(888) 815-0802How Notting Hill Can Improve Your RevOps Focus, with Charlie Cowan [Episode 1143]
In this week’s episode, Alastair and Howard are once again joined by Charlie Cowan (aka RevOpsCharlie), a renowned author and expert in Revenue Operations acceleration. Together, they delve into the transformative power of RevOps in modern business, emphasizing the critical balance between the external, customer-centric aspects, and the internal operational components. You will hear valuable insights into the agile approach needed to navigate the evolving landscape of sales, customer success, marketing, and AI, all while ensuring a seamless and engaging experience for customers.
Podcast Transcript:
00:00:00:06 – 00:00:35:23
Speaker
Man, is he English! He has to bring up the Hugh Grant…Notting Hill. (Laughing) Well, we got Julia Roberts in there. It’s your backyard, we talked about it. You need to specialize. You certainly understand Notting Hill so it’s perfect. (Laughing…)
Welcome back, everybody, to this week’s Sales Strategy and Enablement podcast. I’m Alastair Woolcock, CSRO here at Revenue.io. We’re joined by my co-host Howard Brown, successful entrepreneur, founder and guru at all things artificial intelligence and revenue science.
00:00:36:04 – 00:01:00:13
Speaker
Howard, how are you doing today? I’m fabulous. It’s good to see you. Welcome, Charlie. It’s great to be with you again. Thank you, Charlie. We are thrilled to have you back. It’s Charlie Cowan, the RevOpsCharlie, Charlie Cowan. You’ve been a thought leader in the space of RevOps for many years now and also pioneered some of the books, one of which I love, How to Sell Tech.”
00:01:00:15 – 00:01:27:19
Speaker
Brilliant insights inside there. Charlie, it’s just wonderful to have you back here today. Thanks very much. Great to chat with you both and talk about my favorite subject. Yes, rev UPS. Now, we had a really lively conversation last time about, you know, the automation, the data and the raw impact, the generative AI and AI’s having itself today. I want to shift to like more of the practical application of some of the changes we need to make.
00:01:27:23 – 00:01:53:01
Speaker
And I want to start with a news wire that came out about 30 days ago roughly, and it was McKinsey and Company, a McKinsey company, cited that amongst Fortune 100 companies, those that have a S.R.O., which is a more progressive role in the world of robots now. So. Chief Revenue Officer, instead of just the Chief sales officer, they grow 1.8 times faster and higher revenue than their peers.
00:01:53:03 – 00:02:12:22
Speaker
So we are seeing the impact now, Charlie, of rev ops in the Fortune 100. We’re seeing the linkage between sales, customer success marketing and all of the tooling and data come together. I guess showing up, McKinsey is espousing it in the biggest companies in the world. And look, every startup these days should be embracing that approach as well.
00:02:13:00 – 00:02:31:00
Speaker
But you’ve a really interesting way of articulating how to pull this together in a flywheel in terms of the the continuous nature of all of this. So let’s dive into the rev up, surely flywheel, if we can, and just talk a little bit about how you help companies conceptualize and get these kind of the gains that McKinsey is talking about.
00:02:31:02 – 00:03:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, just to encapsulate what revenue operations is as a as a topic, it’s about aligning marketing, sales and customer success into one unified process. And the reason why we do that, from my perspective, is that over the last five or six years, especially going through COVID, the way that customers are buyers want to buy has completely changed. They’ve got no interest being on the receiving end of ATSDR emails that all look exactly the same every day.
00:03:03:22 – 00:03:37:00
Speaker
They’ve got no interest not being spammed, and so they’re taking control of how they want to buy. And a lot of that is involving them connecting with their peers and private slack communities. It is going to GTA and looking at some of that grids, it is private Whatsapps it’s the dark funnel as it’s referred to and at the point when they pretty much know what they want to do, that’s when they put their hand up and they start speaking to two vendors.
00:03:37:02 – 00:04:11:00
Speaker
I think Dawn has a stat that customers go 87% of the way through their entire buying cycle before they put their hand up and speak to a vendor. And so when we think about revenue operations, instead of it being us looking out to the market and going, right, how do we do a better job? I truly believe that we need to look inwards at our business from the external perspective of our prospects of our customers, and importantly, they now our partners, whether that’s consulting or reseller partners.
00:04:11:02 – 00:04:39:09
Speaker
And so the the flywheel that you talk about, which I describe with all of my clients, if you imagine close your eyes and visualize a circle, a flywheel going clockwise and explain to two halves. The top half is very much the external aspects of the revenue acceleration flywheel. And so in the top half we’re talking about things like that dark funnel that I mentioned.
00:04:39:11 – 00:05:08:14
Speaker
We’re talking about things like the content that you’re creating on your website and your social feeds. We’re talking about the buying experience that your buyer goes through as they move from your marketing teams to your SDR, your A’s and on to onboarding. We’re talking about the contracting process, what it’s like to negotiate with you, the onboarding and adoption, and then on into your systems and any upsell and hopefully renewal and not churn.
00:05:08:20 – 00:05:31:18
Speaker
So that whole experience is an external one. What’s it like to be a buyer of your services? And that is very, very strategic, is not a tactical exercise at all. So to continue thinking about the flywheel, we now go down to the bottom half and we continue around and these are very much the internal aspects of revenue operations.
00:05:31:20 – 00:05:59:12
Speaker
So here we’re thinking about the things that are most commonly thought of as as robots. So it’s about our systems, it’s about our org structure, it’s about the data that we’re using. It’s about maybe some of our processes or how we forecast of how we compensate people. And you obviously need all of this. This is the core of of revolts, but it’s only there in support of the capabilities that are in the top path, which is how a buyers perceive us.
00:05:59:14 – 00:06:22:12
Speaker
One of the things that I’ve really experienced in the rev ops community is that a lot of my professional colleagues have come from a marketing ops or a sales ops background, which was quite internally focused and quite tactical and data driven. And one of the most common questions that I see in the communities is how do I become more strategic?
00:06:22:12 – 00:06:49:14
Speaker
How do I get a C at the executive leadership table? How do I show and demonstrate that revenue operations is critical to the future of the business? And for me, it’s about that top half of the flywheel. You’ve got to get out of the office, you’ve got to go and speak to customers, you’ve got to go and speak to prospects and partners and really understand their view of the world and how are they trying to solve their problems and how does your buying experience support them?
00:06:49:14 – 00:07:12:14
Speaker
And that, you know, as we think about that, Howard, that linkage to the customer, the linkage to engagement, that is when we talk to heads of rival shoulder ops people, we talk to executives say that’s where these things often break down. I think to Charlie’s point is the top half of the flywheel, it isn’t being just enough. Your Web office is not sales ops to point, though.
00:07:12:16 – 00:07:39:14
Speaker
My it you are thinking through engagement. You missed the mark. Hey, you know, hard to see I think you know I know you’re going to agree with Charlie in terms of the engagement the top half of the flywheel. But how are you advising people on that, addressing that issue? Like how do you move from being sales ops 2.0 to actually being genuine revolve say, well, how do how do we synthesize and really be buyer centric, focused or customer centric?
00:07:39:19 – 00:08:17:09
Speaker
Well, and I love Charlie’s example of using a flywheel with a a top half and a bottom half. And I think what sits squarely in the middle is the customer, like this whole whole exercise is to deliver a better customer or buying experience. And if you are not focused on doing that, you will miss the boat. So the entirety of this exercise for every business today around go to market and customer retention and customer service and support has to be put the customer in the middle.
00:08:17:15 – 00:08:55:22
Speaker
And everything we do, everything we create is how to help them by how to help them have a better experience with your brand, with your people. And so if that is at the center point, all of the data exercise, all of the training, all of the enablement should be how to provide that better experience. Because companies that don’t think about their customer in the center and are architecting systems to provide a unique, a special a great expense difference for their buyers and customers are going to be left behind.
00:08:56:00 – 00:09:25:04
Speaker
So for me, when we think about these exercises, it’s also critical to think how do I provide a great experience for my buyer customer? Well, it definitely involves creating a great worker experience. And Charlie, I know back from your days at a Perio, that’s something we talked about was how do we create a great worker experience? Because if you create a great experience for your reps, they’re far better suited to provide a great experience for their buyers or customers.
00:09:25:09 – 00:09:53:13
Speaker
But if you leave out their experience of what they need to provide that experience, guess what? They’re going to be miserable. They’re not going to be equipped with the information, the insights to provide that great experience and those customers and buyers will suffer. So you can’t just think about your customers. Yes, they’re at the center, but every engagement is with a human being, is with a piece of content, is with your brand.
00:09:53:15 – 00:10:15:21
Speaker
And so focus on the customer. Think about all of their touchpoints and work towards building a great experience for that customer. Yeah, absolutely. I think a bit of the film Notting Hill, and there’s the scene where Julia Roberts is standing in front of Hugh Grant. You know, I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.
00:10:15:23 – 00:10:38:16
Speaker
And it’s stripping away all of the celebrity and all of that. And I think a lot of that with with this sales person and the buyer interaction. We built so much stuff around the different systems and recording and this and that. And at the end of the day, it just needs to be a salesperson standing in front of a buyer trying to help their business.
00:10:38:16 – 00:11:08:16
Speaker
And if you can allow them to have that, then all of this other stuff should just disappear into the background. Man, is he English! He has to bring up the Hugh Grant…Notting Hill. (Laughing) Well, we got Julia Roberts in there. It’s your backyard, we talked about it. You need to specialize. You certainly understand Notting Hill so it’s perfect. (Laughing…)So I think what’s really interesting to me, I wouldn’t draw the analogy back to the fly, because all of what we’re talking in terms of making this happen, remember, there’s two halves, and I don’t think anybody’s actually really in debate us on.
00:11:08:18 – 00:11:42:20
Speaker
But I will say that I think people don’t actually treat it as a as a fly wheel. They have a big wheel and then you got a little tiny wheel on customer engagement. Well, what happens when I’m turning back? It’s always going to swing back to the bottom half of ops. If you are equal. Leigh, approaching both the engagement, the customer side equal bigger in rebels as you are the internal ops, you’re never going to actually get a robots model.
00:11:42:22 – 00:12:03:03
Speaker
You’re going to have veneer metrics, you have things to sit there. But but it is the two halves being equally balanced that actually make the flywheel move correctly. And I think for a lot of ops professionals, they’re not comfortable with that. You know. And Charlie, have you seen that? Is that like is that a truism like it the flywheel needs to be equal to work?
00:12:03:09 – 00:12:26:22
Speaker
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. And you know, one question that comes up is like, is is this just for, you know, start ups as though I start the flywheel from day one? But no, this is just as applicable to any organization, even if they’re, you know, very well developed and have got a very extensive redox function because these capabilities can always be improved by a history teacher at school.
00:12:26:22 – 00:12:45:15
Speaker
I remember saying I’d never give 100% because you could always do better, which I thought was a little bit mean, but you can always improve. And so even if you are a very well developed global organization, you can still use that flywheel. And the second question that comes up a lot is, well, where should I stall on the flywheel?
00:12:45:17 – 00:13:04:07
Speaker
And to me it doesn’t really matter. Stall wherever because you’re going to go round in a circle and you’re going to end up at the store pretty quickly. So whether you start with your strategy and your old structure or whether you start with the buyer’s experience and some of the sales content over on the other side, it’s just about getting started somewhere and iteratively improving.
00:13:04:07 – 00:13:29:14
Speaker
All of these, you never get to the end. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s a flywheel and not a line. There is no end. You can keep going forever. Yeah, you know, I love that in so many ways, Charlie, because I think people get intimidated. They read rev ops and the complexity and, you know, you have to reorg your entire business and who’s going to own rev ops is it going to be marketing, sales or operations?
00:13:29:16 – 00:13:53:16
Speaker
And, you know, what do we do with comp structures and everything else? Start with something simple. What is it that you want to improve? What part of your business do you believe that you can improve in the shortest period of time that will have the largest impact out there? Figure out what that is and then build out a blueprint, build out a plan.
00:13:53:16 – 00:14:25:14
Speaker
But you have to start somewhere. And I think people get intimidated by, wow, there’s data governance. And now I need a data science team and I need a sales organization that’s aligned with marketing in a different way. And we have to have a like just find somewhere to start, start the process, bring in some experts like Charlie, start to evaluate the current situation, identify the pain, the challenge of what value you want to move towards and work and get start doing.
00:14:25:16 – 00:14:51:19
Speaker
Don’t be afraid like the finger akhmedov. It’s too big, it’s too overwhelming. Yeah, we we overcomplicate things and we could learn a lot from our product colleagues over on the other side who are doing rapid experimentation. They’re creating hypothesis, they’re running AB tests that just testing crazy, crazy, crazy on the product. And we don’t tend to replicate that in go to market.
00:14:51:21 – 00:15:10:13
Speaker
We spend a lot of time planning and thinking when instead, which is too big. You know, we’ve got a hypothesis. We think that if we put a diagnostic tool on the website, it’ll help customers to understand the value, right? Well, let’s just spin up a minimum viable product for that diagnostic and get it on the website this afternoon or later this week.
00:15:10:19 – 00:15:38:11
Speaker
These things don’t have to take months and months tests if it works right and go on to the next thing. In the flywheel man, he sells like Alistair Woolcock, right? And like just iterate go right. Yeah yeah I’m very big on and I love your, your thinking there Charlie the the agile style approach of development in go to market is absolutely front and center right and that’s why you need the flywheel because you need the agility associated with that.
00:15:38:11 – 00:16:02:05
Speaker
Right. And be okay to get things wrong. Yeah, I mean I’ve heard many an enterprise so like you know what we did in certain combinations of things, it didn’t work as intended. All right. Well, you know what? Let’s move on to the next thing. Fail fair. Yes, Yes. Because as we’ve discussed both the last episode of this one, the rate of automation and I am by tier means you need to fit that right.
00:16:02:05 – 00:16:34:02
Speaker
And by the way, that I feel fossil’s me, you will succeed just as quick, right again as back to the balancing orbits of the Agile approach lowercase a brought in to go to market. Really important I think Charlie is is bang on advice and to your earlier point, it’s not just startups as we started with McKinsey’s now proving again back to their statement Fortune one hundreds with these models with this structure in place in space, you don’t have a Sierra without a rbob steam 1.8 times faster revenue growth than the Fortune Fortune 100 space.
00:16:34:03 – 00:17:01:04
Speaker
It’s even more pronounced when you go further down market. So let’s be agile, let’s let’s go break a few things and test accordingly. You know, on that, Charlie, you know, and I know we’re going to run out of time here soon, but in the spirit of failure, what’s something that you’ve seen that people fail on? And this I think certainly my experience in enterprise SAS, things just take too long to get delivered.
00:17:01:04 – 00:17:29:07
Speaker
There’s a lot of planning, a lot of ideas, and then at the end of the year you go, Oh, we were going to do that webinar, where are we on something? And so things just don’t travel from idea to execution fast enough. And in many ways that can be cultural from the very top of the business that actually, you know, we need all these checks and balances and, you know, no one make too many mistakes, but that needs to come right from the top of the business.
00:17:29:07 – 00:17:51:15
Speaker
On their enterprise revenue structure that actually we have urgency in our business. We’re iterative, we’re experimental and we want to go fast. And I have this phrase, you know, in some companies, everything happens in one day and in other companies nothing happens in an entire year. And you have these companies like, are we any further forward than we were a year ago?
00:17:51:16 – 00:18:14:17
Speaker
No. And that that is that challenge. So it’s implementing a bit more of this urgency and momentum. And these organizations with Charlie, this is being a fantastic conversation with you, unfortunately, to bring us near the end due to time constraints here. But, you know, I think the two halves of the flywheel sink together is is a key element to solving that problem.
00:18:14:20 – 00:18:45:08
Speaker
Right? If you’re going a year and not iterating the you’re fail. Right. And that brings me actually squarely to this week’s trivia question. Are you ready? I’m ready. Okay. So not as comical as last week’s. Well, we have, you know, Charlie on this one, but but do actually think of these companies now and the changes they’re undergoing. Catherine Grotowski, who is vice president at General Electric, came out and said that A.I. represents a big part of the next big thing.
00:18:45:10 – 00:19:12:03
Speaker
What was the next big thing that Catherine referenced from General Electric, artificial general intelligence in generator vein to finding intelligent machines that will automate GE three that she believes the air is going to be the fuel for the fourth Industrial revolution. I think it’d be that last one that it’s going to be the fuel for the next industrial revolution.
00:19:12:06 – 00:19:43:02
Speaker
I think it’s going to transform the way that we build, manage and run machines. You are bang on, Charlie. That’s exactly what Catherine said from VP, from General Electric. And you know, and you just think about our our couple conversations here, how transformative Rev Ops has been over the past really five, five years plus. And now we have I hitting it square on in front of us the ability to have an agile based flywheel approach to my companies.
00:19:43:04 – 00:20:05:16
Speaker
You can’t be staggered. The fourth Industrial Revolution is here. We are actually in it and living it right now. And many people argue that is happening at a rate that is four times faster than anything in previously in human history. So it’s an exciting time to go change how we go to market and how we build those teams.
00:20:05:18 – 00:20:26:21
Speaker
Absolutely. I think for me, I’ve been in sales 25 years this is the most exciting time since since email came in. It’s all changed like never before. Couldn’t agree more. Charlie, final question. How does anybody get a hold of you? How do they dig in more on Revolve? Surely all of these things. Where do we get a hold of you?
00:20:26:23 – 00:20:46:08
Speaker
The easiest way is revopscharlie.com where we’ve got a lot of content and videos, but also I post daily on LinkedIn with revenue growth strategies, everything covering all aspects of of RevOps. So I’d love to see you and connect with you that well thanks so much. We definitely will. Charlie, it’s been brilliant to have you on.
00:20:46:08 – 00:21:03:08
Speaker
Love your thought leadership in the space. Please keep it up. It’s fantastic experience. You’re making the world of selling a better place, So thank you for that. Thank you both. How it now survive and beyond. Don’t forget to like and subscribe and send in your questions to Howard and I will do our best to get them on future episodes.
00:21:03:09 – 00:21:09:08
Speaker
Thanks for joining in, Howard, as always. Great to see you, Charlie. Great to see you. Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate it.
