RevOps FM Justin Norris

I think marketing is one of the toughest functions to lead successfully.
Your job is part art, part science. You need to hire, coach, and retain talent with a huge range of skillsets that you may even not be master of yourself—from the creative to the analytical to the technical.
And then your job is to simultaneously create demand, capture demand, help sales convert that demand, help customer success retain and expand that demand...your job is never done.
Today we chat with one of my favourite marketing leaders, Thao Ngo. We'll explore her unconventional marketing strategy and also her leadership playbook—how she grows her team and creates an environment where people do their best work.
Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.
If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.
You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.
What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.
Try Knak

About Today's Guest Thao Ngo is a senior B2B marketing leader with 20+ years of experience in building world-class teams, generating sales-ready leads, and creating brand awareness for tech companies of various sizes. She's led marketing teams at Elastic Path, Vision Critical, and SensorUp, and is currently SVP of Marketing at Uptempo.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaongo/
Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:09] - What makes a great marketer?[02:40] - Evolution of marketing skills[04:48] - How to use data[06:25] - Marketing leadership and operating rhythms[09:30] - Trust and psychological safety[12:49] - Coaching and feedback [24:32] - First hires on a marketing team[25:43] - Division of labour between CMO and VP[28:05] - What keeps Thao up at night[29:47] - The marketing planning process[36:24] - Influencer / community marketing programs[47:13] - A day in the life of Thao
Resource LinksLive MOps Huddles

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More and more marketers are embracing demand creation as a strategy, at least in principle.
But making a fundamental GTM change is HARD.
You need to build executive alignment, define new KPIs, identify how to educate your target audience, fine-tune your content engine, and a whole lot more.
As VP of Demand Gen at Refine Labs, Sam Kuehnle has been a big part of the movement evangelizing a shift from lead gen to demand gen and has helped many companies make the transition.
Now he's leading a similar shift as an in-house marketing leader.
We go deep into what it takes to actually implement this strategy in practice, go beyond leads, and deliver real revenue impact.
Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.
If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.
You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.
What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.
Try Knak

About Today's Guest Sam Kuehnle is VP of Marketing at Loxo, the Talent Intelligence Platform. From working in-house at a publicly-traded company, to advising seed stage companies trying to figure out how to crack their first $1M in ARR, to everything in-between, Sam is passionate about learning and sharing better ways to do marketing.
Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:37] - Sam’s marketing experience before Refine Labs [06:33] - Joining Refine Labs[08:11] - Refine Labs onboarding process[10:21] - A typical engagement + aligning with customer teams[13:36] - How to communicate a demand creation strategy[20:26] - Identifying the right mix of channels / platforms [25:02] - Leading indicators for demand creation[26:45] - Brand awareness vs. demand creation[31:32] - Evolution during Sam’s tenure at Refine[33:33] - The band-wagon effect and how to identify the best practices of tomorrow[35:11] - Joining Loxo [37:10] - Sam’s first priorities after going in house [41:38] - LinkedIn ad strategy[45:09] - Experiments with Connected TV[51:35] - ChatGPT as a marketing channel
Resource LinksSam's Marketing Meditations - Sam's Substack

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I've worked with a bunch of different sellers. Some were good. Some not so much. But one or two were truly next level.
They had consistently better results. They brought in bigger deals. They closed accounts no one else could. And they just seemed to "get it" in a different way.
They were switched on—you didn't need to tell them what to do. Whatever challenge you threw at them, they found a way. They seemed built just a little bit differently than other people on the team.
I've always been curious about what makes those great sellers great.
To help answer that question, I sat down with true superstar of the sales world, 5x President's Club winner Brian LaManna, Strategic AE at Gong.
Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.
If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.
You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.
What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.
Try Knak

About Today's Guest Brian LaManna is a Strategic Account Executive at Gong and Founder of Closed Won, where he offers resources and playbooks for sellers. He is a 5x President's Club winner and regularly achieves 200%+ of quota.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlamanna/
Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:28] - Role of a seller in the revenue process[03:11] - Sales is not convincing[04:03] - Defusing prospect defensiveness[05:48] - When to break the sales process[07:21] - Are good sellers born or made? [09:26] - Attributes of a great seller[11:25] - Developing a “CEO” mindset[13:17] - Cultivating real relationships with customers[16:11] - Mindsets, strategies, and routines [24:18] - Benefits of selling Gong[25:28] - The sales / sales ops relationship[28:53] - How ops can get sellers to cooperate[31:45] - What does Gong’s RevOps team do well? [33:43] - Why AEs should always be prospecting[39:02] - Current state of outbound [41:39] - Live example: creating a tailored cold email[44:47] - Personalization vs. relevance[46:45] - How sellers can win at “social selling”
Resource LinksClosed Won | Systematizing OutboundLinkedIn Post: Personalization vs. Relevance

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SaaS companies spent the past decade optimizing for growth and customer acquisition at all costs. For many, the plan to actually retain and grow those customers has been foggy.
Now with many businesses facing the reality of massive churn, it's become incredibly clear that helping customers succeed is just as important as acquiring them in the first place.
So we're here today to discuss the third leg of the RevOps stool: customer success ops, and by extension, the discipline of customer success as well.
CS Ops doesn't get as much love or attention as marketing or sales ops—one of my past guests jokingly referred to CS Ops as the "red-headed step-child" of RevOps. But I think, and hope, this is starting to evolve.
Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.
If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.
You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.
What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.
Try Knak

About Today's Guest Stephen McBride is a Customer Success and CS Ops leader dedicated to helping companies grow better. His career has spanned in-house and consulting roles, and he’s spent over seven years in total at Hubspot, five of them as a leader in their Customer Success Org. He recently returned to the agency world with Go Nimbly as a RevOps Delivery Director.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcbridest/
Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:49] - Defining the role of customer success[02:51] - Role of CS in a PLG motion[03:37] - Strategies of a great CS team[06:00] - CS strategy at Hubspot[07:56] - Why do some big companies neglect CS?[09:29] - CS as cost center vs. growth driver[11:38] - Balancing the mindset of customer support vs. upselling[14:09] - Defining the mission of your CS team[15:36] - CS as a point of leverage in the customer experience[17:28] - Impact of macro-economic factors on CS strategies[20:06] - Identifying the impact of CS, factors you can A/B test[21:35] - Scope and mission of CS Operations [23:23] - CS Ops as a its own function vs. part of RevOps[29:09] - Who should a unified RevOps function report to?[31:52] - CS Ops vs. MOPS and SOPS[34:42] - CS tools and systems[40:19] - A best-in-class CS tech stack[42:34] - Churn forecasting[44:35] - Getting truly useful health scores[48:34] - Reducing churn
Resource LinksNet Revenue Retention Hub - Go Nimbly - Go Nimbly's excellent hub on NRR and CS topics.

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Prioritization is probably the biggest challenge for ops teams.
Say yes to everything—you pretty quickly become a service department.
Set your own priorities without input from the business—you can quickly find yourself irrelevant, even out of a job.
The best model that I've seen for tackling this problem is what we could call the product management approach to managing MarTech.
This is where you effectively treat your stack as an internal product and ops as a product management team working on delivering features for internal customers.
Today's guest has practiced this approach at enterprise scale, with an ops team dozens strong.
Josh Hill shares his insights and lessons learned, as well as his journey as one of the earliest and well-recognized experts in the Marketo community.
Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.
If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.
You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.
What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.
Try Knak

About Today's Guest Josh Hill is a GTM operations and systems executive who builds revenue accelerating GTM platforms, global teams, and processes in partnership with Product, Sales, and Marketing. He has a strong track record of turning business strategies into live enterprise capabilities and impactful customer experiences.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhill2/
Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:37] - Josh’s professional journey[04:19] - Development of automation pro as a professional identity[06:48] - Scope and scale of the teams Josh led[08:54] - Definition of a product management approach to martech[15:45] - Should marketing ops be oriented around business impact? [21:03] - Reasons why ops teams need to say “no” sometimes[27:38] - Solving for the internal vs. external customer [30:39] - Asking tough questions about adoption and ROI [33:53] - Building your roadmap [35:53] - Communicating your roadmap internally[40:10] - Cultivating resolve around prioritization and triaging requests[42:43] - How to transition to a product management approach
Resource Links

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Every marketing team  wants attribution. But weirdly, it's often not that satisfying when they actually get it.
I led many multi-touch attribution projects as a consultant, and we got really good at implementing tools, creating taxonomies, and making sure that data was clean.
But I found that when you actually showed these reports to a C-level executive, it was usually kind of underwhelming. The data didn't always pass the common sense test.
Today's guest thinks there's a better way — Marketing Mix Modelling. It's basically the application of mathematical techniques to model relationships between different variables.
However, technology now enables it to happen faster and more cost-effectively than ever before.
Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak.
If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform.
You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button.
What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners.
Try Knak

About Today's Guest Mark Stouse is CEO of ProofAnalytics.AI. With over 26 years of experience in marketing communications and strategy, he has a passion for transforming GTM performance with data-driven insights and agile decision making. Prior to founding Proof, Mark was CMO at Honeywell Aerospace, CCO at BMC Software, and a marketing leader at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstouse/
Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:15] - Clarifying the acronym “MMM”[02:39] - Mark’s background and how he founded Proof Analytics [07:57] - Limitations of multi-touch attribution (“MTA”)[14:16] - How MMM avoids the shortcomings of MTA[16:42] - The Fischer Price definition of MMM[19:56] - Demand vs. brand investments and their impact[24:09] - A/B vs. multivariate regression[25:21] - MMM is aggregate modelling, no reliance on PII[27:12] - Simple explanation of multi-variate regression[30:29] - Incorporating third-party data sources[31:48] - Historical ROI vs. forecasted ROI[32:52] - Is MMM just for enterprise?[34:51] - Marketing as a non-linear multiplier[38:02] - Getting started with MMM[41:18] - Updating models to include new data sources[42:07] - Competition in the marketing analytics space[44:41] - B2C marketing is more advanced in usage of multi-variate regression
Resource LinksProof Analytics - Official SiteEconometrics // Lecture 1: Introduction

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