Episode #5: Aligning RevOps with C-Level Priorities - Jen Igartua
The CEO of Go Nimbly describes her vision of RevOps as a product and how to stay aligned with business impact.
I’m biased, having spent the better part of my career at a MarTech agency, but I think good1 consultants often have the best view of what works.
They simply get more iterations of trying the same thing with multiple companies, which makes it easier to a) see what holds true in most scenarios and b) build repeatable frameworks.
So I wanted to search out a top-notch RevOps consultant to see what I could learn.
That led me to Jen Igartua, CEO of Go Nimbly. She has a pragmatic and thoughtful perspective on RevOps. Her mastery of the topic is super impressive. My favourite interviews are when someone challenges my existing point of view - and she delivered.
In this episode, Jen and I go deep into the role of RevOps within the organization, how to keep your team focused on priorities aligned with business needs, and how to manage RevOps like a product.
My Take-Aways
RevOps as the director of a movie:
I loved this analogy that Jen used as we tackled the existential questions of what RevOps should actually do and how it should relate to GTM Teams.
In this framing, our GTM teams are actors - they are front and center and visible. But behind the scenes, there is a director masterminding the production, how the story evolves, the camera angles, and everything else. This is a great way to think about RevOps in its most strategic form.
Now that I think of it, isn’t RevOps also responsible for building the sets, coordinating the lunch truck, arranging costumes, repairing the equipment, and managing the budget…? 🤔 Moving on.
RevOps as a product:
Since my very first RevOps role, I’ve found it compelling to think about our work as a kind of product management. There are many similarities: we have stakeholders who need features, and we need to prioritize and deliver the ones that will be most impactful.
(Side note: here’s a presentation I gave on this topic in 2021 at a Workato conference.)
But one key question in this analogy is: who is the customer? Is it the GTM teams, or is it the literal end customer that the business is selling to?
Both are ultimately important, but Jen made some important points about why solving for the needs and happiness of those GTM teams is key. Ultimately, RevOps can’t do it alone, and we need alignment and adoption from those teams.
I also personally emphasize the importance of a “constructive tension” between ops and GTM teams, to ensure we’re challenging them and that our actions are aligned with end business results.
Gap-first thinking:
This is a key concept in Go Nimbly’s methodology. It means that you start your planning process with a view of business priorities and where things aren’t working today.
This stands in contrast to a more typical planning methodology, where you start with a backlog of requests and ideas, try to evaluate them for impact, and then assign them to a place in your roadmap.
The downfall of starting with ideas is that you may end up missing higher-priority problems.
To understand what levers you can pull on to improve any problem, Jen advocates an idea of “3VC” - volume, value, velocity, and conversion.
About Today's Guest
Jen Igartua is CEO of Go Nimbly, a revenue operations consultancy for scaling businesses.
From Jen's LinkedIn: "I’m...working with high-growth companies to create a frictionless, human buying experience with RevOps.”
Key Topics
[00:00] - Introduction
[01:02] - Jen’s consulting background. How she helped start Go Nimbly.
[02:37] - Definition of RevOps. Metaphor of a business as a film studio, where the goal is to make a movie, GTM teams are actors, and RevOps is the director.
[03:56] - How operators can step into this director role. If you’re mid-to-junior level and in a company that doesn’t get RevOps, you likely won’t make a huge impact and need to find another environment. Or it may be more a matter of you needing to improve your skills. These include the ability to say no, having an intake process, and keeping priorities aligned to the C-level.
[07:31] - Whether operators have a self-limiting mindset, focused on their craft vs. business impact. Growth mindset is important. A lot of this is new and people are still figuring it out.
[08:34] - RevOps as a product and whether the “customer” is the GTM teams or the literal external customer. Jen’s point of view is that we need to understand what RevOps truly brings to the business and to the things the CEO cares about. Sometimes that may be solving for customer needs, but in other times it could be something different (e.g., data readiness in preparation for an IPO). Ultimately we achieve our customer-facing goals via the GTM teams, so we need to care about their experience and happiness.
[14:52] - How Go Nimbly interacts with the different GTM teams. Whether RevOps is just sales ops rebranded. How silos form and evolve in companies. People are good at aligning vertically but poor at aligning horizontally.
[18:13] - People align themselves based on how power and authority flows in an organization. If the CMO and CRO aren’t aligned, their teams won’t be either. Justin’s experience on the importance of having a unifying force, like a COO, to bring them into alignment. Jen thinks this is ideal, although not something every company has. Ultimately a company is like a complex system. All systems have weaknesses, and so we need to mitigate those weaknesses somehow.
[20:22] - Gap-first thinking: how to identify initiatives with the biggest impact. Start with the business gap vs. with ideas in a backlog. When you have your goal, then identify what levers you can pull to reach it. Typically these levers include “3VC” - volume, velocity, value, and conversion. You can identify where your weaknesses are via reporting or through durability testing (aka stress testing). Go ahead and become the customer.
[24:32] - Why gap-first thinking is hard. Lack of time for operators to step back and audit their work.
[26:13] - The importance of focus at work. Distractions are pervasive. How we can create space for deep work. Completing tasks quickly gives a dopamine hit but doesn’t always yield the impact of deep work.
[28:43] - Machine work vs. innovation work. Both are necessary. It’s a great exercise to audit the effort needed to run business as usual. Then you can explain to the business what your capacity is. The innovation work is how we transform the business.
[31:11] - Pros and cons of outsourcing RevOps. Companies can dial up skillsets when they need them or manage case work that internal resources may not want to do forever. The importance of having an internal champion at a company that can help connect the dots with their own leadership. The challenge for consultants of context switching. Why Go Nimbly tries to keep consultants on only a few accounts at a time.
[36:32] - Jen’s journey growing Go Nimbly. There are people who have figured out professional services firms - important to learn from them.
[38:28] - What innovations is Jen seeing in the marketplace? Product-led sales is a major focus. Data is also important. Companies no longer putting every piece of data into Salesforce.
Resource Links
What Is Gap-First Thinking for RevOps Teams? - Article on Go Nimbly’s website describing their philosophy of gap-first thinking.
How RevOps teams Find Gaps - Article describing durability testing and 3VC.
Thinking in Systems - One of Jen’s recommended resources for systems thinking.
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - Another resource on systems thinking.
The Boutique: How To Start, Scale, And Sell A Professional Services Firm - Recommended resource for running a professional services firm.
There’s obviously plenty of average consultants who adopt a conventional playbook and don’t innovate. Your mileage may vary.