Revenue Takeover on Revenue Rehab: Author Discussion

Intro VO  00:05

Welcome to Revenue Rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:33

Hello Hello Hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have an extra special episode for you today I am joined by two of my favorite Tegrita funds Mike Geller and Raleigh Kenan Mike is the co founder of Tegrita and is the firm's principal technologist. Mike graduated from the famed Ryerson University in Toronto and wasted no time in building a 15 year career covering all angles of marketing technology consultancy. Mike's a self proclaimed coffee snob an author a Trekkie, a husband and a proud dad of two children. Micah is a pawn loving coffee connoisseur and believes that nothing is impossible and his knowledge of data and analytics and the future of revenue technology makes a strong argument that he could be right. Raleigh is the CRO who resides in Colorado. He is a born leader and the key growth specialist at Tegrita as our CRO Raleigh brings 25 years of diverse experience at the likes of LinkedIn, Oracle, Gallup and the US Olympic volleyball teams graduating with his MBA in marketing from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Raleigh has had some unique experiences in his career, including making over 500,000 cold calls. And he has even spent time in training for high stakes negotiation protocol for hostage situations. Raleigh, Mike, welcome to revenue rehab, your session begins now. It is so good to have you both here. It's not often that we have Tegrita wins on revenue rehab, but this extra special episode is the revenue takeover on revenue rehab. But before we jump into why we're all here, I like to break the ice with the little Bullseye moments that I call buzzword. banishment. So Raleigh, I will start with you, what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Rolly Keenan  02:52

It's a newer one. But I've been hearing it a lot lately called indexing. So people will say, you know, I'm indexing a little more toward this kind of product or so the it's a corporate new corporate speak of like, just, instead of saying I'm thinking more about this, they throw in this extra indexing word as if it's a you're a machine and you're indexing this direction or something. So indexing is bugging me more and more, the more I hear it.

Brandi Starr  03:27

I have not heard that yet. And I'm gonna say thankfully have not heard that one yet. Because that is a really odd way to phrase that, like, it doesn't even roll off.

Rolly Keenan  03:41

I don't want to over index on this. But can I tell you what I feel about that just like, you can just use regular words.

Brandi Starr  03:52

Well, I can promise that for this conversation. I will not talk about indexing. To me, that makes me think of the old school library when you have to, like what does that have to do with anything? So indexing is going in the box? We're gonna throw it away. What about you, Mike? We're banishing to words today.

Mike Geller  04:15

Wonderful. So this one's more of a phrase. Blue Sky Greenfield.

Brandi Starr  04:22

That's a popular one.

Mike Geller  04:24

Anything is possible.

Brandi Starr  04:29

Yeah, it's like, we're I don't even know where that came from. Like, it's so popular in sales of like, or even, you know, strategic conversations. It's like, what does that really even mean? Like it? I don't know. But so we will not talk about any blue skies or green fields. Although it is a beautiful day here in Atlanta. We won't we'll put those in the box as well. So now that we've gotten that off our Chest, I have asked you guys to the couch, because drum roll. It is the two year anniversary of cmo to CRO. So for anyone who is listening and is not familiar. Two years ago, Mike Raleigh and I embarked on the journey of becoming authors. And we wrote the book cmo to CRO the revenue takeover by the next generation executive. And, you know, it's been two years since and lots has changed in the industry. So I thought it would be a great opportunity to have you guys on the couch to talk about what we've learned how the book is still relevant, what people are saying, all those different things. And I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an expectation of what they should take away from our discussion. So this time, Mike, I'll start with you. What is your best hope for our talk today? What would you like people to take away from the discussion?

Mike Geller  06:11

You know, understanding, learning something new? Or if you've read the book, then our perspective on why we wrote it the way we wrote it. Because that, well, we'll talk more about that later. But just understanding where we're coming from. So that's would be my intention.

Brandi Starr  06:30

Okay, and what about you, Rolly?

Rolly Keenan  06:33

I'm just the understanding that I think in a conversation like this, no matter how you say, I love the fact that we're setting intention up front, because we just started talking. I think that generally people are like, let me get some tips. And you know, they're kind of like paying attention. And I think what I would want to, from an intention standpoint, what I want people to understand is, the book is a book, because what we're talking about is fairly complicated. It's complex, it involves a lot of people, it takes time. So in our book, we have a timeline is, depending on your industry, it could be a few years to go through the journey versus, oh, this is another like alignment adjustment I can make. And so I would just say the things that we're talking about are kind of bigger deals. Transformational, not tactical.

Brandi Starr  07:29

Yes, I would agree completely. And so I'm going to pose the first question to you, Raleigh. And for those that haven't read the book, can you summarize what it's about? What is the revenue takeover?

Rolly Keenan  07:44

So this is about the challenge. So the overall the book is about our experiences between the three of us, you know, and if you think about the perspectives of management, marketing, and tech, and our say, people, marketing and tech, you know, we it's all the problems we've seen and ways that an accompany handled one, an organization, a client handled one thing, another client, while we were there was handling a different part of it. And all together, it was What if everybody, if somebody did all those things that those companies only did one of? And so it was our sort of best position on hey, here's how you really could do this. And so the sequences, like, what is that challenge? is the first part of the book, you know, the second part of the book is what could the future look like if you fixed it? And then the third part is sort of a how to sequence of how we would go about doing that.

Brandi Starr  08:49

And then

Rolly Keenan  08:51

leaving out the the what, right, it's a revenue. Sorry, sorry about it. So vaguely, it's how to how to basically attack revenue as an organization, instead of separating it into sales, marketing, support, and success. So it's anything client facing, how do you redo that in a way that will work in basically in the way that businesses operate today versus so many organizations that we work with and talk to are operating just like they did in the 80s and 90s. Before things were digital, and there was all this tech and so they're still they add the tech, but they keep their silos. Right? So this is our say, here's how you approach that.

Brandi Starr  09:40

Yeah, and I think the one thing that I would add to that answer is we took a path of least resistance approach, because with any sort of organizational change or transformation, there is a lot of times you try to you know, another buzzword boil the ocean and You know, yeah, things change, you know, priorities change. And like it never actually comes to fruition. And so that was one of the things that was big for us was, how do we start with smaller incremental change, where you can see progress and improvement, as you are working towards the big picture? And I know, that was one of the big things, because I think collectively, we have all seen these transformational kind of projects fail for one reason or another. So it's like, how do we at least get incrementally? Better? Mic? So just for those, you know, of course, I know. But for those that don't know, why did we do this? How did we decide? You know, because obviously, we're all busy running a business and servicing clients? How did we come actually write a book?

Mike Geller  10:56

Well, it was, you know, in one of our get togethers, you know, we were all in different parts of a country, right? Or countries. And, you know, we got together and we were talking about, you know, various things related to work. And it sort of came from all of us in different ways. For me, I was, I'm a visual guy. So I tend to like draw things out. I was visualizing how different operations of tech across different front office places could be better managed, they were centrally structured. And then, you know, that conversation spurred other things, and then it was like, Well, why don't we write a book? And we're like, okay.

Brandi Starr  11:49

Yeah, we more we're like, ah, that would sound great. But when are we going to have to write a book? But I do think so many things in our organization in general start off with, you know, what do you think would happen if or wouldn't it be cool if or maybe we could, with something that is seemingly preposterous, and then we make it happen? I know, going into the book project, you know, when we talked about measures of success. You know, we talked about all the usual things, book sales, you know, being a thought leader, getting our ideas out there. And I know one of the things that I said that I was looking forward to were the trolls. And, you know, the the naysayers who won't believe or the negative reviews of what the book is about. And one of the things you know, going through all of our reviews, one of the things that came up a couple times, is people talked about how the author's as an us, spends all this time defining what the current state is, what the problems are, and talking about what the future looks like. And then the complaint was, when it got to the solution, and the how that it was light on detail, that they were looking for a more prescriptive, exact, here are the steps. And when I read that I chuckle a little bit, because I know that that was intentional. So I'd love to, you know, hear your perspectives and whoever like can jump in? Why isn't there more intricate detail around the how,

Mike Geller  13:38

I guess I'll go first. You know, we wanted to put forth a framework that could be applied as broadly as possible. So the more specific you get into the details of a more narrow the focus is, and the more specific it is to a kind of company. And we wanted to create a path forward, so that we have guideposts along the ways and milestones and markers, so that you'd know where you are in the journey. But there's so many unique elements and challenges to every single company. I mean, every organization is a little bit different. Even within the same industry. Same sort of niche, companies are still organized differently. They're managed differently, they have different cultures. So you know, having a broad framework for how to get there seemed to make the most amount of sense because then it could be internalized by you know, each reader for themselves for their experiences.

Brandi Starr  14:41

Yeah, Rolly, anything you want to add?

Rolly Keenan  14:46

I mean, I, as usual, a bit of a joke popped in my head of like, well just hire us. I think number one, no matter what details We put in it would be the wrong detail for whoever read it. And that's a little bit to my explain of we had to keep it broad. But also like, you know, we wanted to get the idea out there. And the chapters themselves in the third section of the book, those chapters are in a sense detail of those guideposts. Right. Here's the next stage. Here's the next stage. Here's the next stage, you know, and to like, Well, what exactly do I do? That is a consulting firm like Tiger to jumps in there and tells you in the engagement, alright, based on what's going on here, that we would never know, until we're here, how you would, it would still be in the same framework, each stage would be the same. But exactly what we do to make it effective wouldn't be different, you know, everywhere. And that's, that's the ultimate terrible consultant answer of Well, it depends. But I mean, we got pretty, I would say, we got pretty specific.

Brandi Starr  16:07

Yeah. And it's like, I think what some people look for is because there are so many business books out there that are written very prescriptively. Like here is exactly what Yes. And to me, that works great when you're talking about something on a much smaller scale, that is more consistent. Like if we wrote a book on how to implement a marketing technology platform, like the steps are, for the most part pretty consistent, and we could go pretty detailed, but a change of this magnitude with different industries, different size companies, different organizational structures, like all of these things are so nuanced that, you know, if we tried to cover all the variations, this this book, could, you know, be like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings kind of thickness?

Mike Geller  17:03

Yeah, it would both be magical and impossible.

Brandi Starr  17:08

Yes. And, you know, I think the other air quotes complaint that I saw in some of the reviews was, why did they spend so much time outlining the problem? We're marketers, we all know, this is the problem. And, you know, it's like one of those where I'm like, Yeah, but there's a lot of value in validation, in really painting the picture of what is actually happening in your organization. Because until you really internalize that there's a real problem, you're not going to make the effort to do something about it. And so I know, we made a conscious decision to really hammer home and in some cases repeatedly and from different angles, what the problems are that we see. Any other thoughts what you'd say to those naysayers?

Mike Geller  18:12

Yeah, if if it kind of goes to what you were saying brandy around, making sure that it's felt, you know, you, you will not want to embark on this massive journey, if you don't feel like it's worth it. Right. Like, you know, by the time you get through section one, which is the problem, you're like, Okay, great. I know this, I read this, I experienced some of this in different, different, different ways. But, and the future sounds great, and how am I going to get there, so you really have to be invested in order to do this, because it's not easy. It's gonna take years. Like, ultimately, it's Organizational Transformation reorganization, like, it's, it's people, it's people's jobs in terms of what they do day to day, there's a lot that would that would have to change, like, there needs to be a good amount of pain felt and realize the in order to make that change worthwhile, because if it's just something that you put up with, you just accept it and you know, as as well this is simply what I'd have to deal with every day and that is life. But if there's a path forward, then it's something to think about and then you move forward then move forward there because you want to get rid of the pain.

Brandi Starr  19:41

And, you know, I agree completely because if you think about doing this effectively, like we're talking about changing pay structures and roles that exist and depart you know, like there it's not just it's not just a marketing thing, like it's it's not just like, how do we do you know ABM better, like it really is something that is true organizational change. And I don't want to spend our whole time talking about the naysayers. I want to fast forward because we are now two years out. And so I'd like to ask both of you, Raleigh, I'll start with you. Now, we're two years later, do you still feel the revenue takeover is irrelevant?

Rolly Keenan  20:24

I do. I just got off a call right before this call about everything that's wrong. And it's basically a rendition of the first part of our book, I mean, so it's, it's a, it's relevant, it's happening. And because how we've laid it out, and how it's a long term thing, and this is not a tactical, I'm gonna learn this over the weekend and implement it. It also has plenty of runway because plenty of organizations have never thought of it still. Or if they thought of it, that sounds too hard. You know, you have to think about the lifecycle of businesses. So most of the growing businesses or private equity, led businesses are VC on their way to private equity lead, and they're trying to flip a company around in three years. That is it, they don't have time. So they're like, Hey, let's just do what we did back in the 90s. Let's have a head of marketing, head of sales, it has success. Yeah, you know, and it'll be fine. We've been doing this. And so there, and so those are the growing most of the growing businesses, and then you've got those that aren't in that situation. And there's less of them. And they're not trying to grow by 10x, over the next five years. They're just trying to have a good business. And then you've got the giant giant companies who try to invent everything themselves. You know, if they're gonna do, I always laugh and Google though, try to do everything. So be like they invent their own way to assess people, all of a sudden, their assessment experts, like all have another way of doing this, we invented at Google, you know, as like, really, like, you're just going to invent everything like that might not work. So, because of that, it's what we write about in our book, super relevant. It's got a long runway, because only, there's only so many people who are going to say, I'm going for this. Because most people are like, should I go for that? Because I'm going to be gone in two years. Like, why don't I just kind of ride this out? And maybe I'll still a couple of tactics that I heard, I'll try to do those in isolation. So there's super relevant, long runway, we're going to be talking about this for a long time, I think.

Brandi Starr  23:03

Mike, what's your perspective?

Mike Geller  23:05

Oh, I agree. I feel it's more relevant now than before, you know, before, you know, it's like, this is what we think is the future. And now I'm like, Yeah, that's the future. There's definitely more certainty now than then than before. And also, you know, seeing different aspects. Kind of alive. In some of the organizations I've had the opportunity of working with, it is a an additional validation point. Like where there is alignment, where, and I'm going to use a sales marketing example, that everyone's so familiar with. But when sales and marketing is working together on a project by cohesion, and the flow is, is just magical, relative to one it isn't. And it's like, okay, we hit a wall project stops, hopefully, it'll pick back up again, assuming people don't forget about it and move on to something else entirely. So this notion that, you know, there should be a revenue team, with functions of sales, marketing, success, and support is more true, like I believe, wholeheartedly, more so than originally.

Brandi Starr  24:20

And so you actually lead into my next question, which is talking about what aspects of the takeover we are actually seeing companies adopt? And so you gave one good one, I'll jump in and answer my own question first. One thing that I'm seeing, you know, we talked about lining up, you know, behind the tech and trying to get the technology, right, and even just looking at in the past two years, just the projects that we've worked on. In addition, you know, as I'm in different communities with heads of marketing and CROs I see the same conversation tons of projects that they're embarking on, which is actually getting their technology working together, getting things integrated, getting the data flowing in a way that you can start to get meaningful insights from the technology and create that cohesive customer experience. And so that is one place, you know, which we've deemed the first step in this process that I am seeing, you know, it was like we went through this phase of everyone was like, buy, buy, buy when it came to the technology. And I'm seeing so many companies now that are just quite frankly, like, we're not buying shit else, like, it's a done deal. Figure out how to make the stuff we have work well and work for us. And so, you know, that alone, like when the marketing automation and the CRM talk to each other, and all these ancillary technologies are giving data and insight, like that alignment and clear view of the data, like just That step alone makes such an incredible difference at both, you know, marketing and sales and even success, like all the revenue teams really being able to be successful. Raleigh any examples? Because I know you see a lot, you have a lot of different conversations than Mike and I are involved in any examples of things that you have seen and heard people adopting from the takeover?

Rolly Keenan  26:27

Well, I think, you know, no surprise, I think to any of us, or anyone listening to this is, you know, rev ops was not so much of a thing as it was after we wrote the book, or after we started the book. So that's, that is. Definitely it is it is, like, popular or trendy? Like, do we have a DevOps person? Why not? You know, let's get a Reb ops leader. And I'll throw in the Debbie Downer side of that. It's like, I see that. And then I watch everybody asks, so. So where do we put this Reb ops team? Should Should I have him report to marketing or sales, or I saw one, one person asks or have them report to the CEO. So so they're like grabbing one part, and ignoring the whole transformation and going, well, now I have this, which everyone says I should have. So now I've got it. And now I don't know how to make it work, right? Because, like they're there. But sales doesn't want to use them, they keep buying their own tech, you know, marketing is using them as best they can. But it keeps, you know, getting in the way. You know, they're not letting rev ops really do anything. There, we're still on it schedule. In other words, you know, one big part of the book is modern front office, which is separating all the tech that's, you know, go to market and client facing and operating in a way that's fat and moves at the speed of the market. versus, you know, the back end, you know, back office technology, they can run at the speed that make sense, right? infrastructure security, we're gonna make that change. Cool, we'll put that in 2026, you know, like, they're running a speed that does not match revenue. And I watched people grab the revenue ops, pull it in and go, Oh, I don't know what to do with it now. Like, we did it, we have a Reb ops person, which is suit makes us look very good. You know, but they don't, they don't finish it.

Brandi Starr  28:52

And it's so interesting, you brought up that point, because I can remember, you know, because it took about a year from start to finish for us to go from the decision to write the book to it actually launching in the middle of a global pandemic, on top of that, but I can remember early on having some debates about whether we should use the terms rev ops and rev tech, because at that point, they were such unknown terms. And we were like, We got to put definitions around it. So it makes sense. And if you think about it, by the time the book came out, like there's, you know, Ben Reb ops communities and is starting to be more of a title and like head of Rev ops and, you know, thinking about like, anybody that's going back, you can go back to Episode 50, where I talked to Rosalyn Santa Elena, who is one of the most known, you know, Reb ops, you know, sneeze, so to speak in the industry, and we talked about, like, what it is where it should live, why it's important. And so if you just think about Like the debates we had around like, should we say that should we use a more generic term to just when it went live to, you know, even fast forward now of you know how many even again, just looking at our clients have a Reb ops team, you know, not even just the person. So, there is a lot that I do think that when we started the book, we were like, almost ahead of some of the trends. And by the time it came out, it was like, Oh, this is the kind of thing that everybody's talking about now. Yeah, yeah, totally. And then I'd say, you know, I always like to reflect, like, if you knew then what, you know, now, is there anything about the book that you would change?

Mike Geller  30:50

Probably not. Like, I, I guess I tend to be more forward looking. And, like, I, I'm happy with, you know, where we arrived at the book. And, you know, I would say, you know, if I would love to maybe have us do like a second edition version, like in three years, or something where we kind of move things forward and updated and take some of the learnings and clarify some points and things of that nature. But I think we're kind of a world just today, and no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't change. I wouldn't change anything. What about you, Raleigh?

Rolly Keenan  31:33

No, I wouldn't. I mean, I don't want to write a book again. That was that was kind of hard. I mean, I, it's one of the I guess it's one of those things were like, I guess, I guess I would, you know, if we all decided to I'm sure it'd be like, Yeah, let's do it. But, but you know, it was time consuming and took a bunch of brain power. And you know, what people I think, don't realize when you write a book, especially the way we did it, you know, there are three of us, that's not common. We used help. So we had a professional writer helping us, that's not always the case. And we were in a situation, I felt like, we were evolving our own thinking while we were writing the book. So as we had to tackle, like, how do we make this clear? You know, I'd weigh in from one angle, but anyway, in my equation, we'd be like, and then I felt like I had like a better understanding of my own idea. And that just happened over the course of a year, right? So I wouldn't change any of that, I wouldn't change what you wrote. I know, I've told you guys. You know, I get and you guys get it, too. You know, some of you like, Hey, I'm Bob and I wrote a book, can I send you six copies of my book, you know, and I'm, like, he's gonna do that. You know, and sign up recycling, you know, five of the six, and then I open their book, and it's not written in a way that's very readable, or very fun. And so what's one thing I like about our book and why I wouldn't want to redo it, is when I sat sat down and reread it, you know, we read, it's another thing when you write in a book, by the way, you're gonna have to read your book a lot. You know, so we were rereading chapters over and over as we added it, but when I read it now, as a finished product, like I'm always like, really kind of impressed, how well it's written. We have our ideas, but boy, you can have ideas now, actually, when you were talking to Mike about the trolls, and then saying, basically, I don't like how you stay hung out on the problem so long, right. And I went to a whole different place than you guys did, which is not unusual. That's why we all work well together. But when I heard that, I was like, Oh, great. They've given us advice on how to write a book like Thanks, Dr. Smith for wrote. Because that's all that is, like, you know, it was a professional, right? You know, it's kind of like, you know, saying, you know, we shouldn't have, I should, I should, you know, design something a certain way, when you're not a design expert, you just don't like it. Like, this is how you design a book, you lay out the problem, you know, you know, like, like, I don't like that movie, because you just built up and then only in the very end did the guy die? Like you should have just told me that at the beginning. I'm like, What kind of movie expert Are you? So that's what I wouldn't want to change it because I think it's written in a really nice way. Like, you really get to engage with us about the problem. We've seen the future and different clients. So we'd like so we have a whole section around like what future can look like because we know And then putting it all together and how, you know, being that we've helped people get different people do different parts of it. We can do this whole long. Here's how we would do it all. So I like it a lot, how we how it put together, I wouldn't read it.

Brandi Starr  35:14

Yeah, I had one thing that I debated with myself. And in the end, I decided I wouldn't actually change it. But what I debated is the CRO title, because in talking to people, people get hung up there and miss the point. And it drives me crazy. Because right now, it's like people think about, oh, there's no way I would want marketing reporting into a CRO like, if that happens, I'd quit. And like marketing should never report to the sales. Like that's a horrible idea. And, like foundationally, I agree like the CROs of today, our sales leaders, like they are not revenue leaders, they lead the sales function, and they have a CRO title. And like so people miss that. That's not what we're saying. We're not saying that marketing should report into the CROs of today, because that would be a disaster for all the reasons why no one wants that to happen. We are redefining what the CRO role is. And so I really debated like, sometimes I'm like, Oh, I wish we had called it cmo to anything. But CRO because it creates this debate that is so missing the point. But then in the end, I was like no, like it really is the right title. I mean, you could call it chief market officer, but that's a little long. But it really, you know, see GTM Oh, like that. But like it really is bringing together all of the revenue functions and breaking away from that role being a glorified sales position. And, you know, we've seen it happen and other other organizations, you know, thinking about it like, going way, way back, I talked to Helen Baptists Baptist, in Episode 23, where at the time, Helen was leading a single revenue team, where she owned all of revenue under the title of CEO. And so that was, you know, different title. But, you know, she was living and breathing our books. So if you haven't gone that, you know, haven't go back and listen to episodes 23 and 50, as they are super relevant. But yeah, that was my one. Like, if we had to do it again, you know, like, try to not get people stuck on that. But, you know, I think no matter what title we stuck it, you know, stuck in there, someone would argue the issue with that particular title. And it's like, that's not the point.

Rolly Keenan  38:07

Well, I'll tell you, and I think it's just on the topic, not on the topic of changing the book. But the topic of CRO being that on a CRO level, maybe more say about the most, but the thing I find interesting slash aggravating about it is it's not just that people see it as well, that's the former head of sales. Now he's just a see title. It's actually worse, because I've seen at least four versions of the CRO that I can pinpoint as very different roles. And it makes it very, it makes it very difficult to talk about, and this is maybe kind of what you're referring to brandy. It makes it difficult to talk about everything under it. Like the reasons for it. Because I'm talking about CRO and I'm thinking about revenue, you're talking about CRO and you're they're talking about sales, you're talking about pricing, you're talking about reporting, you're talking about your your [unaidable]. And we could have that we could be talking for half an hour and I could maybe never pick up on that until the end and I'm like, wait a second, are you? So like, you know, one organization I ran into has a CRO and a CCO and Head of Marketing and I don't understand that at all. But basically the CRO is in charge of giving numbers to the board. Like every number, every aspect of every number from you know, cost of acquisition You're going to, you know,

Brandi Starr  40:03

their chief reporting officer.

Rolly Keenan  40:05

Yeah. I'm like, Why do you have that job, like, I don't understand. And then a CCO is like, head of sales in a b2b environment. But they have zero connection to marketing and zero connections to the CRO. And then and then there's head of marketing, who's doing whatever. And may or may not be aligned with the other to sort of revenue, C level revenue Exec. So, and this is, you know, private equity lead, funded, high hopes and dreams of flipping that and selling it off to some big company. But yeah, it's frustrating in like a, in a way of like, it's difficult to get on the same page with somebody to have a conversation about revenue. Because you can't even get it straight up at the top. Even if I say it, oh, well, you know, head of this, and then have with the conversation, they'll refer to it as the head of sales. Again, I'm like timeout, like, I thought. So it's it's dicey in a, in a deep way.

Brandi Starr  41:14

And my last question, so for those, you know, generally most of our audience's head of marketing, for those that are listening, who have not read the book, what is a takeaway from the book that you'd like to highlight, that you feel may resonate with people? And so I'll give you guys this couple seconds to think and I'll give my answer first. For me, it is the what gets measured gets done. The domino effect is my favorite chapter in the book. Because it is, you know, it's been early in my career, I recognize this as a huge problem, where, you know, even if you are separate, you know, all the revenue functions are separate teams, where employees have competing goals and priorities. And so how they are measured as individual contributors, is conflicting with one another, between departments. And I've even seen it interdepartmental Lee, where people have competing goals. And one thing that if you are leading marketing, or hell leading any function, if your teams and your team's counterparts have goals, that conflict, you are setting the individuals and the business up for failure. And so you really have to, like, you know, and I give the example in the book of where, you know, I was drip measured on leads, and I was generating all these leads, but sales was only comped on a certain type of leads. And that was not the leads I was generating. So I was spending hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year, generating very qualified leads that sales could give two shits about because they weren't comped on what I needed to sell. So I was wasting company money, like I was doing great from an individual performance perspective. But my efforts were completely wasted. And so it is important that even if you don't own all of the revenue functions, that you make sure that as a leader, how you are measuring your team aligns to where you want their efforts to be focused, and that those measures don't conflict with the other parts of the revenue process. So that's my key takeaway. The domino effect is the chapter where we talk about that a lot, along with other places in the book, but that's the big one. So rally your mic. I don't know if either of you want to go first. what's your takeaway that you from the book that you really want people to know is there if they haven't read it?

Mike Geller  44:06

I mean, I'll take that technology angle, surprise, surprise. So the you know, how to get started on all of this is getting behind the tech and starting to reorganize the tech and really, that means taking ownership of it technology and servicing all the other functions with that technology so that you then have oversight of all of it technology utilized to support revenue. That includes the tax that sales using the tax that support teams are using the fact that service teams are using because then you have the oversight of all the technologies and that allows you to re architect with technologies that data flow to go and once the technology is unified and centrally managed. That is the momentum Bill order for greater change. If you can get that done, then you'll have a much greater chance of success with everything else.

Brandi Starr  45:09

And Raleigh, we'll leave it to you last to bring us home.

Rolly Keenan  45:13

So I am focused a lot on, there's a chapter towards the end called what real change looks like. And, and I think it's worth understanding a bit to my intention of the transformational aspect of this, and that, you know, right now, sales, you know, if they've got problems with the leads that are coming over as an example, you know, that they're going to deal with it by either ignoring them or doing their own thing, or, or something like that, you know, because they're in sales. And leads come from marketing, right? What real change looks like is when everyone feels, knows they're on the same team. And I don't, I'm not getting what I need. I stand up, you know, virtually, if you're remote, but you stand up and walk over and say, What's going on here? Are we're expected to have an average deal size of 100k everything coming over here, these people are expecting something for 10k. Like, why are we attracting the wrong people? What is their messaging that makes people think that we sell a cheap product? You know, and, and things get shifted, and things get talked about and worked on? Because they're one team? Versus like, you know, I don't know what's been going on for the last six months, but I missed my goal. So I don't like you guys. Yeah. Right. So Real. I like that chapter. I think it's important part of it to bring it home of like, and by the way, the people side of this, people should be feeling and acting and moving as if they have control over what's going on. Not things are landing on them. And if it doesn't work for them, then they ignore that other siloed department.

Brandi Starr  47:13

I love ordinarily, at this point in the show, I would ask for the one thing that we want people to do, but in this case, the answer to this pretty self explanatory. If you have not already you got to read the book. So it is available pretty much everywhere that books are sold. fastest way to get to it is just go to revenue takeover.com. And it links to all the places you can also see our lovely faces some of the reviews and other contents related to the episode. Well, Mike and Raleigh, it has been such a pleasure, I appreciate you all for taking the time to come to the couch. But that's our time for today. Thanks, everyone for joining us. Again, if you haven't already go to revenue takeover.com To purchase the book. And for other episodes, we encourage you to go back to episodes 23 and 50 to continue the conversation. Thank you all for joining us. That's our time for today. Until next time, bye bye.

Outro 48:27

You've been listening to revenue rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenue. We have that live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue we have. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.