RevOps Co-op Weekly #107 - Shaping an Operational Vision Through an Executive Book Club
How Creator Guild member Demar Amacker positioned Business Operations at the center of the company vision by influencing book club selection.
RevOps Co-op provides resources, content and community for those who ❤️ revenue operations. This weekly newsletter features collected tweets, posts and thoughts on a variety of RevOps topics. We also have a private Slack community with > 6000+ RevOps pro’s from companies like Slack, Lyft, Clari, Miro and more 👉🏻 click here to join.
📣 COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT! 📣
The RevOps Co-op welcomes Vertice as a community partner to help our members with all of their SaaS purchasing questions!
So who is Vertice?
🤔
Vertice is a tech-enabled purchasing platform on a mission to save customers on SaaS. By using an extensive database of more than 13,000 SaaS vendors and providing an experienced commercial negotiator to handle the whole negotiation process, we deliver guaranteed cost (and time) savings to our customers.
Vertice is designed to support finance, procurement and IT teams, as well as department heads whenever they are buying SaaS. We’re always ready to help you save time and effort on your endless SaaS renewals!
Shaping an Operational Vision Through an Executive Book Club
When Demar Amacker joined Zift Solutions last year, he quickly realized how he could position himself as the center point for key metrics in his organization and provide the necessary insights to his leadership team. Now as Senior Director, Business Operations, Demar continues to work directly with leadership to help drive business forward and allow for future growth.
Books are integral to learning, but we don’t often think of them as making up the practices of an organization’s leadership team, nor do we think of that team as one that would start a book club.
Demar Amacker of Zift Solutions, the platform that brings together marketing, sales and operations in a single tool, explains why this isn’t your typical SaaS company.
Recently, discussions surrounding the redesign of the customer onboarding experience focused around one of the books we featured in our company’s book club: Donna Webber’s Onboarding Matters.
“We’ve really shifted our mindset to be very sales-forward and set up the mutual success plan for the prospect very early on in the sales process,” he says. “So, by the time it gets to a late-stage deal, all of the information has been captured and documented.”
He describes the concept as creating the cookie-crumb trail throughout the process that ensures seamless delivery from one handoff to the next. It’s a far cry from the prospects who get stuck amongst the introductions to multiple people that need multiple prior conversations repeated multiple times.
“[This makes] sure that there’s one linear customer experience-focused journey that we can repeat through customers,” he explains. “It’s about building muscle memory for our team as well—making sure they’re able to deliver the level of training and insight and just pride in the customer experience we want.”
A Top-Down Approach
Gordon Rapkin, Zift’s CEO, read Webber’s book and grew enthused about seeing the opportunity customer onboarding held.
“He felt like the book was kind of written for us as a company,” Demar says. “For me, customer success is driven from the beginning, from that first interaction all the way through to the point where they become a customer that buys again and again and again.”
“There may have been an ‘under-capture’ of data in the process until the prospect got closer to purchase, and then you’ve shot yourself in the foot a little bit with having to go back to play catch up,” he says. “It’s like when you’re taking notes for your summer reading and then it’s the last day of the semester. You have to stay on top of it from the beginning.”
The next title the company’s book club dove into was The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. Written in a fable style, the story revolves around a new CEO and the team she needs to lead.
“It’s a great fable on leadership and I prefer that style where it’s in the context of a true, functional business story where you can relate to the characters and place them within your own organization,” he says. “The book club process allows people to step outside of their role in their day to day.”
The Change to Demar’s Role
While initially the role Demar took when joining Zift was RevOps focused, it grew to become much more operational in nature.
…There’s more! Read full blog here 👉 Shaping Operational Vision Through an Executive Book Club
🗣 From the Community
#04_revops-questions - Better International Support than ZoomInfo
10/19/22 - We are currently using ZoomInfo as our source of truth to assign accounts (employee count and location assignment). The data is less than amazing....anyone have another tool that they recommend? Definitely needs to support international. Read 21 Replies.
#04_revops-questions - # of CRM Required Fields
10/21/22 - …How many required fields do you have in your CRM, in your pre-close deal stages?
I’ve been told “the norm is 10-12” required fields. We have more (we have 4 pre-close stages), although some fields are automated, and others are only required if another field is completed.
I know there’s no one size fits all here, but wondering about the range. If anyone has 20+, for example, have you had pushback on that from reps? For those with fewer than 10, do you gather intelligence in different ways or are your reps filling out optional fields a lot? Read 10 Replies.
#08_tools-and-software - Tools for Intent Data
10/19/22 - Does any one have good experiences getting high quality intent data from 6Sense? Any others companies people recommend? Thanks in advance! Read 7 Replies.
#08_tools-and-software - Territory Design Tools
10/19/22 - Does anyone use tools for managing territory design? Ready 7 Replies.
💬 Access the RevOps Co-op Slack group here to contribute to the conversation!
📅 Upcoming Events
The Co-op now has an Events page on our website! Click here to view all upcoming events from us and our Community Partners.
🐦 This week in #RevOps Social
😣 But I made it special just for you!
Oh look, it’s Blake Kendrick, doing his thing! 🙌
Yeah, you! 🫵
📚 Your curated #RevOps reading list
Building a GTM Data Governance Framework | The Revenue Lounge Podcast
Data inefficiencies continue to plague organizations. Inaccurate, stale and missing data have made companies lose as high as 30% of their [annual revenue.
Clean, reliable and trustworthy data is the key to making GTM efforts successful. The significance of clean & unified data increases even more as organizations scale and add more tools to their revenue tech stack. But how can RevOps teams carry out this critical system audit? This episode discusses data integrity and its significance in running a tight GTM ship.
The RevOps Secret Sauce for Successful Technology Partnerships | Everstage
Working as RevOps entails constantly looking for levers you can pull to drive top-line revenue growth for your company. With that being your north star, one of the high-impact avenues that’s worth exploring is technology partnerships.
Leaders on the Top 10 Sales Compensation Challenges in 2023 | Sales Hacker
Sales compensation planning can be a tricky beast to tame — but know that you’re not alone. I asked 12 incredible sales leaders across the SaaS industry to share their biggest challenges with comp planning and how to overcome them. Read on, take notes, and avoid these roadblocks as you get 2023 comp planning underway. Then, I’ll help you take it to the next level with QuotaPath’s newest free resource — our Compensation Hub.
🔥 A few HOT #RevOps Jobs
Head of Revenue Operations (RevOps) | Intruder
Director, Revenue Operations | Beyond
Revenue Operations Manager | Accredible
Marketing Operations Manager | Beyond
Senior Sales Enablement Coach | Expel
Business Development Strategist | Remotish
Merchant Success Associate | Bread Financial
🚒 Weekly RevOps Meme
Anastasiia Binns Strikes Again! 🙏