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I am SO excited to introduce @Krystal Diel! Recently we recorded a video session on something many of us are agonizing over right now - BUDGET PLANNING. Krystal, before we dig into the deets, what is your favorite food and beverage? 🧉
Hi! I'd have to say that my most favorite food is Nachos paired with a Frozen Strawberry Margarita!
Ohhhh...excellent choices..... So how did you first get roped into budget discussions?
Oooo, my kind of lady! I am such a sucker for nachos and a good marg.
In my role it's important that I am on the lookout for things that can help solve challenges we are having today but also looking for things that can help create efficiencies in our current processes.
I typically need to have a good understanding of the issues and to communicate those to leadership.
So do you primarily focus on the operations budget or are you also involved in planning for other departments?
I focus on any tool that is under the umbrella for Revenue Operations. For us that means Marketing, Sales, or Partnerships.
Nice! What do you think is THE most important groundwork RevOps needs to do before convincing others to hand over the 💵?
Gosh, there are TWO most important things that are included in the ground work:
1. A good understanding of the the problem you are trying to solve
2.Research! It is critical to have done research to vet out what are some potential ways to solve the problem
I think a good ol’ fashioned Pros and Cons list is the right tool to get the job done and to make a good recommendation.
How do you recommend intake of requests as these new problem requests come in?
Great question, Trevor. When I think of intake, I think of how to gather the requests. We use a ticketing system to gather input from the team to submit tickets to us if they have a problem that needs solving. When we have tickets we can see trends and also we can prioritize which problems are causing the most issues.
I will add that if it's a major problem that is coming from the C-Suite, those usually take priority.
Do you have any tips and tricks for building an airtight case for a solution? Like an ROI formula or places to look for real $$$ data?
A few things come to mind but the thing that I do the most is to have a good understanding of what the cost is of not solving the problem.
You can consider doing math on the following:
1. How much time is wasted doing things the current way?
2. What is the cost associated with this wasted time? Here I consider who's time is being spent and an average amount of dollars per hour that is being allocated to solve this problem.
From there I can compare it to how much time and money is being saved with the proposed solution.
Awesome! And I assume that people shouldn't sweat the minutia too much... use average salaries, average time spent, etc.?
100%. Averages are usually enough to show enough comparison to get the point across.
You brought up something that I think is SO important the last time we chatted. Confidence. And how we need it to do everything from convincing leaders to buy into handing over budget to presenting data trends. How can people start to be aware of stuff like body language or tonality? I know this is a passion topic.
Ah yes, a topic so close to my heart!
Step one is to just begin to be aware of your body language.
When presenting, 93% of your communication will come from your body language and the other 7% is coming from the actual words you say.
So sometimes it's less about what you say, but how you say it.
A couple of body language tips:
1. If sitting while giving a presentation, you want to take up space, so sit up nice and tall and move your elbows away from your body.
2. If standing, Be mindful of how close your feet are together. The closer they are, the more insecure you look. Separate your feet a bit and center your weight in the lower half of your body -- this helps you appear more confident and solid.
3. Steeple your hands when you are making a point. This is a sign of confidence and it shows your audience you know what you are talking about.
I love this! We say so much without uttering a word. Are there tips for people who are 100% remote and presenting over Zoom?
For sure! In Zoom meetings your goal is to connect with your audience and you can do this by: 1. Leaning in towards the camera from time to time, especially if someone is talking or asking a question. You want to show them you are interested in their questions or comments.
2. As mentioned above, steepling is a great way to convey confidences in the points you are making, so it's a great tool to use over Zoom.
3. Also through Zoom, it's important to make the conversation as engaging as possible, so be sure to stop and ask questions throughout to build rapport with your audience.
Excellent Points!
I'd throw in - make sure your data is formatted consistently across reporting periods. I know I am always so focused on whether or not the numbers are right. I couldn't care less about how things LOOK, but a lot of leaders are extremely visual and you don't want to give them ANY reasons to take your presentation off the rails 🚃 💥
Yes! Great point!
How much do you think these subtle changes have impacted your career?
A ton. By being mindful of how I come across in my verbal/non-verbal communication, the thoughtfulness in what goes into my presentations, and the research I do to lay the groundwork were all crucial aspects of my development to becoming a credible leader in my career.
Back to tools 🙂. What are some of the tools that have made the most impact for YOUR team? I'd love to hear about marketing, sales, and customer success enablement, but I'm curious what your team couldn't do without.
We have a great tech stack and all have made important contributions to our processes.
I will say that one that comes to mind is Lanefour for routing -- This tool has been so instrumental to us to ensure the right leads get to the right reps -- We also JUST went through a project to convert all of our Leads to Contacts/accounts. As an ABS model, it made sense for us to work out of the Contacts object in Salesforce and Lanefour made this possible.
Joao Oliveira
Nice one, Krystal. How was the move to contacts-only like? Any insights/tips you could share would be great (e.g. how to handle personal emails, etc.)?
Well at first, it was a lot of work to convert them all. When I say work it took time to convert some, fix errors when things wouldn't convert, and then to watch to see if there were duplicate accounts created. So the first part was thoughtful and thorough. From a process standpoint, it makes it sooo much easier to report now because We don't have to pull reports for Leads AND Contacts, and add them together.
Krystal, is this a SFDC managed package or API integrated?
SFDC managed Package.
Nice!
So consistent coaching challenges - are there any consistencies across your team you coach for or is each person very different in what they need from you?
In all my years in sales leadership and even in RevOps, and no matter how big the team is, everyone is different and they each have something specific that is important to them.
What I have found is that coaching should be looked at through two lenses:
1. What does each individual rep need? One on ones should be designed to be tailored to address the individual needs.
2. What does the group need as a whole? Group trainings should be used to address things that the whole team can benefit from.
Krystal, how do you create an environment that involves constant visibility for all stakeholders (marketing, sales, product, cs) in a remote environment?
Hey, Griffin, good question. It depends on the systems you have in place. But the overall goal should be to have a centralized place where all stakeholders can go to get the information they need.
We use Salesforce. So I have dashboards set up to show KPIs that are important to the stakeholders. We visit those dashboards frequently so we are always on the same page.
Have you needed to make more effort around reinforcing personal breaks and checking in on mental health status with the team? And how do you ensure people are pacing themselves? This pandemic...it just keeps the hits rolling…
Yeah, mental health is super important to me and I want to make sure that my team is operating as best as they can. I do find myself encouraging my team to take time off. They need a gentle nudge sometimes because it is so easy to just keep working when your home is your office.
Couldn't agree more, Krystal!
We need more of ^^^ attitude
For sure
Project management...what is the ONE thing you want people to take away? What do you see missed often?
Planning is the number one thing! Often, in a startup environment or in small RevOps teams. There is such a huge push to get projects out and done quickly. But I cannot stress enough to plan out your projects to outline the following:
1. What is the project and the purpose
2. Desired outcome/goal
3. Who needs to be involved in the project
4. Objectives/what will it take to get the project accomplished
5. Tie the objective to the person who is directly responsible for the task
6. Communication plan
7. If you have a project management tool, then use it to plot out the tasks
By doing at least the first 6 things on this list you will have a much smoother, well thought out, collaborative, and successful project roll out.
What are your biggest challenges in growing out your team?
Nice question, Cliff - building teams has come up a lot in the community lately.
Krystal Diel
Great Question! I personally struggled with this for a long time. And to best understand how to build out my team I did the following:
1. Asked around, I learned from others to see how they built out their Sales and RevOps teams
2. Tried to find commonalities / trends
3. Started plotting out what roles fit our orgs needs
4. Tied a few bullet points under each role to provide role clarity
These really helped me see my future org chart at a high level which would inform our hiring roadmap in the future.
Krystal, thank you SO much for chatting with us today and sharing your expertise with the community!
Is there any last advice or tips you would like to share with the group before we sign off?
It was a lot of fun answering all of the great questions. I love to help so feel free to shoot me a DM if you want to chat more!
Thanks for being a part of the RevOps Co-op! I hope you get yourself some nachos and a strawberry marg this week! 🍹
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