How to Go From RevOps Curious to RevOps Capable with Evan Liang

Evan Liang: Marketing goes, we sent you so many leads, no one's following up and sales goes, leads are crap, right? That's, that's an age old problem. And RevOps job is to help you solve that.

John Common: Welcome to growth driver brought to you by intelligent demand, where the best minds in B2B are redefining growth. Hey everybody, John Common here. Look in most B2B companies, two things have become really clear. Okay. So number one. We have got to get better at integrating and orchestrating the actions of our go to market teams if we want to have a chance of hitting our growth goals, let alone hitting those growth goals within our budget realities.

That's number one. And number two, what's become super clear is, we can't do number one without seriously improving the way we use MarTech, sales tech, data, process, and analytics. And that's why today's episode is all about revenue operations or rev ops as it's affectionately known. And today what we're going to do is we're going to really confirm for you why disconnected siloed approaches to your technology and data are very likely hurting your growth.

And we're going to talk about how rev ops and revenue orchestration is the big unlock. So by the Time we're done with today's conversation. We're going to help you go from rev ops, curious to a lot closer to rev ops capable. Okay. That's the goal today. And I have got the perfect guest to do this with me today.

His name is Evan Liang. He's the CEO and co founder of Lean Data. If you follow this show, you probably already know about Lean Data. They have over a, they have over a thousand customers who they help actually make RevOps a reality and successful at their companies. Evan is a true innovator. Not only has he been leading product strategy.

and guiding the company at Lean Data, but he's also had similar roles at eBay and Microsoft. And he originally came from Battery Ventures and Shasta Ventures. He's a real innovator. And then, um, also Evan is a real thought leader around RevOps and not just some academic, although I love a good academic, this person, Evan has been in the trenches doing it in the real world.

Evan, I've been looking forward to this episode for months and months. Welcome to Growth Drive, everybody. Thank you so much. Really excited to be here. Take me back to the beginning. Why did you found Lean Data? 

Evan Liang: Definitely. I think like, like many founder stories, I had to pinpoint myself. So at my last company, I was basically had an inside sales team.

We were on Salesforce. We brought in marketing automation to automate kind of the MQL process. And then we ran into a whole bunch of challenges around data on process. And that made me, that was a light bulb moment for me to realize that if you don't have a good. foundation around data and process doesn't matter what technology you buy, you're not going to make your sales and marketing teams effective.

And so I kind of, that's why I kind of gravitate to rev ops, uh, because I understand how important, uh, people overlook it, but how important that is if you want to hit your ultimate revenue targets. 

John Common: Yeah. What year was that? What year did 

Evan Liang: you found it? Uh, so the company was founded back in 2012. So it's been, uh, it's been quite a journey.

John Common: More and more of. Our audience are realizing they have to start really going from RevOps, curious to RevOps capable. And I love to not skip over the foundations. I think foundations are super important. So give me, give our audience a really great, uh, definition of what RevOps is. How do you define RevOps?

Evan Liang: Yeah, so I, to me, I'd say like this, uh, the rev ops is someone who's absolutely critical. It's that critical engineer that makes everything work well. So I think your CR and CMO, they're the strategy, they're the ideas guy, they want to make something happen. You obviously have your sales and marketing teams that do that execution, but you need that quirky, uh, I don't know what James Bond cue or something that that quirky guy that can come in and actually make the magic happen.

Stitch it all together and rev ops. It's a it's a role that I think many people, you know, they don't want the limelight. They want to stay behind there. They're not looking for it, but they just want to be there. They're by nature problem solvers. You give them a problem and they want to solve it. The other thing I love about rev ops is they're always trying to make things better.

So they're always there. You talk to a robot. Are you ever done with your making your process? And they'll say no, it's continuous improvement. And so I think that's the guy who just makes it happen in the background. But that's it. Absolutely critical and behind every great, successful, uh, go to market team, there is going to be that quirky, uh, RevOps person who's making it happen.

John Common: You know, left to their own devices, marketing, SDR, sales, CS, and even product in a SaaS company. tend to do what departments and functions do. They tend to try to solve the growth problem that they're all on the hook for solving almost through the lens of their org chart, which is by definition and functional silos.

They tend to buy technology. They tend to leverage data. They tend to approach analytics, even process through the lens of siloed departments and The outgrowth of that over the last decade, I think, has meant that we've ended up with technology and data silos. And so the way we try to explain RevOps is the enabling, the critical, must have enabling mindset and set of practices.

That you need to execute cross functional go to market motions like ABX or even demand gen motions that don't suck, let alone product led growth or community. Any go to market motion you're going to execute in B2B is going to be a team sport, and if that's the case, then when you get down to the Martech sales tech data process analytics layer.

You're probably going to run into silos, departmental silos. And so with that as the base canvas, we think RevOps is. Is the solution to that. It's the thing that says you can't go to market as one team if you're leveraging technology, data and analytics in silos. 

Evan Liang: I like that. And analogy we often use to describe kind of where we sit and how RevOps sits.

It's kind of like a great go to market. It's like a, it's a relay race, right? And you got to pass that baton and the companies that do it well pass that baton very seamlessly. The companies that drop the baton, well, you're disqualified. Yeah. 

John Common: Yeah. What's the difference between, or maybe it's the difference or what's the relationship between the concept of RevOps we just talked about and revenue orchestration?

Is it the same thing or is it different? 

Evan Liang: Uh, it's a little odd. So, I mean, uh, so I think RevOps is the function. Right. And the role for us, uh, revenue orchestration is about, uh, managing that process, right? How did the defining that process as how do you make sure the right signals. So think of all marketing leads, everything marketing against intent as signals gets to, uh, do gets the, for you to write the run, the right sales place.

So orchestration is really about making sure the right signal goes to the right place so you can deliver a great customer experience. 

John Common: Ah, okay. So RevOps is the. The point of view, the strategy, the set of best practices, the mindset. But then when you go to turn RevOps into action, when, when, when RevOps becomes a verb, it becomes revenue orchestration.

Evan Liang: Yeah. It's how you execute. So, uh, yeah. 

John Common: Excellent. Excellent. Um, another question I'd love to hear, cause you've got such deep experience, you and your company, you've seen so many flavors of this as companies go to execute RevOps in the real world, in their companies, how often, uh, What are the main types of ways that they organize?

Do they, do you recommend that they create a separate new department and they pull marketing ops into it and sales ops into it and have that person report to, I don't know, the CRO, the CMO, the CRO talk to us about. Yeah. The organizational reality of executing RevOps. 

Evan Liang: Yeah. So I think it's, it's, it's more of an ethos about working together.

I don't think we're very prescriptive around, Hey, you have to have a separate department. Where does it have to report into? I think it depends on the realities of every organization. Uh, I think you can go from one extreme where, yeah, you create, you hire someone who's in RevOps. Uh, you put like sales ops, markups, CX ops all underneath it.

Right. That's one way of doing it. And where does that report? It varies. It could go to sales. I've seen it go to CFOs. I've seen it go to, uh, you know, go straight to the CEO. So that could vary on one extreme. On the other, it's just a coalition, the willing, especially as you get to larger organizations, uh, big things.

The reality is that they are going to have their own sales up and markups. I. T. Is another player in and around this. And so it's more about, uh, them coming together and working together. The nice thing about it is the nature of the role. Uh, there's more commonalities between like sales ops and mark ops.

They speak similar languages than necessarily between sales and marketing. So these folks can actually work outside, uh, work together around their silos. If they're focused on problem solving, right, we're trying to solve a joint problem. Um, and so oftentimes that coalition of willing can Can work as well.

So I don't think, uh, is a one size fits all for every company is how they want to do it. The key thing is those folks should be collaborating and working together, uh, in order to solve per your point, break down the organizational silos and look at the overall company goals instead of just optimizing for their individual silos, which is suboptimal across the entire organization.

John Common: I'm smiling at your use of the phrase coalition of the willing that is, that is. Hashtag. I don't have hashtags are still a thing, but that is, that is really good. Um, let's go. I'm going to click in on that. Like, take me, take me through the philosophy. Like, cause again, you've seen it a bunch of ways, which means let's be real.

You've seen it fail probably a couple of times too. I certainly have. What is some advice? Because I guarantee you, we've got people listening to this episode right now to us. And they're like, Give me some advice about how I can create that coalition of the Rev Ops willing, and then also begin to really operationalize that coalition of the Rev Ops willing.

What advice would you have? What mistakes have you seen? Get real with me. 

Evan Liang: Yeah, so absolutely. I think some of the mistakes is obviously if you set their targets, uh, that are very department level and you play the game of politics and turf wars, uh, you're setting those folks up to fail. Right? So I think you have to allow them to look at the bigger picture and set goals that again, are broader than what the goals are for any single department on if they're allowed to focus on that way, they have a much better chance of success.

If you're using rev ops just to make your own department look good, right? They're not independent in the referees. Then, yeah, that's really difficult. Like, for example, I think, uh, here's something that was popular in our space for a long time, like attribution. Like, I think attribution is very important, but when it's being used by one department just to claim success over another, then it is bound to fail.

And it has no, uh, it can't hold its water, right? You have to have that intellectual honesty. So I think that's really important is the rev ops needs to be Not independent, but that you have to at least give them some latitude to make, make, make some decisions. Uh, that isn't just necessarily what's best for team a versus team B because actually everyone's on the same team.

So that's. 

John Common: You, you would think so. You would hope so. Um, yeah. You know what, what I've noticed as a, just as a practitioner, um, over the last 15 or so years around this is, um, There's a life cycle. There's a rev ops maturity life cycle. We should co write a blog about this one day, but like, but, but. And I'm not saying it's always this way, but often it starts with, um, siloed tech and data.

That's, that's whatever, stage one. And then stage two, you're still actually in siloed tech and data, but the pain of siloed tech and data and analytics forces at least one or more of the go to market stakeholders to start saying, I am experiencing so much freaking suffering and, and, and, and poor performance.

That I'm beginning to be forced to look for a better way to approach how we do technology data process and analytics and that that gets to phase two, which is learning about what ends up ends up. You realize what you're learning about is rev ops. So that's sort of like phase two. And then, but still nothing's changed.

You're still in extreme suffering. You're just now aware of it. And you're properly labeling it. And then you get to like stage three, which is, I think what you're talking about, which is you start looking around the organization and start to build the coalition of the willing. I think that's the phase three when you're like, Hey.

Could we act like we're one team, maybe at the tech layer and the data layer in the pro would that be a good idea? Would you want to join me on that? And I think that's where that begets the beginnings of what you're talking about, which is you haven't changed your org chart. You haven't created the rev ops vice chancellor role or whatever.

Um, but what you are doing is creating a matrix leadership organization of some kind. And when we, when we help our clients move into that stage of the game, we find it helpful to really think about it like a, like a cross functional committee. We sometimes will even be make it formal and create a charter for that rev ops function.

That's not a, it's not a leader. It's a, it's a cross functional team. And that kind of, that gets you to like, whatever, I'm making this up on the fly phase four. And, and, and then at some point. Organizations realize, okay, the coalition of the willing has been operationalized. We're actually starting to do rev ops from our departmental chairs, but we're talking like a team and now it might actually be time to change the org chart and to create a rev ops function.

Is it time to do that? So that journey that I just sort of imperfectly walked through. Does that resonate with your experience or do people just make the jump and go straight into like vice president of rev ops? 

Evan Liang: It depends on the company. I do see some companies just start with that. You start with the org change first, right?

Uh, and they're able to do that. Usually it's smaller companies, right? I would say like like you'd mentioned a lot of your list If you're if you're a B to B enterprise company that's been around for a while, that's very difficult to do. And I think that maturity curve made sense. If you're a smaller company who's getting started going, or you've had some major changes to turnovers, it might sometimes easier, you can jump to phase four, and then backwards into it.

Now, one cautionary tale I'd have to say is, oftentimes, I do see people who tell me that Their sales and marketing leaders get along really, really well. They're like besties and all that stuff. But then you go down a layer and that's not true. So it's not just about like, uh, CEO, like CRO and CMO getting along.

You really need the organization. And oftentimes I think that's more indicative of how well you're working together. Not that you guys write blog posts and you go drink wine and stuff like that. Yeah. That would be, I don't know if you've seen that in your practice too, where people are like, we're really aligned.

And you're like, no, you're not. 

John Common: No, no, Evan. I only see that every single day. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And it's like, and let's be honest, it's a win to have your CMO and your CRO go golfing. That's a good thing. But to your point, that doesn't mean you're aligned. It does not mean you're aligned. Um, Man, that's so great.

All right. All right. All right. We get, I'm going to, I'm going to move to the next thing I want to talk to you about, but this is so great. Um, let's talk about the relationship between rev ops and go to market efficiency, go to market efficiency, right? Which is a, has always been a concept in a term, but it's gone from like, you know, not really talked about a lot to kind of talked about.

All the time right now, because we have seen the death of, uh, growth at all costs. And turns out the budgets matter. It turns out the lifetime value matters. CAC matters. Um, talked, what are some specific, so again, I'm not looking for a philosophy. What are some specific examples you've seen where you're like without RevOps, this or this is probably happening in your revenue process and it is hurting your go to market efficiency.

And then on the other side of it is with RevOps, This is how RevOps can help to solve or mitigate or shrink the likelihood of that, uh, that inefficiency. 

Evan Liang: Yeah, so I'll be a little bit self serious. Two examples for us. The first one is that, hey, without RevOps, you're most likely a lot of your marketing signals or leads are just getting lost in a black hole.

That just happens at most organizations. Uh, and what happens is marketing is throwing things over the fence. No one's catching on the other end and you just don't notice it, right? And so in a, in a world of growth of all costs, that's okay. That's just wasted. We're just going to throw more money at it in the world that you have to be efficient.

You need to make sure every lead is, is treated correctly. Some of them are junk, right? So, so it's not that everything has to be followed up with, but figuring out that process and making sure it's right, that the right leads are being followed by the right person, uh, that ultimately doesn't really fall into either sales and marketing.

Uh, and that's where rev ops can come in to first diagnose it and figure out that you are losing stuff and then secondly, do something about it, right? So I would say what happens without rev ops is no one even notices And that's where you get your classic. Uh salespeople marketing goes. We sent you so many leads.

No one's following up and sales goes Leads are crap, right? That's that's an age old problem and Rev Ops job is to help you solve that. So I'd say like that was one example. Okay. Um, in these days, the area that we're seeing are a lot of our, our customers have solved phase one, right? That's, that's like 10 years ago.

Phase two is what I call like the second lead syndrome is people are so like, okay, I followed up on that first lead. But the reality is most people buy in committees, especially higher ASP products. So if you're not, you don't want to be single threaded. Everyone knows you want to be multi threaded. Well, how do you actually do that?

The good sales reps understand that. They own their account. They really do that. But that's maybe 20 percent of your sales reps. What about all the others? How do you treat that second person coming in who may be that person's boss or something of that sort? A lot of companies drop those leads and they just get lost.

They just don't have the right processes. Think they're all so focused on that initial initial lead, uh, or initial contact or signal. Um, and so that's the new problem folks have to solve is in a world where you have, uh, buying committees where the CFO is going to get involved. How do you make sure you deliver that experience for every single person in the committee, not just the first one?

John Common: Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you about a But potential third, and we've seen the rise, we used to call it lead scoring a million years ago, lead as problem with that word and scoring there's a problem with that word, but, um, but lead scoring has grown up the hard way. And now we're talking about. Sensing signals and, and, and, and signals at the account level, the buying team level, and yes, the contact or human or formerly called lead, currently called lead level.

And so it is a third place where rev ops and inefficiency or efficiency can happen is around helping companies. Have a better grasp of all of the, not just data, not, not just dumb data, but the signals, the insights that are lurking in that noisy unstructured silo data. And I think that's my question is, is, is number three around signal sensing formerly called lead scoring.

But now I think it's about, Hey, what is, what is actually going on with our target accounts with our. customers, um, where are they in their journey? And, and are we knowing it? Are we sensing it? And are we responding in some coherent, smart way? Is that a thing, too? 

Evan Liang: Yeah, no, and I think that's a little bit, uh, where I was trying to, I, I use the, and I agree with you.

The word lead is very, uh, problematic. Uh, but I think that falls in some respects under what I was talking about with second lead syndrome. Is the fact that there are so many signals around the entire journey, and you need to be able to sense those, right? Act accordingly to deliver that experience. I think we have as an industry created so much more richness of vastness of signals than we had 10, 15 years ago.

You can know so much about all of the folks and so much of that journey is done without talking to your sales team, right? What? 70 75 percent of the journey, not even more is done before they actually engage. And so being able to act appropriately at the Uh, meet the customer where they're at, right? And knowing that that context and that actions and who that who's who's interacting and who's that buying team is, is ultimately where I think the next challenge that the best companies need to solve, right?

The best companies are going to deliver that experience and, you know, and understand it. The other companies are going to treat every single signal as their own. You treat every signal the exact same way. You send an SDR to go qualified. That's not a great experience, right? That's six person who's on that.

Oh, the third person who's not buying committee doesn't want your SDR to qualify them. They're looking for her. They're already, you're already engaged and that's a horrible experience. 

John Common: It's a bad customer or buyer experience. And it's also, uh, Pretty sure that SDR is being paid to do that and incentivized to do that.

And worse, they come like, I got a meeting and then they're like, it's not what the right. Yeah, totally. Okay. 

Evan Liang: Yeah. My most horror stories is some of the larger companies where the SDR gets the first meeting, the second meeting comes in at someone else or something else. And they just drop it. They're like, I'm not getting paid for the second meeting, so I'm not going to call them.

And you're just like, Oh my God. Yeah. Let's talk about the wastage or missed opportunities. 

John Common: I'm going to double click on this signal thing with you a little bit. Um, let's get kind of a little more technical, um, in larger companies, they don't have to be like, I don't mean global enterprise, but like large mid market enterprise companies.

Um, what's the minimum, like, like this really kind of like a cut the shit question. What's the minimum number of platforms you kind of have to have today if you want to take signals seriously and, and, and. I don't mean to lead the witness, but I, but like the CRM system, probably need a CRM system. Probably need an MAP.

We probably have an MAP whether you need one or not. You have one. Um, that's a whole nother episode. Um, uh, data sources, first party, third party, um, probably an ABM or ABX platform. Might help, may, maybe, maybe, maybe not. Yeah. Um, and I'm, again, lean data or something like Lean data, would I, I, I think you actually have to have some something that helps you make sure that you're doing a good job of correlating leads to buying teams, buying teams to accounts, accounts and buying teams and leads to journeys, lead flow, et cetera.

And then the. So you're nodding to all of this or a lot of it. I'm going to hand the mic to you in a second. And then the last question is some sort of CDP or data lake. Is that actually required? So if I said, I want to take signal seriously, Evan, what's the minimum platforms you you're going to say, John, you're going to need this.

What is that list? 

Evan Liang: Yeah. So I think a lot of the stuff you're talking about there and I'd say like either CDP or some sort of data lake or somewhere to do the analysis. So I think insight is absolutely key because I think when we talked about the role of Rev Ops is not just to do the execution, but to make sure that the management team is confident that the execution is being done correctly.

So I think that, insights layer and intelligence layer to make sure it's working. I think a lot of people are working on that today. Most of my customers are doing something homegrown. They're trying to come up with their own models to understand or their own analysis to do around that. As an industry, we will mature and provide more of that.

I know My team's working on. Hey, what are the insights and intelligence we can add to that to make sure people know what's working and what's not and catch the differences. So I think the C. D. P. And then maybe the other one is I think there is this whole space around like sales engagement, forecasting, you know, conversational intelligence and recording that that that part of the sales text stack that's really, really consolidated around a couple of key players.

So I'd say those are the typical things that I see See almost pretty much, uh, every one of our customers at a certain level of maturity kind of has all those components that we, that we just mentioned. 

John Common: All right. So I think we're building the must have B2B tech stack, right? Honestly. And, and, and so, uh, to growth driver listeners, CRM system, I didn't mention it, but, uh, content management, CMS system, that's, that's critical.

So, so CRM. Web management or content management system and MAP probably if you're doing ABM or ABX at all, an ABX platform, uh, lean data, uh, a sales engagement tech, um, sales forecasting, uh, Um, conversational intelligence, because if you're not harvesting insights and signals from the conversations that are happening all day, every day with your customers and prospects, that's crazy.

And then last, uh, a CDP or data lake capability. And I think I just named maybe seven or eight sort of must have. 

Evan Liang: Yeah. Well, the good thing is some of these are consolidating, right? So I think sales forecasting, conversation intelligence, the sales engagements, like one space now, uh, increasing down. I mean, sales enablement is another thing that a lot of people do have as well.

Uh, but I think that increasingly, I think you're going to see a lot of like. Like the sales tech and the martech stack, uh, I think, uh, and then something to stitch it together. 

John Common: Growth goals are tough to hit. I know it, you know it, and the kind people in intelligent demand know it too. That's why they have a team of experts across media, content, creative, rev ops, and strategy, who know how to work together.

And with you to crush your revenue growth goals, reach out to them at intelligent demand. com schedule a free consult, talk some shop. Okay. So leads MQLs it's where we've all learned most B2B organizations, even though it breaks our heart are still locked in on that. Versus buying team, buying groups, buying teams and opportunities.

Talk to us what you have been learning and seeing about when companies stop focusing on solo leads or MQLs and begin to widen the aperture to buying, buying groups and opportunities. Talk to me about what you've seen there. 

Evan Liang: Yeah, so I think the biggest thing we're just seeing there is increasing in conversion rates, right?

So, uh, especially for VFB, that's the fastest. And some of the numbers some of our clients are citing are quite frankly, So high that they're almost lose a little bit of credibility. People are like, no way. But I think if we make logical sense of this, this is just the natural evolution off of like, really, the rest of the go to market team meeting what sales is already doing.

I mean, the concept of buying groups is really like, The best sales reps have always done this, right? They understand the account map. They understand the relationships. They multi thread. They understand how to like put the different people. They understand that they have to help their buyers, uh, uh, their, uh, their, their customers buy, right?

And that means overcoming the internal objections and, and the emotions that are involved with kind of that buying cycle. Um, and so I think like the first example I said, like the MQL was. Like M kills like almost 20 years ago. 20 years old now. Yeah. All the people. Uh, and then I think the reason a BM really gravitated pe to people was they were just like, it's not just about the M kill, you gotta think about the whole company and the account level.

And so that's why a BM people were like, uh, John Miller's whole, like, phish with, uh, spears instead of phish with nets. Right. That just really gravitate, people understand it conceptually that, that, that they needed to think at the account level. Uh, the buying group is just the next level to be like for a lot of bigger companies.

Uh, the account is too big if you're selling between like Siemens and Home Depot Like the account is meaningless. It's just too many signals and too much stuff You really have to understand like what am what product am I selling to what part of this company? What business unit what skew or what your geography and so it's just us getting better about the Finding who is that true buying committee, uh, so that the experience could be delivered better.

The sales people could be more effective and not wasting their time, right? Um, I think NVIDIA has a great example of like most of the people who come through their contact us are like low level developers, right? Uh, and they, when they Pick their drop down. They always say CEO, right? Is that just that's like the first big down.

And so they're like, we do not have the CEO of all these companies coming to us. They're just like developers is that don't don't get too excited. What we actually have to do is understand. But we may have to start with the developers who's doing the test kit in the SKU, right? And then build up and understand how to build that a priority.

So I think it's not necessarily a new change to the sales motion. It's just the technology and processes are. Well, finally caught catching up with the best sales reps. And if we could replicate that further, because one of the things our industry suffering from is despite all the investment in technology, we still have this huge inequality between the best sales reps and the average sales rep.

Right. And so if us as rev ops and technology can help close that gap and be able to pass those best practices, then we can maybe finally achieve where. You know, more sales reps are hitting their quota because I think as an industry, we need that because that's the only way to be efficient. The only way you can hit your go to market efficiency is if you have more sales reps hitting quota.

John Common: Yeah. You know, I, I, I think a lot, um, about this topic about how do you help our clients, um, lead the, lead the change away MQLs toward buying groups and opportunities without sounding like some total nerd. That, and it makes the CRO or the CEO or the CFO be like, stop talking marketing to me. I hate your guts.

And I think what you just said a second ago is another good way to drive that change and explain it in plain language. And when you said. The movement from leads and MQLs to buying groups and opportunities is actually just our revenue processes and our go to market strategies and our technology and data catching up to what good B2B sales methodologies have been telling us for 20 plus 30 years, which is like, you know, whether remember the blue sheets and the green sheets that was about buying teams.

Right. And I think that's so great. And I think that we should all of us listening to this, who are probably either already in or about to have to explain why it is valuable to move from MQLs to buying groups and opportunities. How would you explain that to a CFO or a CEO? 

Evan Liang: Yeah, so I think it's just, you don't know what's happening, like, in your processes.

Right. So I think the key thing here is, um, and I touched upon this earlier. So I, I, I, I apologize for almost repeating myself because I've been trying to think about this for a while. I'll be honest, because people sometimes people like, Oh, that makes sense. And then it becomes like a digital transformation project.

And they're like, Oh, that takes too long. Too much change and that scares people, right? Change management is really, really hard. And I'll be honest, I've been trying to think about a way to make it like, how do you make it very visceral, that like, you've got to do this. And so for me, it really is this, like what I mentioned earlier, the second lead syndrome.

What happens when that second person comes? Do you know? Do you know what happens when like, you know, like you're, you're talking to, like in our case, like a RevOps champion and their boss, the VP of reps or a CMO starts interacting with some of your signal, they come to an event. Do you know what that experience looks like?

Uh, and if you don't know the answer to that, you know, uh, and I'm sure your, your, your, your, your CR would be, would be really mad if you delivered a poor experience, right? Uh, and, and, or your sales rep. Yeah. Understanding that like everyone's so focused on that in an interaction initial reaction People aren't focused on the second interaction the third interaction as you build that up.

That's a buying group. Yeah That's the buyer's journey, right? It's how are you interacting with everyone that's associated with them and delivering it? And I don't think most organizations ever think when they, when they draw this on a whiteboard, it's always that first lead. That's what we sketched through.

What about the next? 

John Common: Yeah, you're right. And it's always acquisition because especially if you're working inside a mid market or enterprise company, um, the thing, second lead syndrome, uh, is, is a good way to, to, to, to, to have an aha moment about the lack of. Sensing and thinking about and tracking buying teams and how that is harmful in acquisition.

But when you move to retention and expansion, it gets so much, it gets exponentially worse. Like we've got some enterprise, like multi billion dollar customers of ours who they are think of the number of buying teams and contacts with their customer base is. It makes, it makes acquisition look like, like paltry in compare, in, in, in, in comparison.

And so the problems, the missed opportunities, the, the shitty buyer experience or customer experience, the, uh, the confusion, the waste totally exists on the acquisition side. But what I would add is it gets exponentially worse when you move into retention and expansion. 

Evan Liang: And the skill sets are different, right?

At least on the, uh, uh, acquisition side, you have very skilled enterprise A's. They know how to do this on the acquisitions that you're throwing it over the fence to someone who's a CSM or AM. It's a different skill set, but yet almost the data is in your system, right? You've probably interacted with it with those folks or somewhere.

And so if we could deliver that better, um, and I agree with you in today's environment around go to market efficiency, making sure you retain your customers or grow your customers. is absolutely critical. But what we're finding out is that is going to require more investment in data and processes. Uh, that's, that's true for us internally.

And we have seen some inklings from our, some of our customers who are pushing the animal on buying groups, that they are seeing that the problem, uh, uh, that you, you, you highlighted, John. Around the, uh, around the, the CSM and post sale process is actually deeper. Uh, uh, and, and I'd love to see more companies kind of, uh, investing in that area, because I do think the payoff could be higher.

John Common: Yeah. Um, okay. So if you're moving from MQLs to buying teams and opportunities, one of the first things you're going to run into is your company's reliance on funnel modeling that is reliant on MQLs. And, and, you know, it's, it's the old 2006 serious decisions, waterfall that won't, that will not die. 

Evan Liang: Yup. 

John Common: Um, uh, and so, um, talk to me about data driven reporting and analytics.

And again, I we're on growth driver, let's, let's get real, let's get real, man. So like, um, what do most B2B companies? Need to have the courage to break or do or do differently to avoid Staying in the trap of MQL centric reporting. That's one and then secondly avoid what I think is increasingly becoming obvious which is the trap of

Attribution that inadvertently makes you ask which white paper created that multi billion dollar Opportunity, it's like what so what get real with me What reporting and analytics, modern approaches to reporting and analytics. What are the mistakes? What are your recommendations? 

Evan Liang: Yeah. So I think you highlighted one of those is I think the, uh, on attribution, like multi touch attribution, or even first touch last touch attribution, uh, it ends up becoming like, uh, You know, not a blame game, but like just about about credit hogging.

So I definitely see that as a potential threat. And by the way, we had been in the attribution game at one point in time. So so we actually because we provided such good data that people could use it for that. Uh, but the best customers who use that data is they were trying to more understand the customer journey.

So I think that the first step is really trying to map out and understand what. Uh, what is your customer journey look like? Like historically? Um, and so if you understand that, you have a better chance of understanding what you need to do to highlight it going forward. And with the goal of not credit, like take away the models, just understanding the journey itself.

itself. Now, the advice we give to most of our folks, because there are some boards and stuff like that, especially the private equity folks who are stuck on the MQL model and stuff like that, is we don't suggest completely abandoning it. We suggest running them in parallel. Uh, and so, uh, I, I think it, it's cutting over too tight will create kind of that change management's already hard enough.

Uh, and so we do recommend people keep those metrics there. Add new metrics like number of folks in their buying committee. Um, I would honestly say the industry right now, we're all trying to figure this out together, uh, around it. So I, I think serious decisions or a Forrester has some nice models and those type things around the ROI.

Um, I think people are measuring like, hey, even like we said second legion. Two plus, how many, uh, on your buying committee, on your opportunity, do you have two plus opportunity, two plus, uh, contact role members, right? Even there, you can see a huge lift in your, uh, in, in your conversion rates versus, uh, a single, right?

So that might be, and now that depends on segment, right? Commercial SMB, you don't need that. Enterprise, you probably have a 10 person buying committee. So there are multiple metrics that we can put into place. And this is where that intelligence layer that we talked about earlier around the tech stack and CDP becomes really, really critical.

You need to see all the signals and you need to understand the entire, uh, entire buyer's journey. In order to really figure out what is the mode that works for you, uh, and I think by understanding that we can find our figure out based on signals and stuff like that, propensity to buy, uh, and, and deliver something more, more indicative of what's about to happen than, uh, simply that, 000 MQLs.

John Common: Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. I. You, you alluded to this a second ago. I think

a couple of things that from what you just said, one is stop looking, stop asking. You didn't say this. I'm going to say it. It's going to be an, um, stop asking shallow questions like who gets credit for this and start being curious about. The buying teams and accounts, what are they actually engaging with?

Where are they in their journey? Do we even know, and what, what are they telling us with the discernible actions that we can track it? So it's, it's moving, moving from credit to curiosity was what I heard you say. And I think that is a, well, that's just a damn hot take right there, Evan. That's a, that's a hot, 

Evan Liang: I like it.

And that's the role of RebOps to ask those curious questions. 

John Common: Yeah. Ooh, nice. I like that. See what you did there? Yeah. It's almost like you do this for a living, Evan. Um, that's really good. That's really good. And, um, and then the other thing I think you alluded to a second ago also is stop dear listener, dear B2B people stop.

Expecting one report to rule them all. Like you gave us, you gave us permission to say, look, first of all, we've built an entire MQL industrial complex around this. We're not going to tear it down overnight. So I think you gave us permission to say, all right, you're probably have to keep running that for a while.

That's okay. And then, and then what I love is you brought up the fact that like, depending on your go to market motion, depending on the market segment that you're pursuing and the, the ACVs, the deal values. There might be a low cost, high velocity volume and velocity part of your go to market where maybe MQL reporting is maybe, it might be okay, actually, you know, um, but similarly you, you might have higher ACV.

More ABX kind of motions where if you try to plaster an MQL reporting approach onto those go to market motions, onto those revenue growth goals, um, you are signing up for some serious suffering and inefficiency. And I think that's the other thing I want to tease out here is that be mature and smart about your growth goals and which go to market motions you're running, and give yourself permission to use the right, helpful, Reporting approach for each of those things.

And yes, that might be a little more, um, complicated than a 20, uh, you know, early two thousands MQL model, but like hate the game. Don't hate the player, man. Like, sorry. Like, I don't know what to tell you. You're the one who picked that this, you wanted to be in B2B. Welcome to your life. That's kind of, 

Evan Liang: you know, And I think the models do fit like a buying group of one is an MQL.

So there are, if you really only have a single, it does fit, right? If that's true. I love that. That's true. Yeah. 

John Common: That's a great, that's a much simpler way to say it than what I just did. So like, if your buying team is one person, then you should use an MQL model, but it probably isn't. Yeah. Right. All right.

That's really cool. All right. Like we're going to have to start laying in the plane here a little bit. Um, I want to know, talk to me about trends, what RevOps trends are you personally, genuinely excited about, curious about tracking? 

Evan Liang: Yeah. So from the RevOps perspective, I think the biggest one is, uh, I think that the maturation of RevOps to kind of having a seat at the table, uh, I think, um, I think RevOps, uh, the, the history of RevOps, you start, they started off as, uh, like basically CRM admins that they were just back there just tweaking, like, oh, mostly that, uh, they have gone from that to like.

Sales ops where they're owning a stack and then you have rev ops. And I think really the next trend I love to see is that the people who come from that background as we become more technical, uh, as things like AI remove a lot of the human components of it. I think the best future generation of CROs are going to potentially come up through the RevOps ranks.

So that's what I mean having them have a seat at the table and really being able to, to design and strategize around the whole thing. So to me, that's one thing that's continuing to happen. The more we rely on technology, the more people who have that mindset and think of a system, uh, are going to become the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, the, uh, the holders of the keys.

Yeah. In some respect. So that, that's one macro. Okay. I think the second one is just really, uh, We're all trying to figure out obviously where, where, where AI can, uh, can play a role in everything. Right. And I, we are seeing Sprouts where, you know, uh, AI is providing a ton of value. Uh, I think there are other areas where I think, uh, uh, AI may be not quite ready yet.

you know, I think, uh, maybe I'd say like, not to take a hot take, but like the AI. SDR just seemed to make so much sense for everyone, and I don't think that's quite delivering. Uh, now what the role of the SDR is, that's a better question, right? But because we don't really know how to make the SDRs as effective in today's new world, where there's so much proliferation of signals, it's hard to automate it, right?

You're just going to automate. Kind of the old SDR, which we've all learned doesn't work really, really well. So I think there are pockets of where AI is going to make a huge impact, and there's gonna be pockets where AI is not. And I'm excited about as we enter that new role, seeing what the role of everyone is going to be like, you know, what is going to how is People are going to add more value in this.

Um, I think like, um, and people are always fearful of losing jobs and stuff like that. But generally what we see is, uh, any sort of major technology could change, right? Like the industrial revolutions. Uh, you know, you had all these people, you had these, like, huge protests and these wars when people, you know, brought on all those automated sewing machines and everything of that sort.

But guess what? I love that. People didn't something. There was some disruption. There was some pain. I won't forgo that. But then people moved on to more interesting jobs and interesting roles. And I think we'll see something similarly in the sales of Martech space once we understand what the A. I can do for us.

But then we will be able to, uh, as human beings work on, uh, more interesting tasks and, uh, away from the day to day, but button pushing. 

John Common: Yeah, I agree. By the way, uh, if, uh, to folks listening, if you haven't ever looked up the actual history behind the word Luddite, go look up that there's a, there's a fascinating story about the Luddites.

It's not just an adjective or a noun. It's actually a, uh, It's actually a, an interesting history thing that I'll just throw that as an Easter egg. And because I think, and when you do think about AI, when you go read that historical story about the Luddites, um, Hey, uh, how about, how about this third area, which I think is a trend.

I want to get your take on it. What is your take on B2B? tech stack bloat and what has been well documented as the truth of low platform technology utilization. 

Evan Liang: Yeah. So I do think, uh, I mean, Scott Brinker's map just keeps on getting bigger and bigger, and that's just the MarTech stack. Uh, I do think, uh, potentially, uh, we may be on the near Customers of text at consolidation.

I do think a lot of those technologies need to work well together and those type of things. And so, uh, we had talked about the text stack. We're already seeing that in certain sectors where things are emerging together. Um, and I think that's good for the customer if they're really well stitched together like our space.

Uh, I mean, we were Yeah. Quote, unquote, called the matching leading or routing space. Uh, there was a scheduling space that was ancillary to us. Those spaces have kind of merged as well because we realize that provides a better end to end experience. Uh, so for us now, it's not just about, you know, routing the leads.

We also put them on someone's meeting schedules, just another object to route, uh, in our minds. Um, and so I do think that will happen, uh, but I think, uh, it's both. I think you're going to have an explosion of new technologies like AI and consolidation of some of the core functionality. Um, and so I, I'm not sure everyone's stacks will get, uh, will necessarily get that much smaller.

It will just become different. Uh, and I think, but that will be exciting because things will stitch together. And you, like I said, uh, we talked about RevOps is about, uh, eliminating silos. And so as some of those technologies become more integrated, that will, uh, eliminate some, uh, text silos or data silos when the people stacks.

John Common: Yeah, that's great. Those are three really good ones. Um, all right, well rounding out our episode today, which by the way, Evan, I have been looking forward to this and I'm so glad we have done this because, uh, I, I knew we would have a blast. This is really great. Um, thank you again. But, uh, but you know, one of the things if, and by the way, listener, if you don't follow, uh, Evan on LinkedIn, you should follow him.

And, and I, I have for a long time. And, uh, one of the things I've noticed, and I really appreciate about you is as, podcast. And it takes one to know one. So this is to take this for the spirit. I'm giving this as nerdy as you are. And me too. And I'm, that's a compliment. Um, like think about what you think, think about what you do for a living.

Think about what your company does. You founded a company. That's all about this. And I love that about you, but I also have noticed that you really think about the human side of leadership and you think about culture. And I do too, at least I aspire to and, um, talk to me about. I don't know. I could, I could ask this question lots of ways, but what, what are a couple of things that you really, as a founder, as a leader, as a B2B.

Go to market and rev ops, um, person and expert about the, about the human side of what we do, the culture side. What are some things that you're like, man, I didn't use to know these things, but I really have lived experience now about how important this or that might be if you're a leader. 

Evan Liang: Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, I think it's both internally and externally for me.

It's just, uh, one of the things that we talk about internally, just be humble and keep learning. Uh, and that's one of the things that one of our five cultural values and one of the reasons for that is just I just you never know where you're gonna get your insights from a lot of we've been pioneers in our category for a long time because of some cutting edge customers who came to us with the problem.

And I think the reason we say be humble is you just always have to be listening. And so I like to take that mantra internally as well. We try to have a very flat hierarchy as a CEO. I don't want it to seem like I make it a. Point of just trying to meet with as many different folks as possible, uh, and try to learn from them.

And I don't try to go in saying like, Hey, I know all the answers, right? This is going to be changed. I think everyone has an interesting perspective that they can bear. Uh, and it doesn't mean that we run our company like a democracy. It's not. There is a hierarchy around that because sometimes, uh, hopefully the more senior folks have more context.

But our jobs is to listen to as many folks as possible. Uh, and never over. Dismiss something, especially if you hear something two or three times. Uh, that's where we get a lot of our best innovations is if we're hearing a trend line, uh, and we can only do that if people are willing to have a relationship.

So on the customer side, you have to be willing to ask the customers the question and sometimes be willing to be wrong. Uh, many times I would go in thinking like, Hey, this is the right way to do things. And I hear a customer explains a different pain point. Think about that. But if I hear it two or three times, I'll be like, Wait a second, they may be onto something, but it's not, they're not going to tell you the answer.

And similarly with your employees, I think the same thing is just, you just have to meet people where they are, learn from them and treat them more like a peer. Um, and so we, a lot of what I talk about in culture is really trying to make, uh, not, not to throw my title around, uh, to try to make things fair and equitable.

Um, so I, I try to lead by example and I never try to put myself ahead. Of everyone. Uh, that's it's kind of the servant leadership thing. Uh, and by doing so, I hope I can learn more from our employees that will lead us to just focus on getting to the right answer versus trying to push my agenda in some respects.

John Common: Yeah, that's right. Well, I got to tell you, I've known I've known you for a long time, and our teams have worked together for a long time. And, um, I really think you practice what you preach and I love that. And that's why I asked that question. So thank you for sharing that. My pleasure. Yeah. And also thank you for being on Growth Driver with me to talk about RevOps.

This has been fantastic, man. No, this has been so fun. The time just flew by. Yeah, truly, truly. You've been so generous with your expertise and your insights. And we're going to follow up about some of the things that we talked about, uh, by the way. And, um, I'm going to, I'm going to just kind of close out the episode by not only thanking you, but also Evan.

And everything you're doing with your team at Lean Data, but I want to thank the listener. You guys, thanks so much for spending your time with Evan and me today on Growth Driver. If you like what we're doing here, um, we really care about this. If you can't tell, we really are geeked out about this. Follow us.

Follow me. Follow Evan. Follow Growth Driver. Follow Lean Data. Um, uh, when these episodes come out and you start seeing it, share it with your team. They probably need to hear about some of this RevOp stuff, comment, uh, subscribe to our various things. Work really hard to create not just content, but things that can help you in your, in your, in your job.

And, um, uh, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or any other way, any time about questions, Evan, I'm going to speak for you. I bet you feel the same way. Reach out to us. Um, we're here. And, um, I guess the last thing is just remember that growth driver is brought to you by the smart, multi talented and kind people at intelligent demand.

And if you have a growth problem or a go to market challenge that you're struggling with, Go to intelligent demand. com, check them out, say hi. They would love to talk to you. And I would say the same thing with Evan and his team at lean data. Do the same thing. They're good, good people. And, uh, other than that, uh, Evan, uh, wave goodbye.

We're going to call it an episode. 

Evan Liang: Thank you so much for having me. 

John Common: Bye everybody.