When we first started this show, there was one podcast out there about Operations that people told us we should check out. That podcast is called “Second in Command." The host of that podcast and our guest today is Cameron Herold. In addition to his podcast duties, Cameron is the founder of the COO Alliance, the former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, a keynote speaker, author, and one of the foremost thinkers and leaders on the work of COOs and their relationship with CEOs. In our conversation, Cameron a...
Feb 05, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast When a new leader joins your organization, there is often an exercise to review and revisit all of the key metrics and indicators of the business. This can be a difficult exercise if you’re used to the way things are or you were the one who picked out the original metrics in the first place. On this episode, we talk to a leader who is in the midst of that exact exercise. Our guest today is Allison Metcalfe, the new Chief Revenue Officer at Demandbase. Allison’s approach as an incoming CRO has to...
Jan 22, 2021•33 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast We have spent most episodes of this show looking at the work of Operators. Where we haven’t spent enough time is on the career development of the Operators themselves. Today, we’re going to change that by looking at a specific role that could be a future landing place for those in Ops today: the GM. Our guest is Ryan Toben, the SVP and GM of EMEA for Gainsight, and also someone who started his career in Ops. Ryan leveraged his Ops experience to make the jump to sales leadership and ultimately be...
Jan 08, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this special crossover episode, Sean is joined by Maggie Crowley (host of Build) and Matt Bilotti (host of Growth) to take you behind the scenes of Drift’s podcast program. You’ll learn how the hosts prepare for new episodes, the biggest lessons they’ve learned after recording 50+ episodes each, the best piece of advice they’ve received from their guests, and what listeners can expect in 2021. Want to learn Operations’ origin story? Listen to the full episode to hear Sean’s initial pitch for ...
Dec 30, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast The best teachers and leaders share their hard-earned lessons so that those who come after them don’t make the same mistakes or experience the same pain that they did. The rest of us just need to listen and pick the right people to learn from, and this episode is one such opportunity. Our teacher on this episode is Jamie Sloan, the Senior Director of Marketing Operations and Digital Marketing at InVision, the digital product design platform. In our conversation, we go deep in the trenches alongs...
Dec 11, 2020•39 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast Hypergrowth companies are constantly reinventing themselves. At Drift, we often say, "what got us here isn’t going to be the thing that gets us to the next stage.” On this episode, we’re exploring one of those significant moments of transition: how companies move up-market and start to sell into larger, enterprise companies. Our guide through that transition is Anil Kumar. Anil is the VP of Go-to-Market Strategy & Operations at Carta, and prior to joining Carta, he successfully helped three ...
Nov 13, 2020•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Every single Customer Success team says that they want to become less reactive and more proactive. But few CS leaders will admit that it's a long journey to get there. Our guest on this episode, Emmanuelle Skala, takes us inside that journey. Emmanuelle is the Senior Vice President of Customer Success at Toast, the restaurant technology juggernaut trusted by tens of thousands of restaurants for their POS system, online ordering, payroll and more. In our conversation, we talk about the tricky bal...
Oct 30, 2020•35 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast Managing tech stacks inside of hypergrowth companies can often feel like a precarious game of Jenga, hoping you can pull out the next block carefully enough so that the whole tower doesn’t come tumbling down on top of you. On today’s episode, we’re talking to someone who has mastered the Operator’s game of tech stack Jenga: Brad Smith. Brad is the co-founder and CEO of Sonar, a tool that enables teams to manage your tech stacks from a single source of truth. In our conversation, we talk about av...
Oct 02, 2020•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Operators are often referred to as unsung heroes. But there's a group of unsung heroes within the unsung heroes: the Data Team. For companies in hypergrowth, the volume of data requests and the variety of data sources to access can be daunting. So we've turned to Drift's own Data team for help in navigating the world of big data. Together, Arun Venkateswaran, Senior Data Engineer, and Kyle Thelemann, Senior Manager of Business Intelligence, form the two-lane highway of Drift’s data team. In our ...
Sep 18, 2020•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's hard to take what looks like a perfect plan on paper and translate that to real life. It's even harder inside of a hypergrowth company. In this episode, we go inside one of the fastest growing companies out there: Snowflake. Our guest Rachel Haley spent two and a half years at Snowflake as their Senior Director of Sales Operations, and is now the co-founder and CEO of Clarus Designs, a consulting firm focused on operational efficiency. Rachel saw Snowflake explode from 30 reps to 450 during...
Sep 04, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast There is no shortage of change inside of hypergrowth companies. The channels through which we market to our customers change. The ways we engage with prospects change. But there is an exception. The people on the other side of those interactions -- they remain constant. Today’s guest, Kyle Sutton, breaks down why this one constant matters so much. Kyle is the Senior Director of Marketing at SolarWinds, a publicly traded IT infrastructure company with a market cap of $6 billion dollars. In our co...
Aug 21, 2020•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast A pretty common exercise within Sales organizations is the Quarterly Business Review. This is a time to both look back at the previous quarter’s performance as well as look ahead to the quarter ahead. It’s usually a mix of both qualitative and quantitative, of learnings and reflection, and of course, forecasting. But what makes a Quarterly Business Review, or QBR, a good one? What makes it worth the time and effort invested to run one of these for every single rep on your team? And how do you ma...
Aug 07, 2020•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast We have talked a lot on this show with guests about their routines and cadences -- who they meet with regularly, what they meet about, even the structure of these meetings. Just as important as the content of these meetings, though, is how you present and articulate that content. The words you use and the energy you bring to the conversations you have with Go-To-Market leaders matter. In this episode, Sean outlines three ways you can level up your interactions with Go-To-Market leaders. Whether ...
Jul 24, 2020•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast The relationship you build with a Go-To-Market leader is one of the most important components of an Operations role. The data you present, the way you frame your position, and the empathy you bring to your interactions are all foundational to building a strong partnership with any team. Today, we’re going inside the relationship between Ops and one of the most important C-level leaders in hypergrowth: the CMO. Our guest is former LeanData CMO Karen Steele, and she's the perfect person to give us...
Jul 10, 2020•32 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we’re not looking under the hood of another tech company that just got a splashy round of funding or delving into the finer nuances of SaaS metrics. Instead, we're going inside Boston-based nonprofit More Than Words. More Than Words is a nonprofit social enterprise that empowers young adults who are in the foster care system, court-involved, homeless, or out of school to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business, specifically a book business. Our guests, Leanne G...
Jun 26, 2020•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast A pretty common question we get is, “How does Drift use Drift?” On today's episode, we're turning the tables on someone else who also uses their own company's product: Gong. Gong is a revenue intelligence platform that gives you visibility into customer interactions, and our guest is Brandy Ringler, their Global Sales Enablement Manager. Brandy is going to help us answer the question, "How does Gong use Gong?" In our conversation, we chat about how to instrument Gong in the first place, how to l...
Jun 12, 2020•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're back for Part 2! The playbook for success is one that’s hard to come by. In hypergrowth companies, you are often running around so much that it can nearly impossible to stop and articulate the evolution you’re a part of, what's working, and what isn't. Unlike so many of us, our guest on today's episode has taken the time to write it all down. That guest is Stephen Hallowell, VP Strategic Services at Highspot. He’s seen what happens when companies like Mulesoft and Snowflake go from tens of...
May 29, 2020•27 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast The playbook for success is one that’s hard to come by. In hypergrowth companies, you are often running around so much that it can be nearly impossible to stop and articulate the evolution you’re a part of, what's working, and what isn't. Unlike so many of us, our guest on today's episode has taken the time to write it all down. That guest is Stephen Hallowell, VP Strategic Services at Highspot. He’s seen what happens when companies like Mulesoft and Snowflake go from tens of millions in revenue...
May 15, 2020•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever shown up to a meeting where you have one version of numbers to report only to find someone else in the meeting with a completely different version of those numbers? And then you spend half the meeting figuring out whose numbers are right? In this episode, Bridget Zingale, the Global Director of Analytics at HubSpot, is going to help us all avoid this all-too-familiar situation. Bridget and Sean talk about how the HubSpot analytics organization has evolved, what it means to promote ...
May 01, 2020•39 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s only by saying 'No' that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.” Let's face it -- everyone in Operations is busy. New projects come up, a pandemic completely upends your perfectly crafted forecast, or some tool you rely on breaks. With all the swirl that can come with being in Operations, there’s a magical arrow that every Ops person should have in their quiver: Saying 'No.' Operators are enablers by nature. Our roles are literally created to...
Apr 17, 2020•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever worked at a company that has expanded internationally? Is your company thinking about doing so in the not-so-distant future? Not to worry, our guest today has done it all. Olga Andrienko is the Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush, where she leads an agile team responsible for marketing in over 50 different countries. On today’s episode, we’re going to learn what it takes to carve out a niche for yourself in each and every market, how to listen to your customers from halfway around ...
Apr 03, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the most common questions we hear is, when is the right time to invest in Sales Operations in my company? When is it too early? When is it too late? Luckily our guest, Pete Kazanjy, is a bit of an expert when it comes to early stage sales organizations. He wrote a book called Founding Sales and he is the founder of Atrium HQ, a sales performance analysis company. So on today’s episode, we’re going to answer that common question about when is the time to invest in Sales Ops. And for bonus ...
Mar 20, 2020•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast The intersection of Sales Operations and Sales Enablement is a fascinating place. It’s where process, performance, systems, and analysis all converge. And in recent years, the tools at this particular intersection have absolutely exploded. Luckily, today’s guest, Spekit Co-Founder and CEO Melanie Fellay, is an expert in navigating the Sales Enablement landscape. On today’s episode, Melanie and Sean go deep on measuring the ROI of different enablement tools, the reality of tool exhaustion, and th...
Mar 06, 2020•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, we're going inside the behemoth that is Amazon. More specifically, we're going inside Amazon Web Services, or AWS, where they have 1,500(!) Marketo users. Our guide is Darrell Alfonso, the Global Marketing Operations Manager at AWS. In our conversation, Darrell gives us the scoop on hiring with Amazon’s leadership principles, lessons in boosting your Operations team’s productivity, and what the elusive title of Email Bar Raiser means at AWS. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a...
Feb 21, 2020•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast When you were a kid and your parents told you to clean your room, were you one of those kids who just stuffed everything into a closet, closed the door, and marveled at how clean the room looked? If you’re an Operator inside of a hypergrowth company, you’re scrambling to keep your metaphorical room clean every day. And let’s face it, sometimes it’s cleaner than others. On today's episode, we're cleaning out the closet together, shining a spotlight on our mistakes, and giving you the 3-step proce...
Feb 07, 2020•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast For most of this show’s history, we’ve looked under the hood of software companies. But on this episode, we’re doing something a little different. We’re going inside Banza, the makers of chickpea pasta and the fastest selling pasta brand at Whole Foods and Target. Our guest is Banza's COO Mike Tarullo, who, as he puts it, "doesn't actually do operations." But you can be the judge of that. In our conversation, Mike explains the important difference between Operating and Operations for early stage...
Jan 24, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Let's face it... everyone thinks their team is special. Everyone thinks their problems are unique. But the truth is that your team isn't that special, and you might find lessons from peers in the places you'd least expect to find them. In this episode, Sean sits down with Drift's Director of Product Design, Tim O'Brien, to explore the surprising number of ways that an Ops team is the internal Product team for your company. And what you'll come away with is a laundry list of things that we as Ope...
Jan 10, 2020•34 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast If you spend any time on LinkedIn as an Operations person today, chances are you've come across a post or a piece of content from Sara McNamara, Sara has cultivated a unique and helpful voice in the world of Marketing Operations, not to mention she’s just really good at what she does. In our conversation with her, we dive into everything from getting lost in the sauce, managing the tech stack of a company that doubled overnight, and what Sara has dubbed Lamborghini problems. Check out Sara's new...
Dec 27, 2019•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's annual planning time, so we decided to throw it back to one of our earliest episodes all about the annual planning process at Salesforce.com. On this episode of Operations, Sean goes back in time – to 2012, to be exact – when special guest Bala Balabaskaran first joined Salesforce as Vice President of Go to Market Technology and Operations. At the time, Salesforce was a $2 billion dollar startup going through hypergrowth. Sean and Bala talk about Salesforce's operating model and what it was...
Dec 13, 2019•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s that time of year when everyone is taking stock of what they accomplished (and didn't accomplish) this year, and we are all in the midst of setting our goals for next year. Luckily, self-proclaimed goals nerd Karen Borchert, the COO of Flywheel, is here to help. In this conversation with Karen, we go deep on the goal-setting framework she uses at Flywheel, the special quadrant she has built to help you plot all of your goals, and if you stick around until the end, you’ll get to hear about h...
Dec 04, 2019•43 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast 
