Ops Cast
Ops Cast, by MarketingOps.com, is a podcast for Marketing Operations Pros by Marketing Ops Pros. Hosted by Michael Hartmann, Mike Rizzo & Naomi Liu
Ops Cast
Marketing Ops as a Path to COO with Stephanie Valenti
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Ever wondered how transitioning from restaurant operations to sales can shape an executive career? Meet Stephanie Valenti, our guest who has navigated this unique path with remarkable success. In this episode, Stephanie shares her journey from managing restaurants to leading sales teams and eventually holding executive roles across diverse industries. Discover how her operational mindset became the foundation of her achievements in sales and leadership, and gain insights into the evolving landscape of sales and marketing alignment.
Stephanie opens up about the power of vulnerability in leadership and the unexpected reactions she encountered when she admitted gaps in her knowledge. Learn how fostering a culture of collaboration and respect can lead to professional growth and team cohesion. We'll also discuss the surprising lack of formal sales education in colleges and the importance of continuous learning and adaptability, regardless of your career stage.
Dive into the complexities of operational roles within organizations with Stephanie as she explains the distinctions between revenue operations, go-to-market operations, and traditional sales and marketing operations. Hear her practical advice for marketing operations professionals aspiring to transition to revenue or sales operations roles, including the need to understand stakeholder language and business priorities. Finally, Stephanie shares her strategies for effective leadership and her active engagement on LinkedIn, offering a wealth of knowledge for anyone looking to advance their career in operations.
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Navigating Career Transitions in Operations
Speaker 1Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom , powered by all the MoPros out there . I am your host , michael Hartman , flying solo today , but not totally solo . I have a great guest joining me today to talk about how MarketingOps may be a path to other ops roles or COO things like . That is my friend , stephanie Valenti . Stephanie has over 15 years of experience in B2B sales and operations and is a three-time executive operator across multiple industries . She is currently vice president of sales for the accounting channel at Bill . An innovator in the fintech space , she has a passion for scaling teams , building processes and cultivating a winning culture , as evidenced by her executive roles at three record-breaking companies that achieved triple-digit growth . She is also a creator and facilitator of executive-level courses at Pavilion , a leader of 2,000-plus member CRO group and a startup advisor for Hatchet Adventures . Stephanie , thanks for joining .
Speaker 2Oh man , that was a mouthful of a bio . Thank you , michael . I appreciate it . It's awesome to be here .
Speaker 1I always feel like I'm trying to rush through that , so I need to slow down a little bit , I guess . But I will say , like we are both , so Dallas , the Dallas area , is winning on this episode , since we're both in the Dallas area . Texas , texas , this episode , since we're both in the dallas area , and hopefully it is the we're actually getting the real sort of like leaving summer , moving into fall , because we had that fake one that happened about three weeks ago .
Speaker 1Yeah , it was a lie yeah , it's a fake end of summer . It always happens sometime in august , um , but yeah , so yeah , now we're looking for humidity and storms again , which is that time of year .
Speaker 2Yeah , for sure .
Speaker 1We're good Well , so I wanted to get us going on this topic . You and I have definitely talked about this in terms of like even you know you've given me sort of feedback on from my career standpoint as well , but , um , why don't we start with this though ? I think I think the you know you have not really been in marketing operations . I think you've had marketing operations under you at places , but you've mostly been in sales and sort of general operations a big chunk of your career , at least lately . What it would be . I think it'd be interesting for people to hear your career path a little bit , and it may be lessons learned as you've kind of moved in and out of some of these different roles that might be useful for our audience , mostly marketing ops folks .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , that's it . My my career journey is a mouthful because it's definitely not something that you would see . That's typical really out of . I don't think anyone has this on paper , like it's just weird . So I started in sales . I , you know , before I started my professional career I was in restaurant right which in restaurant is operations right and we were running like totally .
Speaker 2Yeah , it was total operations . And I moved up really fast in a restaurant and someone looked at me and were like you got to get into sales . Your personality is big , like you're so hungry , you're always asking what next , and I'm like I didn't think I was a salesperson , but all right . And what I noticed , though , when I got into my sales career is I was so operationally minded that it actually supported my success throughout my sales career supported my success throughout my sales career . So , started in sales was doing field sales . You know , back in the day when there was MapQuest and you had to , like , go from place to place .
Speaker 1I was just talking to my wife about us . What do we cause we ? We do a lot of driving trips and I was like remember when we had to like do a MapQuest map , print it out and usually multiple like variations on it , then we would have it in the in the car with us totally .
Speaker 2That was that's how I got my cut in my sales career , um , and we didn't have marketing operations back then , and , surprisingly enough I'm like really dating myself the only marketing support that the sales organization had was field sales support . So , like if we needed a custom , like one pager , or we were going to an event , like that's all we had , and there was nothing . We didn't get leads from marketing , we didn't have like any type of co-branded campaigns . We didn't have anything . It was all sales led , and so I did that for eight years and had no idea how a marketing function could actually support a sales function and a cohesive go to market .
Speaker 2Now , this was a long time ago , right ? So , as I , as I got my first so I was which was a DTC , e-com , product-based company that wanted to build out a B2B engine . So , if you think about that , though , it was all marketing , it was entirely marketing-led , and there was nothing but marketing ops . People all over the place , and they were speaking in three-letter acronyms and I didn't know what any of it meant . People all over the place and they were speaking in three letter acronyms , and I didn't know what any of it meant , right ? And so , coming from like an enterprise giant company that was all sales led to a marketing led organization . It took me a while to understand how they were going to fuel my pipeline , how they were going to work within my systems to help me operate my business and my demand better , right .
Speaker 2So I got to learn about that for the first time and it took me a minute , right , I think . In the beginning I really fought and it was like no , no , no , we can be sales led to , we can be sales led to , instead of embracing and like bringing the cohesive nature of sales led and marketing led together . I feel like I battled a lot .
Speaker 1I have so many things going through my head right now . One in particular that is top of mind for me lately is that I believe I think this is a really valuable experience either being in a role that you have to work with on a regular basis . So I was in sales for a very short period of time Wasn't my thing , but it is . I use that experience very much in how I think about marketing , marketing ops , but I think a lot of people tend to just go like those people just don't understand me and they're a pain in the butt or whatever . So how did you like ? Are there any particular things you remember doing that we were like this is ? I'm going to try to learn about what those teams are doing in that scenario .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean I remember sitting in my first like executive recap monthly meeting and the guest speaker , so I had a counterpart . They were a CMO and the guest speaker that month was their senior director of demand , gen sure , and they came in and started walking through all of their metrics and their performance and I didn't understand any of it , like I legit didn't , and so it was a vulnerable moment for me . Like I'm an executive , I'm sitting at the table right and I have to go to somebody within the marketing department and say , hey , I have no idea what you just said and I need you to walk me all the way through it .
Speaker 2And I did that , right . I said walk me through , like it didn't come from an organization that had marketing , support , demand gen , any of these things . I need you to walk me through it . And they did . Did I get it on that first round ? No , like , marketing is complicated , right . Sales is not as complex , especially back then . It wasn't . It was conversation , human to human , metrics through a conversion and like , make more discovery meetings and close up your business and you're good .
Speaker 2And the other side was too complex for me to grasp immediately , and so I asked more and more questions . I sat with more people , I was vulnerable about what I didn't know , and this was also a time before RevOps was popular . It was just coming to the surface , right . So you have Salesforce and you have Marketo and all of these systems , and they were sitting with our technology team that was running it , but it was supported by and the head of sales , the SVP of sales , which was my role . I was responsible for territory cutting and like looking at the performance and conversion of the teams , creating the commission statements , right . So , like , I didn't have any type of like support structure of people that I worked with . But to answer your question ,
Learning Through Vulnerability in Operations
Speaker 2vulnerability you just keep asking , right , I don't know what this is , I don't know what this is . I don't know what this is . How does it help ?
Speaker 1me . So just one follow up . So because you said you were vulnerable , I am curious like what do you think the reaction was from the people you were ? I am curious , like what do you think the reaction was from the people you were being vulnerable with asking Did they , were they surprised , Were they grateful that you actually asked the questions , or is it sort of something else ?
Speaker 2Um , I think it . I think it was a blend of the two Um . They knew the background that I came from and they knew that I was there to build the B2B channel and they had always been the direct like DTC channel and so they knew that I was there to build the B2B channel and they had always been the direct DTC channel and so they knew that that was going to come with a different skill set . So I didn't necessarily feel like they were going out of the meeting and being like what the heck ? How does our executive not know any of this stuff ? Just as a surprising for them as it was for me that that is not historically something that was a part of legacy field sales of the past in a b2b world like it just wasn't . So I think it was surprise on both sides but a lot of willingness .
Speaker 2they ended up hiring a b2b um marketing uh director for me to work and kind of be like a liaison and peer that I would work with and their marketing ops people would join us in meetings . You know , once once a month we would have like full sales and marketing leadership meetings with ops there to talk about what's working , what's not working , as we started to get a lot of demand from our , from our marketing team and all of our channels , and so it worked out well and I learned a crap ton in that role . But COVID happened right .
Speaker 1Right .
Speaker 2And it was a furniture company , so yay me .
Speaker 1I was , I was , I was an event company when COVID hit .
Speaker 2So you get it , yeah , company . When COVID hit . So you get it , yeah , um , yeah , so I . I just that's when I actually took off my hat and was like I started in ops . I've run sales organizations . I think I'm going to go put my ops hat on for a little bit because I want to relearn how to use my brake pedal a little bit slow down , make good operational decisions , and I took a COO role . So I went from SVP , global sales kind of a mid market , you know 400 million type company , down to like a $30 million company as a COO running manufacturing , like I'm talking like demand generation , supply chain , the labor floor and then , of course , finance , um and and our general like operations team . It wasn't a lot of like sales and marketing ops per se , it was more traditional ops right um so went over there and and , uh , it was awesome .
Speaker 2It was nervous about it , right , because I walked out onto that like manufacturing floor and I've been like dress , pants and heels and people are looking at me like what the heck ? Is going on here and .
Speaker 1I was intimidated .
Speaker 2I don't know how these machines work . Like I don't know how to do their jobs and everything I had led before then I know how to do their job Right .
Speaker 2I don't do their job . How to do their job right ? I didn't know how to do their job , so that was interesting . I realized , though , that it's not so different than leading a sales team right . They need to have really clean process , they need to have the right structure to be successful , they need to have the KPIs that will help them be successful , and then they need to be managed and supported and they need to have fun , and so we brought that to there and had had just a lot of success . It was . It was a fun time .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think I'm hearing . I think I think our listeners , if they are not picking up on this , like I think it's really valuable . My reason I asked you about what the reaction was when you asked this question is my experience when I've done that is people are actually . They want you to understand what they did , right , most people do , especially if they feel like they're not seen as a valuable part of an organization which I would that there's a ton of people who are listening who feel like that as marketing ops professionals . So I encourage everyone like learn what those other teams are doing , ask the questions , be vulnerable , be humble , right , I think there's .
Speaker 1It doesn't mean I think it's . I think a lot of people you might feel this right , feel like that's a sign of you know , lack of confidence , or or or not you know that you don't know what you're doing . But I actually think it's the other , like if you're willing to ask the question like I just don't know and I , but I want to learn , right , I think that comes across as actually the opposite of that , right , it's . It shows a lot of confidence that you know what you know and are willing to admit like I don't know this , but I know I can learn it and you're the person who can help me .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , I 100% agree and I've continued to use that . It feels like a risk . But to your point , michael , it's not . It's not a risk , it's putting yourself out there in a sense , where people want to show you how they win , how they do their job . People are native teachers Like we want to teach people , we want to show off our tricks right um and so and so , yeah , you're 100 right there yeah , I love that .
Speaker 1I love it . Uh , total , total . This is a totally random one , which I know will come out of the blue maybe , but it's interesting to me that you talked about early on like you were in sale . You moved to sales , someone suggested and you did that . I've all . I'm still fascinated that I think I've heard now , because I used to think there were none , basically , but I think I've heard now . There are a handful of colleges that teach sales . It still stuns me that there are so many people who go into sales yet there is no like in the formal education system , right , there are very few programs that do that . I know there are lots of outside , like independent things , right , that teach sales methodologies and sales like that . Um , does that still surprise you ?
Speaker 2I'm just like , totally for sure , for sure , it's it . It's like my . So I have a college graduate , right . So my son went to school for marketing and advertising and guess what he's doing right now ? He's selling . He's an SDR , right ? He didn't go to school for sales . He didn't when he was in school he didn't want to do sales , but that's the job he got , right .
Speaker 2And and so it's . It's interesting there's there's so many people selling out there . It is a craft , it's something you need to learn . It's something you have to have an unbelievable business acumen for , especially if you're selling into the B2B space . And who's teaching you that ? Nobody . It's on a whim right , so your leaders have to teach . I mean , if this was a sales coaching and leadership podcast , we could talk about that for the rest of the time . But , yeah , yeah , it's a , it's a gap , for sure .
Speaker 1Yeah , it's interesting . I just still still surprises me to this day that that's like when I think about that , all right , well , let's you know . So let's get into this . You've clearly kind of navigated , um , and it sounds like with some intention
Exploring Career Paths in Operations
Speaker 1right about these different roles and what you were doing . Some some did , some was opportunistic , I guess , but yeah , so one of the things I'm hearing , you know there's clearly you brought up revenue ops , right , that's a new thing .
Speaker 1Now I'm hearing people talk about go-to-market ops and I'm not sure personally , like what the distinction is there , other than I think some people are , I do . I still think I see a lot of people using revenue ops when they really just mean sales ops , right , yes , um , but um , do you see , like , do you have a distinction on those things ? How do you think about them ? And then , where do you think ?
Speaker 1The other part I would say is , like , my sense is that many of these , if you think about these obstacles in the go-to-market space that cover multiple functional areas sales , marketing , maybe , customer success the people who end up leading those tend to come more out of um , the not like sales ops in particular , I think , but in less marketing and probably even less so customer success ops . But how do you , you know , do you see the same thing and if so , like what ? Do you like how ? How do you see marketing ops folks be able to kind of be a part like , get , get a stronger foothold into moving into those roles and go to market ops and maybe even beyond , right ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I think there's a lot that you just said there . I think one thing that's important to share before I jump into my opinion on this is my role . After that COO was a CRO role running marketing and an entire team of marketing agency delivery people . So I ran a team of marketers and marketing ops people . So I did get embedded in what your world looks like for those of you listening and understood real quick the world that you lived in and the way that your stakeholders are requesting things from you and maybe the lack of appreciation that you can have in your role . So I wanted to just caveat that in there , and so , as I transition though to answer your question , it's tough , like .
Speaker 2The first thing that comes to mind for me , michael , is all depends on the business .
Speaker 2Businesses are different , right , their revenue models are different , their organizational structures are different , and so I think that's the toughest part of being any type of ops professional is what does this actually mean for me and where am I going to report ?
Speaker 2What work am I going to be doing and how am I going to be supporting and navigating the growth of my world ? And so , if I think about all of the different places I've worked , whether it be in services and agency right , or product or like program right . I've done a little bit of everything at this point and now I'm in SaaS and FinTech like every single role would have done that a little differently from a marketing ops to rev ops sales ops standpoint , differently from a marketing ops to rev ops sales ops standpoint . You are right that go to market ops right is coming , which is , let's be real , it's like rev ops right . It's like kind of the same thing of what rev ops should have been . I do think that that came from the evolution , because it's lagging right . It came from the evolution of a role , like what I was in my CRO role .
Speaker 1My .
Speaker 2CRO role was a go-to-market role . I ran marketing , sales , delivery , rev ops we called it rev ops right and product and so , of course , I had one person that supported me in making sure that we were getting all of the things from a marketing and a revenue or sales standpoint and even our delivery service that I needed , and so we had that team . If I look at what a public company I'm in a public company now , right , we have a revenue operations team and I have a marketing operations team , and so these guys over here are doing everything post-lead right and over here it's pre-lead and and it's um , it creates some like friction , right . So we're actually like , looking at that , because we just had an organizational structure change at the top or we moved to a cco model . Well , now it's like we have two different teams and one . And how do we do that ?
Speaker 1so sorry . So , chief commercial officer , chief customer officer .
Speaker 2Okay , so anything that touches the customer , right . So if you have sales , marketing and all CSM world under one roof , why should we have multiple teams that are separated by different VPs when we're trying to go towards the same goal and so right , wrong or indifferent ? It's hard to answer you with direct . This is what I believe . I think you have to follow the structure of your organization and make sure that , no matter what , your ops team is very well aligned with the person at the helm that's making customer decisions .
Speaker 1Yeah Well , I think you hit it in what you just said , like when you added the if we have the same goals , right . To me , that is a big miss in a lot of places , whether marketing and sales ops are in different kind of roll up to different people , or if they're under one leader . To me , the key key is like are they aligned together on what the goals are for ? Yeah , call it that revenue engine , set of teams as well as the related ops teams . Yeah , to me , that's that's the key that's missing and speaking those same language , which , again to me , comes back to . I see a lot of marketers to your point like who speak in a language that's different than sales . I agree with you . The sales ones tends to be a much simpler thing and that's they're lucky , right , you , if sales people are pretty like you win or you lost , right a deal , move forward . It didn't move forward . It's very , very clear where marketing is . It's just it's harder to quantify . It does not have a qualitative overlay right ?
Speaker 1Yeah , absolutely it's a bad lead . It's a good campaign . A bad campaign it was , you know , this branding campaign we did didn't lead , generate any near-term leads , but we look back two years ago , so I think there's a challenge there . But I think again it goes back to you need to make the effort to understand what those are so that you can work together Even if you can't go . These are the exact metrics . Maybe you have proxies for , for things that you agree on , but the key is agreeing on them yeah , that's right .
Speaker 2That's right . Yeah , you know it's , it's too like . I think one of the other questions you asked when you were posing um like the conversation starter here was like how do you know what even like your career path is and like where ?
Speaker 1do you ?
Speaker 2navigate yourself , like if you're in marketing off or ops or sales ops or rev ops . Like how do you know what , even like , your career path is ? And like where do you navigate yourself ? Like if you're in marketing ops or sales ops or rev ops , like how do you actually navigate what's next for yourself ? And you know .
Speaker 2The one thing I'd say is , if I put my experience on paper , it was all about actually jumping into new things to gain cross-functional experience and taking a risk . So it's almost like if you're in marketing ops today and you want to be a CRO someday or a COO someday or like a VP of revenue ops or go to market ops , you got to cross-train yourself , which means you're going to have to jump into something and do something that you know nothing about and it's going to be totally scary . But it's the risk that you take to diversify your experience and that's what would be important to me . So , for example , if I think back to my CRO role , if someone came to me it was doing purely marketing ops function and said I want to grow in my career , my career advice would be to them go in sales ops for the next year , want to grow in my career .
Speaker 1My career advice would be to them .
Speaker 2Go in sales ops for the next year . Yeah , that's what you need , right and so ?
Speaker 1um , then you can kind of create your own path from there yeah , I , you know I do some , I do some coaching and I in some of it I where I really like to do it is with people who are kind of in those transition team leading up to it going through one or just just pass one , whether it's going from individual contributor to manager or going from one sort of functional area to another , because I think there's a lot that is required to to manage that and kind of like .
Speaker 1And I think you're right , I think I've gone through roles where , you know , something was part of the role that I had never done before . I took on a role where title didn't really represent it but in addition I had to build a small inbound BDR team . I'd never done that , I'd been in sales . So at least I was like and , by the way , the person who ran that was doing that job for the first two months was me yeah , new industry , new company doing some . But I at least was willing to go out there and go like okay , I'll ask the questions . Like somebody comes in as a lead through the website , I'm going to go ask them like would would it be clear ? And you know my work-life balance even though I hate that phrase was out of whack for a while , but it was worth it to learn it , you know .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , yeah . And I think you know there's a lot of fear of back to what we talked about , of just unknown . There's a fear of unknown . I'm the best at what I do right now . Am I going to get forgotten ? Am I going to be able to do this ? Am I going to be good at this ?
Speaker 2And you know , someone said something to me once . They said if you think about like the absolute worst thing that could happen , so imagine you made the decision , think about like the worst , I'm like , well , I could get fired Right . Like that's the worst . And then it's like , okay , do you think that you would get a severance ? And I'm like , probably . I've had a really good relationship within this company , I've invested a lot , I've given a lot , and so like would you be fine ? Like would it be okay ? Like would you make it ? Would you be able to get through it ? And I'm like you're probably right , I would . And it's like , so there's no risk here . Right , like go learn something , um , go take a chance . And I promise you , like people that don't take risks , it's not as exciting as a career trajectory If you're somebody that can . And with that question , like , really , like , nothing's really that scary .
Speaker 1Well it's , and I think you're like the point . You and I both have kids in similar age groups . One of the things I like I see from them sometimes is fear of trying something new , because they don't want to fail . And I'm like usually , in almost all cases , right . Two things are true . Right . One is most people aren't paying that much attention to what you are right . They they're not all watching to see if you succeed or fail . The other is , like usually the fear you have is way bigger than the actual potential downside . Totally yeah and so and so it's like sometimes it's like you've got to get over that . And it's hard because our you know , monkey brains are are sort of hardwired to think about worst case scenarios . It's a survival instinct . But totally that's not where we are today , right ?
Speaker 1that's right in a jungle or a savannah somewhere trying to survive .
Speaker 1Um , so , so , um . I guess one of the other things is I think we've talked about the idea of like , learning new things , trying new things . Do you , um , do you think there are ? Now ? Especially , I think , is what I love about is that you've got experience in all these different ops functions , including marketing ops . Now what are for our listeners who are in marketing ops , who are interested in either call it revenue ops or go-to-market ops or general business operations things , what are two sides of this ? What are some of the skills that they currently have that they can go like this will transfer over and I can do it and what are some of the skills that they would probably need to learn to move into some of those other roles ?
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah . So I would say first things first is , even while you're in your marketing ops role , you really want to make sure that you're
Evolving Skills for Career Advancement
Speaker 2meeting with stakeholders often to just get their language . What's important to them ? How do they speak about their business ? I'm talking about product , I'm talking about sales , I'm talking about enablement All of those people that support that revenue engine meet with them , sit in those meetings , take notes when they say something you don't know what it is , write it down , look it up , get with a mentor and ask .
Speaker 2And so that's a big disconnect that I see , like if I've had somebody more in um marketing but more in a silo , or even in a marketing ops role , but in a silo . I only work in this system , um , I only build my workflows in this system . I only work with these campaigns . I don't see what happens after . I don't follow it all the way through . That's not my job .
Speaker 2You need to know what happens at the end , um , you need to know what that feedback is , whether you agree with it or not , right ? So like , constantly doing that is imperative so that when you do interview or raise your hand or say I want to take on that RevOps or sales ops , you're able to say here are all of the magnificent strengths I have and we'll talk about that one in a minute like as a marketing ops professional , and here's what I know about your business that I've learned over the last 30 , 60 , 90 . And here's what I know about these other ancillary pieces of the business and here's how I think my strengths would apply to this role . Role and then , proactively this is my best interview hack talk about what you don't know in the interview , because guess what they're thinking it and or they're going to call you out on it anyway .
Speaker 1So if you say it proactively right .
Speaker 2It's almost like in sales . We say that right , like if you know what the pain is , up front they haven't mentioned it . Mentioned it for mention it for them . But in this case do it . Yeah , say I know that you're going to have concerns about A , b and C . Let me go ahead and proactively tell you what I've done to overcome those .
Speaker 1Yeah , it sounds a whole lot like being a salesperson . The product is you right ?
Speaker 2That's right . That's right . Yeah , I'd say my perspective on the strengths that somebody that's been in a marketing ops profession for a long time and wants to come out . Here are the things I think they're probably really strong at . Their detail orientation is probably wicked insane good . Yep . They probably are very , very good at understanding data with intention right and being able to tell a story from that data . Right , and being able to tell a story from that data . They are probably really resilient because they probably get feedback and pressure from multiple departments often and they probably have amazing work ethic . Oh , yes , right .
Speaker 2So those four things for me is like if I think of for any role , those are some of the things I'm already looking for , no matter the role , right , and they have those at the core . I also think like knowing how to make your systems work for you is something that people naturally struggle with outside of an operational role , and so being able to come with that too for efficiency is also just a huge , huge win . So you take that and then what do you actually need to learn on the revenue side ? You just actually need to learn like how do you speak with the customer voice of the customer , what are efficiencies of salespeople . How many calls could actually result in this and understanding their conversions and why some funny be testing for them . Right , like there's commission and behavioral things like that . It's a different role , but not those core competencies are still the same right , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think there's like the that again , the point about the language and understanding . How does that translate and how can you connect the dots from what you were doing is an important thing I would . I have a . The one bit I will pick out here a little bit , I guess , is I believe that marketing ops folks should be in a unique position to understand data and things like that . I don't know that that all of them truly understand that all the way through to the end , nor do I believe this .
Speaker 1I really believe , and I think it's ironic across all marketing in that I don't think , that marketing market house folks are actually very good at doing the data storytelling , which , okay . So that's my hot opinion . I think they could be . I also think it's a challenge because of what we talked about . Right , the nature of marketing is it makes it more of a challenge . I don't think that's an excuse . I think people need to be thinking about what they should be understanding . Like , the audience I'm telling is providing this data , it needs to have a story and if I'm not doing that , if I'm just dumping data , it's not very helpful .
Speaker 2Interesting , I would say like I'm not doing that . If I'm just dumping data , it's not very helpful . Interesting , I would say like I'm going to get attacked for saying this , but like shame on the leaders for that Absolutely .
Speaker 2You've got to train your team to like , or put a new workflow in place and not letting them see this is what you did . Here's the impact it had on the business and like , can you now tell that story ? But if it's not , if it's cut off like oh , I executed , I'm done , I'm going to move on to my next task and I don't get to see that all the way through . That can't feel as rewarding as it could be right yeah , yeah , no , I so I had .
Speaker 1I could think of multiple ones , but , to your point , I think it's important as a leader , if you're a leader of marketing folks I had . I've had people on teams before , like I wanted to put them in a position where they could be in front of people and other other teams in particular sales or sales ops yeah , and present . But I would always work with them , like here , like you , like I gave them the chat , like here's what we need to , here's what we need to report on . You know , go pull the pull that they would generate it like , okay , I was trying to guide them to it and , yeah , after they did it , we'd have a follow-up and go like did you see big clue ? Right , did you see language ?
Speaker 1And maybe you didn't say it that way , but did you see how John reacted to this ? Right , either sort of rolled his eyes or he didn't like that , like it's important , like , and then you want to learn from that and adjust , right ? You mean knowing which I don't ? I actually don't have not seen , and I'm like you . I'm probably going to get just lots of darts thrown at me for this , but I do think there are people who are good at that and there are certainly people in the marketingopscom community who are good at that , but I don't think it's generally a good one . The last part of my rant about that . I do think it's partially . I can blame it on our education system .
Speaker 1Yeah , that's fair , and what I mean by that is not like I . In fact , I have three boys who are all really good at math . Not a single one of them until this year prior to college has taken a statistics course . They've all taken algebra and calculus and all those which are like . I'm an engineer by training . I'm a nerd by that , but the thing I've used more in my career is statistics , which I think is something that should be taught earlier , like understanding data and statistics . I think that is a huge one that's missing .
Speaker 2Or general curiosity . So I'm awful at math , like transparent , upfront . I'm awful , awful at math and I teach annual revenue and forecasting to CROs . So it was like what's the disconnect there ? That's all numbers , right . It's the curiosity and understanding behind how is this business going to work ? Where could those holes come from ? Why would this work and not work ? Like you're constantly asking questions , and if you ask yourself enough questions , then you will arrive at the data that you need to be able to support or deny a hypothesis . Right , and so I think , even thinking like that today , you don't need to be an advanced mathematician .
Speaker 2There are analysts for that right or other special people within the organization that can help you . But you do need to know what questions to ask and you don't need to be hungry enough to know the result . And I'll go back to the very beginning I shared . You know , during my time at that product company where I didn't really know anything and that B2B director right was working with me , we had everyone in that room . And the reason we had them in that room is so that they could see the impact of the campaigns and the things that they put in place and how they support it , or didn't right ? The sales organizations growth ? Every company should be doing that to some extent with every level of the organization to get that sense of pride and fulfillment Like you have to do that right .
Speaker 1I totally agree . Just curious because I'm a big believer that narrative stories about this are really , really important . So when I had that inbound SDR BDR team , one of the things we started doing was tracking deals or leads that we had handed off and did they turn into deals and I was reporting like attribution type reporting to the sales teams and leadership . But , um , we started talking about the stories about specific deals and tying that back to the activity and that had way more impact outside of marketing than any of those just raw numbers .
Speaker 2Well , always right . Like people don't walk away and they're like I can't believe that we grew 13.5% and got this conversion on this . They walk away saying , oh my gosh , look at the impact we made on that story , on that customer , on that vision on that goal . And so yes , yes , like yes , with an exclamation point yes .
Speaker 1Yes .
Speaker 2Right Like we've got to tell the fun stories , those cohesive stories . It's got to happen .
Speaker 1This is how we win together .
Speaker 2Right , yeah , yeah I think so .
Speaker 1Okay , so let's see where we're . Where we could go on for a while . So I think you know , let's switch gears a little bit . And this is this is I want to go a little more into this like understanding other people . So a big part of where that kind of hit me is when , if I I don't know our audience probably skews a little younger than than me , for sure I don't know , our audience probably skews a little younger than me , for sure .
Speaker 1But yeah , I was a big , I'm a big fan of Stephen Covey and the seven habits of highly effective people and the Franklin Covey planner systems and all that . And I think one of the things that he talks about is this like , seek first to understand and be understood , right , that sort of tenet of the seven habits stuff is . And he has some great story . If you haven't read the book , get the book . There's a great story that reinforces that one that I share with my kids all the time when they get annoyed by their friends or professors . But I think , like to me , that is at the heart of why I think it's really important to try to understand other people
Challenges of Seeking Understanding in Leadership
Speaker 1and not just react , and I've failed many , many times at trying to do that for sure , especially earlier in my career . But is that something that you try to ? Is that kind of a similar thing for you that you try to embed in yourself and maybe in the rest of your team ?
Speaker 2you try to embed in yourself and maybe in the rest of your team .
Speaker 2Um , yes , but I want to tell a story on it because , um , I so those of you that have known me or have like been around me before , and even you're probably picking up on it in this podcast I am a fast mover , like so fast , like faster . I get notes from people like you are lightning and like I just can't help myself , right , like I'm a fast mover . That makes me inherently not good at seeking first to understand , right , absolutely . What is funny is you think that I would be more practiced and better at that the older I get . I even like , if you've been on my LinkedIn , you'll see I put posts about Seek First to understand all the time . I wrote it on a sticky note and put it in front of my computer . Like I have to remind myself . What I've realized is it's getting harder because I know more , right .
Speaker 1Ah , interesting .
Speaker 2I think about it like this I've been leading sales teams now , for kasha was like I . It's been almost 20 years , right , since I've been leading sales teams . So when I come in , I immediately can be like oh , I know what's going on there . I know what's going on there , I can see it here in the data . I do my one-on-ones and I'm like I know exactly what we need to fix .
Speaker 2The hardest part is me being like no , no , no , don't do it yet . Like sit back , ask more questions , but I know it's going to increase our performance and I know it's going to make the team happier . So it's actually becoming more and more challenging for me , um , as a business leader , to slow down because of that aspect . Now , when it comes and relates to like you know , when you're in entry level roles or even in , like first manager roles and and things like that , you , you want to make an impact fast , you want to have a good impression , and so you start saying and assuming that's like the number one word , right , and this like seek first is assume .
Speaker 2I always say . I hope no one's like offended by cussing on here .
Speaker 1But that's right .
Speaker 2Assume makes an ass out of you and me . No-transcript , I still have to manage myself and put Seek First to Understand on my computer so that I remind myself Stephanie , you gotta slow down right . So there's no excuse for it . But that's how I would respond to that .
Speaker 1I think it's very interesting that you say that you think it's harder now sometimes , now that you know more and I , so I hadn't really thought about it . I think I have some of that as well . But I think part of that is because I , like like you , like I see around the corners , like I've seen enough of these things , like , oh , that's the . That's where the issue is . I think what I find harder because I'll get frustrated with this , getting other people to see it too , right , yeah , and that's the part that's hard . Like I see it , I know exactly what the problem is , and it should be to me , it should be obvious to everyone else , right ? Who's spent a little bit of time looking at it , and then they don't get it , and then you run into resistance when you try to make change .
Speaker 2Yeah , it's so . So I will say I've , I feel like I've learned some of that . It's sales , right , I need to make it their idea . Um , it sounds awful , but it's , it's , it's totally true no-transcript .
Speaker 2If , like , there's something you could change , what would it be ? Consolidate that information . And then I come back to the team and I say this is what I learned . Right Now it's time to like come up with solutions , and and so that's been kind of my way of . I even know . I know what's wrong , Everyone . It needs to be everyone's change , not my change .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , I'm with you on that . So , wow , we've covered so much ground , so much stuff . It was fun to talk to you , stephanie , so I think we're going to we'll stop there , but if folks want to , keep up with what you're talking about .
Speaker 2You mentioned stuff that you post , uh , or want to learn more about what you're doing . What's the best way for them to do that ? Yeah , linkedin all day . I mean I'm pretty active . I'm not as active as I used to be , but I'm still at least posting like one to two times a week .
Speaker 1So new jobs .
Speaker 2do that , I know new job new job , but I always respond um to my messages that aren't selling me something . So if you like are in the middle of your like career path or journey and you have questions like hit me up , I'd love to talk to you and follow along as I post things on , just all things leadership for sure .
Speaker 1Fantastic . Well , again , Stephanie , fantastic conversation . Thank you so much for doing this . I know it took us a little while to get it on the books . I'm glad we could make it happen . I'm sure that next time I'm sure Mike and Naomi will be sad that they couldn't be here to be a part of it as well . But until next time , thanks everyone for supporting us and listening , and if you have suggestions for other guests or ideas for topics , or want to be a guest or have a topic you want us to cover , don't hesitate to let Mike , Naomi or me know Until next time . See everyone later . Bye , Bye .