First things first…

It’s getting closer to The BDR Summit on November 16th! I will be speaking, and Suzan Souki and André Bressel are also announced! Check it out; it is looking like it will be fun!

Content of the week

• Best open SDR roles in Europe

• Never negotiate over email

What am I seeing this week? PG days are not dead!

PG days are dead.

They don’t work in the modern SDR org.

Both wrong!

Something I’ve been a big supporter of ever since I took over a leadership role was to run call competitions, be that a power hour or a whole PG day. You split everyone into teams and get the SDRs working together to book meetings. The team/community created over that period is worth more than any enablement session you can run: Peers learning from peers.

And the results speak for themselves; at Snowflake, we have booked over 100 meetings on the last 2 PG days, 4x more than usual, AND without ‘sandbagging’.

Would you be interested in learning how we did our PG day? Drop me a message!

For those new to the newsletter and like what you are seeing, please click on the subscribe button, and you’ll receive this top-quality newsletter in your inbox every Friday morning!

Five Questions of the Week: Seth London

This week, we have the wonderful Seth London from Meltwater! He will give his perspective on Rev ops's relatively unknown function, his take on AI and the advice he would give to his younger self!

What drew you to working in Rev ops in the first place?

What gets me out of bed in the morning (besides my 3-year-old shouting ‘Daddy, get me up!’) is the opportunity to be challenged with complex business problems, figure out the best course of action, and learn from implementing change. This is the daily life for someone in RevOps, and when the opportunity arose for me to move into a RevOps leadership role at Meltwater – the decision was a no-brainer.

The great thing about SaaS go-to-market operations is that the destination never really arrives; it’s a perpetual journey of continuous improvement. And to guide you on your way – there is an incredible amount of thought leadership being produced every week by some of the sharpest minds in their field (shout out to David Wilkins and Lars Nilsson @ Snowflake, who have indirectly helped shape Business Development @ Meltwater)

If you could magically change one perception of your role, what would it be?

Because RevOps is still a relatively new business unit (much like Customer Success in the early 2010s), you won’t find a consistent philosophy on its mandate, and org structures vary widely from company to company.

With that said, I’ve heard from time to time (including from some RevOps leaders!) that the RevOps org ‘isn’t responsible for driving revenue’ and that the responsibility of the team extends only to process design and enablement – after that point, it’s on the commercial units to drive topline results. That’s like a basketball coach saying they’re responsible for designing the plays and instructing the players on how to run them – but not responsible for how many points they put on the board. What?!

RevOps absolutely has the responsibility to drive revenue. If Company A operated in two parallel universes – one with a Rev Ops function and one without, the version ‘with’ RevOps should have better topline growth.

Nobody in the business is in a better position to design and refine the go-to-market strategy and partner with the commercial team leaders to improve the effectiveness of the company’s growth engine.

AI is here to stay. How can AI have a positive impact on RevOps?

Indeed! There are so many ways that AI can have a significant impact on RevOps and the commercial org. Here are two of the top scenarios, in my opinion

• Streamline or automate insights about the business. Virtually every company struggles in one way or another to fully harness the potential insights that the data they’re producing can offer. It isn’t easy to blend data into one place and understand the key takeaways that will spawn strategic decisions. I envision a future where an AI model that’s connected to all apps in the core S&M tech stack can surface in real time the top things the commercial teams need to focus on to improve growth velocity – Lead conversion is low for XYZ channels because a higher portion of personas are outside your ICP, Call analytics show that XYZ reps are leaning too much into ‘speeds and feeds’ – and not sufficiently addressing customer pain on disco calls – along those lines. Those insights take a lot of work to uncover today.

• Deliver on a personalised buyer/customer journey at scale. ABM technologies that surface account-level intent or websites with embedded technology to identify the persona type of a visitor and deliver a personalised experience are beautiful examples of how far AI has come in supporting the vision of a fantastic buyer’s journey. We’ll see an expansion in the scope of personalisation these platforms can offer – further sharpening your understanding of when and how to engage with prospects and customers.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self before transitioning into Rev Ops?

Perhaps the greatest challenge of being a Rev ops leader is that a lot of the change you want to make in the business comes through influencing others – very few ‘big’ decisions are wholly in your control. And that’s the point: RevOps needs to act as a partner for the commercial teams – presenting the facts, challenging biases, and getting buy-in from a broad range of stakeholders on decisions that can vary widely from current practices.

To be effective with influence, you need to understand how the individual or team you’re trying to influence thinks about their role, their position in the business, the vision of their team, and what success looks like. It combines leading with empathy and understanding the company to put yourself squarely in their shoes.

I advise a younger self to invest more time practising empathy and learning deeply about each commercial team's thought leadership, strategies, and operating mechanics in a SaaS org.

How do you see the RevOps function evolve over the next 24 months?

Oh boy, what a question!

• CROs will increasingly come from RevOps career paths. Growing your business is becoming more of a science than an art and requires high calibration across sales, marketing and success. RevOps leaders are well suited to own ultimate responsibility for the design and execution of a company’s GTM

• The technology landscape is changing at a blistering pace; I expect that we’ll continue seeing an aggressive consolidation of capabilities to single platforms (the Gong, 6Sense, Clari, ZoomInfo, Apollos of the world)

• RevOps will continue gaining traction as a critical function in the business. You’ll see earlier-stage companies bringing in a RevOps leader much sooner and at-scale businesses investing more heavily in the process.

• RevOps will increase outside of the tech space. SaaS may have been the first business model to consolidate GTM strategy and ops under a single function, but other industries have already begun following suit. I expect that will continue accelerating over the next two years.

Book of the week

And Finally!

I wanted to tell you about an excellent newsletter I’m subscribed to and something I think you’d like. Learning the Venture follows the growth of AceBoy Sports Group. This newsletter is for founders and entrepreneurs who want a behind-the-scenes look at building a start-up!