AMA: Intercom VP, Sales Operations, Tyler Will on Finance / Revenue Ops Alignment

There are a few "how do I get money out of finance" questions in this AMA so I'll repeat the relevant parts each time, and try to add specific context where it seems additive. In my experience, Finance will usually allocate budget to projects if three conditions are met: There is available budget to spend There is a strong business case with compelling ROI to spend the money you are requesting That particular business case fits well into the priorities of the company We can go through each of th ...Read More

There are a few "how do I get money out of finance" questions in this AMA so I'll repeat the relevant parts each time, and try to add specific context where it seems additive. In my experience, Finance will usually allocate budget to projects if three conditions are met: There is available budget to spend There is a strong business case with compelling ROI to spend the money you are requesting That particular business case fits well into the priorities of the company We can go through each of th ...Read More

The benefit of deal desk involving sales, finance, and legal is that you should significantly improve the commercial terms and deal structure of your deals compared to letting sales "do it alone". While this will inevitably slow deals down, the benefit should outweigh the costs significantly and you can take certain steps to minimize the deal friction.Having deal desk in the first place, and then having it involve sales, finance, and legal has a host of benefits: Improved financials: your deal d ...Read More

I would start with a diagnostic of why the pipeline and forecast accuracy are so far off. From that, you can identify improvements to make in your process. This likely requires a full understanding of your funnel, a review of data hygiene, and a close partnership with sales leadership to align that accuracy is something everyone agrees is important. A few things I would look at: Are the errors asymmetric? If the team always under-forecasts (aka sandbagging), what is causing that? Is there some h ...Read More

In this situation, RevOps should play the bridge role between Sales and Finance. More than any other function in your company, you can explain both sides of the situation and help find an acceptable solution. I would make sure that I: Understand sales reps' objections to the discounting approval process. Do they object to any oversight at all? Do they object to the broadness and level of effort required to answer questions from Finance on discounts? Do they believe the approvals process is too s ...Read More

There are a few "how do I get money out of finance" questions in this AMA so I'll repeat the relevant parts each time, and try to add specific context where it seems additive. In my experience, Finance will usually allocate budget to projects if three conditions are met: There is available budget to spend There is a strong business case with compelling ROI to spend the money you are requesting That particular business case fits well into the priorities of the company We can go through each of th ...Read More

The SDR model at this point is solidly established, at least at most technology companies that I know. You should be able to quickly explain the hypothesis for why adding SDRs will increase the productivity of your AEs to any finance people familiar with SaaS sales. I do think you should thoroughly evaluate human and AI solutions for this, vs. just hiring people. The key will be showing how SDRs will add incremental revenue to your business. At the scale of two AEs, there's probably a lot that t ...Read More

This can be a tough situation for you and for finance, and how this works will vary by company and situation. First, I would be empathetic to the finance team driving budget cuts. There's a good chance those decisions are confidential and the result of pressure from investors, the CEO, the board. No one is making those cuts for fun - it's the result of a bad business situation. The times I have been involved in planning layoffs and reductions, it's a very sensitive process and we often could not ...Read More