Why Simplicity is Key to RevOps Success

[00:00:00] Aaron Janmohamed: This is another episode of the Revenue Mavericks podcast, and I'm joined today by a special guest. This is Ross Rich. You want to introduce yourself? 

[00:00:13] Ross Rich: Yeah. Happy to Aaron. Thanks for having me on. Good to see you. But, uh, yeah, I'm Ross CEO and co founder of a company called Accord, which is basically a platform to help, uh, sales leaders operationalize value selling.
Um, and yeah, it's great to connect. Excited to chat today. 

[00:00:29] Aaron Janmohamed: Absolutely. And I've been impressed by a lot of the things that Ross is doing. And so I'm, I'm really excited about the conversation We'll be talking a little bit about balance today, but before we get into it, I want to ask, uh, the, the first question to kind of kick things off.
And maybe this is a more of a personal question, but is there something from your personal life that set you in motion such that you could be doing what you're doing today? 

[00:00:53] Ross Rich: Wow. That's a, that's a deep philosophical question. Um, I could probably 30 minutes talking about that, but, um, yeah, I think, uh, success in everything from.
Sales to entrepreneurship to leadership comes from habits and consistency. Um, and yeah, I built a, you know, a practice about trying to be the, you know, the best person I can every day for, uh, my friends, my family, for my job, and that starts with, you know, great sleep, getting up in the morning, all that stuff, I think, you know.
Yeah, I could talk about some best practices and tips and tricks for, you know, effective communication, everything, but I think everything comes from within and trying to, you know, have the right energy, the right mindset, the right attitude. And I think that just comes from a great daily habit of, you know, eating well, sleeping well, being, you know, physically and mentally and kind of spiritually healthy.
So a lot of, uh, my time and energy and intention goes into, you know, being able to start every day. Um, yeah, and that kind of, that kind of way. So. I love it. I really not the answer you were expecting, but 

[00:01:56] Aaron Janmohamed: yeah. You know, it, uh, it appeals to something I've always wanted to do. And that start a podcast, talking to business leaders about their health habits, I think it probably wouldn't 

[00:02:06] Ross Rich: be surprised that people are pretty obsessed around making sure that they have the right energy and, um, approach to, yeah, what they do and the people around them 

[00:02:15] Aaron Janmohamed: agree with you.
Yeah. There's an interesting correlation there with people that are high performing entrepreneurs. I don't, I mean, I guess I understand why, but anyways, that's, That's a good setup. Thank you for that. For 

[00:02:25] Ross Rich: your next podcast. Yeah. 

[00:02:26] Aaron Janmohamed: Yeah. Yeah. That's I, I've got you, uh, listed as my first guest on that one, but, um, all right.
Today we're talking about balance and the way that you, uh, frame this up and I thought this was an awesome framing was there's a need to balance the support that's required up and down. And if you don't mind explaining what you mean by up and down and who specifically are you talking about that needs to create that balance.

[00:02:49] Ross Rich: Yeah, I think, um, well, anyone I was thinking about, you know, in terms of that rev ops leader or that VP of sales, the person that both still has a boss, which is maybe that, you know, CEO or board or COO, and they have a team under them. And I think, um, I typically see, Leaders at that level be really good at one or the other.
And I think it's very rare to find people that both, uh, you know, I can balance both really effectively in terms of solving problems, um, for the folks above and below. So yeah, happy to, there's probably a million different ways we can take that, but that's kind of what I meant in terms of being, you know, balancing both the needs from leadership above them, as well as their team to make sure that they're effective and successful below.

[00:03:33] Aaron Janmohamed: Let's start with the end in mind when, when you think of what the ideal level of balance looks like, do you have a company in mind or a group of people that you've observed and, and what does that actually look like? What, what, what, what are we trying to aim for when we think of this appropriate balance up and down?

[00:03:48] Ross Rich: Yeah, maybe I always try to be as specific as possible with this stuff. So maybe we'll pick a role and kind of talk about an example here. Maybe we'll pick, uh, Um, what do you think is better? Rev ops or sales leader? I can do either one of those. Let's 

[00:03:59] Aaron Janmohamed: start with rev ops. I, to pick your brain on that one.
Yeah. 

[00:04:02] Ross Rich: Yeah. So let's pick a rev ops leader. Let's say you're a VP of rev ops. Um, you're poured either into, you know, CFO or sale or CRO. Um, so if, you know, you have your bosses, um, you have to deliver stuff, right. You need to deliver and support them on everything from the right forecast, the right. You know, compensation structure and payouts, um, you know, operational excellence reporting, et cetera, above and below, you need to make sure that, you know, your team and especially supporting, I think, you know, supporting the frontline sellers and managers are incredibly important.
You need to make sure that they can go out and do their job successfully. Everything from making sure that the right tooling from Salesforce to, uh, you know, you know, mass email, sending call recording, whatever it is, uh, and make sure that they're, you know, effectively on the field. And I would say, and maybe this is just me defaulting to like, I would care more about them getting their job done than me reporting up because the people above care more about You know, what's getting done in the field.
So I'd probably anchor towards like a, a 70, 30, maybe 80, 20 split of my time. Hey, if I'm making folks effective out on the field and those individuals are successful, everyone else is going to be happy. Vice versa. I don't know how they're true. That is, you can have the greatest reporting, greatest dashboards, greatest compensation structure and territory planning.
And if the folks aren't successful in the field, no one's going to care how, you know, how well architected that stuff is, but it's still something you need to deliver. So I'll pause there and let's see if that's a helpful vein to go down. 

[00:05:29] Aaron Janmohamed: I think that makes perfect sense. Um, you, you mentioned that you've noticed that some, uh, some people are great going up, but not down.
And some people are great down, but not going, uh, you know, supporting the team above them. Why is that? What, where's the disconnect? 

[00:05:44] Ross Rich: I think the people, and again, maybe this is just me, but lean more towards the most effective people are typically the folks that take care of the, uh, the teams on the front lines and understand that that's where kind of value creation happens in sales is.
You know, the truth has happened is what happens with the customer. Um, and I think a lot of people move up because they are effective communicators above and maybe not necessarily the best doers, but that they have the trust of leadership because they're able to communicate a certain way and translate the work that they're doing in the field to leadership.
And so they're trusted and, you know, make their way up in their careers. Um, I think that leads to sometimes people being stronger, maybe upwards communicators and less effective in the field or vice versa. Maybe you're a killer and. You know, you're getting it done, um, for those ICs and managers, but then as you elevate your career, you struggle to think about and kind of reframe the world in terms of other roles that you haven't been in before, right?
Like maybe the CEO, CFO, CRO, like what kind of the classic expression of like, you know, what got you here won't get you there is very true when people hit that next level, whether it's a manager going to director, whether it's a director going to a VP, et cetera. 

[00:06:59] Aaron Janmohamed: You know, I interview a lot of people in sales leadership and, and in rev rev ops, not for the podcast, but for, for my day job, one of the things they often complain about, one of the biggest problems that they struggle with is this, this notion of alignment.
It, it seems like what you're talking about actually fits into this. If you can strike that, that appropriate balance between your. The upper end of the business and the lower end of the business and supporting them in the in the ways that can make them most successful if you can strike that balance I don't know if alignment follows or if alignment's required to be able to strike that balance But it seems heavily connected to this theme and and I would agree with you I think every single person i've talked to says there is a problem of alignment within their organizations.
Is that your experience? 

[00:07:41] Ross Rich: Yeah, I think it starts from the very top. There's only so much you could do, um, in your role outside of, you know, being part of that C suite or even just, you know, CEO, executive board. And that's why I think, you know, people are obsessed with, uh, you know, Frank Slootman and other operators that, um, I think a big part of their job, maybe knowing that, that, you know, top engineering product leader, but could come in and really operationalize excellence because they can orient the whole team around.
The stuff that matters. And again, his whole obsession is the tip of the spear is sales. As customers, we orient our entire company around one thing instead of what it feels like is, you know, you go through our cares, here's marketing's thing. Here's rev ops thing. Here's sales thing. It's, it's a variety of focus areas versus here's what we're doing at the end of the day.
We're making customers successful. This is what we're selling. This is what we do. Every single thing that we do ladders up to that. And again, I think there's only so much you can do as, um, you know, as one of those five or six people in those OKR meetings, if above isn't directed in, in, you know, one single, um, direction and goal.

[00:08:44] Aaron Janmohamed: It sounds like it should be called trickle up economics because ultimately, you know, CEO think of our, our team or our, you know, line of business? But ultimately, like you said, it's like, Who's in the front line closing deals. How are they doing that? How can they do that more effectively? If we spend our results, people overcomplicate the rest of the business, you know, 

[00:09:04] Ross Rich: exactly.
I think people overcomplicate things at the end of the day, executives, boards, everyone's very simple. Uh, what's the, you know, the top line number and bottom line number. And you know, how do we get that as, as dialed in as efficient as possible? Um, and you can get, you know, I think overcomplicated with all these metrics, dashboards, et cetera, at the end of the day, um, you know, I think it gets even more simple, the higher up you get in terms of what matters.

[00:09:29] Aaron Janmohamed: Can you think of an example in your own business of maybe one of your direct reports that has been able to strike this balance pretty effectively? And like, what are the things that you notice out of that individual? 

[00:09:39] Ross Rich: Yeah, I think, um, let's say marketing, for example, able to, okay, this is where we need to get to at the end of the year.
You know, it's a number. How do we break that down from the next level, which might be, um, you know, pipeline goal. Okay. Then how do we break that down by channels? Okay. So now it's, you know, five channels to get to this pipeline goal per month, per quarter to get to our annual ARR number. If this is the coverage we need next level down, then it's okay.
How to, what, what, um, what activities, um, are we going to do for each of those channels to get there? Okay. How are we going to resource that and being able to effectively kind of really simply communicate that again, what we care about at the end of the year is, you know, hitting this number with his efficiency and being able to communicate that really effectively, um, to myself and then to, you know, Her team that are going to actually, you know, do those activities to ladder up to that goal.
So again, I think a lot of folks kind of overcomplicate it, um, when they're trying to work with the executive team. 

[00:10:36] Aaron Janmohamed: So it, I, I, I like that point. It seems like, yeah, it, part of this comes down to the metrics that the top of the organization expects to see from the other layers in the organization. It almost forces them to be appropriately balanced based on what you want
them to report on. So I'm curious without getting into details, that might be compromising, you know, um, uh, trade secrets for the business. What are the things that you try to, uh, have everyone navigate towards? Like everyone's, of course there's a revenue number, but, uh, is there another layer of, of metrics and detail that you, you're wanting all layers of the business to be calibrated towards that they're properly aligned and balanced in their, their 

[00:11:17] Ross Rich: Yeah.
Um, and again, this goes back to like, If there's a one leadership team, you know, at the VP level above that think about themselves as that, you know, quote unquote, one team, a lot of the times I think the lack of alignment can come from folks getting comped and thinking about their job and effectiveness as their thing versus that one or two numbers.
So when we think about it, I think about. ARR slash NRR, where we need to be at the end of the year, thinking about both top top line growth, as well as renewals and expansion as it's kind of number one, number two is what's our baseline for efficiency per team. That's, that's everything. So where do we need to get to from both top line growth and growing from our customer base and minimizing churn?
And then how are we going to get there with the resources that we have per team in a way that we feel really good about our efficiency metrics? Everything else is, is a detail is a how that's the one thing that everyone on our team thinks about. And again, I think. As companies get, it's easier for us because we're a smaller company.
I understand how it can get much more complicated. That's the job of leadership. And again, going back to, you know, the free sleuths of the world, you bang that drum every single day, multiple times a day about what matters at the end of the day. These are the, this is the one thing. These are the two things that matter.
It's very hard to get a growing complicated, you know, markets up and down all this stuff, competitive landscape changing. How do you orient your team around those couple of things and stay aligned? I think that's really the challenge of effective, um, effective leadership. 

[00:12:50] Aaron Janmohamed: You've been in business for a few years now.
Was there, uh, a moment in your history where maybe you had the wrong metric or the wrong goal set up or. 

[00:13:00] Ross Rich: Totally. I mean, you only learn these things from, you know, screwing it up. I think, yeah, we did have that, you know, the default is okay. We have leaders on the team. They should own, you know, Hey, CS, you own this thing, this usage and, you know, uh, renewal number.
Hey, sales, you own the top line number. Hey, marketing, you own this thing. And when it's broken and siloed, then you have this lack of focus, lack of alignment. Okay. Well, if I'm getting gold on this thing, I'm going to do this and not support this team as much. But when you have that sink and same thing with product and engineering, are they going to, are they, um, gold on, you know, uptime?
Is it based on NPS? Is it based on how do you just get as few goals as possible and have as many teams aligned around those things? And then, yes, you have the details underneath there. That's, you know, the job of the VP to be able to balance all those other things. But when you're thinking about reporting up, it should be.
A more singular goal. And again, that's the really hard part is, uh, keeping it simple, right? Simple isn't hard. Simple. I know 

[00:13:54] Aaron Janmohamed: we didn't, we didn't preface this by, by suggesting we were going to go into rep comp, but I am curious, can you push this down to the rep level? Because I can see a situation like I've noticed, you know, reps have a number and they've got to hit that number.
And then oftentimes leaders layer on let's, let's say activity metrics that they believe are going to give them the best shot to get to their number. And. Sometimes the response is the rep leaning to just doing the activities that are required, and they kind of miss the bigger goal, which is the actual number.
Can that also apply to, like, team goals and to business goals? Should there be a component of compensation for reps that are more tied to the broader business? You know, broader business performance. I know that's certainly the case of marketing. Um, you know, my compensation is, is directly tied to what's happening across the business, not just on marketing produced pipeline.
So I don't know if that makes sense, but have you seen that work out or is at the rep level, you kind of need them just to be focused on. Here's your quota hit it. And we'll have other metrics that kind of feed into bonuses or, you know, incentives and things. But I'm wondering if at the rep level, there does need to be a breaking down of silos in a way.

[00:15:04] Ross Rich: And again, simple is hard. So if you want to keep it simple for reps, uh, you gotta spend a lot of time on that. You can't be like, okay, we want net new logos here. And then we want them to do expansion there. And we want you to hold onto accounts because NRR really matters and blah, blah, blah. So I think you kind of need to pick your battles and maybe what's this year about.
Is it net new logo? Is it expanding from the customer base and comp on one, maybe like 1. 5 things. I think you can do a little bit more. So for example, for us right now, we're an earlier stage startup. We're really focused on, um, new logo, um, growth, but we also have a land expand motion where we can get a large part of our revenue every year.
It's been probably about a third plus of our revenue through expanding on the existing base. So then maybe you break out comp to be. You can't hit your number without having 20 percent of your quarter be from expansion. So that's one, you know, 0. 5 way of doing it. Hey, like you can get to 80 percent to get to one 50.
You're going to have to have a big expansion or have a couple deals that you've landed before that are in your accounts, um, grow. So beyond that, I think you can run the risk of being distracted and not focused. Um, but I do think though, then the next level down of like, okay, growth, but And breaking that out into those channels.
And again, maybe like, you know, 1. 5 of those is, is, uh, as far as I would get for, um, potentially being a distraction to the sales team. 

[00:16:27] Aaron Janmohamed: Now, I want to get a sense as to, I imagine you care about this a lot because the problem you're solving in your business is directly connected to this. So do you mind trying to make that connection for us?
What is the problem that you're solving the problem solution statement for, for the, for the business, and then how this factors into helping teams strike a better balance? 

[00:16:45] Ross Rich: With Accord. 

[00:16:46] Aaron Janmohamed: Yeah. 

[00:16:47] Ross Rich: Yeah. Basically the value prop for a cord is. There's a handful of reps on every team that effectively, um, are able to communicate the value of your product, get the right stakeholders together, basically, you know, execute on value selling, right?
The right, why behind the deal, the right stakeholders behind the deal, they're super prescriptive and how they're going to get them from evaluation to validation to onboarding and successful and growing with you. That's what we're helping leaders. Operationalize and replicate, um, how do we standardize what those steps are?
Who those stakeholders are? What a great business case looks like documented beyond just fields and Salesforce and 20 page decks and docks and internal things and actually make it about the rep workflow. So basically tying it to those, um, You know, stages of the deal and saying, this is what a great business case looks like at this stage.
This is what a good stakeholder map looks like. This is what a good account plan or opportunity plan looks like. Um, which yeah, helps you drive that focus around, um, what our expectations are. I think that there's, um, a lack of clarity. Usually if you're a new rep or even existing non top performer rep of like, how can I get better?
Everyone's trying, you know, people on the field that are selling are typically competitive. They want to do well. At least half their comp usually is tied to their performance, um, and their outcomes, and they're not lazy, but I think a lot of people, uh, conflate laziness or, you know, lack of trying with lack of clarity around what they need to do to be successful.
And there's only going to be a small percentage of folks out there that are going to intuit that, and you need to make it more clear for. The 80 percent of your team, 90 percent of your team that could be successful. If you took more accountability on yourself as a leader to say, this is what great looks like.
This is why some of those folks are successful. So that's kind of where we fit into things is, um, yeah, trying to replicate that success of your top intuitive performers or yourself, if you're a leader, um, to the rest of the field. 

[00:18:39] Aaron Janmohamed: Yeah, that makes sense. I can see the connection to this notion of balance and how it would make leaders more focused on the right outcomes and the lower levels of the organization likewise focused on driving impact to the business in an appropriate way.
While giving leadership the kind of insight that they need the visibility that they require to be able to manage things So let's let's go back kind of full circle. We started talking about how a rev ops person might need to Um create this balance if you have a new rev ops person in an organization We can maybe safely assume that that balance hasn't been adequately struck.
So they have this Huge burden in front of them. They've got to figure it out. What's your advice? What's the first thing that they need to look at or do? To make sure that things are are are getting the right attention in the right places 

[00:19:29] Ross Rich: I'd say get down to the level of your top frontline managers and sellers and that's the truth.
Um, I think unfortunately Revops has typically seen As supporting their peers at the VP level, who, to be honest, in most cases, don't understand what it's like, um, to be a seller, to be a CSM, to be an onboarding specialist on PS and have to hit the goals. And I think there's the communication breakdown in the broken telephone between.
The VP, the director, the manager, and the IC. And I would say if you understand, uh, you know, that long tenured rep or CSM or frontline manager has been working their way up and, and, and deeply understands what needs to be true to be successful and to make other successful on a team, that's what I would start with understanding, um, And using that as your lens versus maybe what you're hearing through your peers at the VP or senior director level, um, the, the folks that have energized me the most as, as a peer, um, or as a revenue operations leader actually understands what it's like to be a seller and what our customer's needs are and, and kind of using first principles, thinking to architect our process and comp and quotas and.
You know, whatever it is based on that versus again, up. And again, I think the truth is if you do a good job there, everyone above is going to hear fantastic things about you and you're going to drive those results and they're going to be happy. So that's where it starts. 

[00:20:54] Aaron Janmohamed: That's great advice. All right.
I'm going to give you the last word. Um, put yourself on a pedestal. What is one last bit of advice that you would give people listening to this podcast related to the theme? 

[00:21:05] Ross Rich: Related to balance. Um, I think the hard part about that is both translating to use. You know, kind of classic thing, like use the language of your customers, using the right language for, you know, that CEO, that COO, that CFO as your boss, and using the language of the folks on the front line, I think it's really hard, but how do you tell the same story, the same through line, right?
So in a great sale and a big deal, yes, you need to use different language and demo differently and pitch differently for each persona, but you're telling the same story at its core. So I think the challenge is for that balance is how do you craft that You know, your conversations, the decks, the work that you're doing for those different personas, but still are telling the same story and at the core.
And I think that's the really, really hard thing. And I think that's what great VPs do is they're able to articulate the problems to their bosses and, and, you know, kind of, uh, to the folks at the front line, they're saying the same thing, but in a way that they're going to understand. And, um, yeah, that's kind of what I think the, the really hard part is 

[00:22:04] Aaron Janmohamed: everything comes down to storytelling.
In other words, everyone should be marketers first. And life would be a lot easier that makes me feel good about myself. All right. We're uh, Ross, thank you so much for your uh, your your insights, 

[00:22:16] Ross Rich: of course. Yeah. Thanks for having me