Sales Ops Demystified: Cris Santos of Pluralsight

Cris Santos jumped onto Sales Operations Demystified to share her knowledge and experience in Sales Operations. In this video she was able to answer most of sales operations challenges in today’s innovative era.
Check out all the other episodes of Sales Operations Demystified here.
You can learn more about:

• Cris Santos
• PluralSight

 

Video:

Podcast:

Tools Mentioned:

• Salesforce
• Eloqua
• Marketo
• Hubspot
• NC Squared
• Pluralsight
• Docusign
• DiscoverOrg
• Traction Hierarchies
• Apttus
• InsideSales
• Ambition
• Level Eleven

 

Transcript:

Host: Hello and welcome to another ed of Sales Ops Demystified. Today, we’re joined by Chris Santos who has over 10 years sales ops experience at companies such as DocuSign, Quantcast, and now at Pluralsight. Cris, welcome to the show.

Cris: Thank you. Delighted to be here.

Host: I’m going to kick off with the first question. How did you initially get into sales ops because I can see from your history, you did have time in business in different roles so how did you make that journey?

Cris: Unlike a lot of people who end up in sales ops because they either started in finance or in consulting, I never thought or saw myself as actually joining the corporate world. When I was in college, I wanted to be a diplomat because I really wanted to change the world and I thought that I could change the world to become a better place. I wanted to be a diplomat, that’s what I studied to be. That’s why I joined the military. I was a naval officer for four years. That’s where I actually started working in strategy and operations in a military setting. A lot of people get a little bit confused and say how are the two worlds connected? They’re extremely connected so much because the areas and the concepts, strategy, and operations were basically created in the military so much that actually, I spent a lot of my time. I was assigned to a training unit.

We actually hosted a lot of training sessions with business people about team-building activities, leadership, strategic thinking, Agile methodology, a lot of those concepts. Actually, it was those business people that started triggering the interest in me because they said, “Have you ever considered leaving the military and moving to business because we probably needed someone like you?” That made me very curious about it. I always wanted to live abroad, I was spending some time abroad with the military, and having exposure to that.

I came to Ireland to visit my sister who has been living here. The business world here is so dynamic and there are so many companies looking for people with my background in terms of multilingual, et cetera that it was quite easy to get a job. This was back in 2008 so at the time of the crisis. I started in a sales role because it was the easiest back then. I realized that I really wanted to spend time in the behind-the-scenes, “Where do we go next? What is the next market?” and those things. I was given assignments that were not exactly sales-related. They started giving me SWOT analysis because I was so curious about it at the time I was working for Allianz, a subsidiary of Allianz, the insurance company. I was lucky enough to be in a subsidiary that was growing outside of Europe. I worked with Latin America and Africa. It appealed so much to my prior experience of working in international relations and diplomacy, et cetera.

I just got really interested and I just decided it’s time to find a job in an operations because that’s my passion, that’s where I really like working with salespeople but I like being behind the scenes with them to make them more effective than actually being myself a seller. That’s why I moved to operations and that’s when I moved to BMC Software, a very well-established company where I learned a lot from my manager at the time who was really important, from my colleagues who were a lot more experienced in sales ops than I was in business. It was a great school but it was a very well-established company. I really liked getting my hands dirty and help scaling businesses. Obviously, BMC was already a pretty well-established company. That’s how I made the move to other companies that were less-established, less mature. That’s how I developed my career. I’ve had experiences at Quantcast and then four years at DocuSign which was definitely a very special experience and very successful. Now here at Pluralsight to help the same, scaling the business internationally and making it successful.

Host: Four years in the Navy and then how many years selling?

Cris: Two and a half years.

Host: Two and a half years and then the rest [unintelligible 00:05:01] operations? Cool.

Cris: The rest, yes.

Host: Cool. We’ve had no one else on the podcast who has military service so it’s super interesting. The work you’re doing today in sales ops in Pluralsight, were you doing similar things in the operations in the Navy?

Cris: The concepts are the same. The strategic thinking is always about– Having been with several companies so far, some companies make the mistake of only dealing with the tactical day-to-day but they never have a strategic plan. I would say what the Navy and the military really gave me was you always need to have a plan. Sometimes, it’s plan A and B and C because you need to be agile because sometimes what you expect, especially in business, financial modeling is very interesting but you probably need to take into account. You probably meet scenario one, two, and three because sometimes circumstances change.

In the military, circumstances can change, the stakes are very high, right? We’re talking about lives and very serious things. I think for sure, the concepts I learned there, the agility, being resourceful, getting things done because the stakes are so high that you have to get things done, otherwise, you’re not progressing, you’re not being successful, lives there at risk. I oftentimes tell my teams when they get worried about things that it’s not lives that are at stake but the basics of how I work, I do apply still my military concepts because it’s like, “We need to get things done. We need to get this done and it needs to be done now.”

There is a sense of urgency. I don’t know, maybe it was my military background, maybe it was my sales background. There is a sense of urgency that sometimes I see in other groups, in ops groups, or in finance groups that do not have the same sense of urgency. For sure, the strategic thinking, a sense of I’m never entirely happy with how things are. There’s always something that we can improve so I’m naturally unhappy with how things are even if they are doing really well.

I always think we can improve a little bit more, there has to be improvement because especially in tech. That’s why I really moved away from insurance and financial services and moved to tech, it’s so fast-paced, it’s so competitive. You need to be always on the forefront. That’s definitely something that I take from the military. You need to always be ahead of your enemies, always innovating. You always think about resourcing, planning, and logistics so it’s the same here. In sales operations, it’s the same, always thinking about, “How many sellers we need? How are we going to make them successful? How are we going to train them?”

In the military, it’s the same. It’s exactly the same, the concepts are the same. I don’t see any difference almost, honestly. [laughs] I mean this in a positive way?

Host: Yes. We could write a book about translating learnings in the military to sales but that’s probably a separate podcast. What do you think makes an awesome sales ops person?

Cris: Someone who challenges the status quo, for sure, someone who obviously has opinions and is able to read a situation and make an opinion about it, but also someone who listens. I do think that it’s important for ops people to listen to the business and the units that they support. Oftentimes, I come across ops and strategic people that never listen. They just have an idea and go with it. For example, I also have ideas of my own and perspectives on certain ways of doing business but I always listen because the product is not the same, the company is not the same, the values might not be the same so you always need to listen.

At the end of the day, companies are made of people. As ops and strategy people, we need to influence a lot if we want to get things done. You obviously need to listen to your stakeholders and your partners and make sure that you speak in a language that they understand. Otherwise, you don’t get anything done. I would say that from having that inherent quality of getting things done, being knowledgeable, and having ideas but also being able to listen to other people.

I’ve seen that ops people oftentimes, the ops department becomes the unbiased department in a company. The one that doesn’t have any dogs in the fight, that all we want is to drive efficiency and revenue, regardless if it’s sales or marketing driven. We’re not driven by that. We want what’s best for the company. I would say, it’s definitely listening and always challenging, asking questions. Listening, asking questions, challenging the status quo and saying, “Did it work, the playbook that we’ve been using, has it been working, Has it been successful, and even if it has, how can we make it better, how can we overcome?”

It’s a combination of being active but also listening to people, talking to other departments because I think in ops, we do hold the keys to a holistic view of the business, combining all elements. That it’s not just the pipeline and the lead that comes in, it’s now it’s actually moving through the funnel. It’s how the [unintelligible 00:10:58] is put together. It’s different things.

Host: On the status quo piece, have you got an example or a story of when you’ve done that and it’s led to– where you challenge something that’s happening and you challenge that and changed it and then it led to better results.

Cris: I would say I’ve come across the situation a few times which is, precisely because I’ve been working for long with American companies, is them coming to terms that when you decide to go to Europe or internationally, that the playbook, even for a very well established and successful company in the US, that playbook might not play the same way. Might not get the same results when you go to Europe because people are like, “When I am here, we’re going to use the same book.” Well, let me tell you something, Europe is several countries and I always use the analogy of tea with milk, which sounds very appealing in UK and Ireland.

To be honest, I’m a Southern European, tea with milk, not an appealing idea to me. The same input gets a different output. I think that sometimes challenging that, it is a challenge because you need to talk to your– sometimes your bosses and managers back at HQ in US and explain to them that, “Hey, guys, the scoring model that we have in place is not going to work here, we’re going to have to tweak it.” Or a certain way of prospecting on the sales development side. Here if we decide to go to Germany, for example, we’re probably going to have to tweak the way we write our emails.”

I would say, that that is an example, especially with my experience of working with American HQed companies. Oftentimes my first challenge is– It’s not like I get pushback, it’s precisely telling, “We’re going to have to probably be cognizant that we might have to customize your playbook to something different, to appeal to a European audience, if we’re talking about Europe or to a Brazilian audience. For example, recently we were working with Brazil and being very close to that culture obviously, it’s a culture that is very driven by oral communication.

Emails are not very successful. When you go back and you explain to your US HQ that, “We’re going to have to get phones up and running because in Brazil it’s all about talking over the phone.” For them, it was kind of, “Really, they can’t do emails?” Well, they can but it’s not culturally in business it’s not as successful. If we want to be successful, we’re probably going to have to get some phones up and running. That is an example.

Host: Were Quantcast, DocuSign, and Pluralsight, all HQed in the US?

Cris: Yes. Correct. Yes.

Host: You’ve had to manage that. You much be pretty good in doing it now, right?

Cris: I think so, yes. It started with BMC, also HQed in the US. Yes, I’m pretty used to. All my managers so far have been based out of the US. For 10 years, pretty much.

Host: Do you think that sales experience is necessary to succeed in sales operations?

Cris: Not really. No. I think it makes it easier, make it faster for you to understand the sales side. If you have prior experience in sales, you know the language, you know what makes them tick. I found that because I worked in sales, I knew their sense of agency. I could understand better and faster, once I moved to an ops role. Having worked and having team members in the teams that I’ve managed that never had a sales background and came– They struggled initially with, “Oh,–” It’s like they want things for yesterday and sometimes adapting your language to make sure that, “Hey, you need to be straightforward with salespeople, with sales leaders.”

They have this way of working and you’re not going to change them. Actually, we want them to be that. We want them to be kind of stubborn and we want them not to accept a no, that’s what makes them a good seller. I would say it’s not critical, it just makes it easier in the beginning for you to create a relationship with them, just makes it faster, that’s it. I don’t think it’s a critical experience.

Host: I think that’s what you experienced when you started, when you moved over, you found it much easier.

Cris: Yes. I didn’t have, let’s call it, a cultural crash because I knew where they were coming from. It was quite easy to adapt to that whereas I’ve seen other people taking longer, lets put it like that, trying to come terms, if that was the right choice or not. For example, I do think that whatever background you have, that if you are supporting sales, that you should do the same sales certification that they do. You understand what methodology and that’s something that I always enforce my team members, is that whatever methodology, whether it’s [unintelligible 00:16:32] challenger that you do that as well so that you understand where they’re coming from.

That you also understand the value of the product you’re selling because if you– You don’t need to be an expert because you’re not putting orders together and discussing pricing with customers but you need to understand what the value of the company, the valued proposition USPs are. That way, you also think better on how to strategies around the sales teams and how to make them more efficient. If you don’t know what product your company is selling and you don’t know the values then, no, you’re not doing a great job. It’s going to be much harder to assist and be a good sales ops partner.

Host: Cool. To know that you don’t have to have actually gone sold it.

Cris: No.

Host: Let’s shift over to technology. Right now at Pluralsight, what are you currently using?

Cris: I think right now the tech stack across several sales companies is pretty much the same. You need to get your CRM. I’m agnostic, obviously, I’ve been using past the advertising salesforce for several years, that’s the CRM system I’ve seen being used the widest. Whatever it is, you need to have your CRM platform in place. You need to have a marketing automation tool, again, agnostic to that, I’ve worked with Eloqua, Marketo, Hubspot, depends on the company.

You need to have in place a redistribution engine, that’s definitely something that I’ve seen as being critical. Again, it depends but a lead distribution engine to streamline. You don’t just have lead Qs set up in your CRM but you actually have a lead distribution engine so you can turn on and off. You can push leads into certain individuals, you can customize the lead assignment much more efficiently and faster.

Host: Would that be custom built or is there–

Cris: No. Again, I’ll pass the [unintelligible 00:18:34] NC Squared is definitely something that Pluralsight has and DocuSign also had. It’s quite powerful. Then any sort of InsideSales tool. Either InsideSales or Outreach have definitely the ones that I’ve become familiar with over the years. They provide a similar service. With differences and both being very powerful but again, also important tools to make the work of sales development or business development whatever you want to call it, more efficient that you can track metrics. How long is it taking, how many calls you’re placing, all those metrics are very important to track.

A lot of companies use discover.org to get mapping of organizations. Traction Hierarchies is also another tool that is very useful, especially when you start scaling your business and your sales or organization and you have certain AEs looking certain group of accounts and then in other regions you have another AE and making sure that the AEs connect together and they’re able to see directly in the CRM, who owns what? If there are open opportunities, I’ve definitely seen that working really well. What else? A CPQ system, critical. A system that that allows you to place orders, that allows the sales team to self serve and get the SKUs they want in a faster and those automated approval workflows in terms of discounts.

Host: What does the [unintelligible 00:20:12] stand for?

Cris: I think it’s– oh my god, it’s something quoting. It’s to allow to quote. [unintelligible 00:20:22] is a popular tool, for example, but there are others out there in the market that offer the same type of services. Obviously, I mean, I worked there for four years, but it needs signature companies quite critical nowadays, so obviously DocuSign is really good at it. Pluralsight does use DocuSign and obviously, I was using DocuSign before I joined DocuSign.

A new signature company that makes sure that whatever orders the sellers are placing are immediately signed by customers, that is critical and that should be embedded in your entire contract or their life cycle to streamline the process. That was one of the first things I asked Pluralsight, “You are using a new signature solution, right?” Because that’s, that shows that you’re invested in making your sales processes as efficient as possible.

Host: I just want to jump into the DocuSign experience, because I can imagine over that three to four years, they would have grown pretty substantially. When you did join, how many people were within the, I guess, I think it was a mere sales team and then how many people were there when you left?

Cris: Very few. We were probably all together in outside of the West. DocuSign was already pretty big in North America, obviously. Here we were probably 30 here in Dublin, and 20 people in London so it was very small. I joined DocuSign in the year of all acquisitions, as we kind of say. DocuSign made three acquisitions internationally so we grew a lot in a very short period of time, and then it scaled past the acquisitions, then it naturally grew a lot in the core. When I left, we had hundreds of people, just in Dublin hundreds of them. DocuSign is public, so it’s publicly available that when the new fiscal year was launched, it international represented 17% of the company’s revenue when I started, it was 2%. It was a pretty aggressive growth and an amazing experience, to be quite honest.

Host: How was that having to bring in, I guess, sales resources from other acquired companies into your team and onboard them in the process?

Cris: It’s always complicated. Here again, as I said, we’re dealing with people, and people that had a certain company or corporate culture. I have to say, I worked with all of them. I was very fortunate to have really good experiences with the sellers that I worked with, and create a connection, but precisely because I listened to them. Whenever, “Hey, you’re going to Paris and meet the team”, we did at the south and integrate them into some new manager or something like that.

I was very fortunate that I had a really sensible and experienced people on the other side. Also, I guess I just listened to them and they felt that they could voice whatever concerns they had. At the same time, I didn’t have a very kind of open culture that we want– we made the acquisition, we want to make it successful and the results are there to show. Again, I would say it’s very important that you listen, that you just don’t go there and force things upon people because you can’t force them, but there’s a way of being more– you can influence rather than impose. I guess the military trained me well in terms of influencing people without them feeling that they’re being pushed, even if I am pushing on something.

Host: I didn’t hear much allegiance or any titles, but if you had to choose the favorite and you can’t use DocuSign.

Cris: [chuckles] DocuSign is definitely one of the favorites. Well, I have to say, based on some of the things, I think the gamification tool. When I mentioned the inside sales, a tool that the inside sales, business dev can use gamification, there’s a few out there in the market. Gamification creates a sort of competition, healthy competition within the sales development organization where you can– It’s basically you’re showing the leaderboard of who makes the biggest amount of calls, who creates more opportunities, and you get music, and you get videos, and they choose.

We need to be aware that a sales development organization is mostly comprised of young people. This is their first job, so you need to make sure that the environment is cool and fun because the job can be hard. You need to clean up data and deal with sales, attitudes, etcetera. Creating a gamification and having a gamification tool and getting that hype in the office with the music going on, with the competition of who’s the best, it drives results, believe it or not. I’ve, in the past few years, I’ve become a big fan of gamification tools.

Host: Can you name one?

Cris: Inside sales has it as a native, so it’s good. I’ve seen it up and running. Ambition is a small company, and I pass the advertising gear, great tool. Eleven Eleven is also another one, but for sure, Ambition, I’ve seen it as a very cool interface with videos. For my colleagues out there, and if they are considering gamification, yes, have a look at Ambition. It’s a small company, but definitely worth any integrates with Outreach which has become quite popular as well, so it’s a really cool interface.

Host: Are you guys using Ambition at the moment?

Cris: We used it at DocuSign, yes.

Host: Cool. Awesome. Okay, moving on. How do you deal with data quality? How’s your role interface with the CRM owner?

Cris: Yes, so data quality is an issue I think for a lot of companies. I think the first thing is, there should definitely be a data quality owner that can sit in sales office, can sit in IT, I don’t have personal– as long as it works, as long as they are initiatives around the clock almost. That it’s not kind of an afterthought, that, “Oh, if things are looking really bad, then we do some data cleanup,” no. It needs to be a constant, as in someone needs to be monitoring how accounts get created, what standards they need to abide to. A big struggle is to find there is no such thing, and please I’m proven wrong, I haven’t been proven wrong yet.

There is no such thing as a perfect data provider for North America and international data. I’ve seen across and talking with colleagues in the same area, they all struggle. It’s very difficult to find even the likes of the D&B, it’s very good in terms of North American data, but once we go internationally, especially on smaller companies, or even mid-size companies, the data is not good, the hierarchies are broken.

Data is very, very important so it should be and I interact a lot. Here, I’m pretty new with Pluralsight so I’m still trying to understand but in the past, I’ve always worked very closely. I didn’t have myself the mandate and thank God because I have other things to worry about. Obviously, giving suggestions of local data providers, for core markets, for example, in Europe. There are some companies out there that have become very specialized in certain countries, and you should partner with them and precisely have a data quality team that is constantly driving initiatives around data enrichment, data cleanup, D duping, all of that.

It should be a constant, because data is critical, for insights and for the work of any ops person and any decisions on go-to market. If the data is dirty your insights might be also incorrect, you’re not looking at the right trend. I think it’s critical and oftentimes, data quality is not top of mind for companies, and it should, because it can be your differentiator in the marketplace in terms of getting the right insights out of the business. If the data is wrong, your conclusions are wrong as well.

Host: Taking more of a preventative approach, like doing exercise to prevent getting ill versus taking some pills after you’ve got ill. Is that a good analogy?

Cris: Yes, for sure. Again, I go back to my military roots, you should plan for the unexpected. Actually, I would say the best sales ops person is the one that doesn’t just react to what is going on, is that we are able to predict something that might happen. Actually, sales ops people oftentimes are in charge of forecasting with the sales leaders. You should be pretty good at forecasting the future in a way. If you look at trends and then you add some qualitative inputs into it you can actually say, “You know what? If we continue this way our sales cycle will get longer. If we continue this way our winter rate will go down.” I would say the perfect sales ops person is precisely the one that not just reacts to what is going on, you predict a little bit the future.

Host: [unintelligible 00:30:50] is writing that down, not just reacting.

Cris: It’s not magic, it’s literally science and data. You just identify the trend because that’s the thing. You look at trends and the data and you add some qualitative input because you’re there. You’re with the reps and you know what’s going on and then you can infer a scenario for the future or maybe, “Hey, guys, if we continue this way we might go–” as I said, “We might see a sales cycle going up or we can actually see a sales cycle going down or our retention rates will decrease if we continue this way.” I think that’s why sales ops is so important is to precisely anticipate challenges or anticipate and identify opportunities for growth before they even get you.

That’s why I love ops so much is precisely the ability to be almost like an oracle of stuff. I don’t want to just tell you not because that’s obvious. I want to tell you what might happen for the better or for worse.

Host: Seeing the future.

Cris: Yes.

Host: What would you say is the biggest challenge in your role?

Cris: I would actually say the most exciting thing and at the same time, it ends up being a challenge is that you need to be very cross-functional and cross-departmental. That we can’t work in a silo and just see from one perspective is precisely that– as I said, it becomes a challenge but also the most exciting thing about this is the fact that you’re going to have to work with people that have very different ways of thinking. You’re going to have to work with finance who are completely plugged in a different way to sellers. You’re going to have to work with marketing and they tend to be more creative and all of that.

Sometimes you’re going to have to work with product and engineering. I think it’s navigating all these departments and looking from it in a holistic way. You’re almost looking at everything and that is the biggest challenge but for me, it’s also the most interesting thing. As I said, we become the kind of impartial and biased department that gets everything that overall view and say,”Yes, if we do this we are going to have to work alongside everybody to get to the bus which is at the end of the day, which is making the company successful and driving revenue,” which is what I’m always thinking about. Making the company successful.

Host: Right now the department that you’re interfacing with, marketing, obviously sales, customer success, and finance?

Cris: The main ones, yes, I would say. The main ones.

Host: Are there any others that you would have to speak with?

Cris: IT would also be obviously with the dependencies regarding the CRM platform integrations on systems that have an impact on sales, IT would also be a department that I work with on a regular basis.

Host: Second to that question, if you had to choose a single metric to judge your sales reps by, what would you choose?

Cris: The sales reps?

Host: Yes.

Cris: Their ability to hit target then their forecast accuracy. I’m very basic in terms of measuring the sales reps, it’s their ability to hit their target and their ability to forecast that correctly for sure.

Host: Right now, sales reps are achieving their forecasting with that for their own pipeline?

Cris: Yes, their ability to forecast, to be able to make– I’m kidding in a way but I’m not because that’s how they are also measured in the company they work for. For sure, they’re insights of how they run their business. Sales ops puts out together a lot of insights for AE’s and dashboards and how is it that they think about the business? How are they structuring their territories? We give them their territories but then the management of the territories it’s up to the AE to decide, right? What accounts they should be looking after?

Some AEs we are giving them hundreds of accounts. We might even develop an account scoring model that helps them out but in the end, it’s their decision, they’re the CEOs of their own business.

Host: That’s a really interesting point, sorry to jump on that. That’s super interesting and no one has pulled up that before. Looking at the salespeople as essentially being their CEOs and they’re [unintelligible 00:35:56] and their forecast that’s super interesting.

Cris: It’s funny. I’ve worked in the past with sales managers that had this attitude which I completely agree with is the AE’s and the sellers end up being the CEO’s of their little company, right? You have a lot of teams that supports you in your day to day, they’re not alone but you’re the one that is making the decision. Look at what you have available and make a decision, don’t expect someone else to make that decision for you. If they actually pay attention to the matrix they’re given and the feedback they’re given by sales ops, and their customer success people, and their AM’s, and whoever is working the pre-sales consultants, they can actually make really good decision but they need to be the ones making them and thinking strategically about it.

I talk with a lot of AE’s the and I always say, “Take time in your calendar to actually think about how to run your business. Don’t let it run on its own because you might be lucky to land a big deal and make a tone of money but you might also one of those lucky ones. You need to think about it.” I’m saying it out of experience. Take your time to think how to strategize your territory because nobody is going to do that for you. Even if we develop as I said a scan scoring models and all of that but you’re the one talking to the customers, not us.

Host: Harsh but true words for the sales, for the AE. Finally, who taught you what you know or if a person who has guided you the most in respect to sales operations?

Cris: I’ve been fortunate enough to have had really good managers and really good colleagues, peers who are more experienced people. I’ve also been very fortunate to work with very experienced and sensible sales leaders that were my partners. I’ve also positively influenced me and develop my knowledge in terms of sales operations. I’ve been fortunate enough to have more of the good than the bad. I think for sure my first manager at BMC software Todd was very important. We had a similar background he was also a former naval officer so we had a lot of things in common and we thought very similarly and because he was my first official sales ops role in a company, obviously he was very important.

Julie my manager at the Quantcast was also really impactful. At DocuSign, I was fortunate enough to have a first manager who was extremely experienced. He challenged me a lot and I had a person that wasn’t officially my manager but also taught me a lot. I had two very strong sales ops leaders at DocuSign that really, really, despite their experience they always listened to what I said. They asked me questions, I asked them. It was amazing literally, it was such a learning experience for me to be exposed to two people so experienced in the area and also still their friend at the same time. Being exposed to them on a regular basis was really incredible.

Host: I like how you refer to the sales leaders as sensible as if you might not get sensible sales leaders.

Cris: I was very fortunate to work with the sensible sales leaders who also taught me a lot, made my job a lot easier as well.

Host: I have so many insights so I’ll just run through a couple. I think the biggest one that we haven’t heard before is how the mentioned sales reps or the aids being the CEOs with their own little business. Simply saying that to them, I bet it would have such a great impact on their performance because then they’re like, “Actually, yes. I am a CEO.” Then they’ll go back and they’ll strategize and then your theory will be used better a lot so that was really cool.

Also, the best sales ops people predict the future, they don’t just react to what’s happening. You always need a plan or have plan A, B, or C. Challenge the status quo and then sales ops being the least biased department in the organization. Thank you so much for sharing all of that, Cris. That was a really really intense 40 minutes and I’m sure that all of our listeners are really going to enjoy that.

Cris: My pleasure. It was great talking to you.

[00:40:56] [END OF AUDIO]

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