is some research out there that suggests that when someone starts

Mallory Lee: 00:18:57

a new role as like a VP or higher, they make their plans for their budgets.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:05

In the first, like six to nine months, that's when they decide

Mallory Lee: 00:19:09

how they're going to spend money.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:11

So, you know, that there is a window that you need to get

Mallory Lee: 00:19:14

in at it's not day one, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:19:17

People don't decide those things in their first week in a new role.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:21

And so jumping in too soon, not useful jumping in without realizing what

Mallory Lee: 00:19:27

technology they use already today.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:30

Not as useful.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:31

there are tools out there like built with that can tell you which

Mallory Lee: 00:19:35

technologies are on someone's website when they got detected, maybe it's

Mallory Lee: 00:19:39

going to expire a year from that time.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:41

Maybe it's two years from that time.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:44

So being as informed as possible, getting as much data as you can and forming a

Mallory Lee: 00:19:49

hypothesis that really allows you to reach out to somebody with something to say.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:55

I think is the important part.

Mallory Lee: 00:19:57

So, you know, it might be something like, Hey, congrats on joining this new company.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:03

I see you're going to be Ops.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:06

noticed that your team today is using Terminus.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:11

I'm curious if you are looking to adjust your plans for Terminus, if

Mallory Lee: 00:20:16

so, here's the way we, Add value and solve pain for a business like yours.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:22

And would you like to get a demo so you've got like full understanding

Mallory Lee: 00:20:25

of what you're working with?

Mallory Lee: 00:20:27

something that just shows that you have done the homework to know what's

Mallory Lee: 00:20:31

going on, I think is really important.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:34

And so if we don't do those homework jobs, kind of like surrounding.

Mallory Lee: 00:20:39

The signals, then we're going to continue to have poor outreach.

Justin Norris: 00:20:42

just saying that there's no silver bullets.

Justin Norris: 00:20:45

100 percent agreed on the customer job change signal.

Justin Norris: 00:20:47

I think it's an own signal that is hard for someone else to replicate.

Justin Norris: 00:20:51

They don't have your customer list.

Justin Norris: 00:20:53

shout out to user gems and full disclosure is a, sponsor of the show.

Justin Norris: 00:20:57

but we've seen in, in using that platform, which we use internally at my

Justin Norris: 00:21:00

company, when it works, it is magical or someone's like, Oh yeah, great.

Justin Norris: 00:21:04

Like, let's, go.

Justin Norris: 00:21:05

Like, yeah, I don't, I think we can skip the formal demo.

Justin Norris: 00:21:06

Like I bought, I already.

Justin Norris: 00:21:08

But, you can't apply it like we had to iterate a lot on it and work through

Justin Norris: 00:21:13

different cadences, work through different messaging, get the process in place.

Justin Norris: 00:21:17

It's a bit of a painful slog.

Justin Norris: 00:21:18

At least I find.

Justin Norris: 00:21:19

And I'm curious for your point of view on the rule of rev ops in there because

Justin Norris: 00:21:24

There's a lot of chefs in that kitchen.

Justin Norris: 00:21:25

There's like the SDR team and their leader, maybe sales,

Justin Norris: 00:21:29

demand gen or marketing is there.

Justin Norris: 00:21:30

Rev Ops is there.

Justin Norris: 00:21:31

Like, what should the ideal role of Rev Ops be in that process?

Mallory Lee: 00:21:34

So, the way that I think about this is that RevOps needs to

Mallory Lee: 00:21:39

have very tight understanding and very, iterative and constantly refreshed

Mallory Lee: 00:21:49

and very good command over the ICP.

Mallory Lee: 00:21:54

And that requires a lot of data and it changes a lot and we need to

Mallory Lee: 00:21:59

source, you know, where do we find the information that tells us, are

Mallory Lee: 00:22:04

you part of the ICP or are you not?

Mallory Lee: 00:22:06

that is chiefly a rev ops role to shepherd everyone into

Mallory Lee: 00:22:12

understanding what the ICP is.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:14

Reporting on those success or lack thereof, when we're working in the ICP

Mallory Lee: 00:22:19

incorporating, you know, the strategic changes that people want for the business

Mallory Lee: 00:22:23

to think about how it might shift in the future again, like value props, just

Mallory Lee: 00:22:28

reiterating that back through and making sure that the people we are targeting.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:32

Are experiencing this big pain point that we've decided to solve and then

Mallory Lee: 00:22:37

making that data systematically and accurately available to all of the

Mallory Lee: 00:22:41

people who need to look at accounts.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:44

And so, it's a great example.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:46

Like, when I was at Nihilist, we used, a CS platform I'm not going

Mallory Lee: 00:22:49

to call out which 1, because, um.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:51

I just don't feel like I need to, but, we were happy with it and it was great.

Mallory Lee: 00:22:55

And I signed the contract, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:22:58

So they had me in their database as someone to reach back out to.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:03

And when I started consulting and I was partnering with union

Mallory Lee: 00:23:07

square, I was in their campaign of.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:11

This person changed roles.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:12

We know that she's thought before let's get back in front of her.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:16

And so I got more than several messages, from this company asking

Mallory Lee: 00:23:20

if I would potentially be interested.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:23

And what they didn't realize was that union square was like a

Mallory Lee: 00:23:27

five person consulting company.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:30

We were not in their ICP at all.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:33

And so they were still targeting me.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:36

Regardless, and the messaging was nice.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:40

It was fine.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:41

There was nothing wrong with the way that they reached out.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:44

I even actually replied and said, Hey, we're not in your ICP, but

Mallory Lee: 00:23:48

I think that a rev ups team who has an idea and has a handle.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:53

On what that ICP looks like and how to correctly prioritize around it.

Mallory Lee: 00:23:58

And keeping in mind that it really is dynamic and it really does evolve a lot.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:03

they can help people avoid those kinds of mistakes.

Justin Norris: 00:24:06

Does it speak to like a lack of sophistication in the SDR teams

Justin Norris: 00:24:10

or the sellers that are there because you.

Justin Norris: 00:24:12

look at that, you know, something that anyone with a five second

Justin Norris: 00:24:15

look at, at LinkedIn could have made that discovery that you

Justin Norris: 00:24:18

described and avoided that misstep.

Justin Norris: 00:24:20

It's almost like if you're going to be that, I don't know, the word

Justin Norris: 00:24:23

that's coming to my mind is lazy.

Justin Norris: 00:24:24

I'm trying to find a softer word, but if you're going to not put that

Justin Norris: 00:24:27

work in, you might as well have AI just send that email because probably

Justin Norris: 00:24:31

with clay you could actually do your enrichment and prevent that to be honest.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:34

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:35

Well, I mean, in fairness with this vendor, I don't know if, it

Mallory Lee: 00:24:38

was an automated email or not.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:41

a couple of the emails I got were branded and a couple of them weren't.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:44

And I think that's.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:45

That's still completely automated.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:47

If you know, if you work hard enough to get that rhythm going, you can do that.

Mallory Lee: 00:24:51

so either they didn't take the time to check or they just funneled me

Mallory Lee: 00:24:57

into the same program everybody else was in and those emails were

Mallory Lee: 00:25:01

automated and the ICP segmentation was not part of their audience.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:07

Segmentation and building.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:09

And so again, we're back to like, first you have to have the right strategy.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:15

The right strategy is to say, okay, identify the people that have changed

Mallory Lee: 00:25:20

roles and if they fit X, Y, Z criteria, then put them into the cadence.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:26

but from a technological perspective, do you have a way to score accounts?

Mallory Lee: 00:25:31

Do you send that account score data over to the place where

Mallory Lee: 00:25:35

you send your emails from?

Mallory Lee: 00:25:37

it all has to be, very connected to implement those strategies at scale.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:42

And, if you're not doing it at scale, then of course, please make the person check.

Mallory Lee: 00:25:46

But if you are trying to do these things at scale, you've got to get

Mallory Lee: 00:25:50

the tools to talk to each other.

Justin Norris: 00:25:52

Even a little bit further back into your CV

Justin Norris: 00:25:54

and into the tech landscape.

Justin Norris: 00:25:57

And you're right.

Justin Norris: 00:25:57

You have been in a lot of interesting places at the right time because,

Justin Norris: 00:26:01

um, you, it is, it is really, really interesting, but you were, you were at

Justin Norris: 00:26:06

Pardot, that was the start of my career as well, not, not necessarily working

Justin Norris: 00:26:09

at a marketing automation vendor, but just kind of like starting with

Justin Norris: 00:26:11

marketing automation and having that be my, my My access point into ops.

Justin Norris: 00:26:16

so we've got kind of the legacy players, and PowerDot and Marketo, and

Justin Norris: 00:26:20

to an extent Eloqua kicking around.

Justin Norris: 00:26:22

I'm curious how you see this landscape today.

Justin Norris: 00:26:25

Do we think that those players are going to be the players of the future?

Justin Norris: 00:26:27

Or is there like does marketing automation become something else to remain relevant?

Mallory Lee: 00:26:32

don't think it has to become something else, but I think

Mallory Lee: 00:26:36

that that first generation of tools was built for different businesses.

Mallory Lee: 00:26:42

They were just built for extreme inbound marketing.

Mallory Lee: 00:26:47

they've got good strategies for several things, right?

Mallory Lee: 00:26:50

So the reason that my mind just always instantly goes to segmentation,

Mallory Lee: 00:26:58

audience building, getting relevant, that is just in my DNA

Mallory Lee: 00:27:03

from my email marketing background.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:04

Right.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:05

And that is what marketing automation Really taught us was don't just send

Mallory Lee: 00:27:11

everyone the same email, get the information from the CRM, send the

Mallory Lee: 00:27:14

right email to the right person.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:16

They helped us build these dynamic audiences.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:18

And for the first time, we were able to do a lot with, personalization

Mallory Lee: 00:27:23

and targeting and segmentation.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:26

So that's still like very deeply embedded in probably everything I do.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:30

And so building on

Mallory Lee: 00:27:32

that, the question is like

Mallory Lee: 00:27:34

what do we need to keep up with the way, you know, our businesses have

Mallory Lee: 00:27:39

changed today and what I found and what I learned at Nihilus was that,

Mallory Lee: 00:27:44

none of the legacy players were built in a way that allowed product usage

Mallory Lee: 00:27:51

data to be part of the conversation.

Mallory Lee: 00:27:54

I really do think that all marketing automation is going

Mallory Lee: 00:27:58

to have to evolve to that point.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:00

Because all B2B is out there, they've got software of some kind.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:04

If they don't have software of some kind yet, they're probably

Mallory Lee: 00:28:08

trying to think of how to build it.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:09

And a lot of people, are blending now a license based approach and a usage

Mallory Lee: 00:28:14

based approach, because we've seen that that's great for retention and net

Mallory Lee: 00:28:19

retention and expansion of our revenue.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:22

So if you are trying to do old school marketing automation,

Mallory Lee: 00:28:26

With a new school product lens.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:31

it just doesn't work and I've tried it and you can't do it.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:34

So to make a long story short, I am a really big fan of inflection.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:38

io and their approach.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:41

And what they do is they are kind of product first and they hook up to your

Mallory Lee: 00:28:46

database or segment and they receive all the product events that are happening.

Mallory Lee: 00:28:51

And they digest those in a way that makes them available for marketing

Mallory Lee: 00:28:55

and segmentation and list building and, you know, dynamic email content.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:02

so I do think that that is the next wave of all of the marketing

Mallory Lee: 00:29:05

automation work that's going on.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:08

And.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:09

Even for something like, Terminus, for example, we never thought of ourselves at

Mallory Lee: 00:29:16

Terminus as a product led growth company.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:18

the real growth there happened before that nickname probably even existed.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:23

So if you take a step back and you think about something like Terminus, I

Mallory Lee: 00:29:28

remember being so frustrated that our product was not originally built in a way.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:34

That allowed us to see some of the details of the usage and that was nobody's fault.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:40

Like it just wasn't the way you did things back then.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:43

but we couldn't message people with that insight.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:45

And when our CSMs would be getting ready for a customer QBR had to go manually,

Mallory Lee: 00:29:51

see so many things about ad volumes and ad spend and how they're using the platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:29:58

but If I were talking to someone at terminus today, I would

Mallory Lee: 00:30:03

still suggest to them, like, you can be a product led company.

Mallory Lee: 00:30:07

You can do the things to get people to use the product more

Mallory Lee: 00:30:10

to grow their ad spend further.

Mallory Lee: 00:30:13

You can do things to help them grow and their database size will grow.

Mallory Lee: 00:30:18

And so even people who haven't historically felt that

Mallory Lee: 00:30:21

they were in a PLG company.

Mallory Lee: 00:30:23

need to be pursuing these opportunities to know how people are using the product

Mallory Lee: 00:30:28

and build that in to the messaging that you're bringing to your customers.

Justin Norris: 00:30:32

So with you about inflection, I've taken a few demos, had

Justin Norris: 00:30:35

David Gaudi on the show before and such big fans of, of what they're doing there.

Justin Norris: 00:30:39

I wonder if one of the advantages they have, and I think about this a lot

Justin Norris: 00:30:43

is, just simply that they're building the tool now and not, you know.

Justin Norris: 00:30:46

in 2010 or 2008 or whatever it was.

Justin Norris: 00:30:49

don't know how Salesforce and HubSpot have managed to do this, but there's

Justin Norris: 00:30:52

almost like, you know, your legacy tech debt of the product is this like black

Justin Norris: 00:30:57

hole sucking you back and there needs to be a certain amount of energy to

Justin Norris: 00:31:01

reach escape velocity, to like bring the platform into the modern era.

Justin Norris: 00:31:05

And it feels to me if I'm, I'm being Frank and I say this still as a Marketo

Justin Norris: 00:31:08

customer, but that the legacy platforms have generally not managed to do it.

Justin Norris: 00:31:12

Don't seem to be able to manage to do that.

Justin Norris: 00:31:14

And that's one of the big reasons why I feel like.

Justin Norris: 00:31:16

They'll be overtaken because they just can't evolve past that old architecture.

Justin Norris: 00:31:21

does that resonate with you at all?

Mallory Lee: 00:31:23

it does.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:23

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:23

I I'm on the exact same page as you.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:26

you know, I'm also friends with Dave and Aaron and And they will also be the first

Mallory Lee: 00:31:31

to tell you that they learned so much from the way they did it the first time.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:35

And building now is such a different advantage to the

Mallory Lee: 00:31:39

way that we built in the past.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:41

with that said, there are times where you see companies try to take

Mallory Lee: 00:31:48

a few quarters, hunker down, do an overhaul and get more modern.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:53

I think that there is a lot of courage in leaders who decide to do that.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:58

And it's not easy.

Mallory Lee: 00:31:59

And right now the environment's not very friendly to it because all of us are just

Mallory Lee: 00:32:04

trying to keep up with any kind of growth.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:08

especially after a lot of people's valuations got so out of whack.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:12

And so having a couple of off quarters is like, Very, very difficult right now.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:19

and it's happening to, you know, a lot of people, even who are maybe not

Mallory Lee: 00:32:22

trying to overhaul their products, but generally speaking, it just feels like

Mallory Lee: 00:32:26

a tough time to say, Hey, we're going to go reengineer this entire platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:32

And.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:33

what actually happened with, Nihilus is that our team did that,

Mallory Lee: 00:32:38

but they did it concurrently.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:40

They built the V3 version of the platform alongside the V2.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:44

And now there's a big migration in the works that's necessary for customers

Mallory Lee: 00:32:48

because, nothing could slow down while the other one was being built.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:53

And I think that's the definition of, fast paced.

Mallory Lee: 00:32:57

Technology that the cliche you hear is like, you're building

Mallory Lee: 00:33:00

the plane while you're flying it.

Mallory Lee: 00:33:02

And so some people are literally having to like build another plane next to

Mallory Lee: 00:33:06

the plane they're flying and then try to get people to hop over to it.

Mallory Lee: 00:33:10

And it's crazy.

Mallory Lee: 00:33:11

But, there are some products out there that if they don't do that kind

Mallory Lee: 00:33:15

of thing, it'll, be really tough.

Justin Norris: 00:33:17

It's a really interesting problem.

Justin Norris: 00:33:18

I feel like there should be like an HBR, article either way, it seems there's pain.

Justin Norris: 00:33:23

You know, if we think about the transition Salesforce and like how long that took

Justin Norris: 00:33:27

and, like, they managed to make it happen.

Justin Norris: 00:33:30

And in other cases, I look at Marketo and Marketo, not everyone was probably

Justin Norris: 00:33:34

aware of it, but they had the, short lived Marketo sky interface, which

Justin Norris: 00:33:37

was kind of like their new lightning.

Justin Norris: 00:33:39

And that project was failed and walked back.

Justin Norris: 00:33:41

And, you know, we're left with this kind of like Frankenstein interface

Justin Norris: 00:33:44

that no one really is satisfied with.

Justin Norris: 00:33:46

I feel like a lot of companies don't realize what an existential

Justin Norris: 00:33:48

problem it is, not just the UI.

Justin Norris: 00:33:50

Of course, those are UI changes, but the whole package, the building,

Justin Norris: 00:33:53

the new plane next to the one that's flying, I think is the perfect example.

Justin Norris: 00:33:56

of that, I want, I want to jump up and, and talk about

Justin Norris: 00:33:59

RevOps, writ large a little bit.

Justin Norris: 00:34:01

And, maybe actually I'll jump right to the punchline, which is, the

Justin Norris: 00:34:03

thing that everyone talks about, which maybe is, least consequential,

Justin Norris: 00:34:06

but RevOps versus GTMOps.

Justin Norris: 00:34:08

what is your take on this?

Justin Norris: 00:34:09

Is it just, we love labeling things.

Justin Norris: 00:34:11

Is it just a new name?

Justin Norris: 00:34:12

Is it something more meaningful than that in your point of view?

Mallory Lee: 00:34:15

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:15

I do have some strong opinions on this, so to skip to my punchline.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:20

I think they are the same thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:22

don't think there's any real difference between revenue operations

Mallory Lee: 00:34:25

and go to market operations.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:27

And I actually spoke about this somewhat recently at op stars.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:31

And that was what my entire session was about.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:33

Like.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:34

Is go to market operations, just a fad.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:37

You know, what do we need to be thinking about with this?

Mallory Lee: 00:34:40

And there are some people out there who, really think it's different.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:43

And what I have found in the research that it took for me to prepare for

Mallory Lee: 00:34:48

that, that speaking engagement is everyone has a different opinion.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:53

There's literally no two people who define anything the same.

Mallory Lee: 00:34:59

And so the takeaway for me is that.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:04

The word go to market operations is probably not going away.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:09

We need to find a way to coexist with it.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:12

we don't necessarily have to pick one camp or the other.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:15

I think the place where we end up having to choose is all about job titles.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:20

And, I'm a rev ops leader.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:23

I'm up for a promotion.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:25

Should I be lobbying to have my title changed because it's

Mallory Lee: 00:35:29

going to keep me Bye bye.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:30

You know, in this like modern labeling, you know, scheme the most common thing

Mallory Lee: 00:35:37

I can find is that people who use the go to market ops label, they are

Mallory Lee: 00:35:43

most likely reporting to a CRO who doesn't really oversee all of revenue.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:51

So if the CRO leads only sales.

Mallory Lee: 00:35:55

And the rev ops team is not solely sales ops, then they've gotten this

Mallory Lee: 00:36:02

like inherent bad name because there are people out there who say, Oh, well,

Mallory Lee: 00:36:08

sales ops is just rev ops relabeled.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:11

And it's not actually the full, bow tie or funnel or whatever.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:16

And then there were some people who are like, well, hold on.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:19

I am the whole funnel.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:21

I am called rev ops, but I do the entire customer journey.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:26

Just because my boss doesn't do the entire customer journey doesn't mean I don't.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:29

So I'm going to be called go to market ops now.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:32

And they're just trying to continue to buck this, negative trend that

Mallory Lee: 00:36:36

rev ops is still just sales ops.

Mallory Lee: 00:36:39

And I think, you know, both you and I have this like marketing operations background

Mallory Lee: 00:36:44

and it gives us a very unique way to think about what are these differences?

Mallory Lee: 00:36:49

Like, How do you do rev ops in a way that is not just sales ops relabeled?

Mallory Lee: 00:36:55

And I've been very lucky to work with leaders who are very supportive

Mallory Lee: 00:36:59

of a rev ops model that starts with marketing ends with CS and product.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:05

It's got to include product as well.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:07

So if you are, fully representing every part of that customer

Mallory Lee: 00:37:12

journey, call it whatever you want.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:14

That's all I care about is.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:16

getting every single phase as part of my data set, as part of my thought process,

Mallory Lee: 00:37:21

as part of the way I support the business.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:24

And I do think there are some people out there who maybe need

Mallory Lee: 00:37:26

to use that go to market wording.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:28

To overcome some kind of like reputation or stigma inside their company.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:33

And, you know, fine, do what you need to do.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:36

but it is hard for those of us who are just confused and it's like,

Mallory Lee: 00:37:39

well, what am I supposed to be?

Mallory Lee: 00:37:40

And one thing that I mentioned, at all stars is actually, you

Mallory Lee: 00:37:46

know, if we start to see such a divergence in these two categories,

Mallory Lee: 00:37:51

that one of them starts having.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:53

Like more earning power than the other.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:56

That's when I think you have to start paying more attention.

Mallory Lee: 00:37:59

Like if someone is paying 10 percent more or 20 percent more for a go to

Mallory Lee: 00:38:02

market operations leader, Then a rev ops leader, that's when I'm probably

Mallory Lee: 00:38:06

going to be like, okay, this is silly.

Justin Norris: 00:38:08

Back to your early point about the power of

Justin Norris: 00:38:10

branding, it is a real thing.

Justin Norris: 00:38:11

I'm so aligned with your, your point of view there, like the underlying problem is

Justin Norris: 00:38:15

whether it actually is all encompassing of all those different go to market teams or

Justin Norris: 00:38:21

not, no matter how many times you repaint it, it's not gonna, change that fun.

Justin Norris: 00:38:26

So that brings me to the question, because I think for some people it is

Justin Norris: 00:38:29

a question about whether a unified.

Justin Norris: 00:38:32

does make sense.

Justin Norris: 00:38:34

I've heard cases made in both directions.

Justin Norris: 00:38:36

It seems you're more in the unified camp, but I'd be curious to know

Justin Norris: 00:38:39

like why you think that's important.

Mallory Lee: 00:38:41

Yep.

Mallory Lee: 00:38:41

I am in the camp of unified, team.

Mallory Lee: 00:38:46

I also prefer a non CRO boss for rev ops to, a little bit for the objectivity a

Mallory Lee: 00:38:55

little bit, because I think that your, uh, Senior rev ops person and your

Mallory Lee: 00:39:00

CRO should be challenging each other and partnering and should be peers.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:06

is that always possible?

Mallory Lee: 00:39:08

Maybe not.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:08

I think that the unified model is really, really good for companies

Mallory Lee: 00:39:13

of a certain size and call it like series B to series D E.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:20

at some point the company becomes.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:23

Quite large.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:24

And that is when I see people start to veer back toward a more siloed

Mallory Lee: 00:39:30

model where they've got a big enough team where they really want that,

Mallory Lee: 00:39:34

like embedded support for the team.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:37

And, I think anything can work as long as the parties are all on the same

Mallory Lee: 00:39:43

page, working together, everything fits.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:46

I prefer the unified approach, but.

Mallory Lee: 00:39:48

I've been working in businesses of a size where that's easy to

Mallory Lee: 00:39:52

do and makes a lot of sense.

Justin Norris: 00:39:53

I prefer the unified approach to just conceptually

Justin Norris: 00:39:57

and based on some experience, but I do think, and you highlighted

Justin Norris: 00:40:00

like the marketing ops background.

Justin Norris: 00:40:02

I do think there are a lot of marketing operators who have a justified trepidation

Justin Norris: 00:40:07

about Am I going to lose my autonomy?

Justin Norris: 00:40:09

Am I just going to get sucked up underneath the sales ops person who

Justin Norris: 00:40:12

reports to a CRO and marketing won't care.

Justin Norris: 00:40:15

And then marketing brings in like shadow marketing ops to replace what they lost.

Justin Norris: 00:40:19

like, how do you address that fear?

Mallory Lee: 00:40:21

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:21

It's hard.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:22

I have been the marketing ops leader before who didn't want to go to Rev Ops.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:27

And so it's hilarious to me, uh, just thinking back because actually

Mallory Lee: 00:40:32

the digital, I was the marketing ops leader and I reported to the CMO.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:36

And then there was a sales ops team.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:39

That became a Rev Ops team and they started by joining, sales and CS

Mallory Lee: 00:40:45

and services operations altogether.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:47

And so it was like, what's Mallory going to do, you know, and I was already,

Mallory Lee: 00:40:52

appear to the Rev Ops leader and I already had a team of like 6 or 7 people.

Mallory Lee: 00:40:57

And for me personally, it was a career path thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:03

It was like, why do I need to go report to this guy?

Mallory Lee: 00:41:06

Who is my friend and buddy, who I totally respect and love, but like,

Mallory Lee: 00:41:11

I don't want him to be my boss.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:13

And back then I was much more in like a marketing career path.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:18

And so I thought it was going to mess up my career path.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:21

And I didn't want to combine, my very next role after that was terminus.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:25

And when I got there, They already had the combined unified

Mallory Lee: 00:41:29

model reporting to the CFO.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:31

And so I was really open to it.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:33

I didn't know what I didn't know, and I just wanted to have an open mind.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:37

And then I found out how much I liked it and how great it was.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:42

And I think that it depends a lot on who is leading that team.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:46

And when a marketing ops person.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:49

Is under a rev ops umbrella that reports to the CRO who doesn't own marketing.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:57

I don't blame them in the slightest.

Mallory Lee: 00:41:59

I don't think I would want to do that either.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:01

is it doable?

Mallory Lee: 00:42:02

Yes.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:03

Is it ideal?

Mallory Lee: 00:42:04

Probably not.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:05

every company has to kind of decide what kind of CRO they're going to have.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:09

A lot of people are hesitant to move marketing under a CRO

Mallory Lee: 00:42:13

because they already have a CMO.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:15

So again, that's a career path thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:17

Like what do I do with this amazing CMO?

Mallory Lee: 00:42:20

Who doesn't want to report to her peer, who leads sales and CS, like

Mallory Lee: 00:42:24

you can't unify in that model.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:26

And, a lot of times it does come back to the people, but on the same

Mallory Lee: 00:42:30

topic of people, if everyone can work together and everybody knows

Mallory Lee: 00:42:34

like how to, how to, how Talk about things and unify the data across the

Mallory Lee: 00:42:39

customer journey and work together.

Mallory Lee: 00:42:41

You can overcome, being on different teams if you have to,

Justin Norris: 00:42:44

I'm curious what your experience was like reporting into

Justin Norris: 00:42:48

the CFO, because I do agree that like having some Switzerland neutral,

Justin Norris: 00:42:52

like party makes the most sense.

Justin Norris: 00:42:54

CFO is often like they have a really valuable lens on the business, but they're

Justin Norris: 00:42:57

often a bit distanced from the day to day.

Justin Norris: 00:42:59

Did that impair at all?

Justin Norris: 00:43:00

Or was it, was it useful?

Mallory Lee: 00:43:02

for myself, it was very useful.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:04

I was lucky because I was working with a CFO who had a Rev Ops background.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:11

So, not exactly normal.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:13

but that's the kind of CFO that I was working with.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:16

now at other businesses, where the CFO doesn't have a Rev Ops background.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:21

I still think there's so much value there and there's so much exchange

Mallory Lee: 00:43:25

of knowledge that goes both ways that everybody benefits from.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:30

And so I have really loved learning about the more financial side of operations.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:36

And.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:37

Being tightly connected to an FP and a team can be a really big help

Mallory Lee: 00:43:43

for a rev ops group that doesn't have a lot of analyst horsepower.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:47

And that's been me.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:48

I've been lucky to have a lot of big teams, a lot of great teams, but there's

Mallory Lee: 00:43:52

just never enough analyst horsepower to.

Mallory Lee: 00:43:56

Look into all the things you want to look into and go as deep as you want.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:00

So those FPNA analysts have been my lifeline more times than I

Mallory Lee: 00:44:04

can count because they just, You know, they know how to get in

Mallory Lee: 00:44:07

there and find answers to things.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:10

and I think that if Rev Ops and finance are on the same page, you can

Mallory Lee: 00:44:14

do the right things for comp plans.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:18

You can do the right things for, you know, all kinds of different applications,

Mallory Lee: 00:44:23

but the Rev Ops leader has to have that ability to speak up and not just like

Mallory Lee: 00:44:28

be cheap because they work for the CFO.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:31

so for that reason.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:33

CFO is not necessarily my number one choice.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:36

I think that it is a fine choice, but I think for me, CEO has always been my

Mallory Lee: 00:44:42

preference because when it's time to sit down and plan and put something together,

Mallory Lee: 00:44:48

you know, you've got the CEO representing the board and the insane growth

Mallory Lee: 00:44:53

targets that are probably out there.

Mallory Lee: 00:44:56

You've got the CRO representing his team and his bottoms up

Mallory Lee: 00:45:00

view of what is possible from a quota attainment standpoint.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:04

and you have the CFO view who is going to be pushing for higher quotas, going

Mallory Lee: 00:45:09

to be pushing for a more scalable comp plan where, you know, we're not

Mallory Lee: 00:45:14

maybe paying out as much commission.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:15

Like everyone has these vested interests and their job is to bring

Mallory Lee: 00:45:20

their vested interests to the table.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:23

And then you've just got your neighborhood Rev Ops person mediating this whole thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:27

And it's like, okay, I see everybody's perspective.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:30

I understand like why everyone is motivated the way they

Mallory Lee: 00:45:33

are for me personally.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:35

I want to help us get to an answer that serves as many of those goals as possible.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:40

And the right answer is typically somewhere in the middle.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:43

And so that is the kind of leadership role that I've just

Mallory Lee: 00:45:47

really come to enjoy is like.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:49

Hey, Mr.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:50

CRO, like you're getting a little crazy.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:52

Like we're not going to be paying X, Y, and Z when so and so is

Mallory Lee: 00:45:57

only at 50 percent of quota.

Mallory Lee: 00:45:58

That's just not going to happen.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:00

And you have to be that like translator between these guys that are gals and,

Mallory Lee: 00:46:04

and the voice of reason sometimes, um, But that's, the fun part.

Justin Norris: 00:46:08

It's a great vision.

Justin Norris: 00:46:09

I love it.

Justin Norris: 00:46:10

I have one more random question that I want to talk a little bit about what

Justin Norris: 00:46:12

you're doing with RevTechReview, because I think it's a really cool idea and,

Justin Norris: 00:46:16

something that's needed, um, but it's run product consulting because I'm a little

Justin Norris: 00:46:19

bit jealous if I'm being honest, because.

Justin Norris: 00:46:21

When I use a tool, all I want to do is like tell them how to change it.

Justin Norris: 00:46:24

Like, like fix this, do that.

Justin Norris: 00:46:26

Like you just feel as a user, like you really know.

Justin Norris: 00:46:28

And when you've used enough software, you can really see it.

Justin Norris: 00:46:30

So it feels like a really plum job.

Justin Norris: 00:46:32

So is it, is it as much fun as it sounds like getting to

Justin Norris: 00:46:35

help some of these companies?

Justin Norris: 00:46:36

I

Mallory Lee: 00:46:36

It has been for sure.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:38

how do I describe it?

Mallory Lee: 00:46:39

So, at exact target and part, well, part out specifically, I had some

Mallory Lee: 00:46:43

pretty strong opinions because I was a user and they were receptive.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:48

But again, it was like, we had just been acquired by Salesforce.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:52

Who knew what was going to happen with the product?

Mallory Lee: 00:46:54

Like everybody was a little hesitant to say, yeah, let's just

Mallory Lee: 00:46:57

dive in and change everything.

Mallory Lee: 00:46:59

and at Terminus, I was always trying to get them to pursue some product

Mallory Lee: 00:47:03

ideas that would give us better data for our customers and better ways

Mallory Lee: 00:47:06

to like prove the ROI of doing ABM.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:11

And sometimes they just didn't get prioritized.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:13

and so as an employee, I think the.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:17

Opinions that you bring to the table.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:19

A lot of times they are listened to and valued, but they're not

Mallory Lee: 00:47:22

the same as a customer opinion.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:23

And so we're always kind of like favoring the roadmap for the customers.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:27

being a product advisor specifically, I should, clarify for A young product, like

Mallory Lee: 00:47:34

for a startup, it has been, just so cool because you describe your pain point.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:40

you help people understand what you personally are going through and

Mallory Lee: 00:47:43

like why you want to see a thing.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:45

And if you can describe it well enough, and if you can, get your

Mallory Lee: 00:47:49

point across in a way that someone can actually go and build that.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:52

And then they go build it.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:54

And then a couple of weeks later, they show it to you has like mind blowing.

Mallory Lee: 00:47:58

it's the coolest thing that I've probably done, so far, which

Mallory Lee: 00:48:01

has been really, really fun.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:03

So it's not a full time gig.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:05

I'm never going to be like a chief product officer.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:08

but to shed that light for someone who wants your expertise

Mallory Lee: 00:48:11

and to see them go act on it.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:14

And, then to hear, Hey, we demoed your new feature and they loved it.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:18

You know, like That's really cool.

Justin Norris: 00:48:19

feel you a hundred percent.

Justin Norris: 00:48:21

well, hopefully it's something you can keep doing, uh, you know, as a, Side gig,

Mallory Lee: 00:48:25

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:25

Except I keep telling them that Rev Ops is not the buyer.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:27

So I, I might be like working myself out of a gig here, but

Justin Norris: 00:48:33

Of the bar, but we can speak on behalf of

Justin Norris: 00:48:35

the buyer quite often, which

Mallory Lee: 00:48:36

yes.

Justin Norris: 00:48:37

just maybe just as good maybe better than they can speak on behalf

Justin Norris: 00:48:40

of themselves let's talk rev tech review and I love maybe just in your own words

Justin Norris: 00:48:44

what the vision is why you started it?

Justin Norris: 00:48:46

I working with molly who I also know molly bodensteiner so it's

Justin Norris: 00:48:50

a small small world in rev up.

Justin Norris: 00:48:51

So yeah, tell us about it

Mallory Lee: 00:48:52

Well, first Molly's just so cool and awesome.

Mallory Lee: 00:48:55

and the way that this got started was, I was continuing to see on LinkedIn,

Mallory Lee: 00:49:02

all of these different founders posting about their tool and their product.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:06

And we have the best data and so and so lie about our data and ours is better.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:10

And we did a study here, look at our study.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:13

And how can the vendor put out their own study of whose data is better

Mallory Lee: 00:49:17

and expect us to just believe it?

Mallory Lee: 00:49:19

cause it's totally biased.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:21

And it

Mallory Lee: 00:49:22

And I literally had just left a comment on one of Linda's posts from common room.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:27

And I said, we need an unbiased, open platform.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:31

Rev tech review to do this stuff.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:34

so that's just kind of where the idea popped into, um, my head and, talk

Mallory Lee: 00:49:39

to Molly about it and she liked it.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:41

So the whole premise is that we have purchased a lot of technology and.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:48

We are not the expert in everything, but we're not afraid to have an opinion.

Mallory Lee: 00:49:52

And I think that is a little different than some of the review sites out

Mallory Lee: 00:49:56

there who don't necessarily try to advocate one way or the other.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:01

They just kind of put it in the hands of customers to, you know, get those ratings,

Mallory Lee: 00:50:05

get that volume, get their scores.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:07

And I don't know about you, but I've worked at several companies that have

Mallory Lee: 00:50:13

been in meetings talking about their bad rating and how can we fix this?

Mallory Lee: 00:50:18

How do we send gift cards to the right people to get them

Mallory Lee: 00:50:22

to go and change our rating?

Mallory Lee: 00:50:24

And it's just really frustrating.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:26

Like it's not the right way for people to learn about technology.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:30

and it's easy.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:31

Easy for me to sit back and try to, but anyway, so what we decided to

Mallory Lee: 00:50:35

do about it was, the RevTech review.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:36

So we meet with the vendor, we get a demo, we do a lot of research.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:41

We try to talk to their customers.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:43

and we try to use it ourselves if, if we can, if there's like a trial or something,

Mallory Lee: 00:50:47

or if we have that past experience.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:50

And then we just do one editorial style review to give

Mallory Lee: 00:50:53

people, our perspective on it.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:55

And so it's been really fun so far.

Mallory Lee: 00:50:58

It's, a passion project, I guess you could say.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:01

and we're not doing much with like any kind of monetization.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:04

So it's a slower growing thing, but it's been great so far.

Justin Norris: 00:51:08

Well, something that's very much needed.

Justin Norris: 00:51:10

As you noted, I mean, the G twos of the world are useful.

Justin Norris: 00:51:13

are ways to influence with gift cards with things.

Justin Norris: 00:51:16

and something that's objective, something that's also coming from a.

Justin Norris: 00:51:20

An operator that's putting their, face on it and stamp on it.

Justin Norris: 00:51:23

I think is, really useful too.

Justin Norris: 00:51:24

So very cool.

Justin Norris: 00:51:26

congrats.

Justin Norris: 00:51:26

I know, uh, from experience, how much, passion projects can take a lot of

Justin Norris: 00:51:30

passion and a lot of work and a lot of free time, wish you good luck with that.

Justin Norris: 00:51:33

And yeah, I just want to say, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Justin Norris: 00:51:36

And we, we went through a lot of different territories, but yeah,

Justin Norris: 00:51:38

just super, super interesting, really appreciate all your insights

Mallory Lee: 00:51:42

Yeah.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:42

Thank you.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:43

Appreciate your time too.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:44

And there are some really good questions in there.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:47

It felt like memory lane for a couple minutes, but, uh, I appreciate it.

Mallory Lee: 00:51:51

It was fun.