Lizzie (Scolari) Ficken

RevOps job descriptions be like: - Past sales operations experience necessary ❌ What about marketing operations and CS operations? These job descriptions are perpetuating the idea that RevOps is just Sales Ops 2.0. It's not...or it shouldn't be 😊 And just a reminder that TONS of former marketers/MOps professionals are now in the RevOps space. Honestly, I think the best RevOps teams are made up of people with diverse backgrounds: - some coming from sales ops - others from marketing - some from CS - and still others from wildly different backgrounds that help us all think differently Grateful to be part of a team that exemplifies that diversity 👏

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I could talk about product positioning all day. Good product positioning makes it easy for buyers to see themselves, their routines, and their goals reflected in what you're offering them. Sometimes it's shifting your product positioning from "what we do" to "what we do for you". What a dream getting to meet and talk with Daniel Murray of The Marketing Millennials podcast about: ➡ Creating product positioning that resonates (and how we think about it at Recharge ➡ Sustaining brands in the routine economy ➡ Why your first marketing hire should be a product marketer, and more Check out the full episode ✨

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If you are responsible for enablement at your company, your #1 job beyond all others is to get a strong executive sponsor. It might be the CRO, it might be the COO, it might be the CEO, maybe by some miracle it is the CFO. Maybe it's a strong SVP. Title doesn't matter - organizational respect and resource gathering does. Trying to do ANYTHING in enablement without a strong exec sponsor to: 1. Get resources (people, money, attention) 2. Align teams (sales, success, marketing, product....not necessarily in that order) 3. Create priority (over the zillion other things that a company could do) Is a huge waste of time and energy. If you don't have it, create it. If you can't create it, find somewhere you can or accept that your results will be greatly diminished and your work will be generally uninteresting/frustrating.

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Are you ready to breathe new life into your CRM? With our newest release of CRM Embedded Experiences, we're serving up our Sales Navigator's member-powered data, insights, and features directly in a surface you use every day - your CRM. By bringing Sales Navigator directly into your CRM, you are unlocking a pathway for your team to maximize the potential of your CRM, resulting in more focused, effective, and impactful sales efforts. Elevate your team's performance by ensuring they stay within the CRM and extract the maximum value from it. It was such an amazing journey partnering with an all-star team of cross-functional partners here at LinkedIn to build, iterate, and bring to market a feature we know is going to have a tremendous impact on sellers' productivity. There are too many folks to tag here, but to my XFN partners, thank you for all your hard work and dedication on this launch! I couldn't ask for a better team of people to work with. ❤️ #LinkedIn #SalesNavigator #DeepSales #Sales #CRM #Productivity

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I remember the days when Enablement had a squiggly red line underneath when you typed it out, and not a single Sales Leader I spoke to knew what I meant when I said the word... Fast forward to 2024, and tens of thousands of enablement professionals later... welcome to Generation Enablement. 👋 These folks are not defined by their age or their titles, but by their mission critical role & impact on go-to-market strategy, behaviors, and results. See how they drive strategic change across their organizations, and how you can too, in Seismic's latest study. 📖 https://bit.ly/4cSrnFI Learn more about #GenerationEnablement: https://bit.ly/3TPmdSp ​

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How to turn Gong's new ‘Ask Me Anything’ feature into your 'Aha Moment' machine. Creating a strong ‘Aha Moment’ during discovery calls and demos is essential: 💡 Value realization - It makes the prospect instantly grasp the product benefits and how it can solve their problem. 😀 Emotional connection - It triggers feelings of excitement and relief, creating the necessary switch from "Hmm, interesting" to "Wow! This is exactly what I need!". 📈 Boosted conversion - It moves the prospect down the funnel, as they’re eager to learn more about how the product can benefit them. Therefore, providing Revenue teams with these exact lightbulb-turning-on moments is GOLD. ***************** I’ve been experimenting with ‘Ask Me Anything’ for a while and fishing out ‘Aha Moments’ is definitely one of my favorite use cases. This not only helps you save time (remember the days we used to listen to individual calls?) but mainly helps identify these incredibly subjective nuances that come with buyer intent. ***************** Here’s how I go about identifying Aha moments using Gong + two examples: ✅ Step 1 - Define the specific ICP or product you’re looking to get Aha moments for. As an example, the Aha moment for my company’s eCommerce product might vary between SaaS / Agency / Enterprise audiences. ✅ Step 2 - In Gong’s Conversations > Search tab, filter the calls you’d like to analyze (in my case, I filtered by Introduction/Demo calls for the SaaS ICP). If you’re using the same filter frequently, I recommend creating dedicated Streams for that, which will then appear in Conversations > Company library. ✅ Step 3 - At this point, I query each call manually, which allows you to sharpen the prompt if needed and to get full context. This is probably still quicker than the other alternatives. The prompt I used was “What is the aha moment for the customer?” (which required a few revisions BTW, like opting to use the term “customer” rather than “prospect”, as it generated a more elaborate response). ✅ Step 4 - Aggregate all the Aha moments collected and start looking for interesting themes and patterns. Notice that the relevant video snippet is available at the bottom right. ✅ Step 5 - Share share share. For non-revenue teams - I recommend sharing some screenshots on Slack for visibility. You’d be surprised how many ideas this data can evoke (a new concept for customer success stories, for instance). For Revenue teams - What’s nice is that you can share this data in a very granular way, for example: for SaaS Sales reps, I can provide the top three features that triggered Aha moments for SaaS prospects who were shown the new eCommerce product. These insights can then be applied to sharpen various materials like demos, sales enablement assets, email cadences, and more. #productmarketing #saasmarketing #b2bsales #Gong

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Ask any revenue leader about the difficulty in getting sales teams aligned and you’ll hear common themes: ☑ Too many silos ☑ Too much or not enough process ☑ Too much or not enough enablement content ☑ Inefficiencies and communication breakdowns ☑ Unaligned messaging  ☑ Skills gaps ☑ Product adoption ☑ Disparity in headcount allocation ☑ Shifting priorities and processes changes  ☑ And there’s never enough money, time, resources (fill in the blank) to meet the demand Skillibrium can help. We help you look at these problems differently. Our point of view is that no matter the complexity of your GTM, the way forward to achieving cross-functional high performance at scale is simple. Build a Success Cadence. It starts with a focus on your people – Are they willing and able to do the job? With the right people in place, then you build the repeatable process for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual activities.  Are you ready to solve these problems together? Join us on this journey. 🚀 #Enablement #SalesLeadership #GTMstrategy #Skillibrium

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Not all customer success teams look the same. 1️⃣ CSMs working with enterprise customers will have 10-20 customers to work with. Even at this customer count, this might already represent $1M+ in contract value. To get to this level with SMBs, a CSM might have thousands of customers they have to work with. 2️⃣ Based on what I've heard from the CSM community, enterprise customers typically end up being more responsive to conversations around strategic goals and initiatives. Remember: they spent a good chunk of money to make the collaboration successful, too. What does this mean? – Adjust your benchmarking expectations when going from down versus up-market. For example, 130-150% NRR is exceptional for enterprise. For SMB, it'll be lower (100-110%). – Employ diverse tactics for engaging customers. Scaling doesn't mean hiring more CSMS. You'll only ever scale linearly this way. Use 1-to-many approaches to build broader customer success engagements with your customers. 1-to-many suggestions: – Develop a customer journey with key milestones identified. Automate the processes to engage at the right time when milestones are met (e.g., first login, new feature adoption). – Prioritize ruthlessly. Look at the most impactful (e.g., revenue driving, most engaged) customers to build relationships. – Find ways to engage without the engagement being 1-on-1 or highly personalized. Webinars, forums, Slack community, email drip campaigns (work with marketing for the copy!). These still require effort, but are much more manageable than forging 1000s of personal relationships. – Consider tech-touch software for onboarding and support that are embedded in your platform. And as for the high-touch, 1-to-1 engagements? I'd...err, love to talk to you about your problems. 😅 #CustomerSuccess #CSM #CustomerEngagement #SaaS

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Incentives matter... and there's an "incentive paradox" at play when product-led meets sales-led. When you are doing a great job with product education, have transparent pricing, and make it easy for anyone to get started, you will have inherently less meetings as a percentage of traffic. If you are measured on short term performance on meeting volume, it can be tempting to start to add friction back into the process. This is often a mistake. Product-led companies with a sales-led component will often do far better in the long run; as an easy to use, helpful, easy to learn product often attracts more champions, awareness, and funnily enough... demo meetings. You have to work transparently with other teams and to align on the goals and have the tough conversations with the stakeholders ahad of time so you don't find yourself scambling and making rash decisions. #productmarketing

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Curious about how to navigate the ever-changing influencer landscape? Join me tomorrow at Morning Brew's NYC event, "Perfecting Your Influencer IQ" where I'll be speaking with Mae Karwowski, Founder & CEO, Obviously & Kyle Hagge, Chief of Staff, Morning Brew about: 🌟 Consumer Sentiments: Understand the current attitudes and behaviors about influencers. 💡 Maximizing ROI: Strategies to leverage influencer partnerships effectively. 📈 Trends: Discuss the latest trends shaping the influencer landscape and how to stay ahead. It's not too late to register: https://lnkd.in/dwvaDSiZ #InfluencerMarketing #ROI #ConsumerInsights #MarketingTrends #MorningBrew

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My manager and I aren't spending our 1:1 forecast time catching up on my renewals anymore. If something's not going well, I can't deflect and distract with long-winded narratives on what's gone down. She's no longer reliant on my subjective deal update...because she can see everything that's happening herself. In a beautiful twist of 'how time should actually be spent' fate, we now use our time strategizing, not catching up. 🤩 In a single view, Sam Davis can see: - My opportunity's AI deal health score - If we have a mutual action plan/success plan with the buying team - Our email exchanges over the 12 months - Whether I have an upcoming meeting scheduled with my customers There's a part of me that misses my occasional sandbag (sorry Myles Bradwell 😏 ) which isn't really possible anymore. BUT: in the name of spending time more efficiently, more predictable forecasts and quota attainment, and spending time strategizing vs updating... it's an easy trade to make.

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I was pleasantly surprised to see 1Password listed among NYT Wirecutter's top early Prime Day deals on Amazon (July 16-17th). 1Password is a tool I've personally used and recommended for years - even before working here. It not only helps create and store strong, unique passwords for all your accounts, but also offers features like secure document storage and breach monitoring. If you've been considering upping your online security game, consider this 50% off promotion. Investing in your digital safety is always money well spent! #PrimeDay2024 #CyberSecurity

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The SDR-AE collaboration & relationship How should they work together? How do you define what good looks like...and what the hell DOES it look like? How do you document that, make a framework out of it, and scale it across the org? From there, how do you track & measure success? I hit on each point with Brian Dietmeyer on the CloseMode podcast 👀 Find it at all the usual spots: Spotify, YouTube, Apple, Amazon, etc. Link below in comments P.S. SDRs, AEs, Leaders - Would love to hear how you're doing this. Give it a listen & share your thoughts.

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Sales Development Managers can’t just be a CRM DJ 🎧for their SDRs. - “Turn up call volume by 9%” - “Turn up email volume by 14%” - “Turn down total accounts target spread by 7%” You could just have an automated system and AI figure this out for SDRs. We also have to be the producer in this orchestration. This means understanding what style of prospecting fits best for each rep and designing a proper mix of prospecting instruments work best for each person. Dig into each input and work with your reps to figure how the best way to play each instrument with the end goal of getting them to quota. Sweet, sweet melodies 🎶 Hopefully my music minded network appreciates this example and explanation. This came to me as I was playing the piano this morning. 🎹😁 #sales #salesdevelopment #salesmanagement

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The sharpest DTC brands are moving away from a strictly online model in favor of a cohesive omnichannel strategy that incentivizes customers to shop at retail. Let me explain - Imagine being a prospective first-time customer of a DTC protein bar or a better-for-you functional soda brand. They may be interested in your product, but are unwilling to commit to a full pack size and the associated shipping fees just to try your product. What do you do? For customers who cite pain points around online shipping costs, higher costs of goods, or SKU choice, providing a personalized retail offer can provide the flexibility needed for shoppers who’d prefer to find your brand locally. And it’s no secret that the eCommerce sandbox becomes increasingly crowded and more expensive to play in year over year. Now that the dust has settled from its surging successes during the pandemic, it’s been interesting to see which brands double down on their DTC storefronts versus those expanding to retail. When executed well, a cohesive omnichannel approach can better buffer your brand against the volatilities that are all too common in eComm and give your brand the flexibility to maneuver overall strategy more toward DTC or retail channels as is needed. Several B2B attribution tracking platforms and SMS cashback programs (shoutout Aisle) can make personalized retail campaigns a breeze for your brand. Coupled with creative in-house loyalty strategies, brands can deliver a multidimensional customer experience that meets shoppers where they are to boost retention and maximize LTV. But, do these retail offers support our DTC campaigns, or rather cannibalize them? It can be easy to overlook the “cohesive” piece to this strategy. Before implementing any incentives or messaging around pushing DTC customers to retail, it’s important to understand the why behind each of your customer cohorts and what drives them to either shop online, in-store, or subscribe. This is worthy of its own post, but brands can start collecting data points with the help of post-purchase surveys or cancellation surveys – something that Stay AI’s RetentionEngine can assist with. If you’re interested in several actionable omnichannel strategies your brand can use today, send me a message and we can talk custom strategy 🤝

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Sam Jacobs does a great job calling out CROs who are just glorified heads of sales. The inflated C-level title is why there is often friction with heads of marketing, and why in the CMO community a major red flag is reporting to a CRO and not the CEO or President. The modern CRO needs depth in sales, marketing, and CS - plus some finance, to successfully do their job. If you’re just giving a C-title to your head of sales, you have the wrong person for the job.

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Today's nugget: Make your creative and messaging stronger. That's the holy grail that will drive recall & tap into the consumer's need & move them to purchase eventually. This is primary. Optimizations, frequency, reach, impressions, etc... mean zilch if your creative isn't strong. Period. #MediaBuying #DigitalMedia #Branding #MediaPlanning #Consumers #Marketing #Performance #Brandformance

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I've had a number of people reach out to me recently for advice on how to break into Customer Success without having previously worked in SaaS. Here's 3 common suggestions I've found myself repeating: ➡ Industry Alignment - If you've worked in another industry, see if you can find a software that is used in that industry. Your experience may be valued because of it depending on the complexity of the software. For example, when I worked at Poka Inc., the software was used in manufacturing settings and thus we focused on hiring industrial engineers that knew the space and could add the most value to customers. ➡ Take a CS Course & Get Connected with the CS Community - Go to local CS events, volunteer with CS organizations and take a CS course with organizations like Pavilion, CS in Focus, Winning by Design and Customer Success Collective. You need to be able to communicate your experience using CS industry jargon. No better way than learning and connecting with people in the space. ➡ How many #s are in your CV? - If you've held roles working with customers, whether focused on retention or sales you likely have relevant experience that can translate. Are you clearly communicating the successes you've had though? When I look at CVs I'm looking for NUMBERS, NUMBERS, NUMBERS. Show me what you've done and what you've achieved. CS is not a fluffy profession! What other advice would you add? Rod Cherkas Greg Boyd Selena R. Emma Lo #CustomerSuccess #BreakingIntoSaaS

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