The Change Management Playbook You Can't Outsource

0:00 My guest today is Susan Rothwell, Chief Revenue Officer at Simplify,

0:05 the Blackstone and GTCR-backed advertising platform that serves more than 2,000 agencies and brands.

0:12 I found that I had a lot of questions and not a lot of answers and no place to go find them.

0:18 It sounds like this is a ton of change all at once. Sometimes maybe things could break.

0:24 Because the business is always moving. We'll get it now with AI. It's moving quicker than ever,

0:28 right? Stats say that companies that don't adopt it, they're not going to be here in three years.

0:32 Well, maybe we can get into something that is the most disruptive force on the face of the planet

0:38 right now, AI. I took an AI course like a year ago and everything I learned doesn't matter,

0:44 you know, like it's just kind of crazy. To a lot of people listening, they might

0:47 think it sounds easy to understand what a new logo is or can you close something.

0:52 And the worst thing in any organization is when there's a lack of alignment. That's when

0:57 that's when things slow down. That's when you get stuck. You know, it's hard to grow.

1:11 Susan, you joined a 15 year old business doing a quarter of a billion dollars that had no RevOps,

1:18 no forecasting, barely used at CRM. What was the first week like? And when did you realize

1:25 how deep that actually went? Yeah, so it was very different than what I had come from, right? Some

1:31 large companies with really great foundations of forecasting and modeling and things like that.

1:38 And when I got to Simplify, it was a company that had grown and had a ton of success without having

1:44 a lot of that foundational support needed to really understand what was going on in the business. So

1:50 what I found out was that our finance team was the ones that were doing most of the forecasting.

1:57 None of it was really informed by like a bottoms up roll up of what was going on with clients.

2:06 It wasn't a bad forecast, but what it didn't allow us to do was really understand,

2:12 you know, what was going on for our customers, what was happening with churn and downsell,

2:17 where were the opportunities we were winning and all those things you need to understand

2:21 in a very dynamic environment in order to win in this extremely competitive, you know,

2:27 media and ad tech world marketplace. So I found that I had a lot of questions and not a lot of

2:34 answers and no place to go find them. That's what I found. Well, and I think first of all,

2:41 it's incredible that they're able to kind of get to the point without a lot of the key infrastructure

2:46 that tends to come much earlier. So I think it really speaks volumes to the product and the

2:52 market fit that simplifies in. I'm curious though, some of these things, they're not just

2:58 technical changes. It's not just go into a system, make a couple of tweaks and everything's fixed.

3:04 Where did you have to start? Because I'm sure there were a lot of

3:07 cultural changes that needed to take place as well.

3:11 Yeah. Well, I knew when I came into Simplify that, you know, the role was going to be a little

3:17 different than some of my other roles, right? Where I was brought in specifically at Epsilon

3:22 to drive a go to market transformation at Simplify. It was brought in to use some of my

3:28 background and my ability to build different types of teams to operate sales, to lay that

3:35 foundation for Simplify because it really needed to have some of the rigor that it didn't really

3:40 have as it, you know, became a pretty successful organization. So, you know, what I ended up doing

3:47 was, you know, going in with a plan and my initial plan was that I needed a revenue operations

3:54 organization. Like I needed someone to sit alongside finance to make sure that as finance

4:02 is talking about the financial plan that rolls up to the board, that there is an interpreter

4:08 that takes the sales information, the sales data, and it ties it together, meaning RevOps.

4:13 So, the first thing I did two months after I came into the organization was I hired a revenue

4:21 operations lead. We did have a sales operations team, an enablement team, but what I did was we

4:29 added a layer where we had a leader and then we also brought an analyst in, right, to really help

4:35 us, you know, drive as we started to uncover some of the information as we started to use the CRM

4:42 and we started to get Salesforce moving in the right direction to interpret what does that mean

4:48 and what are those results have because it's not only delivering the sales numbers or delivering

4:54 the plan, it's also looking at, you know, revenue per rep and how are revenue performing and, you

5:00 know, the different types of metrics that allows our leaders to coach our members of our teams as

5:06 well. So, it's a multifaceted in, you know, the way that, you know, I was bringing revenue

5:12 operations into the organization and kind of turning on the lights of what that could do for

5:17 the sales organization and ultimately CS as well. Did you have technical resources too? I know the

5:24 GTM tech stack has continually been growing, getting more complex, layering in AI in there as

5:30 well. Did you already have a lot of those in-house? Did you have to bring those from the outside as

5:34 well? Yeah, we brought some things in from outside. So, the finance team had done a really

5:42 good job of building some dashboards, you know, with Looker and different types of products

5:49 and then we did have Salesforce, but we were up for renewal and we were not really using it,

5:55 right? So, first thing that we had to do is kind of build in a cadence for sales forecasting as

6:02 well as teach everyone how to use sales forecast. We had to actually change, you know, the weighting

6:08 of the forecast because it didn't really make a lot of sense. People, like I said, it was more of

6:12 an order system than a forecasting system, like when we knew we had something, the team would put

6:17 it in. So, you know, we used some of that now we're using, you know, a lot of the technology that

6:24 Salesforce has, you know, done and you and I had spoken about, like they've really increased their

6:28 investment in AI and have quickly, you know, become a leader in that. And then from an

6:35 enablement perspective, we used, our enablement team was pretty savvy and used some of our own

6:42 made AI tools and agents as well. And then from a lead generation perspective, we brought in an

6:49 outsourced, an outsourced company to help us, you know, set up AI agents that could go after ICPs

6:57 and really help us drive, you know, go-to-market link to our marketing to get leads, you know,

7:04 for our sales organization. It sounds like this is a ton of change all at once.

7:12 I know sometimes if you bring that level of change to an organization, sometimes maybe

7:17 things could break. How do you think about approaching a big problem like this in terms

7:24 of how you prioritize what you're going to do first and also how do you pace things out?

7:29 Yeah, you know, when I think about change and how you drive change into an organization,

7:36 you know, I could go back, I'll go back to, I'll go back to Epsilon and then I'll kind of

7:40 bring it back to where I'm instituting some of this within Simplify. When I got to Epsilon,

7:46 as you talked about in the introduction, there was three different sales organizations and all of

7:52 them were calling on the same clients, right? So you had no overall client lead, no overall client

7:57 strategy. So one of the playbooks that I use is I take a step back, I take a look at, you know,

8:04 who are our customers? What are they buying from us? How are they buying from us? I look at that

8:09 through a data lens. What is their potential to buy more? You know, all of those things. And at

8:15 Epsilon, it became very clear to me that one of the best ways for us to drive a unified go-to-market

8:21 strategy was to verticalize. You know, verticals just popped up. There were seven key verticals.

8:27 And so, you know, we started to, I had a group of leaders that were working with me, sales leaders

8:33 and some cross-functional leaders. And we start to message out, you know, what that strategy was,

8:38 you know. So I think it's really important to understand the why at the very broadest level,

8:45 right? Like why are we even doing this? Because I do sometimes think like people think, oh,

8:49 they're just sitting around to do change for the sake of change and always say, no, it's very hard,

8:53 we're not. But I also truly believe if you don't change, you know, you can't stay competitive and

8:59 you ultimately risk the business, right? Because the business is always moving. We'll get it now

9:03 with AI. It's moving quicker than ever, right? Stats say that companies that don't adopt it,

9:07 they're not going to be here in three years. So, you know, you need to be flexible in the way you

9:13 design things. So we started by letting people, letting, you know, on a hall hands, letting

9:18 people know we made the decision to go, you know, into a vertical strategy. As we continue to make

9:23 decisions, we will make sure that we are communicating the decisions. Some people think

9:29 that is a very risky strategy, that people can't handle not knowing what the end point is. And they

9:35 do struggle with that a little bit, but I think that risk is worth not having them think that

9:40 leaders are in a, in a back room making decisions, not communicating, not getting input. Because the

9:47 other big thing is I always make sure that I get input, not only at the CRO, you have layers in

9:52 there, but at the individual contributor level, like making sure stuff you're thinking about their

9:58 daily job and what they're doing. Because as you're talking about this big giant strategy,

10:04 all that, that seller or that CS person is thinking about is how does that affect me? Right?

10:12 So the ability to communicate the strategy, to get a lot of input, to give updates with

10:18 transparency along the way, right? To make sure you are constantly talking about the why,

10:25 right? And why verticalization works, why having a client lead driving the overall strategy works,

10:30 what it means for the business, what it would mean for you, you can start to get people to really

10:36 rally around that and they need to hear it multiple times. The other part of it is, you know,

10:43 when I do those touch spaces, I do listened and learns or roundtables. I know that the message is

10:50 being clear and people are starting to understand where we're going when I'm in those roundtables

10:54 and I start to hear them talk about the strategy back to me and then talk about verticalization

10:59 and why a client lead matters and why all these things, you know, will align us to better growth

11:06 and really ultimately serving our customers better, which is the most important thing to

11:11 be that customer-centric company. When it came to Simplify, there had been a whole motion of changes

11:18 that had happened prior to me coming. There was a consulting company that came in, they switched the

11:23 CS team from being aligned to regions to be in segment, it's aligned to segments, they switched

11:31 sellers from doing both hunting and farming to hunters and farmers and it created a lot of

11:36 angst within the organization and they also did it without a lot of input. So there was a lot

11:43 of trust factors, there was a lot of people not being happy with what roles they were given,

11:48 people need to have support if their roles change in their new roles. So if somebody becomes purely

11:54 a hunter, you have to teach them how to multi-thread, how do you sell across different portions of an

12:00 account, right? How do you grow the existing business and it's very different than just

12:05 hunting for new business. So we had to lay the groundwork for all that training, which we have

12:10 done and we're in the middle right now of looking at our CS organization and believe it or not,

12:18 saying you know that decision to go to segments was not the right decision caused a lot of disruption

12:24 with our clients, it caused a lot of disruption internally and now getting that team back on board

12:30 right to say hey we're going to go back to a regional type of you know alignment and I always

12:38 say to people what is old is new again with a twist because there's only a certain amount of

12:42 ways you can do things and you learn and you iterate on those and that's the twist. The twist

12:48 is iterating knowing that some things we did didn't work, some things we did did work, but we're

12:53 listening to our our client success team and they're saying some of this stuff isn't working

12:59 and that's why we need to make some of the changes that we're making. So we're going to do it,

13:03 we're doing it in a much more open environment, we have a focus group of people that from our

13:08 bestsellers and our best CS team giving us feedback on what is working because sometimes we don't look

13:14 enough at what is working, we always look at what's not working and making sure as we talk and decide

13:21 on things that we're getting input at every level of the organization and people clearly understand

13:27 where we're at at any given time. So to sum it up I think that you know leading companies through

13:34 change and leading teams through change is a very personal thing, people take it very personally so

13:39 you have to think about that individual but you need to start with the strategy, you need to

13:44 understand why are you strategically doing this, what outcomes are we looking when we do it,

13:49 what is the communication plan, what is the input plan, who am I getting inputs, making sure that

13:56 you constantly give updates, you communicate along the way as I said and then really again iterating

14:03 as you go along because you're not going to always get it right, I don't know anybody that does but

14:08 being open to the fact that learning and listening and saying yeah that wasn't the right call

14:13 and we need to fix something I think that leadership needs to be able to do that.

14:18 I want to go back to something you said, I have a lot of questions to dig a little bit deeper

14:26 into some specifics but I do want to go back to something that you said that I think was

14:29 interesting, you said people tend to not focus enough on what's working and they're only talking

14:35 about the things that are not working, can you go a little deeper on that maybe give some context

14:40 or examples or why you feel like that can be significant when you're moving an organization

14:46 through change? Well because I think when people think about change they think about

14:53 the negativity of change right versus the positivity right and so the way I think about

15:00 it sometimes is in my role when numbers when we don't hit forecast or when you know or when

15:06 I'm working with product and a product doesn't come out exactly in time when we should right

15:11 everybody's focused always on all the things that went wrong and there's times I say but

15:17 what are some of the things that are going right? So for example right now we're doing a top 70

15:23 account review and you know with all of our top 70 accounts we're getting in front of them we're

15:29 talking about 2027 planning and you know you're hearing a lot from our clients about what is

15:37 working right they love our service they love our new products we're introducing right they love

15:44 the fact that you know we are infusing AI and into our solutions and yet a lot of times when

15:51 we're on calls we're talking about why did we lose that deal not why did we always win the deals so

15:57 that goes back to my initial conversation on RevOps right and understanding you know really the

16:02 analytics behind the numbers and what's what's causing churn and what's causing wins because

16:08 we tend to just slide to what's not working and focus on that instead of double downing you know

16:14 on what is working and saying this is what we need to fuel and I think it just comes from the fact

16:19 that we're always worried about you know what's not working and and I just kind of remind everyone

16:24 like yes but we need just as much attention on what is working just best practices success

16:30 stories you know why are clients saying great things and that's part of the strategy when you

16:36 move forward yeah and I think it brings me back to what you said early on too we're not doing

16:43 change just for the sake of change so if something is working we're not here to try to fix something

16:47 that's not broken but keeping our focus on okay here's the few things that we can do where we

16:53 think we're going to have an effect having a strong lie behind that and then hey if it's working well

16:58 then leave alone or double down even yeah I can't emphasize enough you know how important it is to

17:05 get feedback especially from a leadership perspective you know one of my other sayings

17:10 is I don't have all the answers I just don't I actually don't want the pressure to think you

17:15 think I do you know that that you know I need I need guidance I need feedback people aren't always

17:22 comfortable giving that a lot of times when I do roundtables or listen and learns all my last

17:29 question to the the people on the call will be if you were sitting in this role not if you were

17:34 susan but if you were sitting in the role running sales and cs what would be the one thing one piece

17:43 of advice you would give yourself in that role if you were me and or you were in that role and it's

17:50 it's pretty people are a little blown away by that that question but you often get really

17:56 good advice sometimes it's like um you know we need we need more we need more success stories

18:01 we need you know we need you focused more on getting out in front of some of our clients

18:06 or whatever it would be but um I always find that like one of my favorite questions to ask

18:12 I love that I love that and and I want to get into some of the specifics two things in particular

18:20 if we can give some barometer I know every business is a little different every

18:24 initiative will be a little different but when it comes to getting feedback from the field

18:30 and a constant communication what does that actually look like somebody may hear that and say

18:35 I'm constantly updating them every annual all hands we let them know what our strategy is so

18:40 I don't know why people don't know it and then they may say well I did talk to one person

18:45 on the in the field so I got my feedback in terms of like volume and magnitude what does it look

18:50 like when you're doing it really well you need to be thoughtful in how you pick the team that's

18:56 going to give you the feedback right so making sure that it is a good cross-functional team of

19:03 if it would be sellers and cs that they're that they have various experience right they're not

19:08 they're not all veterans they're not they have different backgrounds right because you do want

19:13 a mix of of feedback coming in so I think that you've got to curate that team to make sure it's

19:21 got a lot of diversity of thinking in it right so that that would be my one piece of advice when

19:28 when I did this this just currently at simplify with the cs and sales organization is I picked

19:34 a leader that was a more neutral leader to actually lead the focus groups and then I was not in them

19:41 the cs leader was not in them but we but we curated kind of what kind of conversations and feedback

19:48 that we wanted them to have to get so that we would get you know that's the meat of what we

19:53 wanted to and it was funny because I asked them to lean on what was working and initially we were

19:58 getting everything that wasn't working and I'm like no no no but we want to know it's working

20:02 so as I that tendency tends to go back so I think you have to be very thoughtful about that feedback

20:07 loop when you're on a specific initiative or strategy change I think is I think as a leader

20:13 you should always be taking just that time to just check in without an agenda and that's my listen

20:19 and learns right where I just invite people to get on a call it's not me talking it's me listening

20:25 so give them an update on what's on my mind so I get some feedback but specifically for an initiative

20:30 or specifically for a strategy I think you have to have that curated team the other thing is that

20:37 then you know after you kind of get the feedback then you know we did come in we did have an open

20:41 discussion with that team on their feedback I had an opportunity to address some of their concerns

20:47 and as we continue to go down this road that group is really an important part of the change

20:54 initiative because as we go to them for feedback I don't I ask them to go to their teams for feedback

21:01 right so then you start to have a spreading of what the conversation is what are the questions

21:06 they're asking you get more broad input and there's a transparency about it that I'm hoping

21:13 right I'm not guaranteed built will build trust and then belief in the fact that what we're trying

21:20 to do is actually a direction we should be going and that my my my opinion matters my experience

21:28 matters and that I can have an impact on the way that we are driving things forward so I do think

21:35 you have to be very very principled about the way you address it and you have to curate it in the

21:42 sense of you know who's the team why are they the team diversity of thought as well as you know what

21:49 specifically am I trying to get out of this and then once you get out of that how are you going

21:55 to continue to dispense you know the information and get the feedback loop going from there so

22:02 where we're at right now is we as we talked about these things we had in all hands with CS the CS

22:09 leader leaded and talked about you know some of the thoughts that we have initially where we're

22:14 going and now we're doing a survey and getting some additional feedback and information as well

22:19 so I know sometimes you have to go faster so this is this is when we're not forced to go fast we're

22:26 taking this upon ourselves because we feel like this is the right thing to do from what we've

22:30 heard from the team but there is as I said I really do feel like you have to be thoughtful even in how

22:36 you're communicating it out you need to have a timeline of specifically you know how you're

22:41 communicating out what are we going to say what is the purpose of that call am I answering the

22:47 questions of an individual contributor sitting in their seat as I'm talking about things because

22:54 they're the ones doing the work the sellers and the CS teams they're doing the work every single

22:58 every day every day I'm not I'm not doing that role and making sure that you're thinking about

23:05 that the effect and then most importantly how's it going to affect our business and our customers

23:10 and are we going to do a better job and have them love us even more I think there's nothing better

23:18 than when you have that buy-in and I think you could even get to the point where they have

23:24 a strong passion for the change yes right at the bottom floor because it's one thing to say it but

23:31 if it doesn't really trickle down and they're not really bought in it's very very difficult to make

23:35 effective so I know you mentioned sometimes you need to go quicker sometimes you know you don't

23:40 have a choice but I think if you can spend that time really getting the buy-in I think it's brilliant

23:46 yeah I mean and and I would say that I've done it a few times and it it works every time it's when

23:52 you skip the the involvement and the and the feedback that sometimes it doesn't work as well

23:58 but you know again I don't have all the answers so I need help absolutely and then on the

24:06 communication I know it's kind of woven in to okay let's get that cross-functional group in

24:12 how often is often enough is this a weekly thing are there daily updates you need to send is it at

24:16 the monthly all hands what does that look like I would say right now I would say most of the time

24:23 I did it on a monthly basis depending on how long you know how big of a transformation was you know

24:28 definitely at epsilon it took us a year and a half to get to where we got to you know it took a while

24:34 so there was constant updates and it was a mixture of you know keep doing your day job keep doing it

24:40 but you know we're this is where we're going to get to so it is a very fine line to to to follow but

24:46 I think what happens is particularly if it's a longer overhaul or strategy people start to get

24:53 used to the fact that that this this is we're talking about this but they can kind of switch

24:59 and focus to their day jobs because they're not panicked that a decision is going to be made in

25:03 the back room without them or that their job is going to change tomorrow so I think people can

25:08 kind of settle in a little bit and focus on their day jobs while you know we know that this

25:13 transformation has to take place well maybe we can get into something that is the most disruptive

25:20 force on the face of the planet right now ai yes and understanding okay when you need to

25:31 shift a large organization into adopting implementing doing these things in a meaningful

25:36 way too not just running experiments how are you even approaching this with your team and how are

25:42 you even thinking about what the end state of mission accomplished might even look like

25:48 how are you thinking about this yeah you know um my thinking continues to evolve as I learn right

25:55 I I joke that I took a AI course like a year ago and everything I learned doesn't matter you know

26:00 like it's just kind of crazy I was at a Blackstone commercial event last leader event last week and

26:06 it was all about AI and so we had some roundtables with leaders like myself and talking about you

26:13 know everybody's at various stages you know in their organizations of how they're using AI

26:19 um and I think that I do think one of the things that organizations really need to have is they

26:26 need to have kind of an overarching strategy because a lot of people will experiment with it

26:32 and that can actually is good right because you learn but I do think there needs to be guidance

26:39 from the organization you know on you know how are we how are we using AI um what is the purpose of

26:46 it you know what one are we using you know is it Claude is a chat gbt is it Gemini there might be a

26:51 couple of them you know what people need some I think there needs there also needs to be some

26:58 general understanding of um what you know what you should use it for and what we're using it

27:04 for as an organization um so you know I do think you need to have that overall strategy and then I

27:10 do think you need to do some training you know what what are what are effective prompts how do

27:15 you make sure you're not pulling in too much information like so you can be really specific

27:20 about what you're asking because sometimes I think when people are new to AI they think more

27:24 is better and it often isn't right when there's too much too much data you're pulling from or

27:29 too much information you don't always get the right the best answer I should say so I do think

27:35 there should be training and governance for everyone in the organization just some basic

27:39 things on on the best ways to use to use AI um we're you know engaging in it uh in a big way um

27:48 the other thing that um I'm learning as I go along is sometimes you think that

27:54 AI can fix things but you need to take a step back and say is the process right

28:01 or or am I just band dating an AI over a process that may not be actually the right process

28:08 and when you start to look at transformation with AI I think you need to look at it from the AI lens

28:15 versus the current process lens how can how can how would AI do this versus how would AI fix this

28:22 right and I think that's really it's a it's an important thing to think about because otherwise

28:27 you're just putting AI on maybe a process it doesn't really work well it's just you know

28:33 churning numbers or churning something a little bit quicker so that's one thing um the other the

28:38 other thing is we we um you know just we we just launched slackbot we connected to everything in

28:43 our organization we're trying to it's not just for sales through seats through it's for the

28:49 whole company but had an all hands a couple weeks ago with sales and cs and one of the things that

28:54 we did was we had sellers and cs teams get on and talk about how are they using it to help their

29:01 everyday job you know and so we had sellers talking about how they're pulling pipelines in

29:06 how they're using it for call reminders you know of different ways because you know it can seem so

29:12 oh my gosh AI up here and I use it for very different things and a seller might use it for

29:17 how do we make it real at that individual contributor level how do we make it real with cs

29:22 how can they use it to see if there's signals for downturn or there's signals for upsell

29:28 opportunities right um so really having sellers on there and cs people and they're talking about

29:34 their own usage and their ways of doing it I think can be really powerful um you know from a data

29:41 perspective you have to have your data in order right that's an important piece of it as well as

29:45 you use it to pull things in um but I but I do think like organizations just making sure that

29:52 they have just some key learnings for everyone because everyone's not an AI expert and just

29:57 hacking your way through sometimes isn't really the best way to to really optimize the powerful

30:02 uses it can be for the company I really like the test that you have of saying can AI do this or

30:10 should AI fix this and I think aiming hey how do we get AI to automate things or take things to the

30:17 next level rather than just a something's broken I'm not going to use my brain power to try to

30:21 fix it let's just hope AI knows exactly what to do I think you're right I think that's a losing

30:26 strategy almost every time like going back to the basics fixing the process also fixing your data

30:35 model I I think that's a big thing people don't realize that in order for your agents to be

30:42 effective they have to have access to the right data and understanding of the data and a lot of

30:49 people are starting with the agents first they're like oh I'm going to go build this forecasting

30:54 agent yeah it's gonna say okay well I need this I need this I need this and then they build all

30:57 these little data model silos for each agent they're doing rather than kind of taking a holistic

31:03 approach have you been running into these roadblocks as well yeah well well well I definitely in all

31:11 my companies we've always had a data problem right like just getting data together right it's just

31:17 it's always a challenge and I think that AI has just made it more prudent to make sure you have

31:22 some type of a data strategy they tend to sit in siloed areas of the organization right you don't

31:28 always have the same data so it's simplified you know with the RevOps team as we're trying to build

31:34 we're building this sales executive dashboard right using some of our tools we realized that

31:43 we had different groups of data and that we needed to bring not only the data together but but and

31:49 this is a little past my pay grade is in technological understanding but we also needed to

31:54 have it like set up the right way right within within the data lake and so there had there had

32:01 we had to bring teams together to get agreement on you know bringing the data together and how

32:05 would that data be set up and accessed you know in into a data lake as well so we we just really

32:14 accomplished that and it was really driven by engineering working with finance to to bring

32:19 that all together and that's just hugely important because you know if your data is not aligned right

32:26 and we still have work to do right the way our data is set up in and our sales force is you know

32:32 needs to be realigned better we need to have you know parent companies and things like that like

32:37 some of that wasn't set up correctly so we're fixing some of that but the actual financial data

32:42 and customer data of like what they buy and sales data and ios and all that stuff you know we're

32:48 starting is is starting to really you know galvanize together and we're able to set up

32:54 you know dashboards very easily where i said you know when i came in it was kind of like what is

33:00 going on here because i couldn't pull a story together to really understand where are the

33:05 opportunities in the marketplace you know where are we seeing maybe different verticals start to

33:10 pop up as areas we should be focused on you know where are some of our new products really you know

33:14 gaining strength where do we have some risk with competitors you know all that stuff is now

33:21 be able to glean a lot of that you know using um ai and and sales force and slackbot and some of

33:28 the other tools that were standing up from a dashboard perspective i think there's absolutely

33:35 a lot of technical work to be done one of the parts i found most challenging in this and i'm

33:41 curious if you ran into this too is just getting alignment on terms and data definitions and what

33:47 kpis mean like how are we calculating win rate here what is an mql at this company

33:54 what are bookings and how do we articulate what our arr is how how have you codified what terms

34:02 and kpis mean do you have any any tips on getting that done well yeah i think across the board right

34:10 one thing is on like the revenue perspective but actually the organization has undergone like a

34:16 whole definition exercise you know to make sure that we're defining and call like we what we

34:22 call things is the same thing across the organization right that's across the board that's product wise

34:29 that's you know process wise and so much bigger than just uh running revenue but from a kpi

34:35 perspective we have um each of each of the sales teams and the leaders have their own kpis so our

34:42 new business versus um our growth and strategy versus our local team right what are the things

34:47 that matter you know on a monthly basis that they're measuring because it it can be unique

34:54 to the segment of the business right that they're measuring and then that rolls up into the overall

35:00 kpi so you know some of it is um you know our our our win rate for new logos how long you know

35:07 is it take us to get a new logo on board right making sure we have a definition of what an

35:12 actual new logo is because some companies have different definitions of that it's not surprising

35:16 it's like the easiest thing you think that would be the easiest thing to figure out and it's like

35:20 no no no but there's yeah exactly so the definition of a new logo and then um you know it's it goes

35:29 to you know you know retention like retention is huge you know are we are we not only retaining

35:35 our logos but are we retaining the revenue are we we have a measurement we look at how much you know

35:42 solutions are we able to cross sell right we have a dashboard saying we think this client could be by

35:47 you know our platform media and they're not buying platform media they're only buying programmatic

35:52 from us and so there's let's make sure we're focusing on you know growing that account so

35:57 i think the kpis um you know are you know across the board for many different things but you know

36:05 they're important also because as your sales leader and you're doing one-on-ones understanding

36:10 what the average close rate is for your rep and how much they have to close to get to their their

36:16 quota or their goal you know you need to have all those things really spelled out and that's why

36:21 having dashboards and having clear data and understanding what those measurements are an

36:27 agreement not just with within the revenue stream but also with finance right because

36:32 i said they're looking at the financial plans versus the sales plan um i think really is

36:38 important work to do so that number one we understand how we're really doing number two

36:45 the sales plan should convert into hitting the financial plan right but there there are

36:49 differences in the way they look at it and number three you know when you have the tough questions

36:56 from the board or you know or the chairman or whatever that you have alignment on what the

37:02 answers are because that's when confusion starts that's when doubt starts right you just need to

37:09 make sure that everybody is looking at agreeing on certain measurements and looking at them the same

37:15 way and and it doesn't always happen sometimes you know you don't have alignment and um that can

37:21 cause a lot of swirl and a lot of time trying to understand what's going on the business when you

37:27 really should be out there driving the business yeah i've found that part just unbelievably

37:34 difficult to do and to a lot of people listening they might think it sounds easy to understand

37:41 what a new logo is or when you close something finance should know how much revenue that should

37:47 be but it's not always so easy and sometimes you have to make media you know like because you're

37:53 avoiding things right so yeah i know or if there's usage and you have to like calculate how much is

38:01 variable within the deal um yeah it's very different margins for different products and

38:07 you know like right so that can complicate things as well on what that actual deal level was worth

38:14 and so there's a lot of complexity to it yeah especially if you don't know exactly which

38:19 products they might be using in that particular scenario so like okay we're not going to have a

38:24 perfect definition but as long as we all agree on what the definition is and are okay with some of

38:30 these things kind of being a compromise of absolutes then okay we can move forward and we

38:35 can have productive executive meetings productive board meetings and and do what we need to do but

38:41 until you've sat down and written it codified it written an owner to it looked around the table

38:48 everybody said yes i agree with that it's very difficult to do yeah and even when i said just

38:54 the definitions across the organization right like just in general terms is is going to be

39:00 interesting so but it's important work and i think i think when you lay that groundwork down right

39:05 again some of the fundamentals it's worth the work because in the long term it'll save a lot of work

39:11 because you have agreement you don't have swirl you don't have stories being told that are different

39:15 stories and then um don't have alignment right and then the worst thing in any organization is when

39:22 there's a lack of alignment that's when that's when things slow down that's when you get stuck

39:26 that's when um you know it's hard to grow very hard to grow one one of the things we talked about

39:34 during the prep session i think there's a lot of people who want to rush to get outside help for

39:42 some of these things bring in the management consultants um bringing the agencies and being

39:50 an agency owner i kind of know where we fit into the equation of these things but where are some

39:55 areas where hey if you're going outside you're getting help from consultants you're getting help

39:59 from agencies this is where they can fit but this is where they cannot fit what are some of the things

40:04 that you cannot lean on the consultants to do you i you cannot lean on the consultants to do your

40:10 change management plan right like what you can't just outsource it make them do it no you can i

40:16 think i think so consultants are great right they sit across a broad amount a broad amount of

40:22 companies and so they get a lot of experience seeing you know what's out there what's going

40:26 on what's work that doesn't hasn't worked um so it's great to get their input and and their ideas

40:33 and their thoughts because it's outside thinking i the areas that i think that you always have to

40:38 be a little bit um cautious of is the fact that they will push you right and they will push you

40:44 because a lot of times they have a playbook and that playbook is what has worked at these

40:49 other companies they've been at and um sometimes the nuances of the playbook don't fit into your

40:55 business so you have to push them to make sure that you are solving for the the what's going

41:01 on in your current business not just what the playbook fulfills um also i always think about

41:06 the fact that they are brilliant people super smart you look at their linkedins i mean they're

41:11 all you know harvard mba you know graduates or ivy school mba um they they've been consultants

41:20 for a long time but they haven't sat in the operating seat most of them have not sat as

41:26 an operator and i think sitting in that operator seat and knowing that whatever decision is made

41:32 you're going to live with right that the consultants will hand you the the playbook

41:38 work through the playbook help you implement the playbook but then they leave and you have you were

41:44 sitting there you know dealing with whatever decisions you have made you have to be really

41:48 strong about that you have to make sure that you have candid conversations because sometimes they

41:53 will push very very hard and you have to really be strong about what you think is right for the

41:59 organization and not and realize that the decisions you're making along the way you're going to live

42:04 with they will not live with so i think they're i think they're very helpful um but your lot your

42:10 job as a leader is to make sure that you are advocating for what's best for the company

42:16 as you engage with the consultants along the way are there certain areas of the business you've

42:21 really appreciated bringing in that outside help anything specific that you say hey if you're a

42:26 cro and this type of company like bring in some consultants for this type of stuff bring in some

42:31 agencies for these type of things um that you have found been really effective yeah i think that um

42:38 you know really you know helping someone pull together and understand the data from an outward

42:46 out per outside perspective is helpful because um you know taking a look and and mining the

42:53 the data that you're going to be using to make decisions and i say that because when you do all

42:58 the data mining all by yourself in inside your company you can be not have that outside thinking

43:05 right because you could be biased in the way you approach things so i think it's good to have that

43:09 lens and making sure that the way you're pulling the data and using it is is really thoughtful

43:15 from an outside perspective um the other place would be um you know in you know sometimes too

43:23 like pushing you you know in your alignment right you when you have your organizational design done

43:31 a lot of times we just fall in love with our organizational design and how everybody fits into

43:35 it and i think sometimes they can be really helpful in challenging you on decisions and

43:40 why you might have people here or people there i think about um some of the work we did with a

43:47 consultant uh where you know they were pushing me on definitions of like um some account management

43:53 and are they really sales support and you know so some of those conversations can be really helpful

43:59 but i think that um again you know once you get that playbook of how they're in there helping you

44:06 change things you know you have to then put the company lens on it and really understand how

44:11 you're going to you know be rolling that out and what the implications are and what it means you

44:17 know to the people to the company to the bottom line all those things yeah i've always framed it

44:24 in a similar way whenever we're working with companies it's a hey we can come in we can give

44:28 you ideas we can execute and implement things um we can't make decisions for you though right and

44:36 we can't be accountable for those decisions we can give you the options but at the end of the day

44:41 somebody has to pick it and be accountable for it and that's where i think having that real operator

44:47 experience i wish the consultants should he put them on a voyage like hey you gotta go spend five

44:52 years doing something like you gotta go own something yeah they're not all that way i mean

44:55 but the majority of them have not operated it's from what i could what i've experienced anyway

45:00 other people might have different experiences no it's similar i'd say it's really similar in like

45:04 vcpe world too like yes you they see maybe go to market things happening in a lot of their

45:11 portcos and they bring those things to the board meeting or they like value creation teams which

45:16 is helpful but then there's a certain point where it's like yeah but you haven't done this job before

45:22 so maybe you don't have an appreciation for how difficult some of these things might be to do here

45:27 um so but anyway i think everybody kind of has their role in the ecosystem i think really good

45:33 leaders know when to pull someone in and then when they just have to own it and run it internally

45:40 and sometimes you just have to have that conversation when they're pushing really hard

45:44 you know and kind of say hey this is not happening i know you i know you need that to happen but not

45:49 happening so um that that's your role as a leader right 100 that also helps when you have experience

45:57 and you've racked up a few wins too um and have that confidence well susan this has been awesome

46:03 thank you so much for everything you shared i think some of the things a lot of companies i

46:08 know we work with them they struggle with that change management aspect and i think some of the

46:13 things you shared of hey you got to be communicating often you have to be getting people from the front

46:18 lines and from different departments and be selective and careful of who you curate to be

46:23 into that group but you have to get that feedback before making the decisions and i think we have a

46:29 lot of things that are coming up that are going to require a lot of businesses to have some immense

46:35 change management initiatives going on so i really appreciate you walking through the playbook you've

46:39 had a fantastic career done it at some amazing companies um so everything you say i listened

46:47 a little extra hard and take it to heart so i really appreciate it um thank you for being on

46:52 the podcast thanks for sharing everything do it to follow appreciate it thanks so much thank you