How to Increase Revenue Through Team Collaboration

Not everyone runs the math on this, but I do! When I had 5 SDRs I looked at how they spent their time… I wanted to know my costs. Their 8 hour days were on average: - 30 min: internal meetings (1:1’s, all hands) - 30 min: trainings - 150 min: prospecting data gathering - 150 min: calling - 90 min: custom emails / LinkedIn My cost of running my SDRs team was about $750K (includes tools, management, benefits, etc) That meant each fully supported SDR is $150K That meant $75/hr With that I looked at the SDR day again… WTF! $37 worth of training per day $187 worth of “Data gathering!?!” I wanted to flip it. Didn’t like the ratio I let go my least productive SDR, and hired 2 Data researchers who OBSESS with Clay, and other data tools. Hired offshore (no agency, direct hire!) Cost-wise we stayed the same. But time spent per day on my 4 SDRs flipped to: - 60 min meetings (more time w/ AEs & data team) - 60 min training (more w/ peers!) - 15 min checking / validating data in Outreach - 195 min calling - 120 min emails / LinkedIn Something crazy happened. SDRs became A LOT more strategic. SDRs enjoyed their work more SDRs collaborated with AEs more SDRs didn’t burn out as quickly SQLs (Held meetings) went from 22 per month for the team to 38 per month… SALs (AE takes ownership / flip it) went from 8 per month to 27 per month! Mid-funnel meetings to move opps down the funnel went from ZERO! To 7 per month. SDR tenure went from 14 to 31 months. All for a total cost of $0. Not an extra penny spent. Just re-organized the team, became more data driven, split responsibilities, gamified the calls, added SDR Revenue commissions and maximized SDR/AE collaboration. As you plan your 2025, consider this… there are ways to improve your team that take $0 budget. Especially if you don’t have a data team Especially if you use Orum/Nooks Especially if you’re not turning meetings into revenue Especially if you don’t have SDR-Rev-Ops Tag someone that needs to see this / think about this / consider this for the future. Heck! DM me if you want me to explain how to do it right. Happy to share some visuals and process documents via Zoom. Now get back to your 2025 planning and knock it out of the freaking park next year #SDRsMatter

I had an amazing conversation yesterday with Sterling Snow, the former CRO at Divvy from BILL and SVP of Revenue at BILL. Sterling shared his journey of scaling Divvy from zero to a whopping $2.5B acquisition in just 4 years. Divvy’s standout approach? Effectively aligning and incentivizing all revenue-facing departments to collaborate. Here are some highlights 🥇 Building a Winning Culture 🤾 - Hire for the Right Fit:  Divvy’s culture thrived on speed and a winning spirit. They had high expectations from their team but ensured outstanding rewards for young leaders. His go-to interview question was to ask candidates for a 30, 60 and 90-day plan and then have them condense the 90 day plan into just 30 days. Good answers show that they’re adaptable and can think through resource constraints and tradeoffs quickly but elegantly. - Rapid Testing:  Before Divvy had a clear Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), Sterling crafted around 25 ads daily to gauge efficacy. He also focused on finding unconventional channels for “proprietary lead flow.” One that worked well was calling up newsletters that didn’t even have direct advertising to ask if he could write sponsored content (this was pre the newsletter mania we have today). More than half of Divvy’s most effective channels didn’t have direct advertising opportunities. Best Practices for CROs 💰 - Early Alignment of Revenue Teams: Divvy had a CRO within their first year. The sooner you can unite all the teams that touch revenue (sales, marketing, implementation, support), the less finger pointing and headaches there will be down the line. - Invest in Revenue Operations:  It’s easy for sales leaders to ignore things that aren’t directly tied to quota, but understanding revenue enablement tools and orchestrating them effectively makes everyone more productive. - Design Metrics that Incentivize Collaboration: All revenue functions had some KPI tied to one stage later in the sales funnel than they could directly impact. For example, marketing should not only be measured on demand generated, but also on closed new business. Implementation should not only be measured on how quickly they onboard and generate revenue from a new customer in 60 days, but also on how they retain in the long term. This is key to incentivizing teams to work together. - Mastering Quota Management: Establish three quota benchmarks - a surefire board number that only execs know about, a quota number for your revenue team (15-20% higher), and aspirational stretch goal (20% higher than quota). Celebrate grandly if you hit the stretch goal. - Check in Weekly: Every manager should review a weekly scorecard of top metrics that matter for each of their individual team members. This ensures that you don’t wait until the end of the quarter to course correct and also allows you to compound best practices quicker. You can view the whole interview here: https://lnkd.in/gjRz4Myq

I have been coaching a good amount of revenue leaders as of late. Heads of sales, vp's of sales, chief revenue officers and founders who are wearing the sales hat because they are pre-seed or seed. I ask them all this question early on in our journey together. "Can you tell me the details behind your last 5 deals closed?" They typically know the answers. But, it is all in their head or their reps head. I then ask them this question. "Does everyone in the organization know the details behind the last 5 deals closed? I'm talking, marketing / product / legal / finance / IT / HR. Everyone!” They typically say, no. People know we won deals but not the details. This is wear I push them to implement my "win story" framework as it pertains to onboarding. OMG, a sales leader working with HR & People Ops..... Yep! Step 1: Actually get to know your people team and not just when issues come up. Step 2: Walk through some recent win stories with them. Step 3: Tie ROI to why you want to have an onboarding session with everyone hired that talks about "win stories." If you need help here. Use this. "Sarah! All employees are "customer facing" these days, especially in the world of social media. It is important for them to know why we exist other than our mission, vision and values. They need to know WHY the last 400K deal signed with us, like the deep reasons. Example, ABC org partnered with us because of a succession action plan. They had a lot of processes in place and were tying performance to pathing but coaching was missing, that is where we came into play. To take that critical talent and prepare them for future V - C Suite opportunities!" Something like that. Step 4: Be organized. Have all of your "win stories" in one location so you can point new hires to a specific area to read and study. Step 5: Make the meeting very short. Typically a Q&A due to their study and then share one recent win and go into everything from deal size to lead source to revenue to mutual action plans to expansion hopes. Step 6: Be sure you work with whoever owns your slack or teams environment and loop in your rev ops person to ensure that any time a "closed won" deal happens, an update goes to each person on the team! Can have a channel just titled "win stories." Here is what will happen when you implement this, seen it time and time again! Revenue will go up. Why? Because you will have the entire team thinking about the WHY behind the organization and how you are making your customers and future customers life easier. And if you want to get real real crazy? Have every other leader in the org implement something similar about their day to day wins and actions, CTO / CMO / CHRO / CPO / and everyone else! PS-In a remote world, we have sort of lost touch with this type of stuff. We no longer hear Jamal or Ashton running down the hall talking about a deal they just closed or Sam or Larissa talking about their new feature release while talking to the SE team.

A recent conversation reminded me of how essential it is to collaborate deeply across teams in RevOps. But knowing what to do is only half the battle..... The real question is, how do we make this collaboration effective? Here’s where I always start: 1️⃣ For Sales Alignment: Begin with listening sessions. Meet with the sales leadership to understand their goals, pain points, and capacity needs. From there, you can identify specific areas—like data access or tool overload—where RevOps can reduce friction. Mapping out a shared roadmap helps drive efficiency right from the start. 2️⃣ For Marketing Collaboration: Dive into the data and find the channels driving the most impact. Then, have a strategy sync with marketing to pinpoint where budget can be reallocated for maximum ROI. This step requires transparency and joint KPIs to ensure both teams stay aligned on what success looks like. 3️⃣ For Customer Success: Start by assessing churn drivers. Look at usage data to identify patterns and then brainstorm with Customer Success on proactive levers to reduce churn. By creating a cross-functional retention plan, we can align on strategies that directly impact revenue. 4️⃣ For Partnerships & Billing: Focus first on revenue transparency. Meet with finance and partnerships to define billing processes and revenue streams clearly. Establishing this clarity upfront ensures smoother reporting and less misalignment down the line. Each of these first steps sets the foundation for a more integrated RevOps function that actively drives value across the ENTIRE GTM engine. And as always, aligning these initial efforts with C-level priorities amplifies the impact. Starting with small, intentional actions opens the door to lasting cross-functional partnerships. #RevOps #CrossFunctionalCollaboration #SalesAlignment #CustomerSuccess #MarketingStrategy