AMA: Intercom VP, Sales Operations, Tyler Will on Revenue Strategy Execution

There are a few different angles I would consider when evaluating what to implement first for your revenue engine. First you should understand the dependencies each of the tactical elements you have designed for your strategy. It probably does not make sense to implement something first that won't function well because the things it depends on are not yet up and running. By mapping out the dependencies of your various strategy elements, you can start to sequence your work in a way that makes the most sense. As a silly example, you would never fully design, hire, and onboard an SDR team and then pivot next to generating leads for that team to work. They'd sit around with nothing to do until that was up and running. This dependency mapping effort can also highlight foundational work you need to have in place before proceeding with other things. At a really early stage company that might be a CRM, pricing web page, or some basic data infrastructure. Later on it could be more complex like a sales enablement team, account scoring models, or compensation software. Second, I would think about where you can build iteratively to account for the dependencies. Using the same example, the dependency mapping would say that we need marketing leads before we need SDRs. But if you fully stood up a marketing program, website, lead routing, lead scoring, etc. and had zero SDRs to handle those leads, you'd be wasting money as well. So you need to figure out how to launch these things somewhat simultaneously. Maybe you start with a little marketing and have the leads go to AEs without SDRs to test your campaigns, routing, volumes, conversion rates, etc. Then you can add in a few SDRs, go back to enhancing marketing, back to SDRs, and so on. Third, I would do some prioritization with a prioritization matrix, using sizing and likelihood of success to determine where to work. You want something big enough to drive the business but that also isn't a highly risky endeavor. Your question implies this is a pretty big project so start with the things that matter a lot to the business but that you believe the organization is capable of delivering. Finally I would consider if there is a need for "quick wins". Strategies often take a while to show value so, depending on the patience of the people you work with and the level of buy-in you have, you may want to consider ways to show some value early. This was a classic play from my consulting days where we would always try to produce something that created value in the first 30 days of a project so they client would say "aha, we're getting something for this!" This can be as simple as launching a new dashboard that shows business performance and where you can highlight what is changing, or it could be a smaller part of the overall initiative without many dependencies that you can stand up quickly and point to as progress. In the end, you almost certainly will not be able to do things perfectly sequentially. You'll need to start somewhere, then build enough of the piece influenced by that to make part 1 successful, go back to 1 and do more, then revisit part 2 and launch part 3. This is what makes the job hard (and fun!) - we talk a lot about "building the plane and flying it too" which reflects this iterative nature of so much strategy work.

This is as much about company culture as anything. At Intercom, we would have a Coda page because that is our main tool for documenting and sharing work like a data dictionary. There's nothing wrong with a Word doc or Excel file if that is something people will consistently rely on for this. Your job is to figure out what the medium is that the company will respond to. Whatever format you pick, spending time to socialize your ideas and get buy-in from the other key stakeholders will matter a lot too. Where I have seen efforts like this fail is when one group in isolation decides to make a data dictionary or define metrics and impose that output on the rest of the company. They probably don't understand the full business or the nuances and needs of different teams. Only if you get the right parties together to agree will it be a successful effort.

In this case of having a new leader want a different tech stack and strategy, I would stop or severely slow down the execution of your strategy until you can get on the same page as the new leader. Continuing on a path they have not bought into is not going to end well, especially since they seem to have a strong perspective and vision. The first thing I would do is get a large block of time with the new leader to review your strategy and make sure they understand it completely. You should get feedback on what they like, don't like, and cannot yet make a call on because they are new to the business. You should also ask for an explanation of their strategy and tech stack vision. This will give you a chance to ask clarifying questions, explain elements of the business they may not understand and thus have ideas that will not work, and overall understand their thinking. If done well, this session will lead to a much clearer understanding on both directions. You can then take the input and revise your strategy proposal. I would review it with the new leader and revisit it with any other key partners, especially if they signed off on it or are involved in executing the strategy you were in the process of implementing it. Depending on the roles/hierarchy of these people, decisions may need to be (re)made so you can proceed with something, whether it's your original plan, entirely the new leader's plan, or some hybrid. The worst outcome is that no decisions are made and you have no direction. It's your job to push to get what you need to guide your team and deliver the revenue strategy.

Getting any senior leader on board is critical for any change, whether marketing automation or anything else we do in RevOps. Whenever we are dealing with larger initiatives, I like to use a decision-making framework (I prefer RAPID but RACI/DACI and others work as well). In most cases, for the big picture things RevOps teams are going to play the role of the R (and probably the P) whereas the sales or marketing exec will be the D. Within that program, you can be the D on specific implementation decisions. So one suggestion for you is to revisit the approach to the project with your marketing leader and introduce a decision framework for the major components. At the highest level, they get to decide (D) the strategy which has already happened. Below that, you can align on which elements they need to be the D vs. an I, A, or maybe nothing. For something like selecting a MAP product, you can probably be the D, as one example. You could then work through these various changes and see which ones you can own and which they want to be involved in. It will also be helpful to understand why they want to own some of these decisions. Are there things they are nervous about? Do they have context from something else you don't have which might influence them? I would seek to understand as much as possible so you can work through an approach. They might also not understand the challenges of these changes from an operational perspective which you can clear up and then set expectations around how and when decisions have to be made. I would also have a path to escalate any places you cannot reach a decision. There's no point in spinning over and over on the same issue. Depending on your org structure and who you report to, you can go together to escalate the decisions, explain your respective views, and get a decision from higher up. They key to this is doing it together so it's a collaborative way to break the impasse rather than you going around them.

I don't think there is a hard rule for how long an implementation should take to launch a new revenue strategy, and each company and the degree of change will influence this significantly. I wrote a longer answer to a similar question about deciding what to do first (see "How do I decide which tactical piece to implement first in our strategy for revenue engine?") and I think that guidance can help you reach an better estimate for the C-suite. If you have a plan, understand the dependencies, and have a clear set of priorities you should be able to give them a good estimate. All that said, if you're taking more than 6 months to have some initial implementation and traction with the changes, then it is probably moving too slowly. There's a good book (How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between by Bent Flyvbjerg) that is an easy and entertaining read about planning and managing big projects that might also have some useful pointers for you here. One final pointer if you aren't already thinking about this is to try to line up the changes and launch to the beginning of a quarter/half so you can give new quotas, financial plans, etc. that all include the expected effects. This will make life much easier than a mid-quarter switch for everyone involved.

For your project to overhaul the handling of all inbound leads, I would think through all the different aspects of the change that might cause pain. That would let you develop a plan to mitigate the pain for sales and marketing. There are a few questions in the AMA about sequencing and timing of revenue strategy changes and implementation. I wrote a long answer to which you should look at for a general framework to use (see "How do I decide which tactical piece to implement first in our strategy for revenue engine?") as I think that can help you. In this case, you probably need to address a series of technical changes (lead source fields and routing you mentioned), enablement changes (i.e., what skills do the various teams need to handle the leads the way you want?), target and performance changes (quotas, productivity expectations, etc.), rules of engagement updates (depends on the specifics of the changes), KPI/measurement changes (SLAs, handoff expectations) and any other aspect of the process that gets altered. You also need to keep the existing business running as smoothly as possible while preparing for the change. Given all that, I think your inclination to start with the "plumbing" is probably right since you can set all that up before pushing it to production and it needs to be right to launch. From there, I would get through as much of the "behind the scenes" work so you have ironed out the details, made any changes needed, and know exactly how everything will work. That then gets reflected in your quotas/targets, KPIs, ROE, etc. And once that's ready, you build the enablement content to have really comprehensive sessions that anticipate all the questions and ease the transition.

I think the question behind this question is how to get the sales team to have good CRM hygiene so that your dashboard will be accurate and updated vs. how to build an accurate dashboard. CRM hygiene, of course, is the thing that keeps half the people reading this AMA up a night. There are a few different things you can do here, all of which are change management tactics since that's the solution to this problem. I am sure others here have dealt with this and could offers some suggestions of what to do (and not do). 1. Automate any aspects possible of the stage updates in your CRM. For example, if there are certain activities or pieces of information that get captured to indicate the next stage, can the system automatically move the opportunity to the nexts stage for you? This takes the onus off reps and managers to get you the inputs you want and, critically, no one has to do extra work. 2. Get alignment and sponsorship for the stage management project from your CRO, SVP of Sales, and the sales management team. If they understand the why and use the dashboard to run their business the can be your most influential lever in getting the stage updating behavior to change. This notion of a "sponsorship spine" is incredibly powerful in pushing change into an organization. 3. Be clear on the "WIIFM" (what's in it for me) for the reps. Will this help them create more pipeline? Close more deals? If you can't articulate this you'll have a much harder time getting the change you want. Related to that, find the people who do it well already (someone at your company is probably very good at this and, I hope, it shows in their results). You can highlight these people as to why following your process is a contributor to success. 4. Sticks and carrots. How are you going to highlight the people who comply and those who do not? We send out weekly hygiene dashboards that show how the various teams are doing on a series of CRM data topics we care most about. This keeps the issues top of mind and provides visibility to the entire org on how we are doing.

Even with a budget cut, you should be able to find ways to leverage partnerships and community. You noted that you have a short list already so I would spend time prioritizing those efforts with the constraint of your new smaller budget. Which ones likely produce the most uplift for you? How much effort/cost is required for each of those? You can then look at the various portfolios of communities and influencers that fit your budget and will bring you the most uplift. That might be 100% to one community, or could be 10 different options each getting 10%. The key is prioritization in a logical way and the following that with focus.

Like most RevOps teams, we look at a wide array of metrics that help us understand performance in various parts of the business. It's crucial to look at both short term and long term metrics, so I don't think it's bad to be concerned about the short-term, especially in a highly dynamic environment like we have been in for the past few years of Covid, ZIRP, and inflation. I like the book Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance by Jason Jordan that talks extensively about how to think about different levels of metrics in the sales organization. It's 12+ years old at this point but still spot on. A few longer-term metrics you may want to consider: * Top of funnel metrics - web visits, leads by source, MQL/SAL/various pipeline stages; trends here can also help identify the causes of improvement or decline in the business so should be readily available; these all may vary wildly day-to-day or week-to-week but looking longer term gives great perspective * Sales channel share - percentages of the business coming from marketing/inbound, outbound, partners, referrals, etc.; likewise a useful view over longer periods of time to understand where your new logos/new revenue is coming from * Churn & contraction and existing business expansion/x-sell - important both in the short and long run; you need to know how this is doing in quarter but also over time, and what are the underlying reasons and characteristics of companies that contract/churn/grow * Rep productivity - trends over time (by quarter) are very valuable to see how your team is doing, if they are getting better over time, etc. This is typically going to be bookings/billings but you can also look at activities, pipeline generation, win/loss rates, and so on. * Magic Number (for the SaaS people out there), CAC:LTV, and related metrics that take revenue and cost into account - this gives you a sense of the economics of your business. You might have lots of activity, pipeline, or even revenue but if that is done too inefficiently you need to change your business model. * Tenure/retention - gives you a sense of how long people stick around, and from there you can dig into correlation to productivity * Ramp times - how good is your enablement team at getting new hires or promoted reps up to full productivity; especially if you have higher turnover being able to do this well is important to having an efficient sales team * Marketing probably looks at others over time such as awareness * Customer support will look at CSAT, response times, volumes of contact/tickets, resolution rates, and so on that all will have useful long-term trends Nearly everything can be measured at a point in time but it's giving them context of the long-term that is helpful. If you find your sales partners just asking for the metric in quarter, you can proactively bring them some context by providing the quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year view and some hypothesis as to what has changed. Taking that action yourself is probably the best way to get them to engage with the longer-term because you'll have some insight along with the metric vs. just reporting what is happening now.

This is a good question and I hope other people can comment and provide their perspectives as well. I think defining and quantifying success metrics for RevOps is challenging. We're surrounded by probably the most quantifiable parts of a business - sales quota attainment and revenue generation, marketing leads and pipeline, etc. - and yet none of those directly reflect our work. As a general rule, I don't find time savings metrics from SaaS vendors very compelling. I think small time savings for reps or RevOps tends to evaporate rather than add productivity (e.g., "My solution X saves AEs 5% of time so they can prospect more" doesn't lead to more pipeline, they just go home earlier or socialize more with colleagues). The exception is when you save considerable time by eliminating entire processes, either by making it unnecessary or automated. This might be a 20% time savings for a team and then it starts to get large enough that I find it interesting. If you can make your value prop about eliminating manual processes, streamlining operations, or reducing the need for resources that becomes compelling and ties in better with the kind of metrics I would point to in a QBR or other review. Some examples I might point to about my team's contributions: * # of processes eliminated or automated * # of steps eliminated or automated in the end-to-end sales process * # or % reduction in tickets related to account ownership, hygiene, etc. issues * % increase in throughput without adding headcount (e.g., deal desk handled X% more deals this year with the same team size) due to changes we implemented * % reduction in sales cycle time due to changes A, B, and C * % increase in completeness or quality of data (e.g., capturing competitors on new business opportunities or better populating fields for MEDDPICC) * % increase in usage of a tool (e.g., +10% more opportunities came from our PQA analytics engine) At the end of the day, RevOps success is largely viewed in the context of sales and marketing success. I personally would not say we had a great year if we did a lot of automation and process simplification, and had good metrics for all the above items but the sales team hit 75% of their plan. So whatever the the value prop for addressing RevOps issues, it also needs to at least have a clear tie to sales and marketing outcomes that are logical. If you're offering me clean data and an easier time for my team, I still want to know how that is expected to show up in the business outcomes even if it's not a direct "do X and get Y revenue."