[upbeat music] Hey friend, it's David Nebinsky, the Senior Community Manager at the Chief of Staff Network.
We help chiefs of staff through the three Cs: cohorts, curriculum, and community, via Slack, with over 900 people in it. Learn more about our upcoming events and programs at chiefofstaff.network.
You can also subscribe to our newsletter there as well so you don't miss anything out. This episode of the Chief of Staff podcast is with Robbie Nepali, who currently works in revenue operations at SetPoint.
Robbie has been a member of the Chief of Staff Network and the Biz Ops Network. This episode was recorded live at our Chief of Staff NYC mixer event.
Robbie has been an early stage employee at startups and in business operations, which can often overlap with the chief of staff role as well.
In this episode in particular, you'll learn about rev ops and working in early stage startups. So excited for you to level up and grow as a chief of staff. Here we go with Robbie. All right, let's give it up for Robbie.
[claps] Whoo. Robbie. [laughs] Whoo. [clapping] All right. Uh, Robbie, how did you get your chief of staff role?
So my initial chief of staff role was actually at, uh, CometML, where I came in as, like, the first business hire. Um, really it was, like, a 10-person team, all technical, engineering, and product.
So I did everything except those two things. So really owned everything from sales, marketing, CS, ops. Um, helped raise the founders, uh, with their Series A, and then kinda just did everything under the sun after that.
And then how did you, like, become more active in rev ops, or how did that start to be more of, like, the scope of your work?
Yeah, so I think I naturally gravitated towards more of the operations side of the house, specifically with, like, how sale... like, how do we make more money?
Uh, like, one, how do we make money, and two, like, how do we make more money?
So essentially setting up HubSpot, Salesforce or your, uh, classical sales tools and trying to dig behind the data to understand what's actually working versus what's not.
So I had a pretty natural curiosity towards that side of the house. Um, yeah, that's kinda how I got started, at least at, uh, at Comet. Yeah. Cool. Um, who's got follow-up questions about rev op?
What's something about rev ops that surprised you, one of the first things that surprised you when you started diving into it? That's a great question. Um, I think the nuances of starting rev ops at a series...
or a seed or a Series A company versus, like, a Series C or a Series D company. They think about rev ops very, very differently.
I think when you're early on, you're just trying to make sure that you're collecting enough data to actually have any kind of inferences on and trying to understand what's working versus what's not, versus, uh, when I was at Wunderkind, we're really going through this IPO readiness phase.
We're trying to understand the actual business model, optimize and drive efficiency and efficacy towards the sales, marketing, and CS, uh, go-to-market leads, and then, um, trying to make sure that every single dollar that we brought in was actually accounted for on the, on a finance side.
So I think there are generally different, uh, phases that a company goes through, and, like, there's definitely, like, a learning curve that ops goes through as, like, the go-to-market leads, um, evolve as well.
So I think the biggest diff- like, the change I saw was like, oh, wow, like, things get a lot more, uh, rigorous when you're going later stage, um, and that require, kinda requires a lot more people in the house making sure that the, that the wheels don't fall off.
I think that was really interesting. Wheels fall off. That's not a good idea? [laughs] No, no. Generally, generally you want them on. Pretty, pretty, pretty fastened. Yeah. For sure. Hey, Robbie.
How would you say a rev ops is different from just general growth, like growth practitioners? Sure. Like, uh, like when I think of growth, I think of, like, marketing growth. Yeah. Like... In a way. Gotcha.
Um, so I think, uh, the best growth marketers that I've seen generally come from, like, a very quantitative background, like a data science or, like, some sort of, uh, analytical background because they tend to have a great insight into
how to unpack the black box that is kinda growth marketing. I think the best growth marketers also I feel like are very, uh, know the ICP extremely well.
When I was at CometML, we, we had a great growth marketer who kinda s-spammed Reddit, KDNuggets, and a lot of these ML blogs because CometML really sold to machine learning engineers, and we had a very product growth kind of growth motion.
So at least our growth team was very honed in on where do these ML engineers live? Where do they, like, breathe? Like, where do they go visit for advice and context and, uh, tools?
So I think the best growth marketers that I've seen tend to have a really, uh, strong bias towards the actual product itself and then know kinda the ICP and how they kinda think through the entire buyer's journey, especially for, like, a,
a, a PLG type motion. Um, yeah, and they constantly A/B test a lot of their experiments and their, uh, hypotheses.
So, um, they have a really great way of understanding what are the mar- are the right metrics to track, how to A/B test them really well, and then, um, come back to the table with different ideas in terms of, like, what's working and what's not.
Um, yeah, I think that's kinda, like, the best I've seen at least for, uh, growth marketers. What is one tool you could not live without? Oh, that's a great question. Uh, honestly, I think Gong's kind of, uh, super...
I know it gets a lot of shade, and I think voice tracking is a little, uh, is a little, uh, poo-pooed on, like, some, some sales circles, but I think it gives people who are not in that conversation so much great data because I think the most important thing, at least in my opinion, to hear is what customers are saying, not necessarily what sales says in Salesforce or HubSpot or in their, the QBRs.
Um, so having that context is actually super useful.
Um, and then I think it helps product try to figure out what is actually working well when you're rolling out into a new vertical or a new customer or a new, um, like a co- a, uh, customer segment or in a new, um-A new phrase that they're trying to test out as well.
So I think Gong does a really great job of, uh, documenting all of that and making it easy for, like, o- all, like, like ops people to figure out what's actually being said and what's not.
Um, I think ZoomInfo is a terribly, terribly bad product. Um- [laughs]... I think it makes ops lives absolutely hell to kind of back-test and bridge-test data.
So sorry for anyone who's at ZoomInfo, but, like, it, it needs to be better than what it is right now.
And I think one alternative to that is Cognism, which does a great job of, like, giving you emails and phone numbers that actually work for, like, sales people to actually go reach out to.
So I think the most quickest way to figure out how to get more sales is to, like, get those salespeople to call or cold email the, the ICP that they want to get in, uh, front of.
So reducing that gap at the, at least in my mind, is super important. So yeah, maybe that's, like, a nice bonus. Who is the hardest salesperson you've had to manage or work with, and how did you overcome that?
Uh, that's a great question.
Um, for anyone who's actually had to work with salespeople, they're extremely opinionated and very territorial over, over their, one, territories, but over, two, like, their, uh, number as well.
So trying to come to consensus with the actual quotas and targets are always an interesting challenge. I think, um, being realistic, I think o- o- one thing that I've always found really helpful is to
kind of always be on their side when it comes to coming up with a number that they feel really comfortable with 'cause everyone from the CEO to the board to finance is telling them to go, like, reach ninety, a hundred, a hundred and twenty percent of their actual quota.
But I think coming to the table with a bottoms-up model of, "Hey, these are the MQLs, SQLs, the actual closed won opportunities that we did this quarter, last year."
And I think if you go in with a framework that can help them talk to how they're thinking about the number, that ultimately gets them to trust you and have more comfort in the numbers that you bring to the table as we- u- um, as well.
So I think being a, being a champion to them, I think is super important to help them understand, "Hey, like, there's a bigger broad number that the board wants and the CEO wants to, to help hit their number, but is that realistic?"
And you should give them insight into why.
Um, they're not always gonna like it, but I think it just sets up everyone for success if we all understand both tops-down and bottoms-up in terms of what, what our goals are here.
Um, yeah, and that goes to territory planning, to quota setting. Like, ultimately, you kind of... You're in service of them, and helping them hit their goals will ultimately help you win as well.
So that's kind of how I think about that relationship, but it's not always as pretty, but that's kind of, that, that's kind of the goal that I always tell myself.
What are the biggest data points that you're looking at in your role, this role- Mm-hmm... versus your f- uh, previous role where you were, uh, pre-IPO? Yeah, that's a great question.
So, um, for context, at least at Wunderkind where we were kind of getting ready to IPO, we, we looked at, um, kind of the goals more holistically. We looked at territories and quotas, but ACV, pipeline...
Sorry, uh, pipeline coverage, win rate, sales cycle. These are kind of the classical r- RevOps metrics that you want to kind of look at, but across different sales segments.
So, uh, enterprise, strategic, mid-market, that's kind of the s- like, that's kind of the focus that we wanted to understand at, at, at scale.
But then how many SDRs do we need for each AE, and then how many SEO quotas do we need to have for the SDR to hit for the AE to be successful?
Sometimes those two in, in, in inherently always don't add up, but as long as the AEs are kinda hitting their number, that's kinda how we thought we were all kinda winning as a team.
Uh, conversely, I think here, uh, at Setpoint we're a lot earlier stage. We're really going zero to one, so it's really understanding kinda our lead scoring, um, methodology. Are we having the right conversations?
Are we having the right ICP coming into the door? What events, what marketing, um, activities are actually contributing to opening up opportunities? And then how many of them are actually closing?
So, like, a- again, win rate and, uh, sales cycle, but much more focused on the marketing effort. Like, how do you understand top-of-the-funnel activity versus strictly based on, like, industry or, uh, vertical.
So I think it's a lot more focused on, like, the nitty-gritty of getting more opportunities in the door versus, uh, driving efficiency throughout our entire sales or- sales organization.
I think those are, like, a couple things that I think a lot more about now than I did at Wunderkind. Uh, is there anything else you wanna share about RevOps, chief of staff,
to the, to the chiefs of staff that are in this room and are listening to this? Anything else you wanna share? Yeah, I think, I mean, there's, there's generally, like, a...
I think RevOps is, like, a right hand to a CRO of an organization, so a chief of staff is essentially like an extension of an executive member on any team.
I think if you're smaller, then you have your hands in a lot of different pots. And then if you're larger, obviously you have maybe your hands in a few specific pots. So, like, that's kinda how I think about,
uh, like, a chief of staff, kind of biz ops type of person generally. Um, I think your focus tends to be more narrower as you kinda scale.
So I think there's a lot of skills that I've learned from my PM friends that are very applicable to my day-to-day job right now just because the frameworks that they use, the metrics that they track, learning how to set metrics, I think that's really important.
But also hiring, learning to establish an organization. How do you give responsibilities to certain people but, like, not others?
I think that is generally how I think of, like, the other job of a more general chief of staff. So I think all those things are very applicable.
So I think, um, I, I try not to be so rigid in my thinking of, like, what's a chief of staff versus, like- Mm-hmm... what, what industry or what vertical. I think there's generally, like... I try to be, like,
a-- just try to learn as much as possible about other people's roles in chief of staff and how they...
Like, why they think the way they do, or how do they apply different frameworks from product to, like, hiring to scaling an organization or even metric tracking, for example. So I think it's just, like, just be curious.
Thanks, Ravi. Cool. [applause] Yeah. Yeah.
[laughs] [upbeat music]