SVP, Revenue Operations, Strategy, and Enablement: Carolyn Mellor of Procore Technologies

Carolyn Mellor, SVP, Revenue Operations, Strategy, and Enablement at Procore Technologies, jumped onto the Sales Ops Demystified Podcast to share her knowledge and experience in leadership and sales operations. Check out all the other episodes of Sales Operation Demystified here.

Connect with Carolyn and Procore Technologies here:

• Carolyn Mellor 
• Procore Technologies

Tools Mentioned:

• Salesforce

Key Takeaways

Carolyn’s journey into sales operations

Carolyn worked in sales operations before it even existed; she first started working in a car dealership where she automated the system. She designed, coded, and maintained dealership websites transferred the deals and commissions into a database. After rendering her services and knowledge in a car dealership, she joined PayPal and served as a project manager. Currently, Carolyn is a senior vice president at Procore Technologies.  

Carolyn thinks that sales operations are diverse; marketing enthusiasts, tech geeks, and people who want to automate things, everyone have something to contribute towards sales operations.

How has sales operations formalized in the last ten years?

Carolyn says that the advent of digital marketing has played a crucial role in formalizing sales operations. Technology also played a significant role; it helped in the automation of the whole system.

She thinks that the new internet technologies have improved customer relationship management (CRM) and digital marketing.

Overview of sales tech at Procore

Carolyn’s company, Procore Technologies, focuses on achieving high business growth. They design smart business solutions that make the growth of the business exponent. They look across marketing and sales to make them synchronized and make sure that they follow the same tools.

Procore Technologies also looks across the revenue motion and work on what they can do to make it better. They spend money in the best way possible; scaling is very important for them. They invest in businesses and technologies that scale with them and create solutions that iterate with them.

Challenges of being remote

According to Carolyn, her team has performed exceedingly well whilst being remote. As the company went remote, the customers also went through a significant change, and the only target of Procore was to deal with the customers empathetically. It was not just a change; it was a declaration. The company worked on its long-term plan and its strategy for the next months or years. 

Carolyn’s only focus was to be remote-friendly and serve the customers in the best way possible to overcome the remote environment’s challenges. 

How the company plans to cope up with COVID-19 and the remote environment?

Carolyn says the only goal is to remain remote-friendly. Procore has campuses in the United States and globally. Effective communication among the employees and the executives will remain persistent. The company is now focusing on when will be the right time to go back to the offices. 

Targets and objectives over the last few months

The company adapted to COVID by making small changes, but the mission remained the same. They made sure that the revenue team will interact with the customers to serve them in the best way possible. 

Carolyn mentioned that the key to achieving the targets and objectives was communication and coordination among the executives and employees through video conferencing. 

Changes in the forecasting process in the last few months

There were many alterations in the forecasting process due to COVID-19. The company double-down on forecasting and started focusing on what they should be doing and operating in this new normal.

Again, the forecasting process was successful only due to communication, weekly conversations with the executives on the economy, what’s happening out there, and the solutions. 

#1 sales metric: productivity analysis on each stage of the sales funnel

Productivity is the metric that Carolyn loves to follow, whether moving in between the pipelines or closed deals. Productivity analysis the key to everything that the company does. It allows you to see things from a different perspective and ask questions about how you need to change things and give more to the team.

At the end of the day, productivity is the base of everything. It is the crux of the company, not only for Procore but for any company. In Carolyn’s view productivity should be placed as a significant KPI, as when you have a deep understanding of what you measure, you can measure it systematically. Consistency is essential; being consistent and having information on what you are measuring is super important.

Has the metric changed in the last few months?

Procore has followed the same metric. The only things that changed due to COVID were the objectives and key results. The impacts have not changed a bit; the company is only focusing on the things that they need to focus on. 

Changing a small thing is easier than changing the whole metric system Procore has only changed its OKRs. 

Carolyn’s biggest influence: 

Carolyn also mentions her first boss, who played an influential role in her career. He was unable to understand the technical stuff, and he handed over this responsibility to Carolyn. She was empowered with making the decisions and automating the profit & loss. 

Carolyn’s mentor taught her productivity, saving costs, and how essential sales operations are in business.

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