How to Escape your Company's Wild West with CaptivateIQ's Johnathan Warren

Sean Lane 0:02 Today's episode is sponsored by the DevOps experts at full cast with me is their Head of Customer Success. Tyler Simon's Hey Tyler, revenue efficiency, sales productivity are everything today. How does full castes go to market planning platform help Reb ops teams achieve these types of goals. Tyler Simons 0:18 Well, forecast lets you build better territory so that the right resources are always focused on the right opportunities. When reps are motivated and zeroed in on their targets, they'll be more successful and bring in more revenue. Sean Lane 0:32 That sounds great. I do a lot of that planning and spreadsheets today. And I'm pretty happy with my spreadsheets. How is forecasts any better than that? Tyler Simons 0:40 You must get rid of the spreadsheets. Because spreadsheets create lag and errors with forecasts planning and updating happen automatically, all in one place. Best of all, it automates all common headache inducing planning activities like territory rebalancing, account hierarchies, routing, and more. So when you're faced with those go to market plan changes, which you know what they happen all the time forecast has your back. Sean Lane 1:07 Alright, you got me convinced? Where do I learn more about forecast? Our Tyler Simons 1:12 website forecast.io. Sean Lane 1:30 Hey, everyone, welcome to operations, the show where we look under the hood of companies in hypergrowth. My name is Shawn Lee, quick story for you. When I first accepted my job at drift in late 2017, a friend of mine who was already working there, invited me to some team outing at a bar. This was before I even started. So I was a little nervous to meet with some of my new teammates, but I thought it'd be a good way to get to know some people. So the company at the time didn't really have any dedicated sales ops folks. And I'll never forget, as I was being introduced around at the bar, as the new sales ops hire, one of the reps literally came up and hugged me. We need you so much. He said, I laughed. But I made a mental note that I probably had my work cut out for me. So many growing companies grow through this phase where things are loose, they're messy, they're undefined. Our destiny affectionately refers to this phase of a company's growth as the Wild West. That guest is Jonathan Warren, head of revenue operations at Captivate IQ. Having built out the ops functions that other startups like spiff and Keaton, Jonathan is now on his third ride through an out of the Wild West. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about in today's episode. In our conversation, Jonathan gives us two specific examples of ways that you can graduate from the wild west. He gives us a crawl, walk run model for building your first territories. And together, we realized that there's an opportunity cost to chaos. To start, though, I think it's important that we all be self aware enough to acknowledge if we find ourselves in the wild west at this very moment. So I asked Jonathan, how do you recognize when you're in this wild west environment, and that it's time to graduate? I Johnathan Warren 3:18 generally think that most people don't set out with this strong desire to have a process that ends up being this wild, wild west environment like this is something that you fall into kind of haphazardly, because your focus is on so many other things. Oftentimes, for early stage, these high growth companies here, founder led selling here, you're pitching product solutions that don't exist anywhere except a figma. Board, you're just doing so many other things to keep the lights on and just keep pouring gas on the fire while you found some product market fit that some of the necessary process, things can be overlooked. And I think as your team starts to grow, potentially, as the market starts to cool off, and there's the ability to have a little bit more reflection or inspection on your process and what's working and importantly, what's not, I think, and notably, once you hire someone in OPS to take a hard look at that and actually run and drive a process change. I think that's where you need to make sure that you're investing in a number of different process areas, but particularly in that Wild West, like our go to market motion. Do we have a process in place that's well defined, that's understood by our team and is repeatable for them to continue to find success in their prospecting motion, their, you know, ongoing sales process, whatever it is, is the speed at which you can clean up that wild west mentality is, is really going to be dictated by by how motivated you are to solve it. Because really, we shouldn't be in that world to begin with at all. But so many of us find ourselves stepping into that environment or, or cleaning up that environment that we've let kind of persist Sean Lane 4:57 and I think you know, your last point they're about finding yourself in that environment like that's, I think what a lot of ops folks might come into if they are to your point that first hire or even an early team member in an ops environment. So, before we even talk about kind of getting out of that environment, like, are there things that we can help recommend to people where you do find yourself if you're moving at such a speed that like you can't possibly get out of that right at this moment, but there are ways I think, to probably build your team or your function, when you know you're in that moment is to prevent yourself future pain, right. So like an example is, you know, there's always going to be band aids to stuff in your systems. And what I will always tell my team is just don't build a band aid on top of a band aid, right? Like, that's when we know we're gonna cause more problems for ourselves. So any idea is there for folks who find themselves in that type of environment and can't quite graduate out of it? How do you live in that environment? If you absolutely have to? Speaker 1 5:56 Yeah, that's a tricky balance to lock. Because unfortunately, so many of us, particularly in small teams have this responsibility to keep the lights on, you gotta keep the ship from sinking. And so you can't just slow down to completely overhaul the process and only focus on that for a month and then deliver this perfectly bundled up a new process to a team. But I think what you said is key, let's not put band aids on band aids, let's start to understand what our ideal state should look like. And again, not maybe delivering that overnight, but not taking steps in the opposite direction, to make sure that the small incremental changes that we can make that will eventually get us there can help build that momentum rather than having to start from a static state and then having to roll everything out. Again overnight. Sean Lane 6:45 If you're sitting there nodding your head and thinking, Jonathan is describing me, I'm here to tell you, it's okay. And Jonathan's going to help all of us. First, it's important to recognize what Jonathan pointed out, operators are often simultaneously tasked with both keeping the lights on and maturing the company's processes out of the Wild West. You can't slow down, he says, but you also need to be motivated to get out of the madness. You can't just accept it as the status quo. So if you're armed with this mindset, let's talk about some examples of way Jonathan and the team at Captivate IQ have started to mature and graduate out Speaker 1 7:24 of the Wild West. I've spent my career at three different tech startups and all I've been early stage ops and learned a lot of this stuff the hard way, I'd say one of the most obvious things that I've seen companies adopt and then move away from as they scale is the round robin, distribution for leads, opportunities, etc. There are a lot of benefits to round robin, obviously, I think it's easy, it's straightforward. And honestly, it's maybe the most equitable solution in terms of trying to define fairness where I've spent days and days of my time trying to create the world's most perfect sales territory plan and intensive TAM SAM som analysis, really trying to get it right carving out San Francisco and New York zip codes into into 100 different patches just to try to, you know, create this perfect distribution of territory only for things to still not work out and be even at the end of the year. Whereas round robin, if you at least zoom out far enough. And don't just focus on Oh, this week, I got, you know, the big account and by my peer got a small one. And vice versa. If you zoom out far enough over time, the round robin system is is very good at that equal distribution across your teams. I think there are also a number of cons that come with that. And I think as you think about maturing your team into a more established territory model, there are big benefits to be gained. I think that you have when you have a defined territory, whether that's by geography, whether it's by industry, vertical and specialization. For us we're moving into this world here Captivate IQ, where we're taking our moving from this round robin world to a named account territory modelers book of business where we're we're prescribing this, the best of the best of accounts that we know that we can sell to that are within our ICP, and making sure that our sellers have clarity on who it is that they need to sell and focus their efforts on how they should prioritize within that list of accounts. We've got firmographic signals, but we also got these, you know, buyer behavior signals that we need to take into consideration and in the wild west world, everybody's doing it their own way. And Round Robin, you're kind of waiting for things to come to you here. What we're excited about enabling our teams to do is really have more of a sense of ownership around their book of business effectively charging them to be the CEO or the president of their book of their territory. And I think with that responsibility comes a lot of accountability and we're banking on is ultimately some increases in productivity because of that focus. So I think that, you know, there are other benefits to for moving away from Round Robin, as your team gets familiar with their territory, again, regardless of how you're dividing those territories up, you will seek to try to find ways to have consistency in those territories year over year. So sure, things might shift somewhat as your team grows and, and changes, but you'll have more of long standing relationships in your territory that you're able to sell into the persistence of, you know, long term nurturing relationships from a prospecting standpoint, can pay off, it's better for your customer. And I think so much of you know, all of what we do should be tied back into what is right for the customer. And, and that's, you know, this familiarity in who their main point of contact is, and in our company, so that if and when they're ready, because we know, so much of the buyer journey takes place outside of our walls, that once they come in, they're ready to chat that they know who that person is. So there's sure many more benefits that aren't top of mind for me now. But we're very excited to give that that level of structure to the team in the territory mom, since you Sean Lane 11:21 made the point to that, like, you know, a lot of times in the round robin, people are just kind of waiting, right sitting around waiting for that lead to get distributed to them. And it's amazing how you can kind of just get used to that type of motion. And that's all you you know, right? That's all that you know, and understand in terms of how leads can and should work. And then all of a sudden, like, you lift the bag from over your eyes, and you start to look at it from this territory model perspective. And all of a sudden, oh my gosh, like, the approach you can take is so much more holistic, you kind of briefly said, Look, we're gonna go through this process of prioritizing the best of the best. And you said there's like maybe some firmographic score or traits that lead to that, like, can you talk more about that, because determining who's the best of the best, and determining who's at the center of the center of that ideal customer profile that you alluded to is not a light lift? Can you talk a little bit more about how you're going through that process? Speaker 1 12:14 Yeah, totally. So I think, yeah, in order to equip our teams to prioritize within their books, they have to have a sense, at least on paper who those best accounts are. And there will always be some intuition and some feedback they get from the market that can help there. But what we were lacking prior to this new motion was a robust account scoring model. So marketing has lead scoring, but not bubbling that up to the account level historically had just left us kind of flailing in the wind as to who do I go after. And, you know, we've had a lot of success in tech in the past. So maybe our reps are running a quick sales or force report that says, show me all the unknown accounts that are in the software industry and find the top range of the segment that I can sell into, and you know, those are the ones I'm gonna focus on. But even that involves a certain degree of a level of effort for our sellers that should just be taken out, like off of their plate, handle operationally, where they can just focus on, let me get into these conversations, take away the work to find the account, take away that work to even find who in the account we should be talking to, and just gobble it up so that our sellers can be be spending their time having as many conversations as possible. So we built a homegrown account scoring model, we looked at a number of different things, based on historical, you know, indicators of what good looks like what's converted for us, as well as aligning that with a bit of recency bias with what's in our current pipeline, where are we wanting to go from a market standpoint, with our ideal customer profile, all these things in formed this account scoring model where we outlined a small handful of attributes, think of them I guess, its fields, and within those fields industry, for example, industry would be an attribute, the industry could have a number of different values, software, business services, retail go on and on with each of those values needs to receive some sort of score meaning to relative to the value to our business. And each of those broader attributes needs its own weighting as a part of the whole aggregate score. So for us, I believe we ended up settling on five different attributes, things like the industry that the companies involved in the size of the company, the rate at which that company has recently grown, given the market conditions now we realize that that's something that's an important thing for us to index on. It certainly gives us some some information on paper as to the likelihood around their propensity to buy in the absence of maybe some additional third party data that you might have around intense signals. So we mapped all those out gave each of our attributes a weighting based on how we felt like it was meaningful to our business. You apply that weighting against the value within that attribute, you get a little integer number and the sum of those can be can be rolled up to calculate the score for an IQ out. Now, I walk you through all that because we built it we operationalize that we had, you know, total sign off from the executive level on down. And then we realized, you know what, we have this fancy tool called sixth sense. And one of the many things that they do is offer their own custom account scoring model. And while we had put a lot of time and effort into this homegrown model, and there were definitely some pros to our version, particularly because we got hyper focus to our business, there were enough pros that we couldn't quite solve for out of the box with our stuff, that six cents giant company that they are can like continue to really invest in porn to their model, where we said, okay, like, ego aside, like, let's scrap our model, like, Let's go all in here. And so we ended up, we'll still use the model that we built to inform and help layer in some decisions as we think about scoring and prioritization. But we're now just going to take advantage of of an out of the box account scoring model that we already had in place that was just not utilized. And then beyond that, we're going to go beyond the firmographic lens. And that was all we were originally solving for with account scoring, which is how good do they look on paper, and you're only as good as your data there. But once you solve for that, they're still okay, what's next, though, is how can we prioritize these accounts that all look great? Well, the best way is if you have any sort of signals on the buying signals that they're showing, and so we're taking and layering in that data to really drill down and drive the accounts that should be most prioritized. Sean Lane 16:32 Depending on the maturity of your company, you might be listening to Jonathan thinking some of this sounds super basic. But don't take these critical building blocks for granted. If you don't have them, if you're just round robbing every lead that walks in the door, then the opportunity cost of your reps time on the wrong leads is massive. And Jonathan is teaching us that there are multiple ways to graduate to that next level, you can crawl Walk Run, start with a homegrown version of a firmographic score. And then only when you better understand your ideal customer profile, or ICP should you then start to think about buying a tool or creating that next level version. It's also okay to run both of those things in parallel to one another. That way you're testing your own assumptions and using both the homegrown version and a tool as checks and balances against one another. You're only going to get smarter this way about your firmographic traits of those ideal customers. So that when it comes time to actually start building territories, you're going to be very well positioned to do so. This episode is sponsored by fool cast the company that helps operators build better sales territories. Their platform focuses the right sellers on the right opportunities, making them unstoppable. And the cherry on top forecast automates common go to market activities like territory, rebalancing, account hierarchies, routing, and more. So the plan is always in sync with operations. With forecast say goodbye to go to market planning headaches, and hello to your own personal planning assistant. Learn more about forecast today by visiting forecast.io. Okay, let's get back to Jonathan. He and his team at Captivate IQ are graduating from what he affectionately calls the wild wild west. First, we covered moving from Round Robin distribution to a more thoughtful territory model. Another area though, that Jonathan is digging into is around pipeline management and forecasting. This is definitely one of those places where in the early days of a company, particularly if you have a shorter more transactional sales cycle, you could get away with a much more loose process. But then as your company matures, you might be looking at more of an outbound motion. Or you might be looking at longer, more complex sales cycles with more steps and more stakeholders. When you reach this tipping point, Jonathan says it's time to evolve. Everywhere I've Speaker 1 19:05 been the forecasting process has started with, okay, we're doing things in spreadsheets, we're taking things out of Salesforce and writing it down. And, you know, this team had their call on Wednesday, but by the time it's making it to management, it's, you know, Monday of the following week, so much has changed, right? You've got not only static data, but you know, potential for error. And like, that's fine, if that's where you're at. That's where most companies start. You don't need the most powerful forecasting solutions that are on the market. They certainly help. But I think that as you think about the maturation of your team of your process, and what really moves the needle from a business standpoint, getting forecasting right is one of the most powerful things that you can do as a sales org and certainly in sales leadership, that prediction of what's going to move through the sales cycle and when to really drive that projection of future revenue is essential. Right. And so, I think that forecasting is certainly a skill that needs to be honed. Over time, nobody really gets, hopefully, you're getting solid coaching from a manager or from someone in sales leadership, that's really guiding what the forecasting process should look like. But I think for so many, it's just this, okay, got feeling I got this many deals, and I'm gonna put call this number and then you look at your number go, oh, yikes, well, that's not going to get me near near enough to my quota. So I better put, you know, more or, Oh, I'm actually I've got a healthy pipe, and it looks like I could call way higher, but I better hedge my bets. I don't want to overstate and sandbag a little bit. So I think there's definitely an aspect that can be solved this maturation in your forecasts, emotion can be solved through technology. And that's a step that we're taking here internally to get out of spreadsheets, and have a system that is structured, it's you know, real time connected to your your data source. And you can really build an operating rhythm or cadence to that motion for your team. But if it's garbage in, you're gonna get garbage out. And so you also, you can't just throw technology at a problem here, you have to make sure that you're also laying a solid foundation for the process itself. So setting expectations and like getting clear alignment on definitional things. What do we mean when we say a forecast has a category of upside? Or most likely or commit? How strongly should you feel around the certainty of any of those deals, there's a lot of science in sales, there's structure to sales process, you've got all these helpful sales methodologies, pick your poison there, you've got sales stages, that should be very prescriptive, have clearly defined exit criteria. This is what happens before you move it to this stage, etc, etc. But forecasting is where you actually do start to introduce that little bit of art to the science and to not contradict what I said earlier, where it's just finger in the wind got like, yes, that's still operates within some bounds of understanding, what is it that my company is expecting of me here based on my understanding of these deals, and to be realistic about those deals. And again, we've fortunately got technology that helps us, even if we're not running the deal, have a good, good pulse on the momentum of the deal and warning signs and all of those things. But yeah, I just say that you have to make sure that any sort of technological overhaul to a process like forecasting is mirrored with an overhaul or a rethinking and alignment around your general methodology and approach to it. And I Sean Lane 22:38 think like that art is the most useful when it can kind of lean on the structure or the science that you have put in place, right. So what I mean by that is, let's say you're at your end of quarter, and the rep saying, you know, my call is $100. But like, I've got two deals left, both of which are in our most likely category, but like, if one of those slips, I've got one in our best case category to fill in. And so I'm gonna get two out of the three of those no matter what. So the art is, yeah, I'm gonna get two out of the three of those. But it's all based on this common language about what most likely versus best case means to your company. And so if you don't have those foundations that you're describing, then, you know, it's all are and then therefore, you've got nothing, right. And so I think like, being able to lean on the foundations that you're describing, is really, really critical. Like I would imagine, to you know, you've seen this before, as you're going through this kind of maturation process, like, what I've seen a lot of times is also depends on the expectation setting and the championing from the leadership within these groups, right? Like, if Ops is the only one who cares about the forecast, then good luck. I've Speaker 1 23:50 unfortunately built some beautiful plans that have never seen the light of day because you get to the point where you're ready to think you're ready to roll them out, and you just don't have the bias. So won't make that mistake again. But yeah, certainly you have to have the top down, executive buying them support, and really not just them signing off, but like them to understand to feel the pain of what the status quo means. So that there is really that drive and that change that's pulled through the entire team. And so, yeah, I think going back to some structure and changes needed for us specifically around forecasting, it's great to get alignment on terms and it's great to say, hey, stop putting your number to spreadsheet, we're going to put it in to a tool, but how do we help our account executives? How do we help our managers to really level up that forecasting beyond just that you'll get better at time. It's a muscle you build over time. And one of the things that we're incorporating into this new motion is this very prescriptive. Of SOP for what the forecasting cadence should look like here and, and that's why it's so easy to fall into this trap of okay, We did it. Congratulations. We're all like we're all now aligned on this new forecasting motion. And then every week have the same conversation over and over again, because that's just what we do here. But we're now saying, Okay, well, at some point in the quarter, it makes sense to take a peek ahead and look at next quarter deals and early in the quarter, it probably makes sense to look at the deals that pushed and find out how we can like find a way to path for, you know, strong momentum. So if you think about the quarter in a 13, week, Sprint, it's getting very prescriptive down to the week this week, like, these are the areas that we're going to discuss on a forecast call, the outputs for most of them may be the same, where you're still going to be responsible for submitting your most likely and your commit forecast for the month and for the quarter. But occasionally, we'll be guiding the team. And this is going to be standardized across the org, where all our teams are going to also be having this part of the conversation built into our cadence. And I think that it's such a easy thing to build into the process. But if you don't, going back to the wild west, you just you lack of structure. Sure, maybe again, people are adhering to the same definitions and like putting their numbers in the same place. But you're missing that ability to really level up that motion and mature Sean Lane 26:17 Jonathan has given each of us a prescriptive playbook to graduate from the Wild West, when it comes to forecasting. According to him, you're going to need a mix of art and science, you're going to need buy in from the top down, you're gonna need outrageously clear expectations and prescriptive instructions. And most importantly, you have to consistently follow through on the system and processes that you have defined. Like Jonathan said, It may sound simple, but for many orgs, this is a massive change. Putting meetings on the calendar is the easy part. Once you're on the other side, you're going to have wonder how you ever did it differently. But until you make it to the other side, it's going to be a painful transition filled with change management. I would have to imagine that Jonathan is facing some internal resistance when he's making these changes when he's getting rid of a round robin when he's putting more rigor into forecasting. So what type of pushback is he seeing? And how is he dealing with it? Speaker 1 27:16 Yeah, the resistance is somewhat inevitable. I think, as we just shared, it's far easier to fight those battles, when you know that you've got the support at the executive level at the leadership level, right? Then it might be still met with that same resistance, there might still be those growing pains. But at least you know that you're not going to have to be looking over your shoulder and second guessing the enforcement of those and feel like you're you're out on an island all by yourself trying to drive that change. So do you have kids, Shawn? Sean Lane 27:44 I have one, yes. Okay, Speaker 1 27:47 so I have two little girls, and I don't know how old yours is. But I have a four year old and, and she's reached that wonderful developmental stage where she's learning to assert her control over everything. And she's discovering what the word Nomi as much as it feels like Sunday, she's just intentionally pushing all of my buttons. Really what she's trying to do is find that line that she's not allowed to cross and for her dad to uphold a boundary, right? And in doing so, while it's not always pleasant, and tantrums exist, ultimately, we both win by this new like shared mutual understanding of, okay, what are the rules of this game, and there's so much security, particularly for young kids, and just understanding what the boundaries look like. And so I don't mean to compare salespeople to preschoolers, that is not what I'm doing here. But regardless of where you're at, in your life and your career, I think most of us benefit from having some of those clear rules to operate within. So anecdotally, to share some work stories, as we've kind of gotten some pushback and different things are going maybe you'd imagine we'd get pushed back in different areas. We overhauled our qualification process here internally, what does it look like for a BDR to qualify a meeting and set it up for an account executive for for them to then qualify and work that business? I think generally from qualification standpoint, at least in my worlds, you're never trying to solve for 100%. If your account executives are saying yes to everything, you're probably not giving them enough balls to swing at. And if conversely, if they're saying no to more than half, that you probably have a misalignment on what the expectation is for, in this case, your BDR is and what they're serving up. So I've typically tried to solve for a number that's somewhere in the ballpark of 75 85% of the opportunities, the meetings that are set, actually turn into qualified business but we had quite a bit of disalignment there on the qualification standards when I stepped into my role last fall and while still maybe not perfect, and maybe never will be. You would think that maybe by introducing some more restrictive boundaries on what it is that each party is responsible for in this this handoff motion, after rolling out some some new process here i I have a number of people reach out to me, you know, in my slack DM saying, Thank you so much like, yes, maybe it's harder for me as a BDR. Or maybe the total volume of opportunities that I'm going to be sending over for qualification is now down under these new standards. But at least I know what it is that is expected of me so that I don't have to just guess, because Sure, I've got a quota like I'm going to try, but I'm gonna just hope that this works, and then get, you know, get that slam down, and it shut down, sometimes publicly, right? Where it's like, no, this isn't a good fit. And this is why I want you to be credited back in the round robin going back to problems with round robin. So don't get me started there. But I think, you know, another anecdote is with our account executives, you have sellers that are operating within different segments. For us, it's its market cap, like size based segments. And again, a lack of clarity around some of those rules of engagement had led to some consternation, and really, after just a little bit more focused on, hey, what is our rule? What is our source of truth? What are the different paths that we take, if we, you know, if we come to this point in a conversation, it's the amount of a prescription and clarity that we can provide as ops in terms of defining the process and the expectations. These reps are not coming to me and saying, like, Thank you like, again, maybe this is a deal that I no longer get to work now. Because I now understand that this is something that I need to pass to my counterpart in a different segment. But it saves me from having to, like deal with the awkwardness and the tension that comes with, I now won this deal. And now all these eyes are on it. And they say, Oh, this never should have been yours. And you're saying, Oh, should I get paid on? Like all this stuff that can be avoided? Just because we're more clear from the outset what that expectation is. And so I think, yeah, across the board, I probably have a number of different anecdotes just like that, where reps are ultimately thankful for the the amount of guidance that can be put in place. And Sean Lane 32:01 I think like the lesson there, too, is like, you're now leading with the why and like the what's in it for them to these changes, right? Because the flip side of everything you're describing is that like, there's an opportunity cost to chaos, right? Like, for every one of those inbound leads, you know, once you moved into that firmographic scoring territory model, you're probably also cutting out a whole bunch of noise, right? If you're living in a round robin environment, then with no thresholds to clear, in order to make it in front of the rep, like, there's going to be a lot of noise, it can be a lot of people who are never going to buy, there can be a lot of people who aren't even the right persona, or role or company, whatever for you. And so moving into one of these kind of maturation stages that you're describing, all of a sudden is like, wow, like the threshold of what makes it to me, and the threshold of being worth my time is so much higher, so much more clear. And then therefore, you're more productive. And so like, it's hard sometimes to reach that moment where the flip is switched, but I think like inverting it to say like the opportunity costs of the way things used to be was actually massive. But because you were living in it, you didn't even necessarily recognize it at the time. Speaker 1 33:11 Yeah. 100%. Yeah, as best as you can always start with why Simon Sinek? Like, how do we get to what's in it for you as a seller, there's oftentimes motivations from a business perspective as well. I'm in the process right now of rolling out a CPQ tool for our team. And part of what that tool will enable us to do with first time CPQ here is have some built in approval rules around discounting. And in this wild west world, right now, reps are quoting and just offering whatever, you know, they think feels right, and the manager has to, you know, sign off on it, but there's no guidance. And so, again, by setting some standards on the discounting example, to be specific here, where we're not only, like helping the rep, think about what are the standard kind of boundaries with AI should operate within, but also like what's right for the business. And ultimately, if we can limit discounting by providing, you know, some more clear bounds of what they can do without manager approval without vice president approval, etc. Now, they're putting more money in their pockets. The business, you know, finds more margin in the deals because of that, that clear guidance. And so, yeah, ultimately, there might not be a win for the end user. And it just, it's, it's a business oriented win. But it still is important that you're able to communicate the why and do your best to tie that motivation back to your end users. Sean Lane 34:35 I also think it's okay for us to say out loud that like some people thrive and enjoy the Wild West environment and some people don't. And like there is a profile, I think when it comes to hiring within your company to look for depending on the stage that you're at, right? If you're at that super early, scrappy stage. You want a rep who can thrive in chaos, because that's going to be their day every single day. A and then there are going to be folks who absolutely hate that. And the reps, feel the thrashing and feel the lack of clarity more than anybody else because they are the end user that you're describing. And so I think it's okay for us to say out loud, like, there are people who love this type of environment. And then as we graduate, those people might not be the perfect fit anymore. But there are a whole bunch of other people out there who love this more structured environment, right? And that's what they actually need to be successful, because they hate the wild, wild west environment. Speaker 1 35:31 100% and I'm glad you said it. Because I think you and I, maybe you'd be surprised at how wild the West really is. In some large companies still you go no way do you not have this process dial down. But they've you know, maybe it has been intentionally ignored. But it may be working and there may be, you know, more important fires for them to be fighting. Sean Lane 35:59 Before we go at the end of each show, we're going to ask each guest the same lightning round of questions. Ready. Here we go. Best book you've read in the last six months, Speaker 1 36:08 I'm rereading a book right now, by a brilliant guy Fil A Nashville native named Donald Miller. This book is called Building a story brand. And it is a story brand is this messaging framework that helps businesses with their marketing by incorporating the principles of story into their their messaging, and I just geek out over all of the the buyer behavior, insights and examples that are shared in there and really recommend it. Awesome, Sean Lane 36:33 kind of check that out. favorite part about working in OPS, Speaker 1 36:37 my favorite part about working in OPS is solving meaningful problems, particularly when those problems are at the intersection of technology and process finding a way to use technology to improve process. Ultimately, that's a win for my stakeholders, my team. And I think that's maybe you know, one of the biggest benefits of my job is being measured, at least in part by the success of my, my stakeholders. And so when my team wins, I win. And there are the things that I need to do well, but that's certainly a highlight of my role. Sean Lane 37:11 Flipside least favorite part about working in OPS, Speaker 1 37:15 the punch line is always the inverse of that is also the people in the complex problems. But I think, at a more tactical level, right now, in order to work as cross functionally as we do, the amount of meetings that I get pulled into and conversations I need to have, is rather cumbersome. So I mentioned I've been at three different startups. And all of those instances, I've I've started the operations function and built out either been a one man band the whole time, or built out a small team. But in every instance, you have the responsibility to be both that strategic partner with your leadership, but also still very much involved in keeping the lights on. And I try to be just ruthless in my prioritization of what is both important and urgent for the day, for the week for the quarter. But oftentimes, my calendar just fills up so quickly. And I find that there's, there's little time left in the day to do my day job. So I got to find ways to protect my calendar a little bit more, but realize that that's, that's part of just the chaos and the nature of being an ops. Yeah, when Sean Lane 38:19 you figure that one out, let us all know, come back on the show. Someone who impacted you get into the job you have today. Speaker 1 38:26 Oh, so many have had been really fortunate to have a number of fantastic managers. I think if I go back early in my career, I worked with a guy by the name of Brad Klaus, he probably doesn't remember this conversation, but I'll never forget it. He was a CEO at the time, I was a marketing generalist 20 something and he took me out to lunch in our building one day, and he was new to the ER just kind of spitballing you know, plans for growth, potential rewards. And he said, Hey, you're doing a little bit of everything under the sun. But if you had to pick a swimlane, like, what would it be? And at the time, having already become our accidental Salesforce admin and really enjoying supporting our team operationally, I was quick to answer that I wanted to build out the marketing ops function at this small startup. And I think regularly about what I'd be doing if I hadn't been so clear internally, about what I wanted my kind of the direction that I wanted to see my career grow. And I've realized that over the course of my career, I've been fortunate to have many fantastic leaders to work with and for and they've all been willing to open doors for me. But I understand that it's my responsibility to know where that door is and to knock and when they open it, like be prepared to step through and how different things could have been if I just if I had not wrestled with that internally and known to ask and say that's the direction I want to go. So big shout outs to Brad crops there. Alright, Sean Lane 39:52 last one, one piece of advice for people who want to have your job someday, Speaker 1 39:55 I'd say. Generally speaking, as you progress in your career, you're never gonna have more time than you have right now you're not going to be less busy. So in the same vein of my struggles with time management right now, like, Don't postpone learning or training opportunities for this mythical slow season, because it doesn't exist, like the things that you're focused on day to day may change and move from tactical to strategic in nature, but the stakes will only increase. And, you know, I just feel like I've wasted dozens and dozens of hours of my work time not being as proficient in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets as I as I would like to have been. And I'd say that they're earlier in your life, you can tackle some of those foundational things and not put it off. There's just exponential time rewards in this case to begin. So certainly invest in that time for your training and don't wait for for time that things might slow down because it's going to be hard to find. Sean Lane 41:02 Thanks so much to Jonathan for being our guest on this week's episode of operations. If you liked what you heard, make sure you're subscribed to our show to get a new episode in your feed every other Friday. Also, if you learn something from Jonathan or from any of our guests, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Six star reviews only. Also want to shut up a big thanks to our new sponsor who sponsored the entire episode full cast.io Special thanks to Dharmesh Beth, Ashley and Tyler from the forecast team for helping to make it happen. All right, that's gonna do it for me. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time. Today's episode is sponsored by fool cast your go to market planning platform. If you've ever spent hours or days building territory and quota plans only to have them be out of date. The second the reps hit the street, you need to check out forecast. With forecasts you set intelligent rule based policies that automate all of the time consuming manual tasks that hit Reb ops teams throughout the year. with virtually no effort operations will always seamlessly align with your plan. Learn more about forecast today by visiting forecast.io