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Well, full cast lets you build better territories 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.
That sounds great. I do a lot of that planning in spreadsheets today, and I'm pretty happy with my spreadsheets. How is full cast any better than that?
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I always joke around, Sean, that at the end of every workshop, they look at me and say, best training ever is awesome. High five. Then they turn around in their chairs, they look their manager straight in the eyes, and they go, how much of this are you really gonna make me do?
Hey, everyone. Welcome to operations, the show where we look under the hood of companies in hypergrowth. My name is Sean Lane. I had a phone call with a friend earlier this week who is a sales leader, and he told me that he's looking to hire the 2 most important partners he needs to run his business, ahead of sales ops and ahead of sales enablement. For him, when those two hires are in place, he'll have the 2 headed monster he needs to make his team successful.
So on today's episode, we're gonna explore the relationship between ops and enablement and whether, wait for it, enablement should actually report into rev ops instead of being its own function. To help guide us through this conversation, we're joined by Carlos Noche, VP at Visualize, the global leader in implementing the value selling framework. Now, Carlos has been in the enterprise software industry for over 25 years. And for the past 16 of those, he's been helping visualize his customers maximize their sales effectiveness. In our conversation, we talk about how enablement teams should be structured to focus on alignment and outcomes.
We cover how to make enablement changes that actually stick and what approach Carlos uses with his clients to drive 2.75x higher ACVs. By the way, if you hear him referring to Laura at different points in our conversation, that's Laura Adant, our mutual friend and my former boss. To start, I wanted to get Carlos' take on how this question of how enablement should be structured and where it should fit into an organization.
I think I have more of a feeling of where it shouldn't be than a dead set, hey. It has to be this or that. Sean, since we last talked, I thought about this. I thought about my conversation with Laura. I've asked some of my mutual friends.
And the reality is when you think about enablement, if you just purely think of it as a function, you kinda get trapped in some spots. But if you really think about it as people and what you're trying to get it to do, there's multiple places that it could work. I think the key thing is alignment. So let me go back to your original question. I don't think it should be part of HR as a training function because that is the kiss of death.
I hate it when enablement is trying to go through the motions of we did a program. We don't really care if it was successful or not, but we got all fives. People loved it. They did nothing with it, But, hey, we did our job. That is the last thing I want it to be, and that's what I think is a kiss of death. Does that make sense?
It totally does. How do you think about the audiences of an enablement team, right, in that context? Right? Because if usually, if they're within an HR context like you're describing, then the entire company is gonna be your internal customers. Do you think that there should be a one specific function that is the focus for an enablement group, or can they kinda serve a broader audience?
I think they could serve a broader audience. It all depends on the company. Right? Let's narrow that down. Hey.
In most technology type companies, you're trying to enable a lot of these key roles such as sales, SDRs, presales folks, maybe your consulting team. These are costly resources that you're trying to get the most productivity out of, and you want them to work in alignment with the rest of the organization. So if that's your focus, hey, it could be under operations or under sales under your CRO if they have enough time to focus on it. But I think the bigger thing is, hey. What are they getting paid to do?
And this is where I kinda thought about their alignment should be about driving revenue success, not about AKA training people. So when you're onboarding someone, right, that's where enablement usually is part of what they do. Great. They set up programs, and they're all in an effort to get these folks to be productive. So if they're a consulting resource, hey.
How quickly can we make them a billable resource on projects that are successful? If they're a sales resort, hey. How quickly can we get them productive and get to their first deal and selling what they're supposed to be selling within their aspect of the business. So they should be tied to the same goals as the rest of the organization. So when you think about revenue ops and we're trying to drive revenue, hey.
Enablement should be trying to drive the same thing at the end of the day, not say, hey. Look. We're rolling out a new program and, yay, everybody's trained on it.
Look. There's no one size fits all org structure that's gonna fit for every single company. But what Carlos is saying is that much like we've said about operations teams on this show in the past, it doesn't necessarily matter who you report to as long as there's alignment methodologies, those aren't outcomes. You're just checking a box. Instead, what Carlos is recommending is in an alignment around outcomes, like revenue and productivity.
And if you're super thoughtful in the design and articulation of your company's goals, you might be able to pull that off, But it's really hard. So since Carlos brought up RevOps, I had to ask the $1,000,000 question. Should rev ops and enablement be together on the same team?
So the caveat I have to this thing is it depends on the people you got. So yesterday, I was literally talking to a CRO buddy of mine. And since I knew I was gonna be on this podcast, I asked a question. Hey. Where do you think enablement should be?
And he says it's gotta report up through the CRO no matter what because I need them to help me get my team productive. And I said, what about having them report into rev ops? She goes, yeah. If I got the right person in rev ops. So going back to your question, I go, ideal world.
Hey. Look. There's only so many stuff we could put on a CRO head of sales. Let's be honest. If they got 12 direct reports, they're not gonna do a great job of really cultivating and driving those folks the way they should.
So I'm all good with bringing it up into rev ops. If I have someone in rev ops, that's good. Right? Can really be a leader versus someone again, I mean, I'm I'm not picking on rev ops, but, hey, people matter. You got people that are really good creating reports and tell you, hey.
Here's the information, and you got people that it can really analyze the revenue production of the company. So if you have someone that's a leader, can analyze revenue, hey. Getting enablement underneath them is great. Like, Laura, our mutual friend Laura is a great example of that. Right?
But if you have someone that's more on the analytical, hey. Let me just get you the reports you need CRO, then there may not be the right person to also manage enablement. My big thing is to avoid conflict. Right? You can't have these groups wanting different things. I mean, we can have a whole other podcast about the conflict between sales and marketing. Right? How do we avoid this conflict so that we're driving to a mutual result?
I've been thinking about this a lot too since we chatted this last time as well. Right? And, like, I've been kind of going around and around, and and I think you and I both landed on a similar theme around the people. Right? And as I reflect on my own kind of path, right, I know that earlier in my career, it was half self deprecating, but half reality where people would ask me that type of question.
I'd be like, look, if we're in a room and I'm the one teaching the sales skills, like, something has gone horribly wrong. Right? And I think that probably was true for a very good chunk of my career. And now if I reflect on it a little bit differently, like, yeah, I could probably have that function roll up into me within a broader ops organization, but only now. Right?
At the point of my career that I'm at that do I feel like I could be comfortable with that. Do you find that that is either from a self awareness point of view or just from almost like a fear point of view that ops people will kind of actually keep themselves arms length from the true sales skill development because of all the reasons you just mentioned? Maybe they're more comfortable in systems and more comfortable reports, more comfortable in the technical work, and actually kind of shy away from the sales skills?
I mean, I think you're on to something about self awareness. So, for example, the CRO is talking to you about yesterday. He had an amazing operations leader. This person could easily roll into a COO type role tomorrow. Right?
Great knowledge of the overall business and the different functions. He's at a different caliber than, let's say, someone that's, hey. I've been doing this for 3 to 5 years, and I've been running spreadsheets, and I'm I'm looking at it from an analyst perspective. Right? So you gotta have some self awareness about your strengths and weaknesses within the role and what your function is that you're trying to do.
Just like we said, enablement should be about enabling the folks to get there. The other thing about enablement that I'll add to the picture is some organizations, I think they're over rotate. Like, I have a client. Their enablement organization is enough people to run a $50,000,000 software company. I swear it's like, are you kidding me?
There's so many people in this function that I'm like, is your job basically to push paper? Do you spend 8 hours a day just answering emails? And I'm making fun of them, but the reality is there's no way those people are the best trainers at the different functions because they haven't either ever done them or they did it 10, 15 years ago. So I think enablement teams need to be able to kinda, hey, be self aware as well. Hey.
I'm gonna set up programs to onboard these folks. They're gonna have different needs from a sales methodology to negotiation skills, presentation skills. Some of those, hey. I might feel comfortable enough to deliver. Others, I need to bring in outside resources and then manage that.
And how do I piece that together into the onboarding of these things? And, of course, people say, well, Carl, you're biased because you're that outside consultant. You're right. But you're asking me what works and doesn't work. I'm doing a project right now.
We just trained over 240 folks. It's had great results in enablement. It's been an amazing partner in this process. She's talking about, you know, how she's onboarding new folks and how she's blending in some of the concepts so she can get them ready for the new hire workshops they'll be doing with us. Nice. That is the picture of someone that can work with. It's, I think, incredible.
I feel like on one side of the spectrum you're talking about, it's that self awareness. And then I think on the other side the spectrum, like, it's imposter syndrome. Whether you are from ops or you are in a pure enablement role. Right? I feel like something that some people have really strong opinions about is whether or not you, quote, unquote, carried a bag before you're in one of those types of roles.
Where do you land on that? For me, as someone who has never had an individual sales quota assigned to me, am I immediately disqualified from being able to be good at enablement?
I think you can enable folks in different aspects. So for example, a lot of organizations have, like, a value team where they'd look at the ROI analysis of how do we deal with the finance piece of this deal and convince someone procurement and these other groups that it is worth it to do this project. And, hey, you might have amazing skills there. The other side of the equation is, oh, great. I could sell.
And, again, I have a bias because this is the way we model our organization, me and my partners. I've been through 11 different training programs, and these trainers that sometimes come in, you're like, are you kidding me? Have you been out there? When's the last time you had to go negotiate an MSA these days? Because it ain't like just sending a contract over and just getting them to sign it anymore.
I mean, it used to be big organizations want MSA. Now everybody seems to want an MSA, statements of works, and liability, and all this other stuff. The world is constantly changing, and it is easy to forget how difficult the day to day is. So my bias is when you're doing sales training, you gotta be selling. And so all of me and my partners sell and deliver.
And the reason being it creates instant credibility with our audience. We share the stories of how we sold your organization and the challenges that we had. And we can use stories that are relevant, not from 15 years ago.
I appreciate Carlos' push here that self awareness must be present for anyone involved in enablement. Whether you're an operator approaching enablement from your unique perspective or someone who's been teaching enablement for the same way for the past 15 years, guess what? You both have some learning to do. Carlos and his partners stay sharp by selling themselves. He's in the services business, so in order to teach selling, he better be pretty good at selling himself.
That's what gives him instant credibility when he does it well. So if great revenue leaders can come from a bunch of different backgrounds, it begs the question with all the access that Carlos has to sales leaders, what is he finding to be true about the very best of them?
We'll just go down some thoughts. One is people that are just kinda caught up in the past. And what I mean by it is what worked 5 years ago, 10 years ago. And I say 5 years goes because the world changed with COVID. Yeah. Right? And you go 10, 15. I was just sharing some stories with an old buddy of mine this weekend, and we're talking about a road trip we took and I go, man, that was before the freaking cell phone. We couldn't even call home. So the world is constantly changing.
So going back to sales leaders, hey. Are they adapting to their audience today? So you got baby boomers, gen z, gen x. You got millennials, gen z's. You got the biggest diversity of generations on your team.
Are you able to find a way to communicate across them, or are you kinda old school? Just do it my way. Are you trying to hold the team accountable and get them to take ownership? So we're talking about enablement. And it's funny because one of the things I was talking about with another executive the other day is, Carlos, we've done programs before.
It didn't work. And I go, I'll tell you what I think after doing this for 15 years now. It comes down to is the leadership down from frontline to executives taking ownership and accountability for the success of the program. If you have a leader go, hey, Carlos. That's great. We'll see how enablement, you know, takes us to the next level. What? You're gonna rely your success on enablement to do it? I mean, that's like, hey. I love the CRM.
We'll see how, Sean does in making it get all filled out. No. That's you and your team's job to do it, and you gotta hold your team accountable to get there. So talk about sales leadership. Hey. Look. Can they adapt to today's multiple generations? Can they do what they preach? In other words, can they inspect what they expect? Or are they saying what they but doing something else?
That's something I coach in my coaching workshop to leaders. I go, folks, it doesn't matter what you tell them. They're gonna watch your behavior. If you're not talking to executives uncovering their business drivers, underlying challenges, helping them understand the value of what you're selling. How can you expect them to do it? Because you don't do it when you talk to folks. And how have you found that you can kind of make sure that that sticks? Right? Because similar to what
you were saying, like, I've been through a handful of these. Right? And everyone gets really excited right when the program starts. You know, maybe it lasts depending on how strong of a sales leadership team you've got around you. You know, a month, 2 months, maybe 3.
And then, like, okay, all the concepts start to wane, the excitement and the newness of it starts to go away. You talked about having ownership and accountability and kind of demonstrating the skills. I think the other thing you mentioned has to do within inspection. I find sometimes that, like, words like inspection and adherence, they're kinda dirty, right, when you talk about them to sales teams. Right?
It feels kind of, like, micromanaging to them, I feel like, if it's not delivered properly. So what do you do, or what do you kind of work with your sales leaders to do to make sure that, 1, the inspection and the adherence is happening, but 2, that the changes you're trying to make stick and hold to actually drive business outcomes.
Any program like implementing a new sales methodology approach, common language. It's a behavioral change you're trying to get people to do. John, yesterday, you called it tomato. Today, I want you to call it tomato, so we're on the same page. I need to change my behaviors. Eric? Hey. The word inspection seems like micromanaging. Yeah. But part of your job is to manage and coach.
It's not to create the whopper room of, hey. Do whatever you want, man. Whatever works. So maybe I'm using an old world school with the word inspection, but let's take something as simple as, hey. We're gonna change our expense policy. The way you run your expenses. Do you care that they make the change? Oh, yeah. Are you inspecting the process? Yeah. Other consequences if they don't do the process? Yeah. We don't pay them. Surprise. Surprise.
Tomorrow, you might get a lot of rumbling, but everybody is following your new expense policy because they wanna get paid. Does that make sense? Now I'm not saying you just make things horrible. You you gotta put some thought into that expense policy so it's reasonable. Right?
If it's taking hours for them to do it, they're gonna finally revolt. But if it's reasonable, they should do it. Now let's take the sales process for example. If you're expecting to do simple things like get key information to better qualify it, to get resources on a deal. If you're expecting them to do a mutual success plan with their accounts to drive it forward, then if they're not doing it, isn't that your fault as a leader?
Are there any consequences? No. I'll still give them the resources. We'll move forward. I need the pipeline. Well, then you're demonstrating through your behaviors, you really don't care. I always joke around, Sean, that at the end of every workshop, they look at me and say best training ever is awesome. High five. Then they turn around in their chairs. They look their manager straight in the eyes and they go, how much of this are you really gonna make me do?
And if we twitch, you just sent some money up in flames. I work with leadership to make sure we don't. What's gonna be our answer? So the first group I start with is leadership. How are we gonna make this part of our DNA?
So let's make this functional. How do we make this new sales framework functional for us? Not the way Carlo sells, not the way the last client I worked with sell. How do you all wanna sell? It could be as simple as we're gonna ask 6 consistent questions on every single opportunity.
And our reps can have an answer of I don't know yet, but then they need a plan of this is what I wanna do or this is where I need help in getting the data. But whatever that is, can we stick to that? And that's how I try to make the program stick. So if you look at behavioral change, you start out, woo, this is awesome. I love it. Real world smacks you in the face. Oh my god. I got an internal call I gotta do. I'd rather do that. Oh my god.
This customer is really horrible. I'm not gonna ask him any of these questions. And we get this dip, and then you slowly come out of it, and you only slowly come out of it by applying it. So another idea is I hesitate because we have way too many applications. I look at the tech stack for revenue and it's like a NASCAR slide. Nobody's using all these tools. You're way overpaying.
You're preaching to acquire, Carlos. Yeah.
Out of all these tools, if they even know how to use all these effectively, I don't know when they have time to sell. Right? So if we narrow that down, you do want them to use some sort of a CRM. Most clients are using Salesforce. Other companies out there, please don't beat me up.
It just happens to be the majority of the market out there for right now, let's say. Okay. So we got them using Salesforce. When we roll out a new sales methodology, is it part of Salesforce? We have an application that's been rewritten natively into Salesforce.
So the way you enter data, the way the app works is Salesforce. You're not learning a new application. You're not clicking out to another tool, and now we're tracking that information that we thought was critical around our contacts, our leads, and our opportunities and accounts all within the same CRM system. And now operations can run reports. So for example, at one of our accounts, they simply looked at don't quote me on the numbers, but it was like 58100 opportunities.
Their data scientists took out the biggest and the smallest, which obviously pissed us off because we wanted to keep the biggest in there, but they go on. I don't know. This will give a true representation.
You can take the smallest one out, though.
I'm like, okay. And then deals that had the value selling framework information associated to it versus ones that didn't had, like, a 47% higher ACV. But, again, you know, I'm a pessimist. Boy, that could just be lazy old me filling in some fields right before the forecast call because I know Sean's gonna ask me. Then they go back and look at data.
If they actually filled in that data in early stages versus late stages, 70% higher ACV. Surprise, surprise. If they actually updated that data more than one time, we jumped up to 2.25 x higher ACV. And if they did it for more than one person, because deals are multithreaded, 2.75x higher ACV. Sean, we use that data at the beginning of every single workshop to help them make it stick.
So why are you all here? You're all here to achieve more revenue, get to your target quicker because that's what you care about. Does this work? Let me show you the data. And this is a real simple study.
I mean, this is like, if you got this data early and you're doing it with more people, look at the results. I mean, they're outrageous. And we got senior leadership to look at and go, you know what? We're gonna stank rank all of our managers. And if you're not hitting your number and you're not tracking this data within your team, we gotta have conversation because it's unacceptable.
This episode is sponsored by Fullcast, 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, Fullcast automates common go to market activities like territory rebalancing, account hierarchies, routing, and more, so the plan is always in sync with operations. With Fullcast, say goodbye to go to market planning headaches and hello to your own personal planning assistant. Learn more about Fullcast today by visiting fullcast.
Io. Okay. Back to Carlos. Before the break, Carlos was teaching us about how the best sales leaders not only hold their reps accountable to important behavior changes, but model that behavior themselves. And what's more, he gave us all the keys to making behavior changes stick.
Let's face it. We all get excited about new shiny objects, but when not managed well, those objects lose their luster and we revert back to our old way of doing things. One way that Carlos highlighted is finding ways to embed this new language, new processes, new expectations in the day in the life of your sellers. It has to be unavoidable. Here's Carlos.
It needs to be part of your daily DNA of selling or it's number 39 on the list of things I'm never gonna get to. And I think that's part of the problem programs like this. Great. Love it, Sean. I'll put it on my list. It's it's it's on here, But the reality is I don't live it and breathe it every day. So if you get the managers from executives to frontline managers living and breathing it every day, then you can get the reps to do it. If not, it's optional. They pick and choose. And how
do you both assess and kind of validate quality there? Right? I'm sure AI is just not far off from doing this for us. But to your point from before about, like, yeah, just fill in the fields right before the forecast meeting. Is that one of those things that just, as of right now, needs to be managed by managers as opposed to managed by systems and process?
It's funny because with AI, everybody's talking about all sorts of stuff. Right?
I know.
So for today, let's put the future aside for a second. Filling out fields and using CRM does not close or not close business for you. So we got through with that. Just because I put stuff and that's where I think programs get way too complex, and I used to sell CRM for 13 years. I look at CRM systems. There's fields in there. He goes, what's that for? Well, we tried that 2 years ago. Well, why don't you get rid of it? I don't know.
I think somebody's still using it. I go, are you kidding me? The system doesn't sell stuff for you. People need to engage with other people, have conversations to get information to help the buyer make a buying decision and for us to actually qualify, drive the deal, forecast the deal. So when you go back to the system, we're not asking for anything more than the stuff you would share with a buyer anyway.
In fact, that's what I love about our program versus others. There's other programs that are much more complex. At the end of the day, they're we're all looking for similar data. But if I have to spend half my time figuring out what I need to tell you versus actually talking to customers and getting the data, then I don't see the trade off. Right? I closed no business today, but I filled in all of Sean's forms.
Can you give me an example of a useful version of that and a not useful version of that?
So in our side, look, the things that we're looking for is, hey, what are the overriding reasons why they're they're doing the deal? The underlying challenges that your your current state today, and their problems, their pain points that we need to address. How do we address those on the solution side? What's the impact in addressing them? Who's involved and what's the timing?
Those are the fields I'm looking for in Salesforce. That should be the same data that you should be reporting back and driving with your buyers, so you can get them to create a useful business case if you will to make a purchase with you or not. Think of it from a buying perspective is the big moment that I saw with value selling. A lot of other programs to give it from a selling perspective. Well, who's the economic buyer?
Agreed. I'd love to know who owns the budget, who are all the people involved. Gartner says there's 6 to 10 people involved in any enterprise deal. Great. I wanna know who those people are, and can I wanna engage with them and get their perspective?
And if I don't, it becomes a risk factor for my deal. But it's not as simple as I identified a coach, identified a champion, I'm done. And you gotta develop those. And those other programs, by the way, just so I don't offend anybody. They wanted you to develop them too, but their perspective was from a let's sell them perspective.
And even the younger generation is how do they think they wanna sell anybody? Because nobody wants to be sold. What they would love to do is help other people make buying decisions. This idea of a sales role, if you look back in history, it's supposed to be a role of service. We're helping people make buying decisions, aligning the best products and services with your needs, making sure you satisfied so we can create raving fans going forward.
I mean, that's a whole SaaS model, for example. Right?
Sales is a role of service. I think this is the difference I've seen in my career between the good reps and the great ones. Good reps want to hit their number and win the deal. The best reps genuinely seek out a solution that's the best for their customer and then relentlessly pursue that solution on their behalf. And then surprise, surprise, they hit their numbers and win their deals.
This also gives me hope about the future of operators in sales leadership roles because, guess what? Our whole job is one of service. If you can bring that mindset and that empathy to sales enablement and not just focus on, hey, you didn't fill out these fields, you're gonna have a leg up. My best litmus test for any of these fields, systems, CRM conversations has always been, 1, does this information serve the customer? Or 2, does this information help us serve the customer in the future?
Because just closing that customer is only the beginning. We need to create value for them. We want them to stick around, renew, expand. It's a much longer road than just signing on the dotted line, which brings us back to alignment. It's about revenue, and it's about discipline.
My conversation with Carlos really got me thinking about what it means to be a disciplined revenue leader, Not a disciplined sales leader, not a disciplined enablement leader or ops leader. It's about the full life cycle that comes with focusing on revenue. I was curious if that term, disciplined revenue leader resonated with him.
It's funny because I've had this conversation about what a CRO means. You know, should they have marketing underneath them or not? Should they have customer success underneath them or not? And the reality, if you're a sales leader like you just mentioned, dude, I'm just trying to get revenue in the door. But a lot of these companies, they want net ARR.
They wanna see a recurring revenue model. So we need so much new business. We gotta keep our existing business. We gotta create raving fans of the people that are using us. I like your approach.
You gotta look at it from I need to create a revenue engine for this organization. And I think that's where if you think about different roles, having a great revenue operations person to really help that leader be effective, having a great enablement team to help that executive team be successful, you get much better alignment. And, you know, it's kinda like we just talked about sales. If your view is to close a deal, that's your perspective. But if you flip it over, you're gonna have much better alignment across group.
I think we need to flip over the idea of I mean, in a way and you may wanna shut this thing down. I hate the word sales nowadays.
Wow.
I hate sales training. Nobody wants to be sold. There's not a single person out there. So it's in your pocket. Man, I can't wait to go to sales training, said no one ever. But what they do wanna do is they wanna get better at their function. They wanna get better at connecting with their buyers and their existing It might, but I'm no marketing genius. It's not what I meant it to be. I really wanted to change mindset. I don't want us to be in selling people business.
I wanna be in creating a revenue engine where we help people solve really complex problems and create customers for a lifetime.
I think the language thing is real. Right? Because one of my partners, she's a former VP of sales, former CRO, and she hates the word consultant. Right? She hates being called a consultant.
She hates when we call ourselves consultants. Right? She views herself as a coach, and that's the role that she wants to play when we get inside of these organizations. So I do think that that language is important. And I also think, you know, like we've been talking about, it does kind of all come back to the people and all of those traits that you just mentioned and kind of the growth into that disciplined revenue leader.
Like, we've had people on this show before put a stake in the ground, and they say, you know, look. I think future CROs are gonna come out of ops. And I think based on everything we talked about today, like, that absolutely is plausible, but it's gonna be a very specific flavor of ops people that will be on that trajectory. You buy that?
I do. You know, you look at all these roles. Like, I think about presales because that's where I started out. And I go, my god. We're looking for someone that's technically proficient, but salesy at the same time, can communicate very complex concepts of folks, but can vary that description from an executive to an admin.
That's a tough thing to ask. Those things don't come out of a university like that. Right? So you gotta try to create a culture and a program to enable people to be able to do that function that way in a way that they could do it and be successful at it. CROs, we're gonna have to change count on how we think about their roles, change the mindset, maybe change how we measure their success.
It's not about just getting the win. It's about is that customer gonna actually use the technology and get those outcomes to become a rate I always think I wanna write this book about creating raving fans. Become a raving fan for the company that says, hey. Here's the results I've got, and this is why it's important to do it this way.
Before we go, at the end of each show, we're gonna ask each guest the same lightning round of questions. Ready? Here we go. Best book you've read in the last 6 months.
Oh, man. I'm gonna give you 2 answers because one of them, if I don't give you, I'll get hit. So the one behind me is their value selling book that Julie Thomas just came out with. It's our framework, so I'm being really selfish and it's self serving. So that's what. Another one that I read recently that I enjoyed, and I've read a couple recently. I'll tell you one that I'm halfway through, and that's Elon Musk's book by Walter Isenson. I'm halfway through it because it's a big book.
Yeah.
And whether you love the guy or hate the guy, please don't send me any hate mail. I'm confused myself. But what he's done, he's kinda like our modern day da Vinci in a way. In the trials and tribulation. The book doesn't paint him in a horrible light, doesn't paint him in a perfect light, but he talks about some of the things that he's gone through. And I think it was a great, so far, it's been a great read.
I've been doing the audio version of that one, but it's, like, I think 20 hours or something like that. Like, it's long. Right? But, yeah, fascinating. Fascinating. Alright. Normally, I would say favorite part about working in ops. We're all all about alignment today, so I'm I'm looping you into this. Favorite part about working in ops or with
ops? So look, there was a part of my life where I took over our services team for a couple of years. And without my ops person, I would be never have survived. So favorite part about working in ops is really getting a team together that has common goals that we measure against. We would have this red light, green light, yellow light on all of our projects, and we get the team together to figure out, hey.
What do we get? Congrats on the greens. What are we gonna do about the reds and the yellows? And it created alignment on the team that said, hey. It's not enough to sell stuff. We gotta actually deliver it in a profitable way, and in a way that actually has the outcomes our customers need.
Flip side, least favorite part about working in ops.
I think it just comes down to people. Sometimes you you gotta work with the right people with the right mindset. And when that doesn't work that way, it creates hard decisions of making changes.
Someone who impacted you getting to the job you have today?
Greg Billings comes to mind. He's a guy that made me a VP. He he did it at an airport. He asked me to meet him at the airport in Atlanta, and I had to go there and I part of me thought, oh my god. I'm getting fired.
And he made me a VP. He saw something in me that I didn't I mean, obviously, I believed in, but he saw it in me and he encouraged it. And it goes back to your word about being a good coach. So in my life, the best leaders I've ever worked with told me that, hey. What I'm I'm doing today is not good enough, and here's what you need to do to get to that next stage in your career.
The people that just tell you, you're awesome. You're doing good. Keep up the good work. Thanks for the kudos, but that isn't making me better.
Alright. Last one. One piece of advice for people who wanna have your job someday.
Going out on my own 15 years ago has been the most rewarding, but I'll tell everyone it's been the hardest I've ever worked. So one piece of advice is, man, you still gonna have a little work life balance, but you gotta outwork everyone else to kinda get there. Hard work is just part of life, and I'm very fortunate that my parents who immigrated here put that in me. And it's the biggest gift they gave.
Thanks so much to Carlos for joining us on this week's episode of Operations. And also a special shout out once again to our friend Laura Aden for making the introduction. Also, if you'd like what you heard from Carlos today, he's got a podcast of his own that you should go check out. They've done over 300 episodes. That podcast is called the B2B Revenue Executive Experience.
Check it out. Alright. If you like what you heard today, make sure you are subscribed to our show so you get a new episode in your feed every other Friday. And if you learned something from Carlos or from any of our guests, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, 6 star reviews only. 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 Fullcast, 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 full cast.
With full cast, you set intelligent rule based policies that automate all of the time consuming manual tasks that hit rev ops teams throughout the year. With virtually no effort, operations will always seamlessly align with your plan. Learn more about Fullcast today by visiting fullcast. Io.