Drift

A pretty common exercise within Sales organizations is the Quarterly Business Review. This is a time to both look back at the previous quarter’s performance as well as look ahead to the quarter ahead. It’s usually a mix of both qualitative and quantitative, of learnings and reflection, and of course, forecasting.

But what makes a Quarterly Business Review, or QBR, a good one? What makes it worth the time and effort invested to run one of these for every single rep on your team? And how do you make sure you are spending time on the stuff that matters.

We’re going to answer all of those questions with our guest, Rosalyn Santa Elena, the Head of Revenue Operations at Clari. In our conversation, we outline how to run QBRs at your organization, the role of Operations in those QBRs, and we’ll get some insight into how Clari forecasts their own business.

Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod

 How Clari Runs Effective QBRs With Rosalyn Santa Elena

To all the marketing and sales operations pros out there deep in the trenches, we know your work isn’t always glamorous. And maybe it seems like no one cares about your Salesforce hack or that Marketo program you built from scratch at 2 in the morning. But we're here to change all that. Because without you, there would be no hypergrowth companies. This podcast is just for you. Every other Friday, you'll hear from Sean Lane, aka SAL, Director of Operations at Drift, and leading operations pros. We'll go under the hood of companies like Salesforce, Amazon and Okta to find out what it truly takes to scale through hypergrowth.

Operations With Sean Lane

Business

Operators are often referred to as unsung heroes. But there's a group of unsung heroes within the unsung heroes: the Data Team.

For companies in hypergrowth, the volume of data requests and the variety of data sources to access can be daunting. So we've turned to Drift's own Data team for help in navigating the world of big data. Together, Arun Venkateswaran, Senior Data Engineer, and Kyle Thelemann, Senior Manager of Business Intelligence, form the two-lane highway of Drift’s data team.

In our conversation, we talk about how they’ve thoughtfully crafted their partnership, learn about the 4 V’s of Big Data, and talk through a real-life example of how they translated a tough business problem from something very technical to something simple and digestible.

Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod

The Two-Way Highway Of Drift’s Data Engineering And Data Analytics Teams with Arun  Venkateswaran and Kyle Thelemann

It's hard to take what looks like a perfect plan on paper and translate that to real life. It's even harder inside of a hypergrowth company. In this episode, we go inside one of the fastest growing companies out there: Snowflake.

Our guest Rachel Haley spent two and a half years at Snowflake as their Senior Director of Sales Operations, and is now the co-founder and CEO of Clarus Designs, a consulting firm focused on operational efficiency.

Rachel saw Snowflake explode from 30 reps to 450 during her time there. In our conversation, we talk about the insane growth she saw, how they were constantly planning and re-planning at Snowflake, and why Snowflake’s CRO once told her he wished they had invested and hired in Sales Ops even sooner.

Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod

The Art & Science Of Snowflake’s Sales Capacity Planning With Rachel Haley

There is no shortage of change inside of hypergrowth companies. The channels through which we market to our customers change. The ways we engage with prospects change. But there is an exception. The people on the other side of those interactions -- they remain constant.

Today’s guest, Kyle Sutton, breaks down why this one constant matters so much. Kyle is the Senior Director of Marketing at SolarWinds, a publicly traded IT infrastructure company with a market cap of $6 billion dollars.

In our conversation, Kyle teaches us how to get to know those end users. We go deep on storytelling, how to learn about your users based on the questions they ask, and why scrappiness is the trait that he looks for on his teams today.

Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and Kyle on Twitter @Seany_Biz @kylesutton @HYPERGROWTH_pod

Scrappiness, Storytelling, And Search Queries With SolarWinds' Kyle Sutton

We have talked a lot on this show with guests about their routines and cadences -- who they meet with regularly, what they meet about, even the structure of these meetings. 

Just as important as the content of these meetings, though, is how you present and articulate that content. The words you use and the energy you bring to the conversations you have with Go-To-Market leaders matter.

In this episode, Sean outlines three ways you can level up your interactions with Go-To-Market leaders. Whether it’s a one-time presentation or a standing weekly meeting, we’re going to take you through ways you can improve how you present and articulate your work to others.

Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod

The 3 Ways To Level Up Every Interaction With Go-To-Market Leaders

The relationship you build with a Go-To-Market leader is one of the most important components of an Operations role. The data you present, the way you frame your position, and the empathy you bring to your interactions are all foundational to building a strong partnership with any team. 

Today, we’re going inside the relationship between Ops and one of the most important C-level leaders in hypergrowth: the CMO.

Our guest is former LeanData CMO Karen Steele, and she's the perfect person to give us the perspective from the CMO's side of the relationship. A 30-year Marketing veteran, Karen got her professional start at Apple and has since led Marketing at B2B organizations like Informatica, Xactly, VM Ware, Marketo, and most recently, LeanData.

In our conversation, Karen is going to take us through the evolution she’s seen in the role of Operations, the best way to communicate with a CMO like her, and what it took to build highly-engaged communities for Operators like Marketing Nation at Marketo and OpsStars at Lean Data.

Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and Karen on Twitter @Seany_Biz @karenmsteele @HYPERGROWTH_pod

How To Maximize The Partnership With Your CMO And Accelerate Revenue with Karen Steele

In this episode, we’re not looking under the hood of another tech company that just got a splashy round of funding or delving into the finer nuances of SaaS metrics. Instead, we're going inside Boston-based nonprofit More Than Words.

More Than Words is a nonprofit social enterprise that empowers young adults who are in the foster care system, court-involved, homeless, or out of school to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business, specifically a book business.

Our guests, Leanne Goff and Shaun Newell, are going to take us inside their $3.7M book business. We’ll break down how the journey of a single donated book eventually leads to 2,000 books being shipped out of their warehouse every day, and why, despite a global pandemic, More Than Words is still on pace to hit its revenue targets this year and keep 100% of its staff employed.

Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️  review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and More Than Words on Twitter @Seany_Biz @mtwyouth @HYPERGROWTH_pod.

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Sean Lane