Tag: Revenue Letter
3.5 weekly meetings you need to have
This revenue letter was sent on May 18, 2023. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here.
As I interview, sell, and talk to people in RevOps and to CROs constantly, I get to learn a ton about what they are doing.
What their best practices are, and where they tend to struggle.
One item that caught my eye recently was a few people asking me about what the right meeting cadence should be to drive the GTM.
But the question was not about monthly or quarterly cycles.
It was much more about weeklys.
So here is what I’ve personally employed, but also what I have seen a few times as the best practice around this.
- Weekly Demand Gen
This is for all your top-funnel leaders. Think VP Marketing or VP Inside Sales (SDRs). It could also include the leader for partner or channel sales.
The topic is top funnel, reviewing volume metrics like Opp production, SQLs/MQLs etc.
You might get tactical here sometimes, also including CPL (cost per lead) or even noticing CVRs drifting off.
The discussion should center around where you are off, and what you are doing to fix it.
- Weekly Sales Forecast
I think almost everyone has this one. This should include your Sales Leaders – of course.
The topic is bottom of funnel, deals, pipeline health, and forecast.
Ask: how are we tracking? Are there teams/regions that need more opps? Are there deals that need C-Level involvement? Which deals are stuck in legal/InfoSec and need a nudge?
- Weekly Revenue Projects Check-in
Very few teams do this one, yet the best teams swear by it.
The composition includes all GTM heads and sometimes this happens during the CRO team sessions.
The purpose is to check in quickly on how the key revenue projects (some call these revenue OKRs) are tracking. This is done by giving quick confidence indications.
It’s important not to get stuck in “why are you not confident” – save that for a monthly.
But it’s key to stay aligned and share challenges with the rest of the team – since they might be impacted.
- Talent Attraction Fortnightly
Yes, “fortnightly,” not weekly. Thus only counting as .5 weekly 😉
This is a meeting between RevOps, TA, and Finance.
The topic is execution of the hiring plan.
How is the talent pipeline looking? Are we ahead/behind budget? How many leavers do we expect?
If you run these 4 meetings, a lot of things on the execution side will suddenly get a lot easier.
I would recommend your Head of RevOps to run these. Usually there are tons of data questions but also a lot of mini-projects are born here that someone needs to put into a backlog or run with.
This revenue letter was sent on the 4th of May 2023. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here.
I recently had a discussion with a RevOps leader of a “boring” (aka mature, profitable and predictable) company.
We discussed how RevOps can elevate itself in an organization (especially in his “older” team).
He mentioned MBRs and QBRs – and while I felt I know it all already, he ended up giving me 3 golden nuggets I wanted to pass on to you:
Keep your QBRs short, simple but very valuable.
His first few reviews had 150 slides with insights for days. It felt good. Valuable. “Deep”.
It resulted in 15 odd projects for a group of 25 people.
The realization was that this much data and insights show that RevOps are doing their job, but in reality, it’s just noise and not much help to anyone.
Instead, he focused on 5 insights and takeaways. 5!
The more focused we can be on single elements, the more actionable GTM teams can actually be once the QBR is over.
(And yes, you need to do some math to figure out what really drives the most revenue.)
Second, interpret the data and make it a story.
As part of keeping QBRs simple, there’s no point in throwing data at your stakeholders if you can’t explain it.
To start with, answer these questions:
- What is happening?
- Where is it happening?
- What’s the impact?
- What’s the actionablility?
If you can answer these 4 questions for every insight that you present, then you’re creating value out of the meeting.
Finally, you’re not the expert in all things revenue, so don’t pretend that you are.
It’s a sign of an over-inflated ego to think that you have all the answers and you can fix everything.
The true power of RevOps during QBRs is the ability to combine data and storytelling to create insights across the GTM.
But you’re not a marketing expert. You’re not in the trenches with sales. And you’re not dealing with CS issues on a daily basis.
But what you do have is a squad of big brains leading these teams.
A QBR should empower these GTM leaders to find and suggest solutions.
Just like your revenue engine, improving your QBRs is a process of incremental steps.
And I know that “incremental” is not a word that gets anyone excited (yes, I study the stats on these Podcasts, Linkedin Posts, and RevLetters).
But this is one of those things that mature, profitable, and predictable businesses do to become… well… mature, profitable and predictable.
Is what we’re doing efficient?
This revenue letter was sent 6th of April 2023. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Growth at all costs is dead and buried. We live in an efficient growth world now.
The problem? Looking at the current reality, efficient growth has never been further away.
Sales cycles are expanding, conversion rates are dropping, and creating opportunities is harder than ever before.
All of these are massive inefficiency drivers.
So while we all want efficient growth, the current baseline data tells us that it’s not going to work out for everyone.
So what’s the answer, Toni?
It’s time to assess the different channels and markets you have now, figure out which are efficient (and more importantly, which aren’t), and start trimming down to the level you can afford.
Think of it like drilling for oil.
Say you go to Texas, drill a hole in the ground, and set up a cheap but efficient pump.
Now you see that the price for a barrel of crude is going up, and your Texas operations are pretty much already at peak, so you expand out.
You head to Alaska, where you need to invest in better technology and experienced people to get it out of the frozen ground (it’s always cold in Alaska, right?).
Next, the price of a barrel of crude keeps going up, so now you look at nearshore and offshore oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Again, it’s much more expensive to get to that oil, but the economics of the situation more than makes up for it.
Now all of a sudden, the price of crude collapses.
So what do you do?
Well, you take a serious look at your operation.
You stop offshore operations because it’s too much to keep up.
You scale down your Alaska operation because you can’t justify the cost.
And while small, you will again fall in love with your Texas pump!
And yes, you’ll produce much less oil than before, but you’ve cut out all of the expensive stuff, and the oil you’re producing is the most efficient in your entire operation – matching pretty much what the market is paying for.
So how does this translate into our world?
See your GTM as a system that has very similar layers. Texas is your brand, word of mouth, and existing customers.
Alaska is maybe your SEO and Search Ads.
Near and offshore drilling is your Linkedin Ads, Outbound, Conferences, etc.
When “the market,” aka the VCs, were willing to pay a lot for a dollar of revenue (aka valuation), you could afford to use all the expensive tactics.
But the barrel of crude price for your company has dropped, so you will need to scale down the expensive channels.
Sure, you will find some efficiencies here and there, but I have rarely seen anything in the order of magnitude you might need.
By cutting down on those channels, you can also reduce the team down stream. E.g. AEs, Inbound SDRs, CSMs, Managers… etc.