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[Music] welcome to club revenue i'm cornelius willis and if you're joining us today you're probably obsessed with revenue growth so here's a fun fact for you ing to forrester companies with high alignment between marketing and sales are 15 more profitable and grow 19 faster that's right revenue growth is no longer a solo race it's a relay that has marketing sales and customer success all running in the same direction and sequence to ensure the customer experiences a seamless journey down the funnel just like olympic runners your team needs the right training practice and proper sportsmanship to go for the goal we've got divi cro sterling snow here today to show us how it's done let's dive in friction between marketing and sales is a problem for countless companies and the story is always the same sales believes marketing is filling the funnel with lousy leads and marketing says sales just doesn't spend the time doing the hard work of cultivating opportunities particularly early in the deal cycle bottom line this feud stops revenue dead in its tracks some companies are remedying this problem with a mutual agreement between the two departments that defines the attributes of a qualified lead and it's a smart idea ing to gartner 64 of b2b sales reps said they were more likely to follow up on a lead if the qualification metrics were agreed upon by both sales and marketing but some crs are taking an even deeper approach ing to divi's chief revenue officer sterling snow alignment should be the primary driver of your org chart divi is a remarkable financial services platform that was recently acquired by build.com for two and a half billion dollars companies don't reach that kind of success in such a short time unless their revenue operations are right on point and yes among other things that means world-class alignment between marketing and sales unlike many with this title sterling actually came into sales leadership for marketing and he's been making waves in the revenue world for his insightful innovation but using not just quantity but quality in designing comp plants he is a member of the exclusive club creating the revenue operations movement and we get to pick his brain today sterling i'm honored to welcome you to club revenue great to be here appreciate you having me cw so cro at divi means that you've got accountability for the full end-to-end revenue process from awareness through renewal all the way to expansion is that right that's right yep so marketing sales customer success customer support and then revenue operations obviously supporting that entire funnel the reason why that structure is so successful and why i think it's early innings i think i think cross are going to be the norm in the very best companies especially software companies because you have one person singularly responsible to make sure that those handoffs are smooth and that that alignment is created as part of the structure not as like an afterthought but really as the primary driver of your org chart and your kpis and everything you measure and so i think that you you you obviously have some of the classic challenges about hey how are we determining how do we determine quality at the at these handoff points when did marketing do their job in in the right way when did sales do their job and set success up appropriately and those don't go away just because you you have someone who's titled cro but it does give one person the ability to streamline that funnel reduce friction points set up set up the right kpis and the right measurement tools and put you in a place to be successful you described quality checks what are some of those checks between maybe the first and second stage and the second and third stage so there's very similar right with marketing primarily on the demand gen side right leaving out brand and some of those other parts of marketing you're saying what is the quality of what you're passing over how well are you supplying the segmentation based on how you've modeled it right what percent of your new business comes from inbound comes from channel comes from outbound and how well is marketing doing at supporting those different initiatives um and so it's really a quality measure in terms of you know is the deal size right or the close rates right is it is it a quality uh lead that you're passing over and then on the sales side it's a lot more about it's really the same thing how how good are the expectations that are being set is this a customer who's been sold a bill of goods that that doesn't really exist or are they gonna come in and and be happy and have an extremely long ltv and so there it's it's very similar just a little bit deeper in the funnel for sales to success but similar issue are you able to tie compensation to those quality measures that's one of the main benefits of setting up a structure with you know end-to-end revenue insight is you can compensate on kpis that are typically deeper in the funnel so for example if you have a marketing team and they're standalone it's really hard to measure them on say like converted opportunities because that usually lives on the on the sales side of the house they're the ones who have to convert whatever opportunities you're throwing over and so if if those are standalone entities that's a really hard sell but if you have revenue under one funnel then it becomes a little bit easier and so that's that's how we do it we measure every single group typically one level deeper in the funnel than they have control over and that force is a real partnership a real alignment it does you no good to spend time putting putting blame back and forth you need to spend that time just figuring out how to get better because you're measured on the same things so anyway that's uh you can yes measure and compensate deeper in the funnel because of it so the thing i'm hearing is that this doesn't work unless you've got a culture of trust accountability and transparency which is exactly why the revenue operations movement is so powerful let's check in with clary's holly proctor to take a look at some of the metrics fueling those trends thanks cdub that's right having a unified revenue team brings massive benefits to a company with sales and marketing working more closely together b2b tech companies are seeing a 15 to 20 percent increase in internal customer satisfaction with happier marketing and sales teams also comes a decrease in go-to-market expenses of up to 30 percent this kind of alignment is one of the many reasons why companies with the revenue operation strategy grow 12 to 15 percent faster than their peers and are 34 more profitable at scale deepening trust and collaboration between sales and marketing is a huge part of the foundation of a successful revenue operations engine back to you cdub thanks holly trust between those two organizations is absolutely imperative so sterling are there things that you're doing from a process cadence or culture perspective that make that connection point work better there there are a few things that i think have really enabled us to to succeed here we have a framework that we've used from from very early on we call it right people right structure and if you have those two elements there's a lot that goes into those two elements but if you can if you can boil it down any issue you have is dealing with one of those two things so let's assume we have the right people when we talk about right structure you asked about culture that's a part of it one thing that we have everybody kind of commit to is is a cubby principle and it's called loyalty to those not present there's really good essays written about it and essentially part of our our credence is you do not you do not talk about somebody else's work if you have a complaint about about marketing say and you're the sales leader you're a sales rep that's a conversation we all need to be involved in and that's one of the things that puts trust through the roof because nobody's wondering like hey i wonder if so and so is in there telling sterling you know his his or her side of the story when really that's only that's only the side that paints them in a good light in us that doesn't happen and so i think culturally you have to you have to do things like that to make sure that trust is as strong as it's ever going to be and by the way that doesn't mean that you don't have healthy conflict that doesn't mean that you don't have real problems that you need to get into a room and hash out and we've had our fair share of folks in a room passionately debating i'll call it other people might call it yelling um but but getting to the bottom of things but that's okay as long as you trust that uh that everything's happening in a very transparent sort of way and i think that's part of what what allows those leaders and those departments and therefore everyone on their teams to to have trust in the in the system thank you sterling snow for sharing with us today great insights into what it takes to bring sales and marketing together for a productive and predictable revenue engine that's our show for today folks thank you so much for watching join us next time for another real world revenue strategy right here on club revenue