Matthew Volm: Yeah. I think the, so one, uh, you know, RevOps is still, still relatively new, right? If you think about like just over the last like four years, still a new, but very fast growing, uh, field and profession.

And so, you know, like with that, right? Like we're still figuring stuff out. Um, and we still will be figuring stuff out probably over the next few years. So, you know, I think, uh, you know, naturally the place where, uh, kind of RevOps has started is a lot of focus on, uh, you know, like new call, like new logo acquisition, right?

Like more, how do you support the sales team or maybe even the marketing team? Uh, and I think now, and it's because that's where the market was, you know, over the last several years, right? You could, if you were a business and you were able to spend a dollar to, you know, get like 50 cents of revenue for like you were, you were rewarded for [00:15:00] that.

Um, but that's not the case anymore. Right now there's a big focused on, uh, net revenue retention, uh, renewal rates, eliminating churn. And so a lot more focused for revenue operations on the post sale and customer success side. And so with that, I think the main things in terms of org structure when it comes to RevOps, you know, is one, um, again, RevOps should span the entire revenue engine, marketing, sales, and post sales, and so it should report to or be aligned with a leader who has those same those same, uh, like responsibilities or things at heart, right?

Which means if you are a rev ops team or person and you are reporting to someone who is the VP of sales, for example, you're really just a sales operations team because while yes, everyone obviously wants what's best for the business, you know, the head of sales is going to have their own comp structure.

They're going to be rewarded and incentivized on certain things. And they're obviously going to think that. The things that they need are [00:16:00] going to be the most important. Uh, and so, you know, same thing if you report to the marketing leader, right? You're really marketing ops. Uh, so, you know, one reporting up through someone who's a, um, like a CRO, uh, is good.

But again, the caveat there is sometimes the CRO is just a glorified VP of sales. So if that is actually the case, Then you're not going to wind up in any better spot. So reporting up through a CRO who actually has a responsibility across the revenue engine of marketing sales and post sales is, you know, call it like preference number one, uh, reporting up directly to the CEO is also a great way to make sure that there's that alignment.

Or even, uh, the COO, um, just because, uh, you know, again, operationally minded supporting the, um, the business as a whole. Uh, you know, everyone seems to like, you know, either, either love or hate the idea of rev ops reporting up to like the CFO, um, [00:17:00] I don't know, I don't necessarily have a strong opinion, I guess, one way or the other on that.

I'm kind of just like, nah, you know, give it a shot. Like, I think in some cases it could work, in other cases it could not. Um, But again, I think the main gotcha thing to look out for is just like, is your leader responsible for just one department or piece of the revenue engine or the whole thing? Um, and you know, ideally you want your goals and objectives to align with someone who is responsible for the goals and objectives of the business when it comes to revenue as a whole, not just a piece of revenue.

Chara: Yeah. Um, complicated function comes with complicated. you know, additions clearly. Um, so it seems like, like you mentioned, you need a champion for all teams, uh, where the budget for the team, uh, isn't favored to either marketing or sales or, uh, customer [00:18:00] success. So, yeah, uh, maybe it evolves as we go and there is, who knows, probably a chief revenue operations officer who rolls up to like a CRO and keeps things sane, right?

Awesome. So, one of the things you touched upon was the fact that it's thRevOpsps team's responsibility to kind of, um, you know, bring together marketing, sales, and customer success. Uh, make sure that they're all aligned on, uh, priorities and are able to, and pretty much are able to streamline, um, you know, how the entire org functions, right?

So where should a revops leader spend their time, um, to make sure that they're able to get this alignment in and make it as painless as possible because just the sound of it, uh, is, I mean, just the idea of it is pretty hard where you're trying to bring together three different functions with three different priorities.

So what are your tips on where revenue operations leaders should spend [00:19:00] time on?

Matthew Volm: You know, it's, I'll say like, it's no different if you look at, you know, call it like the buying process or the, the buying journey journey for someone for like a prospect who's coming in to evaluate your, um, call it your software, right? Like you want, you know, your main goal, right? You want that to be as frictionless as possible.

As possible, and you want to eliminate the number of call it like conversion points, right? Because you know, like every screen you you introduce or every every handoff you introduce is just another opportunity for that person to drop off. And so I think, you know, if you're looking at, you know, rev ops, right?

It's, um, you know, it's the it's the same way, right? Like you're, you're trying to eliminate as much friction from the process as possible. And so looking at those. Conversion points, which are basically the handoffs that occur between those teams or within those teams, is a really good way to [00:20:00] figure out where you have opportunity, um, and how, um, how you could fix those things.

Because the other thing that's really great about that is one, it's entirely focused on, the efficiency of your process, whether it's handoffs that occur within the, within the sales team, for example, or if it's handoffs that occur from marketing to sales or sales to, to CS, or even CS back to sales. If you're talking about an expansion, um, or upsell opportunity, um, you know. One, like focusing, focusing on those is great because it's all about efficiency and effectiveness. Two, it's a current

um, process if you will, and a lot of times it can be solved with better, better process, right, or leveraging, leveraging existing tools, communicating better, right, like things like that, which don't cost you any extra money. Normally, you're not talking about needing to throw a new person at a problem or a new tool at the problem. And then the last reason why those [00:21:00] could be really valuable is because every again every conversion point, right? If you can improve something, you know, like top of funnel, for example, um, that just will compound in value as it goes. down, down your process, right? Um, so again, it's a great way to find areas for improvement, improve them without needing to spend incremental dollars, and then see kind of compounding value as folks go through, um, your process, if you will.

So that's where I would focus is, you know, handoffs are a great place where people, internal processes, stuff can break or get stuck, whether it's people or whether it's tooling or technology. 

Chara: So, um, it seems like one alignment for these handoffs to be successful, uh, an agreed upon process that's very clearly communicated and bought in, uh, by leaders of, uh, marketing, sales, customer success, what have you, right?

So, it sounds like, um, [00:22:00] you need to be great at communication, you need to be great at, uh, you know, tooling, you need to be great at, you know, uh, evaluating your customer's journey as well. It just sounds like a jack of all trades. And just one thing that came to my mind is, given that this feels like a coordination heavy, communication heavy role, have you seen, um, you know, any difference between, uh, an outsourced revops agency versus somebody doing it full time, being part of the company, understanding the culture, or, uh, does it not really matter, um, as long as they, you know, follow the

Matthew Volm: Yeah, I think it, um, right. Classic answer of it. It depends. I think, um, like, depends on, I'll say, like, where you are as a, as a company. Like, there's, um, especially like if you're early on and you're a smaller, you know, smaller company, finding a, um, you Like a contractor or [00:23:00] consultant to who might have like some specialized knowledge, right?

And maybe a tool or something that can help you with, you know, like a quick win. Um, kind of like a project here, a project there. Uh, those can be super super valuable. Um, super helpful. Um, and then as you grow right in your, your company gets bigger and your team gets bigger, you know, I've definitely seen, uh, like some cases where, um, kind of just always having a certain firm or agency around, um, you know, you know, essentially as a part of your team, right?

Who, um, who maybe still like has specialized knowledge expertise in certain areas, but then who also has like seeing what other companies are doing and how they're solving problems, uh, that can also be, um, be super valuable. Um, but if you think about, you know, if you need to drive change or, like I said, build relationships [00:24:00] with all of these different

people, one it's going to be hard regardless, but it'll be better or I'll say easier if it's a team member, not a contractor or consultant. Because again, it's just hard to, you know, those people have multiple clients. They're not embedded in everything day to day. Uh, so it can be hard, uh, to get there with someone like that.

Chara: Yep. Uh, makes perfect sense. Um, and other than, um, just the alignment that you need to drive, uh, it's also, so one of the things that we've observed, uh, working with a lot of different RevOps folks is just the amount of, uh, you know, tactical, uh, day to day things that come across their way. So we saw an example where somebody wanted to, wanted the RevOps person to automate updates on the meeting status Um, one day and then the next day came back and said, Hey, don't automate it. My sales folks are now not updating the right statuses. So we don't want to go back, uh, within a day, [00:25:00] right? So how do you as a revenue operations leader or an ops leader, make sure that your team is able to deliver on these, uh, individual tactical activities, but also don't get buried in it.

And, you know, uh, don't see the forest for the trees, like how do you maintain the team as a strategic team that's able to accelerate growth and not just, hey, can you add this drop down today and take it live in production in the next hour. 

Matthew Volm: Yeah, so definitely starts. Uh, you know, so one kind of got to shift.

I'll say the mindset at the company from one that's reactive to proactive. And I think there's a few ways that you can do that. One is, you know, like every company should have some sort of, like, I don't know, goal setting, um, in place, right? Either like OKRs or some other framework that they use, but as a RevOps team or person, like the first thing that's important to understand is like, what are the company's goals and objectives?

Like, what are we [00:26:00] trying to accomplish? Are we, are we trying like, right? Is it on a quarterly basis or an annual basis? Are we trying to, are we really focused on growing revenue? Are we focused on, uh, renewal rates? Like what are the things that are important to the, the company? Are we trying to raise more money?

Whatever that might be. And then look at all the different things that you could possibly work on over, say, the next, um, quarter or six months, right? Whatever time period is kind of aligned to those company goals and, you know, write down the things that align with those goals or, you know, Objectives. And then from there, you can have some specific projects that also line up with those goals, right?

If your company, for example, is focused on growing revenue by X, you know, you can, you know, support the sales team and generating new logo, uh, new logo growth, support the CS team and, um, you know, generating a certain [00:27:00] renewal rate or, um, or some sort of NRR target, helping the marketing team hit, uh, you know, MQL targets or, you know, again, like product, product or customer marketing efforts, whatever it might be, and then be specific in projects or work pieces, work items that can roll up to each of those, um, kind of KPIs that are again are all aligned with things that the company is focused on, and that's a good way to, uh, like just set the stage of like, hey, for the next quarter or the next six months, here are the things that are important to us because they're important to the company, and then as you go through the quarter, you know, there'll be right shiny objects or things that pop up, um, like what you just mentioned. And some of them may sound horrendous, right? Like, you know, Hey, we got to figure out a way to update lead status or whatever. Some of them might be. Might sound really fun, right? Like some new tool comes along or some new thing, right?

Some new integration that, you know, maybe you'd be like excited to [00:28:00] build. Always reference back to those OKRs or those goals, those objectives that you set up at the beginning of the quarter and just ask yourself, like, hey, does this thing help me achieve any of those, um, any of those objectives that I set for myself?

And be honest, sometimes It won't. Um, sometimes it will. And if it does, but it wasn't on your list, then the next thing you need to be honest about is can you actually do it with all the other things that you have going on? And if not, what would you deprioritize? And then that helps you, um, just figure out like, Oh, yes, this is new.

I didn't think of this when I planned. It should go on the list. It should be at the top of the list. Or this is new. But it doesn't help me accomplish any of these things. And then that also allows you or gives you a way to have discussions with, uh, other people on your team, right? So if you get a request like that, you can say like, well, Hey, you know, these are the things that we said were important to us at the beginning of the quarter.

This thing doesn't seem to be [00:29:00] aligned with any of those. Do we need to readjust what's important or, you know, like, how should we think about that? And then that way, you're not just saying, Yes to everything. And you're not just saying no to everything, but you have something to reference back to about what's important.

And that just allows you to have better conversations with your team members and to, to figure out what should truly be prioritized. 

Chara: Yeah, that makes sense. So you start off with, um, both, uh, start off with a plan that details out what your large projects are going to be, allocate specific swim lanes or time for those individual requests.

And whenever you get things that are outside of the project or outside of the plan, refer back, figure out if you actually have the bandwidth. And I'm assuming, uh, the short of it would be, short of it would be to learn to say, no, And say no nicely, uh, if it doesn't, uh, you know, roll up to your original plan, right?

Yeah. [00:30:00] Yep. 100%. Got it. So that kind of, um, leads me to, uh, the next question. If you're a revenue leader or a revops leader who just joined a new org, uh, I know that for marketing, the running joke is, uh, you know, if you're a CMO and you just joined, first thing you need to do is do a website revamp. So, uh, what is the 90 day plan that you would recommend for a revops leader who's just joined, you know, a company that's big enough, uh, to need like a director of revops?

Matthew Volm: Yeah, I think the, I guess the two big things are like one go on, um, call it like a, a listening tour, uh, try to, you know, understand, like one build relationships with people across marketing, sales, uh, post sales, customer success, uh, that's one, um, you know, that means like set up one on ones, interview people, don't just do it with, um, And don't just do it with, call it the leaders of each department.

Do [00:31:00] it with, uh, you know, do it with folks who are individual contributors, um, and other different, um, uh, kind of titles as well, which leads me to the, to the second thing is, um, in addition to just, right, going on that listening tour is actually, uh, shadow some people, um, on their roles, right? Sit on, on some calls with the sales team, actually watch your sales team.

Input or not input, like work in the CRM, um, do the same with your customer success team, you know, sit on a QBR with them, understand the process of what they go through, have them walk you through all the different steps that they need to take to get ready for that. or renewal discussion and do the same thing with folks on the marketing side, whether it's like how do they prepare for a new campaign or how do they hand things off from, um, you know, marketing to sales, uh, like actually watching the way that people work is a great way to understand [00:32:00] again, like where there's opportunities for improvement and within if you do those two things, uh, what will come out of it is, you know, want a long list of stuff for you to do. Some of it will be big projects that will take time for you to do. A lot of it will actually be probably smaller things and like some quick wins that you can do pretty quickly in order to demonstrate value give value to the team that you're just joining and that can set you up for a great relationship from the start 

Chara: Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

So when you Talk just to like leaders of functions or probably slightly removed from the ICs probably tend to miss out on ground level realities that You know ops could fix. And so, yeah, make friends with everybody you need to deal with on a day to day basis and not just the folks you meet once a quarter, right?

That makes perfect sense. So, we do have a question [00:33:00] from the audience. I'm just going to quickly put it up on stage. So, this is something that I'm also curious about. How do you measure success of the RevOps function in an organization given that it's quite broad and involves a lot of responsibilities?

 So I'd love to hear about what KPIs you typically track and how you measure success for the function. 

Matthew Volm: Yeah, I guess, uh, well, I'll say that you measuring success of the RevOps function just comes down to how you define the success. And so I'll use like an OKR, like OKRs as an example, kind of based on what I was chatting about before.

So, you know, what I, um, you know, you know, Vikash on your team, right? We used to work at an OKR company that was building OKR software. So, you know, for us, everything you start with company level objectives, right? The company comes up with like three or four things that are important to them for the next quarter.

From [00:34:00] there, then your teams go out and they come up with team level objectives that align with those company objectives. And then you come up with, uh, kind of key results, ways that you're going to measure the success of those, um, of those different objectives, right? So it could be, you know, we want to close X dollars of new business.

We want to improve the sales cycle from 30 days to 25 days. Uh, we want to enter a new, a new market. We want to increase renewal rates from 85 percent to 90 percent for the quarter, right? Whatever it might be, you know, your, your marketing, your sales team, and your CS team is going to have those specific KPIs that they're going to be, uh, chasing, right.

Or, or, or tracking or measuring against, and the success of those metrics is the success of your team as well, because you and RevOps have the ability to directly impact all of those things, right? Take, um, you know, take [00:35:00] new business generation, for example, on the sales team. If your sales team is, you know, has a, you know, X dollars of ARR that they're trying to close in the quarter, what can you do to, to help them achieve that?

Well, you know, one, are there, are there process, um, are there process improvements you can make that would eliminate manual time that they're spending, non selling time that they're selling. So they can now get freed up to do more prospecting or, uh, you know, have, have more time for things. Can you deliver new technology or a better way to help them prepare for calls?

Right. So they can spend less time, but be more prepared for some of those new prospect calls that they might have. Those are all things that, you know, the rev ops team directly impacts, right? If you improve a process or if you deploy a new tool, or if you build the flow in salesforce that is supposed to make it easier on your sales team that, like I said, that saves them time, right?

You can [00:36:00] quantify that time as well. It doesn't need to be super precise. We can say, Hey, by doing this thing, if we save you. 10 minutes today and you have five sales reps, right? That's 50 minutes a day over the course of, you know what? 260 business days or something a year like that stuff all adds up, right?

That's not like selling time, um, that they can, that they can use. So that's how I've always approached it. When it comes to the success of the rev ops function is it's no different than Uh, KPIs that you're marketing sales and CS team are measuring and the work that you're doing or the projects that you're doing should directly impact those results and you should be able to quantify it, uh, like I said, 

Chara: Got it.

So, given that revops is a function operates for, uh, the greater good, uh, it seems like you need to first be aware of the KPIs of each individual function, uh, and then determine how you [00:37:00] contribute to the improvement of those KPIs. And then communicate, uh, how you impacted each one of those KPIs.

Awesome. So, that gets me thinking, um, given that RevOps, or the impact of RevOps is spread across functions, uh, and impacts multiple different KPIs, um, in the GTM org, how do you even wrangle, um, all the data together and report on it, right? 

Because you might have improved sales process, uh, which is recorded in your CRM, in terms of Uh, you know, number of days it takes to close a deal, when from X to Y.

Uh, whereas when it comes to marketing, it's probably how long it took for, uh, a lead to go from a lead to a meeting. Sounds like the KPIs that RevOps impact typically lives in multiple different tools, or is that typically not the case? And is that one of the first things that a RevOps function [00:38:00] has to solve for to be able to unify all of this?

What have you seen work? 

Matthew Volm: Yeah. I think the, so the reality is that every, every revenue team, you'll definitely have different tools and systems across marketing sales and post sales. Uh, you know, so like why, and yeah, you can, and actually like, I don't think, I think this whole notion of like trying to get a like single source of truth is, um, Is I don't know more like a mirage than than anything because in reality everybody is going to be used like marketing sales and CS are all going to have their different tools.

No one's going to be operating out of one system and so instead of a single source of truth you're going to have this notion of like distributed source of truth and there is technology and software out there to help you. help you achieve, um, those things, right? To make sure that the right data points are getting into the right system.

So whether you're looking in CS tool, your marketing automation tool, you're seeing the same thing, but [00:39:00] regardless of the tooling, the main thing, and maybe this goes back to like one of the other things that you can do in the first 90 days, um, uh, of a new rev ops role is that's really important regardless of whether you're using technology to help you solve this or not, is have some sort of.

Uh, like data dictionary, um, where it's like you just. Define what each thing is, right? So like when someone says MQL at your company, like, what does that mean? Right. And like, be specific. Is that like, Oh, that's the number of the number of new contacts created in any given time period that fit this criteria based on what we see in Marketo or HubSpot, right.

Um, you know, like just put it down so that everybody agrees. Um, or, you know, again, like what is. What does ARR mean? Like, what does ACV mean? Like, those are all things like, you know, make sure it's like, Oh, that is this, the [00:40:00] collection of this field in Salesforce based on new business opportunities, right? Um, so I think it's okay that stuff spreads across different tools.

I think rather than try to solve that problem, try to solve the problem of just getting everybody on the same page so that, you know, when your CEO says, or when your head of marketing says MQLs, Your CEO is also thinking the same thing. Or when you're, uh, like when your VP of sales says, here's how much pipeline we have, that everyone else understands what they mean and that you all aren't talking about different things.

So, so yeah, having some sort of documentation, whether it's on like a shared confluence page or a spreadsheet, again, just start somewhere, um, and document all the different, all the different ways that, All the different things you should be measuring, um, and how they should be measured. And then obviously that should be a living, breathing document that'll change as your process changes, as your people change, as your tooling and [00:41:00] your systems change.

Chara: That makes sense. So first get to know the jargon and the lingo in your company. 

Because in our earlier, one of, in one of my previous organizations, Four to six weeks was the internal jargon for, Hey, we're not picking that up, right? 

So, uh, it always pays to know, uh, what a company jargon means. So we have another interesting question, uh, from the audience.

So, um, organizations are going to look at RevOps, uh, you know, to figure out how to adopt AI into GTM motion. Any advice on how to be proactive in facilitating adoption by different cross functional leaders? And I think this goes beyond just, um, Yeah, like, how do you think about, um, just getting different functions to adopt AI and any tooling or new processes for that matter?

Matthew Volm: Yeah, so I uh, I think so. I think one with AI right [00:42:00] now, uh, it's a little bit of um, it's like a it's like a hammer try and find a nail right now Uh, and I think I I compare it. It's like the early days of if you think back to when um, like the cloud first started to to take off right and everybody was everyone was talking about their products being like Cloud based and right like access from anywhere and like all this stuff, right?

Like you don't hear like no one mentions that anymore when no one markets their software products is like, you know Like hey, like, you know cloud first right cuz like you just take that for granted You're like, yes, I can log into your tool anywhere in the world without needing to connect to like some physical server It's great.

I think we'll get to a point with AI as well, where it should be focused. Like the first thing you should always start with is the problem, not the solution, like AI and technology as a solution, it is not a problem, right? So like first start with the problem that needs to be solved. So like in this, in this case, you know, how do you adopt [00:43:00] AI into the go to market motion?

And it's like, well, first look at like what problems. Do you, do you have in your go to market motion that need to be solved for, and then how can you, and then, you know, where does AI or any other piece of technology, right, potentially fit in to solve those problems? The other thing is AI is not going to be the only solution to any of the problems that you have.

There are people, there is process, there are, uh, there are manual things with spreadsheets and other, other stuff that you can do. I think the expectation, I guess the place to start, like I said, start with the problem and maybe those problems are handoffs, like I mentioned before, between marketing and sales, sales to CS, or even within any of those teams.

Maybe the problems are, you know, the fact that. You don't have any, like you've got all these, uh, Gong recordings or, you know, sales call recordings, but you're not doing anything with them and you're not improving, you know, you're not improving your sales teams performance. [00:44:00] Like those are all things or maybe one rep on your team is doing a lot better than the other.

Another rep and you're trying to figure out, like, what are they doing that they're not doing right? Like, that's where I can, like, come in and, like, help you solve those problems, but you can't just look at or any piece of technology and say, like, Oh, yeah, let's apply that solution here again, because it's backwards.

Start with the problem and with the solution. And especially if you're talking cross functional, like I said before, those handoff, um, points are, are, are big areas for, um, for, um, For friction and a great place where you can, um, kind of solve for problems with technology. And then again, look for anywhere that people are spending, are spending like manual time and effort, right?

Things like preparing, uh, preparing for, uh, for sales calls, preparing for, um, renewals, right? If they're just pulling data from different systems, putting it into a PowerPoint, like [00:45:00] anything that involves manual processes or handoffs between teams are great. Thank you. great candidates for where you can apply AI and technology to help you solve those problems.

Chara: Got it. So essentially first identify the problems and like you said first check whether those problems aligned to your first 90 days and the overall strategy and agreement that you had with all your functional leaders. See if the problem really needs or can be solved by AI and then try to get an option for AI rather than starting AI first and And then figuring out the nail, uh, to hammer.

Makes perfect sense. Yeah. Alright. Uh, I think we have another question, which is probably closer to you. Uh, can you suggest a book or co uh, course for somebody getting started with RevOps? I know of a awesome community that has a lot of this. What do you think? 

Matthew Volm: So we, um, [00:46:00] so with courses, there are, I guess, uh, well, you know, a bunch of different bunch of different options.

So we, um, so Rev Ops Co op on our website, we have some courses from like. Revops course, sales ops course. We have a HubSpot specific course. So there are some, uh, like on demand courses like that, uh, through Revops co op that you can, uh, that you can take. Um, there's also just a lot of learning that can happen, call it in the.

Community, um, that, you know, is like free of charge. Right. So like people, uh, you know, people joining our Slack group, having conversations there, attending some of the digital events that we do that are, are, are free. Uh, so those are all great ways to kind of level up on different elements of revenue operations and kind of hear directly from practitioners in the field.

And then the other thing I'll mention is, uh, you know, like HubSpot has a bunch of, uh, free. Like certifications and [00:47:00] courses, uh, that you can take as well. That aren't just like a lot that are not just HubSpot system specific. And then if you are looking at things like, um, like Salesforce, uh, specific stuff where you want to learn more about that, Particular piece of technology.

There's Trailhead and all of those things that are out there. So that's what I kind of mentioned. You got RevOps Co op in communities like us where you can participate in our Slack group, our digital events for free, learn a lot there. We've got courses, on demand courses that you can purchase from us as well.

Look at HubSpot as another one for some free courses and then Salesforce Trailhead for free. Salesforce specific stuff. And, um, and yeah, I don't have any. I know there are a few. I have seen a few books out there on revenue operations. Um, I've not read any of them myself, so I don't have any. Don't have any book guidance for you right now.

Chara: All right. [00:48:00] So I guess, um, HubSpot, Trailhead and probably just, uh, joined RevOps Co op listening to the RevOps experts. And maybe just take a download of all of that. That's a good use case. Get a summary, just read that. And that's a great book on RevOps. Yeah. All right. Awesome. Uh, Ooh, uh, we have one of our favorites.

Uh, this always gets interesting answers. So what are your three favorite tools for automation? 

Matthew Volm: So the, I guess the biggest tools that, that we use. So one I like to, um, Like make sure, like limit the amount of tooling that you have, just because like every new thing that you add is just going to, it's one more thing that you need to manage.

It's one more integration that you need to build. It's one more data point that's going to start flowing back and forth, and all those things just get more complicated, right? So make sure that, like, if you're adding a new [00:49:00] tool, it's that you've evaluated all of your current technology, uh, for, uh, like whether or not it can do the thing you want it to do and that you've ruled all of them.

And so for us, the, the biggest, uh, biggest ones, especially around, I guess, automation are, I mean, we use HubSpot, Notion and Zapier for basically like everything. Um, so Zapier, you can do, you know, you can connect HubSpot, you can connect Notion, you can connect Stripe. all the different things. Um, they've got the news happier tables, uh, like functionality, which kind of allows you to create these like databases and data sets and, um, runs apps on specific columns and fields and properties.

So that's a big one. That's a big one for us. Uh, and then we use notion for like all of our Uh, like company, um, company stuff. And there's some built in automation and notion. That's great, especially for like project [00:50:00] management and like assigning tasks and stuff automatically to, um, to people with certain due dates.

Uh, so that's another one. And then HubSpot has all of the built in automation, uh, in terms of, you know, marketing across marketing, uh, customer success, support, and then sales. So those are the big three. Um, that we use, but I have seen a lot of other, uh, you know, like automation tools, um, kind of pop up, um, especially within our, um, community.

So obviously, like, you know, RevenueHero does a lot of, um, like automation on, like the, the scheduling. Um, side for you. Um, and then there's some other tools that I've come across. Um, so I mentioned, uh, I mentioned the revenue hero, which we obviously know about. There's, um, default is another one, uh, that does, um, Some like, uh, [00:51:00] workflow automation, uh, scale, uh, scale stack, uh, is it scale stack.

io or. com? I can't remember. Um, they're another one. Uh, sync, um, is another one. Uh, seam AI is another one. So those are like some of the newer, uh, like those newer kind of automation, uh, like purely automation, uh, tools that. That I've seen. Like I said, I haven't used any of them. I've just seen them pop up in the community.

Chara: Got it. So, personally used recommendations would be Zapier, HubSpot, Notion. And, uh, thanks for the revenue hero plug. And the rest, we'll definitely summarize, uh, on the transcript. So, um, when I build the summary out of this transcript and I create a blog post out of this, I would be remiss to not have, uh, lines about ChatGPT, uh, [00:52:00] Matt.

So have you seen, uh, RevOps folks use ChatGPT, uh, to make their lives easier? Uh, if yes, what is the most interesting, uh, use case you've seen them use it for? If not, that's all right. I already have ChatGPT in the transcript and I will, I'll solve for what 

Matthew Volm: yeah, I think the two, uh, so yeah, the two biggest things are, summarizing, summarizing meetings and, and transcripts, right?

Like it does a really good job of like, whether it's a, uh, like a zoom call that you have or a long form piece of content, like if you just, if you feed it a bunch of words, it'll do a good job of summarizing stuff for you. Um, so that's one way I've seen RevOps folks use it. And then the other is a similar, uh, kind of like turning.

I'll say like unstructured data into structured data. So if you have, um, and like, so any of those things where you might be spending some time on like [00:53:00] manual analysis. So like someone, uh, in the community the other day. They had, uh, I can't remember if it was Salesforce or HubSpot that they had a bunch of, um, like, uh, like they had a property that just had a bunch of like random, uh, like open text that was, it was an open text field and it had a bunch of random, like different values in it and they wanted to turn it into.

Um, I don't know, like a pick list or like something, something more structured. And so they just, um, kind of like fed the data into chat GPT and was like, Hey, like put this into five categories for me. And, um, and it did a good job of that. So, uh, so that's the other thing is if you've got like, like kind of standard data analysis where, um, You would need to spend some time on it.

Uh, and you want to turn, like I said, some of that unstructured into structured, um, mm-hmm. data and just eliminate some of the steps there. Um, that's another, a [00:54:00] second area that I've seen people using it for. 

Chara: Awesome. Uh, so just like for everybody else, when you have a lot of data, uh, you don't have the time to go through it.

All the patients, uh, let ChatGPT do it, especially for ops folks who I'm assuming are always trying to tam the chaos that is the CRM data. I think, uh, ChatGPT is a good sidekick, uh, to help you. Awesome. We'll just take a couple of more questions, uh, given that we're running short on time. So, uh, you're talking about helping sales prepare PowerPoint for the prospects in a quicker way.

How do you manage to do it? We have a big pain around it. 

Matthew Volm: So, uh, so I don't have, uh, so one, I don't have direct, um, I'll say experience there, but again, start with the, like, start with the problem. Um, so when I mentioned like sales creating a, like, if it's a, you know, a custom proposal or like a deck or something, right?

[00:55:00] Like what, like first, like, what's the actual problem? Like, is it that you have one deck and they've got to just like change, um, like change the names in it? Is it that you have a, like, you're trying to create a unique demo instance for each prospect that you have? Uh, You know, because again, like depending on the problem, um, you could have different solutions.

So I have seen there are, um, I have seen, I can't remember the name of the company that, um, that like helps, um, is a, again, an AI tool for sales teams to create like customized pitch decks and stuff very quickly. So one, you know, there could be some tooling, um, out there that could help you solve that particular problem.

The other though, is if it's more on, um, like the demoing side, for example. And if it is sales related, so new prospects, right? Um, you know, there are, there's like demo technology out there that can help you, uh, like easily run, like easily [00:56:00] spin up, um, like a unique kind of demo. instance for each prospect that you have that you can customize.

Um, you know, whether it's like names or data points or things like that, without having to like have an engineering team do it for you. So that's, um, so yeah, that's one way. Uh, that's one way that you can, um, kind of look at that depending on where the biggest problem is for you. 

Chara: Awesome. Uh, so I know Matt probably, uh, is not going to like me for this, but one of the tools that I would, uh, recommend having personally used it is Gamma dot app, uh, right, uh, which helps teams generate, uh, really beautiful PPTs customized to their requirements based on, uh, prompts and just in terms of better demos, uh, which also, which Matt covered. Uh, I've heard really interesting things about SalesRoom. Uh, I just recently joined a call on SalesRoom. Um, and saw that as a sales rep, you [00:57:00] get awesome prompts whenever, um, you know, the prospect mentions your competitor and, you know, tells them exactly what to talk about. Um, but yeah, I think the more important thing is, uh, helping your sales team customize their decks to have dynamic content about the customer, uh, the company names and so on. Um, but if you're looking for more tools, uh, then I would say Gamma and Salesforce. All right. Um, I think that's about it in terms of questions. So, Matt, I always like to learn from folks who've been there, done it in a lot of cases. So, um, I personally, whenever I monitor Ops Co op, I see great answers and great conversations from folks like Jeff Ignacio and Rex Bibberston. Uh, who are folks that, um, you would recommend, um, you know, someone who's looking to learn, uh, revops or is new to the [00:58:00] industry?

Like, uh, who are some of the revops leaders that, uh, you think folks should follow? 

Matthew Volm: Yeah. So, um, so yeah, there's a couple out there. So you mentioned Jeff Ignacio, he's a good one who does a lot of things across revenue operations, and he's worked at large companies like Amazon and Google, and he's worked at like smaller startups, uh, as well.

So he has a great perspective across the, uh, kind of the RevOps, uh, sphere, if you will. Uh, there's some folks out there that if you're looking for, I'll say like systems specific. Uh, uh, help or, or knowledge that would be good. So like Jackie Leahy is a, um, uh, a founder, uh, of, um, this, uh, this agency, uh, lot of like, like very like kind of Salesforce and like systems heavy, but a lot of really good work on the sales side, um, especially she just spoke at our, our conference, um, [00:59:00] last week and then, uh, there are, there's a whole team actually at.

that is dedicated to, um, to, to rev ops. Uh, so like one guy is Steve Silver. He's actually in the process of retiring. Uh, but he's got, there's like a team of like eight people at Forrester that are focused on revenue operations. So they provide, um, just a lot of good, a lot of good stuff on kind of rev ops and, uh, and the market.

So those are some, those are some folks that, uh, Kind of initially come to mind. And actually, well, not Natalie Furness is another one who, uh, she's based out of the UK, runs an agency, but she puts out a lot of really good content to on, um, kind of rev ops started mostly on the HubSpot side now does like HubSpot and Salesforce.

Um, but, um, but she does a lot of, a lot of good stuff too. 

Chara: Awesome. So Natalie Furness, Jackie Leahy, Jeff Ignacio, um, That's great. So, um, we're on time. Uh, [01:00:00] so, Matt, where should people find you? Uh, and we'll leave it there. 

Matthew Volm: Yeah, so you can find me, uh, like I said, revops, uh, revopscoop.com. If you join our community, you'll get, um, emails and some Slack messages and stuff from me as part of the onboarding process.

You can hit me up in Slack or email. And then I'm on LinkedIn, too. If you just search, uh, if you just search Matthew Volm, you'll be able to find me and happy to connect with anybody there on LinkedIn as well. 

Chara: Awesome. Um, great. So folks, go check out, uh, Matt, Jackie, Natalie, uh, and Waunakee. Uh, I just Googled Waunakee and saw really cute.

We're the only Waunakee in the world. Yeah. Looks like a great place to visit. Matt, thank you so much. This is a great session. Uh, and thank you everybody for joining in on all the great questions. 

Matthew Volm: Yeah. Thanks, Char. Thanks to y'all. I'll see ya. 

Chara: See ya. 

Matthew Volm: Bye bye.

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