Dominique Levin’s Post

It is time to borrow some time from my retirement and splice it into my life in the form of my third sabbatical. My current work-life philosophy was inspired by a TED Talk from Stefan Sagmeister on “The Power of Time Off” from 2009. It’s worth a listen. Thus, my first sabbatical was shortly after Stefan's TED talk in 2010, when I left LogLogic as CEO. I studied positive psychology, worked with the society of environmental journalism, volunteered in my kids’ classroom, and spent two months on a road trip from New York to San Francisco. My second sabbatical was in 2015. After an intensive campaign of five years, I convinced my husband we should BOTH quit our jobs and do a family sabbatical. We homeschooled our three kids and traveled the world for a year. We returned from that sabbatical eight years ago. At the start of my third sabbatical, people are asking me “what are you going to do this time?”. My answer is inspired by the commencement speech of Kelsey O’Connor. She said that the better question is not “what are you going to do”, but: “Who are you going to be?” At the end of this sabbatical, I want to be more giving and nurturing and collaborative . I will start by practicing to be a better listener and to ask better questions. Because "Practice makes progress", right Alia Pirani? No matter what I do or where I go ... The most rewarding in life is to “give” not to “get”. I am grateful that 🐶 Jacco van der Kooij has recently stepped back into the business, which enables me to do this. I am equally grateful that we have such an experienced leadership team to support Jacco, including Shari Johnston, Sari Green, Linda Martin, Lauren Shleifer Goldstein, and Olga Cojocaru (and too many crew members to mention and thank here). I will remain an active board member and enthusiastic owner of Winning by Design, during and beyond my sabbatical and I am a HUGE believer in #revenuearchitecture. So my question for you: Who do you want to be this year? #sabbatical #worklife #outwardmindset #growthmindset

What can traditional B2B companies learn from SaaS GTM? - Bowtie: document your customer impact journey even if you have a lot of institutional knowledge and tenured reps - Growth model and formulas: even if growth is slower, understand where it will come from and how to make it happen - Use intent and engagement data: prioritize outreach to prospects based on data, not personal relationships - Joint Impact Planning: have a formal plan to get customer to first impact and recurring impact and track progress - White Space Planning: decide how much time to spend with existing customers based on available white space - Trigger Plays: engage with existing customers when something good or bad happens, not on a set schedule - Tech enable all aspects of your GTM, starting with a modern CRM and basic remote selling infrastructure What SaaS #gtm best practices and technologies have you seen non-SaaS companies most benefit from? Douglas van Oijen I think you may have some to add? Maybe my CS friends like Nick Mehta Guy Nirpaz 🍊Emilia D'Anzica, MBA, PMP Julie Persofsky can help expand the list right side of bowtie.

Should the RevOps function evolve to GTM Strategy and Operations?  What’s the difference and why does it matter? Can GTM Ops drive predictability, scalability, and profitability? How can GTM Ops standardize GTM process, data, and operating cadence? What’s at stake? Saket Pradhan has been on the forefront of GTM Strategy and Operations at public companies:  Dell Technologies: VP Sales Strategy, Planning and Operations at  HashiCorp: VP Sales Strategy and Planning, Analytics & Compensation Jill Guardia (she/her) is forging a new path at a ScaleUp as: SVP Revenue Enablement and Operations I will interview both in a live ask me anything fireside chat on June 26, 2024 at 9 am. We will tackle questions such as: Why does GTM Strategy and Operations matter? Who should own the global GTM process? What title, job description, reporting structure? How to get buy-in from the organization? How to ensure success for this role? How to standardize data definitions? What operating cadence to deploy? Both will speak about the obstacles when building your revenue factory and building a GTM Strategy and Operations organization and how to overcome them. No recording will be made available. Live participation only. What questions do you have for Saket Pradhan and Jill Guardia (she/her)? Add your questions to the comments here, DM me, or join us live on June 26 (link in comments or on our website). #salesops #revops #revenueoperations #gtm #saas

Who owns your end to end GTM system? What about the Bowtie data model? This was a key question during our two-day Revenue Architecture Summit in Santa Cruz. Marketing owns awareness. BDRs or equivalent own education. Sales owns selection. Finance oversees the mutual commit/contracting. Professional services do onboarding. CS helps with retention. Account managers focus on expansion. So do we even need somebody to own and optimize the overall #bowtie process and data model? YES! "But my marketing is great at increasing leads and sales is increasing close rates, so why worry about an overall owner?", you might say. What if the new leads are low quality and sales is rushing through the sales cycle, ultimately yielding high onboarding and ongoing churn? Whether you like it or not, revenue production is a closed loop system. Something you do on the left side of the bowtie impacts the right side and the other way around. Best to assign an unbiased data owner who does that personally have anything to gain by making the data tell any particular story. The most likely owner for the overall system, or at least for the overall data model, lives in operations or finance. We see new titles around GTM Strategy and Operations. We also see RevOps moving from CRO to COO or CFO. So hence my question: In your company, who owns the end-to-end revenue production system? Who owns data definitions and brings together your teams to decide on next actions to improve revenue production based on the data? #revenuearchitecture #bowtie #revops Photo courtesy Jill Guardia (she/her)

Have you done the math on each of your GTM motions lately? Are all your GTM motions still sufficiently scalable and profitable? Don’t look at averages. AVERAGES TELL LIES. Don’t look at this only once. Small changes in conversion, win rate, and discounting could easily take what was a high performing GTM motion to an unprofitable one. Just a few points lower conversion, close rate, and higher discounting can take the performance of an AE/SDR pair from $500k to $250k in new ARR a year (making the motion unattractive). It’s called compound effect. Have you considered shutting down underperforming GTM motions altogether and instead focusing on the best performing one(s)? A GTM motion is like a production line in a factory: it’s the coordinated efforts of marketing, sales, and customer success for the benefit of a specific customer segment. When companies are small they should focus on just one GTM motion, but a company of $50m ARR or more will typically have 3 or more GTM motions: velocity, mid-market, enterprise. Perhaps for multiple product lines. It’s important to assess the growth and profitability of each of your GTM motions separately, especially in a dynamic market. If you need to economize it might be better to shut down an underperforming GTM motion entirely rather than peanut butter cuts across the company. One company we worked with shut down their most unprofitable GTM motion and instead doubled down on the motions that were working. The result? A 25% reduction in headcount, but a 9% increase in revenue. (Fewer reps, but a higher achievement or $ per rep) Have you ever done this at your company? #saas #revenuearchitecture #gtmmotion #revops #gtmplan

What if you could reduce headcount on the right side of the bowtie, while at the same time increasing expansion rates? TLDR; Two things: Do away with your one size serves all: focus on accounts with the most white space And Talk to your customers when it matters: more triggered and fewer scheduled touchpoints Using these strategies we have seen clients reduce headcount by 33% paired while increasing retention by 7% (absolute). How does this work? Many CSMs spent their time mostly on the customers who scream loudest, not on the customers that are most deserving of their time.. Instead segment customers by white space and likelihood to expand, then put the low white space clients on a self-service or 1:many path, giving your CSMs and AMs more time to spend with strategic accounts. Note that a strategic account is NOT necessarily the account who has already purchased the most from you or the largest company. Instead strategic accounts are those with the most future potential. Second, think about when your customers wants to hear from you. Move away from purely scheduled check ins to conversations that are triggered by an event, good or bad. Triggers could be something that’s in the news, a new stakeholder, a new product, or signals of concern such as low usage or high customer ticket volume. If you spend more time with your accounts which have most white space, you’ll see more expansion. If you talk to your strategic accounts when it matters most, you’ll see better retention and expansion. Have you deployed any of these strategies in your company? What were the results? #saas #customersuccess #expansion #retention #nrr #churn #revenuearchitecture #bowtie

If you are in GTM your job will change radically. Soon. Sales, marketing, customer success, it will all change. GTM is going through an Industrial Revolution. Compare recent-day GTM with Craft Manufacturing. Sales results are heavily dependent on the skills of the individual. That's why collectively we invest in skills training. Over the past 10 years forward leaning organizations have made investments in standardizing their end to end sales process. Or better: their end to end customer journey (#bowtie). Think: "The DocuSign Way" #docusign or "The Snyk Way" #snyk or "The Dropbox Way" #dropbox. That made it easier to hire and to train and to achieve more scalable and predictable growth. Think Henry Ford. But next many sales and customer success tasks will be automated. Yes, #ai are the robots of our Revenue Factory. Note: there are still humans working in each lean factory. But their jobs have changed radically. The jobs of the humans now include: - Process engineer - Mechanical engineer - Electrical engineer - Software engineer - Maintenance technician - Quality Assurance In fact, many of the engineering disciplines were born out of the industrial revolution. It's happening all over again. If you are in #gtm leadership, or in #revenueenablement, or in #revenueoperations - it's time to put your engineering hat on ... It will be your job to design the process, to build and maintain the robots, and to keep the humans safe. We are here to help. For example, with #revenuearchitecture certification courses so you can keep up with the new demand in GTM. P.s. if you are looking for a "GTM Engineer" for your organization, see the comments for some people who have recently become available. Or add some great examples of GTM Engineers yourself.

How many Moneyball-style GTM analysts do you have in your organization? In 1999, at the age of 27, Paul DePodesta joined the Oakland Athletics organization as the assistant general manager, serving as second-in-command to general manager Billy Beane. In the movie Moneyball Jonah Hill plays this character (in the movie named Peter Brand). Paul took the analytical principles of sabermetrics into the mainstream. Paul was the first, but he is no longer alone. Every. team. now. has. teams. of. analysts. and. engineers. Some have only a couple, but by 2018 teams like the the Yankees and the Dodgers had teams of 20+ analysts. The same is happening all over again in Go To Market. How many GTM analysts do you have? Our more forward leaning customers have entire teams. Sometimes part of "strategy" , "business analytics", "financial analysis and planning" or "#revops". They carry titles from GTM strategy to revops to business analyst. They all bring science to revenue production. We call this discipline #revenuearchitecture. If you are in need of a stellar Revenue Architect, look no further than some of our amazing Architects in Residence such as Ian Westbrook , Sid Kumar , or Sara Eklund. Or follow in Paul DeModesta's footsteps and become a revenue architect yourself (link in comments). Who is your favorite Moneyball-style GTM strategist? P.s. And what about the real-life Paul DePodesta? At the age of 31, DePodesta was named general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, making him the fifth-youngest general manager in baseball history.

If you're on the fence about taking a Revenue Architecture course, either in-person in Santa Cruz June 3-4 (see comments) or remote (see our website), please read what CEOs, RevOps Leaders, GTM Strategists, CMOs, Chief Customer Success Officers, and others have to say about this program: “THAT. WAS. AWESOME. 👏” “WOW. This course blew my mind.” “The "funnel" was turned on it's side.... literally....” “I wish I had taken this course years ago, but I'm so glad to have this information in my brain now.” “📜 This course has been an absolute game-changer, equipping me with the essential models for sustainable growth that constitute the Recurring Revenue Operating Model.” “This course is simply outstanding!” “World class instructor and the course content. It was fresh, appropriate for today's realities and most importantly - tangible". "You learn it and tomorrow use it”. “I highly recommend this course as it's super relevant for revenue leaders looking to add more science and data to their recurring revenue operations”. “Anyone wanting to deepening knowledge of how to drive growth and success with a company or division should absolutely take the Revenue Architecture class” “While I thought I had an amazing understanding of SaaS and Revenue models from years of building models, board decks and working with revenue teams and leaders...not to mention my MBA classes and focus in data analytics… I learned a ton!” “I can't say enough good things about this program." "I'm really fortunate to have had the opportunity to sharpen our tools and thinking." “Highly recommend it to every revenue & marketing operations professional out there!” “This course has given me a deeper understanding of the specific, proven models and frameworks to consistently achieve revenue goals 📈” “Incredible instruction! I can’t wait to elevate what I’ve always done with the teachings from this course! 💪🏻” “The methodology taught in this course allows you to architect your revenue in a way that achieves sustainable growth by understanding the fundamental principles of recurring revenue and the specific frameworks to apply across your GTM team.” “This course has been a game-changer for me. It was an incredibly insightful journey that taught me the fundamental models for sustainable growth that make up the Recurring Revenue Operating Model and provided a wealth of practical tools and resources. Honestly, it's one of the best courses I've taken professionally! 💯” “What a great course by Winning by Design on understanding the ins and outs of recurring revenue business 📈” "This will enable you to do the right thing at the right time to maximize success 🚀” “The Revenue Architecture course was an incredible course. I learned ways to increase growth by making some minor improvements, look at GTM motions and make sure they align with my business, and take the "right" action at different inflection points on the growth curve so my company doesn't flame out.”