Aligning Your GTM Teams In HubSpot

Welcome to this dynamic and insightful session hosted by Jasmine Powers, Director of Growth at Jasmine Powers Multimedia and RevOps HubSpot User Group (HUG) Leader! In this fireside chat-style panel, Jasmine is joined by Ben Rubin, Director of Client Success at New Perspective, and purpose-driven RevOps leader, along with guest panelist Devaney from the Financial Modeling Institute.

Together, we explore the common friction points and misalignments between Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams, and how RevOps professionals can break silos, improve data hygiene, and drive intentional growth—especially in HubSpot environments.

🚀 Topics covered:

• What true GTM alignment looks like

• Signs your teams are out of sync

• The Bowtie Funnel vs. the Flywheel Model

• Prioritizing RevOps initiatives with leadership buy-in

• Reporting strategies that matter

• Tools, automations, and the human element in RevOps

• How to influence teams even when you're the only one doing RevOps

🎯 Whether you’re a solo RevOps practitioner, part of a growing ops team, or an executive looking to scale intentionally, this session is packed with practical wisdom, relatable stories, and strategic frameworks.

🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss a RevOps HUG event replay!

📅 Next Meetup: June 5th @ 5 PM PT / 7 PM CT
🎉 Theme: Truly Happy Hour with RevOps HUG!

📍Connect with us:
Jasmine Powers: LinkedIn | jasminepowers.com
Ben Rubin: LinkedIn | couragewithintention.com
New Perspective Agency: npws.net

#RevOps #HubSpot #GTMAlignment #RevenueOperations #BowtieFunnel #HubSpotHUG #RevOpsHUG #MarketingOps #SalesOps #CustomerSuccess #BusinessGrowth

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro by Jasmine Powers
01:00 – Meet Ben Rubin: RevOps Leader & Coach
02:15 – Why GTM Team Alignment Matters
04:00 – Common Signs of Misalignment
06:30 – When it looks aligned on paper—but isn’t
08:00 – Human error in RevOps processes
09:20 – Automating handoffs inside HubSpot
11:30 – The friction caused by disconnected tools
13:00 – Using BI tools and reporting wisely
15:00 – How to push back on unhelpful report requests
17:30 – Creating reports that drive decisions
19:00 – The Bowtie Funnel Explained
21:00 – Lifecycle stages and customer journey breakdown
24:00 – Emotional journey of the customer
26:00 – Value delivery and upsell moments
28:00 – Operationalizing with HubSpot workflows
30:00 – Measuring alignment across the lifecycle
33:00 – What if you're the only one doing RevOps?
36:00 – Influencing leadership and building relationships
39:00 – Prioritizing RevOps projects
42:00 – Making the business case for alignment
46:00 – Finding friction and turning it into opportunity
47:00 – If you focus on just ONE thing this quarter...
49:00 – Bowtie vs Flywheel Model
51:00 – Keeping the momentum after events & trainings
53:00 – Building a SMART RevOps roadmap
55:00 – Final thoughts + upcoming events

Full Transcript:

Jasmine Powers (2): [00:00:00] Good morning everyone. This is Jasmine Powers of Jasmine Powers multimedia, and also your new Rev Ops Hug Leader. And I'm so happy to be with my friends. We got Ben Yeah. Devaney today. And then we're also expecting a few others. This is gonna be primarily an interview with Ben, but because technical issues, we're gonna open it up to the panel and have everybody share their experiences to make it more interactive and flow, which actually is more fun.

It's like a party rather than a panel. And so we're gonna keep it very fast pace and exciting this morning. And so I'm gonna introduce our special guest, Ben Rubin of NPWS. What's the full name for that company, Ben? New perspective. Perfect. A two C-level executive and purpose driven coach with a in operations.

Organizational alignment and business growth strategy. [00:01:00] With over a decade of revenue leadership experience across sales, marketing, and customer success functions, Ben helps companies break down silos. That's why we're here today, and build integrated systems that drive scalable, predictable revenue. Today he combines his expertise in rev ops with his passion for purposeful leadership to help businesses grow more intentionally and sustainably.

So awesome to have you. Yeah. Great to. President of Revs, like I, Mr. President of Rev Ops and we have De Devin. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Oh, yeah, I'm excited to join as well. My name's De, I'm based in Toronto. I work for the Financial Modeling Institute. I help manage the operations there.

And, we're just getting started with rev ops, so I wanted to join and see what Ben had to say today. Perfect, perfect. Perfect. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for [00:02:00] joining. Alright. You can mute if you don't mind 'cause it's giving an echo. Alrighty. Perfect. So we're gonna kick things off. We're, we're gonna just kind of dive into.

The need for us to align GTM teams. We've all had our nightmares stories, but there's ways around it. There's ways to prepare and, and really try to avoid some of the bigger pitfalls. And so to kick things off then, how do you define a team and why does alignment between these groups matter so much? This, this is such a great core question and.

Rev Ops is still gaining traction. It's come a long way since, uh, you know, revenue operations has become a term, you know, it's trendiness and then it, the actual details and processes that fall into it. But it's really about the entire team that turns customers [00:03:00] into. Loyal stranger or loyal customer. So it's the stranger to, to loyal customer.

Ben Rubin: Everyone that touches that entire journey is part of the revenue operations, and so that's considering your marketing team upfront, creating demand gen awareness, the sales team that is looking to make those conversions, and then the CS team that is expanding on those conversions. Retaining those conversions, keeping them to be, you know, in that place where they become, you know, advocates and that alignment.

It matters so much because it's, it, it's still in today's world where there's lots of siloed pieces, marketing does what they do, they hand leads over to sales, and sales is gonna do what they do, and. Could be complaining back to marketing. The leads aren't quality, right? Yeah. And then it's just back and forth that goes on, or, well, I hit my quota of leads that I'm supposed to give to sales, and you, it's your job to, to close them and, and pointing fingers back and forth.

[00:04:00] And then when the, the, the customer gets, uh, you know, goes closed one, and typically there's a drop in experience from sales to Cs and how you make that seamless all the way through so that there's not this disconnected. Un constant, you know, experience for your prospects, customers, and, and advocates to go all the way through.

And so it's, it's how we create that continuity across that entire experience with this GTM team. That should be absolutely. At minimum marketing, sales, and cs. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so what are some of the most common signs. We, we see it coming, like we feel it coming. Most common signs that a company's go to market teams are out of alignment.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a great follow up because I kind of touched on it, which is sim similar feedback where you're hearing sales, communicating back over to [00:05:00] marketing, you know, the, these leads just, they're not quality, they're not converting. I can't get these to where I need them to go. Right. Misalignment.

What are, what are the, what's. What's the criteria of quality then, right? If you're not seeing that. And then from the other side of it, it is like marketing pointing at sales, which is, you know, these efforts we're putting in all this time and this effort and sales isn't converting, so I'm spinning up pipeline gen but then you're not giving us pipeline revenue.

So there's that back and forth. And then there's this, obviously this, this huge part, which I think still is quite often an experience, which is this dip. In the customer experience. Once a sales team member closes a deal, signs a contract, what happens next? It's, it's, most often salespeople are, they're hunters.

You know, I got the kill now I'm gonna go find the other thing to, to get to closed one. So then they're just like, boom, it's this, this dip and experience where then the CS is like having [00:06:00] to deal with a customer that is like. What's next? What, what's going on next? And so those, those are typically the main friction points when it's each team pointing at each other with whatever way tends to be A lot of the things around quality criteria, I.

And then, you know, marketing saying, I'm giving you this many, this volume and you're not converting. So now it looks like I'm not having attribution to, to revenue gen, just pipeline gen. And then the other side of when a customer gives that feedback of a drop in experience when they, when they sign a contract, purchase a product, purchase a service, and then it becomes a customer when CS has to work through that.

Yeah. Have you ever seen an instance where. You know, the, the criteria and you know, alignment looks good on paper and in meetings, but in practice that things are still not aligned and you're still finding some, like [00:07:00] miscommunication and of course the outcome being what you shared before. But have you also seen that?

Like, it looks good and we're like, didn't we agreed on this? Yes, we agreed on this, but. And then you see kind of the pointing fingers. Yeah. Yep. All the time. You know, and there's, there's only so much that we can do inside of complete documentation, proper CRM, HubSpot Hygiene Workflows build, you know, the, the, the best practice of all the feature sets inside of it.

But the common element is just there's a human there. Right, so it's, well, we went over this together. I understand the definition of life cycles. I know who's responsible at what this stage, but there's still a human at the other side of this that's doing it. And if it's people who don't recall, what is the process, and you don't keep that constant reminder, and then they start doing things a different way, it falls outside of what was documented, communicated, and agreed [00:08:00] upon.

Yeah, it still is gonna be there because of just the human element of it, which is why it's so important to not only just get the right kind of documentation, but have each of the leadership management team working with those team to constantly follow that process. I love the opportunity to put as, as many things that don't need to be human to become automated inside of HubSpot Features and functionality.

1. Right, but make sure that there's the elements. Then the other side, which is, well, hey, I just gave you a lead. Now I have to do something. Right? So then there's the human part, which you are allowed to be human, but maybe it's fill in these things after you have a sales call, so that every time it happens, I get the feedback on why wasn't it a quality lead?

I can adjust if it's marketing that needs to make some adjustments. Is it your target audience? Is it your messaging? Is it what kind of lead magnet you have? Is it too top of [00:09:00] funnel that then you're saying, well, I got someone to form convert on top of funnel and you're giving 'em the sales and they're having a, an objection of timing.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. That constant communication has to be there, and I do think it comes from. Leadership leading by example, and having that kind of collaborative synergy between say, a marketing leader and a sales leader and a CS leader that has to, they've gotta, they gotta lead by example so that the other teams follow, and then they have to also continue if it falls out of alignment from the documented process and communication course correct.

Wonderful. I was wondering how much do you see or how, like over your course of your career, that those teams had separate tools and those things weren't integrated and created any friction? Have you seen an instance of that before? Of [00:10:00] course, and it still happens daily, right? Where you've got, uh, someone who's on Pardot in Salesforce, you've got someone who's on HubSpot in Salesforce, um, Pipedrive and Marketing Hub, right?

And so the, the element still here is obviously I'm a big Bleed orange HubSpot fan. Been around, you know, the HubSpot ecosystem for quite a few years and it's like, it. As much as HubSpot is my go-to, it doesn't matter. But if you get yourself on something that's more in a single source of truth that you can believe everything's all in one, it gives you better visibility to where you don't have to look at it.

You know, I still deal with customers that have the Marketing hub and Salesforce, and then you go to the integration and you still see that there's sync errors, right? Yeah. So stuff just happens. Yeah. So, uh, you know, I, I'm, I'm a proponent of a single source HubSpot is that go-to for [00:11:00] me. Um, that brings everything into one view and it, it helps really solve the disjointed common I.

Experience of Salesforce isn't doing what I need it to do, and then HubSpot's over here doing this reporting, but I can't have the entire reporting view in the right way that I wanna look at it because Salesforce isn't syncing this property or what force. And then you have obviously the disjointed, well, you have to have a sales admin and then a HubSpot admin, and are they on the same page working together?

Right. I, it, I, I wanted to quote it correctly, but I, of course, I'm at, uh, Matt's conference, uh, rev ops co-op, and, uh, yesterday I believe they said, because it was so, so much, uh, you know, MarTech and, or, you know, ops, ops. Tools that sell, I think they focus on Salesforce. Salesforce is no longer the source of truth that you have, like, [00:12:00] you know, the data lakes or warehouses, and that becomes the source of truth.

Um, how have you seen that impact things? Is it much, uh, is it like a force multiplier where it just gets worse? Or what, what are you thinking? Yeah, it can bring it together. So some sort of bi tool, right? Where it's, um. Power bi data box, some sort of thing like that. I, I would definitely look at a way to integrate some sort of BI tool because.

There. There's the way, it's like, okay, well this platform has this vote, this has this. We're gonna try and connect all the data points, but are they all syncing properly and is it getting all the right information so that I can report and build a view that's helpful for a sales leader, a marketing leader, a CS leader, when something like a BI tool is like, Hey, gimme all the data.

And I'll do what I need with it. And then you customize that for the views. It can present a little bit more complexity to the, the setup of it, but it's a huge win if you [00:13:00] are struggling to get the right views that you need. Because the other side to this is, I, I'm, I'm a big. Pushback on, well, build me this report.

I need it. I just wanna look at it. Why do you wanna look at it though? What do you, what decision are you gonna make off of viewing this information if they can't answer that? And this is my biggest thing, it's easy to talk about the what, the, the how, the when, the where. But if you don't have the why is it really what needs to be there?

Yeah. So I'm gonna bring, Devaney to the screen to ask her questions since she's here. Go ahead. I really like that point about pushing back on reports 'cause I have found that, uh, sometimes our team makes reports and then we don't use them.

Um,

so are there any strategies that you put in place or frameworks on,

1. How you should approach what reports you use so that you're being mindful and you don't just create a hundred reports in HubSpot and [00:14:00] then they just lie there waiting to be archived. Yeah. Uh, it's a great question, Devanie, and I think I, I'm not, don't, I'm not trying to simplify this all the way down, but it does come down to that question of why, right?

Why do you wanna see this information? If there's a valid why that can be explained and, and a follow up would be like, okay, I understand that. Why, what decision is it gonna help you make better a data-driven decision? And if you can understand that, and I think for, for you in this role, and now it sounds like you guys are getting into rev ops, it's to just say like, I'm on your side.

I want to help you have the views you need so you can make better decisions. But if it's kind of the thing too, like. The simplest of thing for a sales manager, Hey, give me a report that shows me all my my sales reps activities. Cool. What are you gonna do with it though? I just wanna view it, [00:15:00] but what?

What for? If you can get them to be like, okay, I wanna look at it because I'm gonna use it as part of my one-on-one to talk about the activity. There you go. You know what I mean? That's the stuff. If you can't get to that with them and you just want to help them understand and maybe. Devanie for you or others in this role, if you see that connection and you can help like, hey, and ask it back in a question.

Well, what about something where it was you looking at the sales activity? So if you saw someone who wasn't performing well, you could bring that into more of the performance one-on-one you have with them. Does that seem like a reason you might want this report? Yes. Cool. So it is a bit of kind of acting like that guide.

Um. I don't have a piece of string here. I did this, there was a few years ago where I had the opportunity to be on A-A-P-K-O, A partner kickoff event with HubSpot. And I did this cool thing where it's like, think about the string and inside of rev Ops, this applies internally and externally where it's the best way to do [00:16:00] things is to pull, not push.

So if you think, if I had a string and I push this side to this side, what happens? The string just. Dips down. But if I pull from this side, then the string stays taught and I get to guide that where we want to go. So inside of Rev ops, we should be thinking about guiding people to understand why this brings efficiency and how you can use it.

So you might ask, it's kind of like being a consultant, sitting in that seat of, well, what about like, could you see yourself using this report for this, this, and this? I say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I, that could be really helpful for me. Awesome. The other thing to consider too is how many times do we need one-off reports?

Like one report, you're gonna go to the reports and look at that one report. If it doesn't find its way to having some sort of DOT connected to being a dashboard, what's the one-off report gonna do to you? So it's also thinking about how do [00:17:00] these reports connect to each other, that I could get it into a dashboard view.

Then you bring efficiency into like, I'm gonna go to my dashboard and I'm gonna see all the dots that connect. There's a, a really cool, like five stage, um, image. I like where it thinks about, you have this awareness to wisdom stage and it's, you got all these circles and there's nothing in 'em, and then it's like, okay, well now I've got circles with colors in them.

Then you get, I got circles with colors in them and one line between them. And then I've got colors and circles and dots and lines between all of them. And then the last one, wisdom is like I got circles with colors in them and lines between all of them, but there's one highlighted line because that's when you connected everything all the way to that furthest point of wisdom and understanding.

I got this dashboard, but when you look at this dashboard, here's the one highlighted yellow that helps you make that one decision from it. That was probably a lot. But did that answer your question there, ny? Yeah, that was so helpful. I was taking notes [00:18:00] in the, in the corner. That was, thank you. Thanks Ben.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Wonderful. Thank you so much Ben. And so where would a company start if they wanna start to break down some of those silos that they're, like we all have seen before? Yeah. This, this is a killer one and I prepped up, uh. Little, little slide presentation here so I can bring this up. Um, and so it's, it's a, this isn't a new thing.

Are we seeing the screen here? Okay. Yep. Right. This isn't some groundbreaking thing, but the reality is there's still not a lot of people that look at this view. And so if we look at this view and we think, well, typical is this way, right? You got the funnel that just points downward and you just have people come down.

Conversion and then everything kind of stops from there. And so this bow tie funnel really stops that and it gets you to flip the thinking of just top [00:19:00] to the bottom, convert, closed one done, and you really get this on the left side. Here's your marketing sales, converting these prospects to customers.

Then you have this right side, still a funnel. You can see how this expands out. So it's going from these. Different stages of all the things Cs. So you've got everything from unaware to awareness, to consideration to decision, standard buying journey, right. On the other side, then it's thinking about, here's that gap, right?

If you talk about this, the first impression, is it a dip in experience or is it a wow moment because it was this first impression that this new customer just had with you? What's the first value that they get? What's the intended value and then what's the opportunity? It's the kind of expand or upsell op where it's what's the extended value and how to get people all the way through this thing and having ownership on this.

This is easy to say, marketing sales owns the [00:20:00] left cs, AP billing owns the right, right? But when we think about how to get this really aligned, there should be some core steps in thinking about this, which is really think about this entire map. Both sides. So everything from awareness to closed and then everything on the right side.

Onboarding to advocacy clearly define those. It's thinking about defining what that means. Who are the responsible people at what stage. You might only have, you know, depending on whether you've got an entire outbound SDR team on side of the business that's doing cold outreach, that's looking to get people to become aware, but.

Typically, you're gonna have some aware awareness campaigns, which might be marketing only, but then when they get to consideration, now it's marketing and sales, because sales wants to understand this. And then when you get to the decision, obviously you're still thinking marketing's involved, but now sales is gonna take the lead.

When it gets to the other side, who now is responsible? [00:21:00] So when you think about that going back here, that first impression part, that should absolutely still be sales and cs. That first impression, getting this all the way through. So define that entire customer journey. Another thing that I like to think about, um, if you wanna build a tool for yourself that really creates documentation for the internal team.

The other side of this is what are the kind of emotions people are feeling? Externally, if you can start to understand that, that helps your team really align on messaging too. Well, we, we see, you know, someone's nervous feeling at this stage, or they're uncertain here, uh, maybe then they become optimistic, right?

And you start to think about what are those kind of emotions people are feeling through each of these stages as well. That helps you create unity between the messaging and how you talk to your prospects, to customers and advocates. When you think about that, then really thinking the lifecycle stages that happen [00:22:00] with this.

This is really important to understand. How do you define it? Right? HubSpot for a while was pretty adamant on like, Nope, you can't change the name of the lifecycle stage. You can't add any few years back. They opened it up, right? You can customize lifecycles now. You can name 'em whatever you want. You can put 'em at any stage.

You can reorder them, so use that. That's empowering. If you need to change it a bit. I've had. People think about like they have different levels of MQL. People are gonna either hate that or they're gonna be like, but this empowers my team so much. MQL one, MQL two, MQL three. Cool, if that works for you. And that under you understand that inside of your process as an organization do it.

So then it's thinking about how you align on all of those lifecycle stages. Define them, metrics, handoff points, what happens? Then moving this over to the next stage. Tied right to those lifecycle stages is how you [00:23:00] operationalize this HubSpot automation. Use the workflows, use lifecycle stage, and then automation associated to that to manage and track this report back on.

How long did somebody spend in a lifecycle stage? How often do we convert? 'cause if you think, right, let's go back to this. All of these, these white spots in between, these are conversion points. So how well are you converting through all these different stages all the way through? Are we stalling out at the consideration stage?

Why right. Are we stalling out at decision? Why? Find out those things and and get aligned on them before. And then when, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't wanna take Yeah, go stop you. But if you would go back to the previous slide. Yeah. Let's say someone has never seen this particular, uh, you know, the bow tie slide before.

You and I, we know about it. The text is kind of small. If you can call out those little things in the middle of the bow [00:24:00] tie, that might be helpful as well. Because you just were talking about like the awareness and, and of course between each stage of course is a conversion point, but the text is very small.

That's the only part that we couldn't see. But I, I kind of couldn't interject earlier to say Yeah, yeah. Sorry. And I, I, I made this graphic and posted it in, so it's not the best, but you've got. All the way on the left side, it's unaware. Okay. Then you move into awareness. Um, and then this is consideration.

You have decision. So these three are your typical buyer's journey, awareness, consideration, decision. We like to think about it as unaware because you got, this is like just saying your target audience, but there's a massive amount of probably unaware, right? Okay. Now they become aware a little less. Less people convert all the way through.

Then when you get to this, this blue line is, is here your closed one conversion, customer conversion. From there you go to that first impression, right? This is that moment where it's the [00:25:00] handoff they just closed. How warm do you make them feel? What? How big of a hug do you give them? Right to a hug. Right.

Uh, and then how does that feel for them from the first impression they're gonna move over to what's the first value that they experience? It doesn't matter if you're a service or product based, what's the first value? And if you can't, that's something you have to work on. If you can't describe or tell someone what a first value moment might be, you don't have to say to the customer, Hey, this is your first value you're gonna experience, but you need to understand what is the first value you're going to give to them.

When you understand that, you know when you hit it so that then you can say, okay, cool. First value has been delivered. I got this. Now think about that. Where I talked about the emotions. What does someone feel? They might be feeling nervous still through that first impression. You might make them feel good, but they might be like, oh, but am I gonna get the ROI out of this thing?

I'm gonna get first value. Boom. You give them a moment of [00:26:00] quick win, quick impact, quick ROI. It doesn't have to be complete ROI, 'cause that's not intended value, but you give them enough where they're like, oh my God, this is gonna work. Right? Then you can move them to that intended value. Now here's where you're like, if you're in the sales process as well, you understand what the intended value is.

If it's buying HubSpot. When you buy this sales and marketing, we anticipate that you're going to be able to grow your business and get the intended value so that you get your ROI from the intended value. We don't wanna stop because we wanna look at that upsell expansion opportunity. What's the extended value that you can give them?

This isn't a high pressure thing if you follow these steps. It's the exact opposite as a typical marketing funnel. So if you come into this in the right way, follow these stages, nurture through, handle objections. When you're on the other side and you're delivering this, then it's, it's, it's the [00:27:00] no-brainer.

They got the intended ROI. Hey, I've been thinking, and this is what CSMs do all the time. You, you, you're showing strong growth. I'm looking in here. You're paying X amount a month for this. Product service, but I see that you're bringing in X amount of revenue that's like five x. If we add this one thing, I think I can two x on top of that, right?

It's the concept, Hey, you gimme a quarter, I'm gonna give you a dollar. I doesn't want that exchange. Is that helpful? Yeah, very much so. And then I stopped you in the middle of the other slide, so I wanted to, wanted to keep it going, but I was like, I can't see what that saying. Yep. Perfect. And that's, that's my badge on the small text there.

Oh, no worries. Um, so we talked about this operationalized step three. When you get into step four, now you gotta measure this Devanie. This is that question. What are the right ones to report on? How do I [00:28:00] bring this together to track this? There should, there should be absolutely a dashboard that's rev ops focused.

You should have your marketing performance, you should have your sales performance, CS performance. You should absolutely also have that rev op one that brings this all together, that gives you those views so you can see how is this working across this entire bow tie approach. How do you get all of the data points to see to make those data-driven decisions?

I'm a huge fan of like, maybe call it like a 60 40, maybe a 70 30, maybe even where it's like 70% data driven. But I always love having that gut side inside of that because that allows you to not become like robotic. Mm-hmm. Right. Because sometimes you can look at the data and you're like, look, I get it, but my human side, I'm talking to these people.

I'm telling you that the data is there, but I want, here's my thought and opinion and experience to it, which is like that blended gut. Part inside of this, [00:29:00] um, decision making. And so really looking at it from its, this doesn't stop when it goes closed one. So it's the continued reporting on the other side of it to bring this together.

So you really look at this entire lifecycle from the unaware to the extended value stage in that bow tie. What this does, this creates that seamless experience. You're taking these buyers into loyal customers and those loyal customers become your next best marketers. Standard stuff, right, that we all talk about.

But I think there's still a bit of a lack of people, organizations that are actually applying this. And that's what I also hope, um, not to try and get to kind of like an end messaging, but in all this stuff. I can, I can say this and you can hear me, and what does that become? Awareness. Mm-hmm. But if you don't apply it, how much value does that awareness have?

How many times have we gone [00:30:00] to the next rev ops thing, this presentation, this hug group? So my, my biggest hope is that anybody who's watching this, going back to this. You know what? This is the last time, maybe this is my ass to you to say, this is the last time I'm gonna go to something like this because I'm gonna actually do it this time, put it in place, put the action behind this awareness and the things that we talk about, or we're gonna just keep going to presentations and hug groups and all this and being like, oh, this is cool.

And then all of a sudden you go back to the regular day to day. Yeah. Good stuff. A lot of what you said brought up a couple of other questions that I think translate into our world, world real world experience. And so one of the thoughts that I was having was, number one, you really tied together the impact of this, uh, this alignment.

It brings, uh, like this streamline, uh, effect and everything is [00:31:00] se uh, seamless, but it helped everybody to perform in the campaigns as well. Well, what does an individual computer, a computer individual contributor do when they are aiming for really the ideal, but they're getting pushback from leadership?

Specifically, how do you, how do you influence other people to kind of start to march in the order that you want so that there is, uh, alignment across the board? So to understand your question, kind of going back to some of the other things around what are some of the signals you'll see of friction and then like, you, you might be able to see them all the time, but, uh, you know what, what do I do with it?

Yeah, what do I do? Right, because that, that is, that's what I hear. So like, the reality is we've all worked in various teams, even at Rev hop's, you [00:32:00] know, companies like, so it's like we know the, like intellectually what something is supposed to be. But if you, or maybe you and a peer at your team or, or trying to, you know, advance really.

This alignment and the performance, and then you have someone else who's on a totally different wavelength. How do you start to steer that team towards this? And I guess this is probably like the, the sum total of the entire session, but like, what do you do if it's just you, like you, you can't, you know, make people do what you want them to do.

What do you do in those cases?

That's a, that's a, that's a great one. Uh, because I think there's a lot of people inside of rev ops that feel this way, right? It, it's, you know, Hey, we need to do this. Or, um, this isn't to say that people that are hired in some sort of rev ops role or capacity [00:33:00] aren't. Smart, educated, valuable at all. But sometimes I also just, I think there's companies out there that make this higher because it's like, well, I'm seeing rev ops become this trendy thing.

Let's make a role and hire this person. But they're just then like an assistant to do what someone else needs them to do. So I don't want that to become like a fear mindset that gets people in that space. But it is up to us to help. Educate others around what Rev ops really is and create this alignment across the entire organization because you, this is how I always look at it.

Even when I'm, you know, as a CTO and a past CRO, I always like, look at it in that servant style approach. I work for you. How can I help get things out of the way for you? As a leader. And so rev ops roles should also be focused on building a relationship where these other team members, individuals, leadership directors, VPs, [00:34:00] all of this, Hey, I'm on your team, I work for you.

I want to help this company grow and help build efficiency in your role. Mm-hmm. So I think there's a lot around relationship that has to come into play, and there's an art. To communication. Um, when it comes to communicating with C-level, VP level, director level, it can be intimidating, but I, I empower you to just find that voice.

That's the, the middle ground, right? It's a little bit of the like, Hey, you hired me to do this and I'm, I wanna do this for this organization and I can see when I do this, or if we do this as an organization, we're going to win. The other side of it too is, is like maybe a little, a little salesy inside of it because it's, our competitors are doing this.

We're going to lose if we don't do it. And so it's how do we [00:35:00] present these in some ways, look, we're also in a world where AI is becoming more prominent than ever, right? I use it. I'm sure everyone's watching this is using it. Leverage it. So if you're uncomfortable, if you're still earlier in the, the career of RevOps give it everything you need.

Hey, I'm getting some pushback like prompt it I'm getting some pushback from my leadership. Here's the kind of messaging they're saying to me. I don't want to be too pushy, but I want to help communicate to my leadership team why we should focus on approaching rev ops with this new lens. See what it gives you.

Because it's, it's learning too, right, is because if you haven't had lots of high level executive style conversations, it's you, there's an art to that communication, how you distill down the different level of detail based on kind of the tier. And so how you connect with those people, build those relationships, [00:36:00] the balance between defending what Rev ops is and helping them and listening and hearing them.

And then also trying to, to, to, when you hear them, try and turn that in a way where it's like, okay, I hear you and so what I can do is X and it will solve for that. But when you tell me you want Y and it doesn't solve for X, can you see that there's a misalignment between what you're asking me to do?

Right. Yeah. Very good. I was thinking about, you know, you probably went to the Rev through the book camp. HubSpot's Rev Ops bootcamp just because, you know, and as I, as I did too. So I was, um, thinking about like one of the tools that they implemented or they share us how, uh, share with us how to use or like the rev ops, um, roadmap and trying to get the team to agree on projects and then, you know, prioritize them accordingly.

Trying to [00:37:00] get that stood up at, you know, taking that back to my team and trying to get that stood up was extremely difficult. Um, what tips would you have for, again, and I, I'm, I'm just trying to bring it down to like, like we all understand the concepts, but what in practice a person does, and you mentioned kind of like building a business case, like what are the specific things that you might say to say, Hey, we want to.

Either start doing rev ops or we need to prior. Maybe a, a more realistic thing is like we need to priorit prioritize this specific rev ops project and this needs to go before this project. What does communication around priorities sound like? Is there a specific example of some sort you could share?

Because I. I don't want to short shorten the response to it, but it's like, it's [00:38:00] kind of the same thing. It's just Yeah. Whether, and, and I honestly haven't gone to the, the revamps rev ops bootcamp. Uh, so I'm not familiar with this exact roadmap. I'm sure it's great. Um. You could Google and find so many different rev ops roadmaps, and it doesn't matter if you use like HubSpot's Bootcamp one or something you find else that makes sense for your organization because that's, that's the variable stuff.

It doesn't matter which, which piece, which process, which roadmap? Is it three steps? Is it 17 steps? Right. It's still, it still shouldn't be as. We shouldn't care to the level of that we put, well, I have to like massively contain myself to this roadmap more so than thinking about how I build a relationship and communicate that.

Why. Yeah. Right. So it's, I I'm not sure, I'm not trying to avoid the question, but I still think it comes back to there's just so many different ways that these can, things can be, well, [00:39:00] they're asking me to do step five ahead of step four or step seven ahead of step two. It still comes down to thinking about that style of communication, where it's understand the why, ask the right questions, and can you find yourself in a persuasive style of communication to get them to see and buy in on the why that you know is true.

Now, here's the other side. Sometimes they might be right. That's great. That's collaboration. That's good communication. Open lines where it's, you know, what? I did spend some time thinking on this. I do think seven should go ahead of two. That's okay too. That's not a, that's not a fail. That's not a loss. Um, so Jasmine, is that because I'm not trying to, like I said, I'm not trying to like sidestep your question, but I still think it's really rooted in how people inside of Rev ops build relationships, [00:40:00] communicate, find that art of standing the ground and listening.

That's what I think is the biggest problem because we tend to get walked over in rev ops because it's someone higher than us. That gives a bit of what we might always assume as a directive. Yeah, yeah. Essentially, I was just saying like, it theoretically it makes sense, right? Like, okay, you, you, you know, try to prior prioritize and align with your team.

But I, I guess it was kind of, kind of thinking about a situation where. Number one, feeling alone in a quest of rev ops. Uh, also, maybe there is agreement that there are particular projects that you need to prioritize as a team, but then maybe, you know, a CEO directive is pushing. Those projects further and further back, [00:41:00] and so you kind of feel like you're drowning.

At least I'll say I felt like I was drowning, and we never are able to really do rev ops. We're never, mm-hmm. We're never able to work on any data quality projects, or we're never able to integrate these tools because this other thing is happening and pushing it back and then just feeling alone. If you, you know, you're, you're not.

Wanting to be si you know, okay, you like, think of silos, you're, you're not technically in a silo 'cause this is your team, but there's a thinking and a, um, you know, like a way of being that they haven't come to yet, a realization that they haven't come to yet on rev ops in general and individual projects that really would fall under a rev ops priority.

So, just kind of thinking about that line, which I, I think you did really cover that. Uh, you know, with some of the tools that, and, and questions like asking [00:42:00] about Wise, uh, are there other things, including data that somebody can add in a business case to really try to get the team to adopt, uh, a similar perspective and really, really, really try to find alignment?

Yeah, I, okay, so I totally get that. And so. Yes. That whole part around communication is, is probably what I would label as the highest thing to do. Well, second to that is like the relationships, and so it's if we as, as rev ops leaders, executors. Strategists, we should have those relationships with each of those people so that you don't necessarily feel siloed.

Because yes, if it's one person doing rev ops for an organization, but you have a marketing sales CS team, then you shouldn't feel alone because that should probably be whether, depending on what kind of. Volume, size, [00:43:00] complexity of what your roadmap might look like to implement some sort of rev ops. You might want to have a one-on-one every week with your marketing manager, a one-on-one, separate from your sales manager, separate from your CS manager, because you need to have those relationships.

So even above the data, have the relationship because sometimes the relationship can be more powerful than the data. Then to your point though, it's to look at how you look inside of things inside a HubSpot and you can help them identify places where, Hey, I'm seeing this data point lack in conversion from this stage to this stage.

Because what I see is we don't have the right automation set up to support nurturing someone smoothly from this to this. Mm-hmm. So that's when I definitely would say poke around in the HubSpot, because if. What your roadmap should include is things that are obvious like that. I'm looking at this from the revenue [00:44:00] org perspective.

Our sales cycle is a hundred days, but I see that we sit in this one place for 17. Right? But why does that happen? Cool. I wanna fix, I wanna put some optimization in this place because I want to see if we can compress the 17 days. Let's try and get it to seven days and how that compresses the sales cycle in.

Who's not gonna buy in on that if you have a relationship and communicate well. Yeah. Right. So that's what I think it's like, it's, that's why I talk, I use that word, it's an art. Mm-hmm. Having the relationship with each of these departmental leaders, having good communication skills, and then Yes. To your point, Jasmine, what data can you bring that backs up?

You wanna optimize? It doesn't always have to be too, like if we do it, here's what's going to happen. You could just say this, [00:45:00] this, I see three days in each of these stages and then there's a 17 day right here. Is there anything you're aware of and why we sit here for 17 days in this stage? You know, I'm not really sure.

Awesome. I wanna put that as a priority for me to dig in and investigate and see if I can get the 17 days to match the three days for all the other ones. I'm just spitballing an example, but how you bring that stuff into a conversation that, that I think can be helpful. So it can, it can help prioritize that.

This same thing here, Jasmine. This might be the approach that you take to build your roadmap. If you didn't, if you don't have a roadmap and you're starting from nothing, how do you figure out what you want to do? It might be by going and identifying some places where there's friction. That's the biggest word, right.

Now, this was one of my biggest takeaways from the, I did take the HubSpot Rev Ops certification. Mm-hmm. One of the loudest things that stood out to [00:46:00] me was, you should remove friction anywhere where the value is lower than the friction, and it's okay to have friction at a point where the value of what that friction is is higher than the friction.

Mm-hmm. That make sense? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Cool. We have a few more minutes. I wanted to get to some of our other questions. If a company can only focus on one thing, so this, this is where priority comes in, focus on one thing to improve alignment this quarter, what should it be? One thing you can I say it's bow tie, but that's, that's gonna include multiple things.

Um.

I might come back to, to the bow tie approach and if it's to simplify the, there's lots of things to do inside of the bow tie, but if you simplify to the element of who is responsible, [00:47:00] I think that is a great place to start that then you can, you can drip that down into so many other areas associated to that bow tie.

But if you can get people to buy in. On. I'm responsible for this. You're responsible for that. Here's where we are to start. For the remainder of the quarter, what we're we got? A little over a month and a half. If you can build your bow tie set, assigned responsible people, not, not like individuals, but marketing and sales, sales and cs, whatever it might be.

I would say that is a great starting point. To create alignment and be like, all right, we all agree, here's who's the responsible. Then you can take that into like writing out the life cycles that follow with those stages, the definitions of those. Right. I talk about thinking about the emotions that external people are gonna have between those, because that bow tie just gives you so many ways to think about.

I, [00:48:00] I use like a worksheet that's built on an Excel, uh, a Google sheet. So you think, okay, well each of those stages are columns. And you can think about whatever you need to help align your team that are than the rows per stage. Cool. Devaney had another question. Go ahead Devaney. Thanks. Um, so I had never seen the bow tie model before, so thanks for sharing that.

Um, I do find it really helpful. I've also seen the flywheel model in the rev ops certification for HubSpot. Um, in your perspective, like are there any. Pros or cons between the two? Or is there a reason you use the bow tie over the other one? Or are there reasons to use one and other circumstances to use the other?

Just curious. I that's an awesome question, Devaney, and I think the, the flywheel is, is a great thing to think about. Like you just keep getting this energy in these cycles, right? Um, I think the bow [00:49:00] tie. Is as if you like, slowed it down and just didn't make it a circle where you saw a start and then an end.

But there's such continuity still between the two because as you're getting people to become that aware stage, and then when you get to the other side of I. Extended value. Your, your, your goal, because you should also have customer marketing inside of this. Your goal should be that they become the advocates that create kind of like this circular energy that happens.

So it's not to say one is right, one is wrong. They're both right. And maybe if you, if you can view the bow tie because it gives you that very structured, like linear approach to see things. Versus how do you take the flywheel and say, who's responsible for what and how do you get it clean in a, like a column view?

So it's like the same, but I think it's a slightly different view in how you see things from this linear buyer's journey to customer journey. [00:50:00] So would you, that was a great explanation. Would you say like the bow tie looks at who's responsible for each stages and breaks it down almost more granularly, whereas the bow tie is like, what kind of friction and force can I put in to make this thing go a little bit faster?

Um, I think just, just flipped. Does, it sounded like you said the bow tie. The bow tie is what, what you put in the energy. I think that's the flywheel. Yeah. Yeah. The way around. Thank you. Yep. But, so, yes. Spot on. So it's, it's thinking about, uh, things around that flywheel, which is like, how can you make it go quicker?

A hundred percent. And finding those places that are friction points. But I also think then the bow tie gives you the opportunity to really see where those frictions are. And then, so if you remove that friction, then you're essentially putting energy back into the, the flywheel, which makes it spin faster.

Right? So I think yes, it's, it's, it should be, use all of that flywheel awareness and knowledge. And you look at the bow tie as [00:51:00] the way to like kind of zoom into it and say, okay, but if I remove this, then the flywheel moves faster. If I remove this, the flywheel moves fast. If I add this, the flywheel will go slower, maybe right.

Yeah, that's so, yes. Spot on. Yep. Thanks so much Devaney All righty. So we're gonna close out with one last question. So you mentioned earlier people go to these hug meetups, go to inbound, go to the, the rev ops, uh, conferences. How do you keep the alignment conversation going after the initial excitement you come back with?

No, we're gonna do. Now what? So I think it probably comes down to don't have the conversation if you don't have, if you don't know what you're gonna do next, so Right. It's. Don't come back. 'cause a lot of times too, if, if [00:52:00] companies send somebody to go to a conference, a, a trade show, a seminar, a workshop, Hey, if you go, we expect that you're gonna come back and report what's gonna happen.

And, and, and coming back and reporting is a good piece. Like, Hey, I just wanna report, here's what I saw. But if you're not ready to say, here's what I saw and here's what I want to do and here's why and how we're gonna do it, then just hold on that part. Then you will get stalled out. If you go and say, here's my plan, I wanna do it.

And you don't have like everything laid out or you, I wanna remove friction now I want to analyze this, I wanna do this and this and this. And you just like, all you say is, I want to do this. I would say, hold on that conversation until you've got to your point, your rev ops roadmap work on getting that built out so that you have all of this, and as the simple acronym goes, make sure they're smart.

On what is included on that roadmap? What are you gonna do specifically? How are you gonna measure it? Is it attainable? Is it realistic, timely, right? Like all these things. [00:53:00] So use that to then present it and put dates on it. And be realistic with yourself too, right? We're, we're humans here. Things are gonna change.

Life comes at us. We've got different seasons of life. Jasmine, you and I have talked about the seasons of life and how we're, we're, we're just always in waves, right? You're gonna be high and be crushing work, and then you're gonna feel a little low. And so be realistic with yourself because you might build a roadmap that says, Hey, this is gonna take us six months.

You might build something that's maybe you, you wanna build something massive and it's a whole year of doing rev ops. Maybe it's something simple. But I think building out to your point, that roadmap and really having each of those stages focus on something that's smart, that you can list out what is it?

Do you have a, some sort of PM tool? Is there an, you know, a, a. Task tracking tool, you can put these in and see how everything, what are the dependencies? Well, I can't do this without this. [00:54:00] So that's what I would, I would say is, is then when you get to that point, then really have that conversation to present it and be like, here's what's gonna happen.

Here's the calendar and when these things are gonna happen and get after it. Cool. Thank you so much. I appreciate. Thank you Devin. You so much. Ben, and thank you Devaney. And I wanna thank, say Kati for joining today , lively conversation. I love the panel style and just the insights as well that you shared.

Of course, yeah. HUG members. Yeah. Wonderful. Rev Ops hug members. We're gonna be meeting again next month on June the fifth at five Pacific, 7:00 PM central time for truly happy hour. So there we have a special treat for that. Uh, so definitely, uh, mark your calendars. I'll be posting information for that.

Please tell all your friends in rev ops. Or those aspiring to be , rev ops, [00:55:00] professionals. We, my intention for this hug is to diversify the voices that are speaking in rev ops, but then also amplify rev ops to communities who may have not considered it or who may not be properly, represented within their companies and being able to get the credit that they need.

And so. We wanna give them the tools to help them to succeed. So definitely join , and share this out with your community. So I look forward to seeing you for truly happy hour with the Rev Ops hug on June the fifth. And everybody Oh, one more thing. Ben, where can we find you? Outside of you, like just on LinkedIn.

Where else can we find you? Yeah, so, I work at a marketing agency called New Perspective. So if you wanna look up new Perspective online, we're full service marketing agency. And then the other side of it is, I have a passion for helping people and so I am also a life [00:56:00] coach that focuses on helping people find their purpose, find their why which creates better enjoyment in life, in your profession , relationships, those sorts of things.

So that's at courage with intention.com as well. I, I can vouch for Ben. He's, he's awesome. Awesome. Everybody. I can vouch for you, Jasmine. You're awesome as well. Alrighty, we'll see you all next month. Bye. Thanks everyone. Take care.