Here is another excerpt from my in-progress 'What is RevOps?' book, the second part of the chapter about the tools principle in RevOps, related to software and related topics for success. It's currently chapter 5 in the book, after chapters about the definition(s) of RevOps, and the more important principles of people and process.
This blog focuses on the second research question in this portion of the chapter, asked to 35+ experts:
What is your preferred tech stack?
The previous blog answered the question:
The next blog will cover the later parts of the chapter, which asks:
Click to scroll down to read:
What is your preferred tech stack?
Disclaimer for book draft excerpts:
Throughout the interview questions, several experts mentioned the need for a standardized RevOps tech stack, which could help RevOps be more easily understood and accepted as a discipline.
This question about a preferred tech stack also brought up interesting answers about types of tools and not nearly brand names of particular software, which was interesting.
Since people are always curious about the exact names of the software, here are a few of those common tools mentioned out of the ~35 people interviewed, from most to least mentioned by name:
Common answers or themes:
Many of the experts agreed that there is no perfect tech stack that will work for all businesses. As Andy Mowat, Vice President of Growth Marketing & GTM Operations at Culture Amp, said, “[There’s] always [an] evolving view [which] depends on the sales motions. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all stack.”
Alana Zimmer, Senior Manager of Customer Ops at GoSite, agreed, “There's no perfect tech stack because each team is different, their customers are different, the product is different. [There are some that] I like their UI or UX better, there are some tools that are better designed to survive in this COVID 2.0 world that we live in, and that are mobile-first or just remote-friendly.”
Agnostic was a popular word when it came to software brands. Spencer Parikh, founder of ioAudio, said, “I've seen and deployed a lot of these different systems. I go back to what the culture is, what kind of data we are going to need in the near term, and what the integrations are in the back end. I try to stay agnostic and just look at what the business issues are. What's the culture ready for? What are we trying to accomplish?”
Several interviewees discussed how the lack of a standardized stack may be holding RevOps back from standardization and acceptance, whether it’s exact software or the categories of tools discussed later in this chapter.
Dana Therrien, Senior Sales Specialist of Sales Performance Management at Anaplan, said, “I'm surprised at this point that we're trying to still figure out what the ideal tech stack is for B2B sales, marketing, customer success, and that we all pretty much build it independently of one another. I don't know when that problem will be solved. You’ll just have an out-of-the-box solution that says, we thought about all these problems, the measurements that are required, and how to produce that for the people. And here it is. No, instead, we all pick and choose the components of the tech stack that we want. We assemble it in our own way.”
On a similar note, Nicole Periera, Founder and CEO at Remotish, said, “I don't know if there's a RevOps stack out there. And maybe that's what there needs to be. Maybe that's the evolution of where we're going, [which] is the RevOps stack.”
Depending on a company's size or stage of maturity was a common theme for most of the research question answers, and this question was no different.
Sylvain Guiliani, Head of Growth at Census, said he is very opinionated on specific tools and anti-third-party integration tools since it’s hard to get the data flow right. He also discussed choosing tools based on company size, among other considerations. “For me, what is the problem? And what's the tool to solve that problem or to implement the process that solves that problem? And different situations [need] different tools...whatever is the right tool for the job for the right time. There's no reason to start with best in class, [for example] if you have a sales team of three people, I don't think you want to roll out Salesforce right away. Even though you're probably going to end up using Salesforce when you have like 30 sales reps,” Sylvain said.
Mike Rizzo, Manager of Community and Loyalty Programs at Mavenlink and founder of the MO Pros community, said, “I think every business can use tools effectively and efficiently, and they can be different tools. It just really depends on what you need. My preferred first-choice tool is to go to HubSpot and then see what I can or cannot use for a client. From there, I don't think anybody needs Salesforce out-of-the-box as a CRM. There are so many products out there that you don't need right away when you're in that small-to-mid-size business. You don't need that giant beast of a product that requires a ton of help to get it going. But at some point, you might.”
Similar to the proposed definition of RevOps and the order of the main principles in this book, in their answers to the tech stack question, several experts chose to talk about how tools are less important than people and processes.
Lorena Morales, VP of Marketing at Go Nimbly, said, “I'm the type of marketer who prefers to focus on people on processes first, rather than on the shiny new tool. ... And secondly, you have to have processes and people really well-defined before you even jump into talking about buying something. It's very detrimental for the organization to try to find your miracles in the tools; that's never going to happen.”
Another ‘people’ consideration is having enough people and the right people to architect and support specific software, which ties back into the size and stage of the team and organization.
Nicole Smith, Revenue Operations Consultant at Winning By Design, said, “Salesforce is incredibly robust; that said, it’s very easy to overcomplicate it. The key here is to ensure you have a certified Salesforce administrator who understands the system and what functionality to use and enable based on requirements. Ideally, this person also has an operational background or mindset to really be able to marry the technology with the process in a simplified way. (lots of good other notes on general systems needed and why).”
Crissy Saunders, Co-Founder and Principal Consultant at CS2 Marketing, said, “My simple answer is one that has enough bodies, budget to support it, and I also have a case built for it already.“
Jeff Ignacio, Head of Revenue and Growth Operations at UpKeep, talked about a ‘people’ consideration of the ease of finding talent who is well-versed in certain software when choosing software. “I can find talent, [so the] total cost of ownership is low for me because I know how to recognize and spot great talent, at least in Salesforce,” Jeff said.
Instead of only listing specific software brands, several experts also discussed the types or categories of tools to include in a stack, which could be a solution to standardizing a tech stack in addition to considerations such as size.
Jeff Ignacio also spoke on this topic. “I think a CRM is critical, a marketing automation platform … and a sales engagement platform, which is a new category that emerged over the last ten years, [such as] SalesLoft and Outreach. I've used both. My current company is an emerging capital company, so we tend to buy from our own portfolio, and that's why we are looking at SalesLoft. I'm also a big fan of Outreach, and I think they are well-versed in the space. I do think you need a data enrichment solution… Other tools that I enjoy from an admin’s perspective are some sort of data loading solution that allows me to mass update, insert, and delete records. I do think a backup solution makes sense… [and] anything that allows me to get my sales development team and my sales team to talk to leads on the inbound basis within five minutes,” Jeff said.
Maggie Butler, Senior Solutions Marketing Manager for Operations at HubSpot, has a way to categorize the types of tools further. She said, “The way that we think about our tech stack is in a system of three: our system of record, our system of engagement, and our system of content.”
Adam Tesan, CRO at Chargebee, said, “I think there are some mission-critical components that you have to have in your tech stack. What those are is up for evaluation and determined by the specific needs of the business. But then you obviously have a centralized CRM system, [and] you’re going to have a marketing automation tool. In my mind, that means you have to have a sales enablement tool, which is pretty critical. And then, depending on the nature of your business again, we have a lot of lead gen tools…[and tools for sales] enrichment of those leads. Sales enablement tools…we use a lot. [In] customer success, we have an NPS tool that helps us drive the NPS…they use another tool called Term Zero, which is very specific to customer success functions and how to really hone into managing churn and retention, which in SaaS businesses are pretty important. And then there are some interesting tools that were probably nice to have before this new world got us all locked down. We just implemented a tool …to send gifts to prospects, either as part of your campaign or your sales guy…. You can send them a box of donuts and some coffee to their team [when that is no longer possible in person during COVID]. The marketing and sales teams can use it to help enhance their prospecting. So I think that's a cool tool. And then, sales screens are a virtualized gamification version of what you'd see in a typical sales pitch [in person] where you have the big screen over you. Now, that's not possible [so] that allows us to send around to the distributed force around the whole organization with leaderboards, and different metrics and reporting tools that everybody can log in and see. It really gamifies that aspect of it, which I think is important in this environment that we're working in. And then… there are a lot of cool AI tools that are being overlaid or integrated into CRM tools. I think there are cool usages for some of those.”
Two themes about integrations were mentioned in the responses to this question. One theme was choosing multi-use tools that did many things, compared to point solutions that were good for one type of task or activity.
Rosalyn Santa Elena, Head of Revenue Operations at Clari, said, “I personally have selected one tool over another, and then I go to another company and pick the different one. I think it's because it really depends on the selling motion, how you do business, and how you go to market, but it also depends on the size and stage of your company. In terms of what you need … the most important [factor] is to purchase tools that solve multiple business use cases and solve most multiple use cases that you have…that you're picking tools that are going to solve more than one thing because the last thing you want is to have 12 tools in your tech stack, which most of us do...and you're thinking, ‘This is great.’ Then you go in, and nothing talks to each other, they're not configured properly, the users aren't using them, you've got all these licenses that are assigned, but you go in, and nobody's even logged in. Or they're not configured to really maximize and optimize the value of the tool...a mistake I have seen is where you implement something, and you have to rip and replace it with a different tool because you find out it doesn't scale.”
Nicole Pereira, founder and CEO of a HubSpot agency, was unsurprisingly a HubSpot advocate for its multi-use approach. “HubSpot is uniquely positioned to be an all-in-one system where everything could live in there. Obviously, you may need auxiliary tools to hook into their platform if they are unable to deliver what you need, like a robust proposal system. But in theory, there's a whole lot in this tool where you don't need to leave the engine to do much of anything [else], and you can see a start-to-finish journey of your customers. Are they perfect? Do they have everything you always will need? No, but out of all the other systems, I feel like they've done a better job keeping it contained in one,” Nicole said.
A common task for RevOps in uncertain economic environments is to reduce the tech stack budget, which can prompt consolidating the duplication of tools or features and relying more on multi-use, muti-team tools.
Lauren Nickels, Director of GTM Operations at Blackline, said, “We're looking at ways not necessarily to reduce [the tech stack], but to reduce redundancy. So, part of my quantifiable goals tied to this project was consolidation... the goal is to stop buying tech that we don't need or stop buying tech that is only necessarily helpful to one group. But [considering software] that might have broader application.”
The second integration theme in the tech stack answers was choosing tools that could integrate well with the existing tools. Whether the tools had one purpose or multiple purposes for multiple teams was less critical than if they could connect well so the necessary data could follow well between tools and provide accurate visibility to the customer journey. Jeff Ignacio mentioned this point in his answer about why he likes Salesforce, for example. Mallory Lee, Senior Director of Operations at Terminus, also discussed selecting tools based on their Salesforce integrations and flexibility.
Leore Spira, Head of Revenue Operations of Syte, said, “My mission at every company is to create a 360 customer overview. I believe in transparency. All the departments should know everything about the revenue machine and how it works. But I do believe in stakeholders and each stakeholder should be responsible for a specific milestone in the process. So this is part of technology, we have to know which tools are relevant for each department, how will this system [help them] succeed and achieve their goals and KPIs...we manage a lot of integrations, because every integration means that we bring data to the system, and the data should be clean. We have to keep [that in] mind, we have to keep our data clean. So [that] all the reports, insights, and dashboards we provide reflect reality, or at least almost 20% of reality. Because I do believe in a decision-making process based on data, and not on gut feeling.”
Jonathan Fianu, Head of Revenue Operations at ComplyAdvantage, also talked about integrations and starting with guiding principles before choosing a stack. He mentions he has too many tools right now. “The team is too well serviced in this regard, and we need to collapse and consolidate some of the areas. ...the CRM sits at the heart of the stack. Everything should be coming in and out of that. That should be your single version of truth...CPQ system...CRM lifecycle management, ...I'm pretty much system agnostic, as long as it can all be centrally reported, reconciled, etc. with a bi-directional sync, multi-directional is preferred,” Jonathan said.
One anonymous executive talked about questioning the stack if you’re not using one of the industry-leading tools, possibly implying that the leading tools are more likely to integrate with a greater variety of other tools. ”Use one of the three category leaders for every vertical of your tech stack and make sure that they integrate and work together. And beyond that, it doesn't matter,” they said.
Hilary Headlee, Head of Global Sales Ops and Enablement at Zoom, had a unique point about choosing the companies that are good partners and educate you to help you out, instead of software companies who forget about you after you buy from them.
“I don't have a preferred tech stack, per se; I think there are a handful of tools and applications that I have found extremely helpful over the years…But what I think is actually more important is those companies that have been really strong partners for me and [for] the companies that I have been at. What I mean by that is, they are constantly leaning in to help, offering best practices, they want to send you a root cause analysis if something goes wrong, they've got great events, they include you… They treat you like a partner and not just somebody who's given them money. That's been a big differentiator, especially as of late for me. You don't have to have the most whiz-bang pieces if you're going to go to the mat with us to help make something better," Hilary said.
Hilary continued, "And so that's why I don't have an ideal tech stack. I think there are new players popping up all the time who understand that importance. And then there are companies that have just been really good at that. And [some software companies have an] understanding of the importance of the operations roles, and so they always have a little bit of a leg up… where they're not constantly calling my boss to see what's happening, and they know that we [in operations] own it and run it, and that you got to kind of make us happy first, because we'll influence what our boss says. I think that's a great way for folks to look at the ideal tech stack…and it sounds so obvious… that relationship piece just goes a long way… we had vendors that were on the phone with us at three in the morning when [we had] unprecedented demand... And those were really great partners.”
As you have seen in this research, though there isn’t one preferred tech stack, there are many agreed-upon considerations you should evaluate when choosing the software for your RevOps and revenue teams.
Thank you to all the experts for their thoughts!
Part three of this chapter will be published soon!
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