Once More With Feeling: You NEED Ops
It’s obvious. We’re huge fans of operations on the Revenue Marketing Report. We understand that without them, a lot of us would be left in the dark. And other people are starting to notice this reality, too. In a recent survey by BrandMaker, a majority (89%) of CMOs are planning on investing more in marketing operations because:- CMOs consistently struggle to translate data into ROI proof points (47%)
- Marketers use too many data sources to easily make sense of it all (41%)
- The majority of marketing leaders struggle to report data to their executive team (91%)

How to Find the Right Hire
We understand that every profession sees a full spectrum of talent, from the insanely gifted unicorns to the people who blow things up if not closely supervised. We get it. But hiring managers don’t always know how to tell one from the next. Melissa did a great job digging into the common hurdles hiring managers face and gave an interview tip that is very strange and absolutely brilliant.Hire to Match the Ask
I see too many young companies hire the cheapest person they can find who wants an operations position with major projects on the immediate horizon. Usually, the need for headcount is created by purchasing an automation tool and then realizing it’s hard to use. If you aren’t pairing your inexperienced intern or new hire with an experienced consultant (or just biting the bullet and investing in a qualified professional), your implementation will be an absolute mess. It may limp along for a while, but you won’t start collecting the data your business will learn to rely on from day one.
Are Your Expectations Realistic?
I’m a big fan of revenue operations and an even bigger fan of the growth operations mindset. However, I think it’s a huge mistake to take multiple roles and crunch them into a single “revenue operations” position because you aren’t willing to pay for necessary specialists. “When you build a house, do you hire the plumber to do your electricity? Do you hire an electrician to put your windows in? No, because you don’t want your house to fall apart. “There are specializations for a reason. Good MOPs folks focus on providing a center of excellence. They’ll understand how their marketing automation platform interacts with tools like Gainsight or Salesforce or Microsoft dynamics. They may not be experts in these peripheral applications, but they’re going to understand the impact of anything they change to those systems.” We’re not saying there isn’t value in a marketing automation administrator knowing the CRM. Many of us get certifications in both CRMs and marketing automation platforms. What isn’t realistic is expecting one person to own both the CRM and the marketing automation platform. Those are two big jobs on their own, and there are only so many hours in a day. “When companies under hire and understaff, they burn their people out. They have revolving doors. My experience in talking to anybody in operations is that we stay at a company for two years and we’re spent. So many operations professionals turn into consultants because we’re burned out and tired of not being appreciated. A lot of us have horror stories about not being valued and being asked to boil the ocean. “We try to say ‘not yet’ rather than ‘no’ because we have other dependencies that are a higher priority. They are roadblocks to doing what the business asks of us. And we can’t do everything overnight. Somebody once said to me, ‘Nine people don’t make a baby in a month.’ Some things just take time.”Certifications < Experience
Melissa had an excellent point. “I cannot tell you how often I hear, ‘I am so deep in Salesforce, and I’m an expert.’ And then I ask what a permission set is. They have no idea. “‘I’m an expert in Marketo.’ Okay. Can you do a list import? If the answer is no, you’re far from a Marketo expert.” Honestly, some people impress me with their unfounded confidence.
Ask Them How They Do Their Laundry
“I’ll ask people about their laundry. I’ll ask, “Are you a do your laundry as you go kind of person, or you do your laundry on just one day a week?” It sounds really strange, but there’s sound logic behind the question. “What I get out of that is how they process things. At the top layer, do as you go laundry people tend to be stronger data quality people who run checks and balances and don’t mind daily monitoring. The once-a-week laundry people are more apt to automate a process. “Then I ask what they want to be doing (once or daily?). People who do the laundry one day a week can be more focused. And the reason that they can get more focused is that they will find ways to automate things. “Then the question becomes, why do you do your laundry one day a week? Or why do you do it every day? This really gets to the way that they process things. Is this person somebody who is going to be able to cross-communicate? Are they going to be able to manage other people? Or are they somebody who’s an individual contributor? If they tell me they don’t know why they do laundry every day, that means that they’re probably not ready for management yet. You always have to explain your ‘why’ as a manager. “A day at a time is great for management. It tells me they can balance a lot of things. If they tell me they do it all on one day and the why is they don’t want to be bothered with laundry the rest of the week, I’ll ask whether they don’t want to be bothered because they don’t have enough time or you don’t want to bother because you hate doing laundry? If they think doing laundry is better done all at once because it’s a better use of time, that tells me that they’re really good at prioritizing. “Finally, if they tell me they just hate doing laundry, I ask why. Do they not like the tactical pieces of it, or do they hate it just because they don’t want to touch it? That tells me that there’ll be certain tactical items and operations that I would not put them on. I wouldn’t have them do any data quality work. Because that’s laundry. I wouldn’t have them cleaning up lists, views, or reports. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be a manager. It doesn’t mean they can’t be an individual contributor. It just lets me know how deep they’re going to be willing to go on things. “You can also get to how they prioritize and process things by asking how often they take out the trash.”Growth Ops Will Be the Gold Standard
“Growth operations is the next level of revenue operations. It helps companies optimize people, processes, and technology for the purpose of just not revenue growth, but internal growth and customer growth. The focus is on the big picture.”
For more on why growth ops is the new gold standard and other great nuggets on operational excellence, listen to the full Revenue Marketing Report episode at the top of the article or anywhere you podcast. Be sure to visit the Growth Ops Community and tell them the Revenue Marketing Report sent you.