About the speaker

Frank Devine is Sr. Director of Revenue Operations at HUNGRY Marketplace, a platform for top chef-made food production and delivery services. Frank is building the revenue operations function at HUNGRY from the ground up. Listen as Frank shares lessons he’s learned by being the sole rev ops person at a hyper-growth company.

The Path from SDR to Revenue Operations Director (1:03)

Barry: Hi Frank. Please tell our listeners about your background and how you got into revenue operations.

Frank: Yeah, happy to. I run the rev ops function here at HUNGRY Marketplace. First in function, so I’m building, creating, and developing a lot of stuff from scratch. How did I get into rev ops? Good question. I never expected to be working in the business world, let alone sales or rev ops, things like that. I went to school to become a police officer, and I have my degree in criminal justice. And one thing led to another after graduation, and I ended up in Silicon Valley as an SDR, making 100 cold calls a day and trying to figure out what it’s like to work in the business world.

The first company that took a chance on me brought me in as an SDR, and they’re like, “Yeah, we’ll teach you the ropes. We’re a food-tech startup, and it’s going to be a cool process.” So, I joined that company, and it was called EAT Club. I’m very fond of that company and will always be grateful to them for kicking off my career. So, I worked as an SDR for seven or eight months, bashing my head against the wall many nights at home, trying to figure out why I was so bad at cold calling or why my emails weren’t getting responses, and finally broke through and ended up getting promoted into an account executive role. So, I was doing full-cycle selling and closed about a million dollars in business before I moved on to take the first role as the SDR manager.

It’s something that hadn’t existed before, and I felt pretty confident building off of my success to that point in prospecting, lead generation and strategy, and helping other people who are breaking into sales find success quickly because it can be such a meat grinder as an SDR. So, I was the first person as the SDR manager, I did that for about a year, and then they had a position open up in training and enablement. So, I became our head trainer, I ran all the onboarding, I developed training calendars, I spent a lot of time in classroom settings and in virtual settings getting people engaged, getting them pumped to go and make cold calls which is a big challenge to get somebody excited to do that but had a lot of success in that.

As I was going through this process, though, and moving through different roles at EAT Club, I was spending more time getting into the systems that we were using to make sure that they were user-friendly, to make sure that the CRM made sense, that it was logical for our new hires, for our existing teams and as we added complexity to our product, new product lines, etc. So, I became a self-taught CRM admin. I was working a lot with our one sales ops guy who turned out to be a great lifelong friend, and he mentored me a lot in the ways of Excel and spreadsheets and learning how that world works. So, I ended up starting to assist with things like commissions, forecasting, and getting exposure to these other ideas and concepts.

So, I moved from training and enablement into a full-fledged sales operations and business intelligence position. At that point, I overhauled all of our commissions, created our forecasting strategy, helped us go through two CRM transitions, pipe drove a HubSpot, and then HubSpot into a lightning deployment of Salesforce.

Never Say No to a Challenge (5:16)

Frank: I think the key to my success at EAT Club was never saying no to a challenge, an idea, or a project. Did I always know what I was going to do before I started? No, but I had learned how to research, teach myself, become self-sufficient, and ask for help or leverage other resources. Once the pandemic came, EAT Club and most food tech companies, your revenue dropped to zero overnight. So, we went through a period of strategic evaluation, pulling back the hood on our systems, figuring out exactly what was going on, and then how we wanted to build for the future.

I ended up moving out from EAT Club, went to a giant global company, publicly traded in the data warehouse and data integration space, and learned what it’s like to be a little cog in a big machine, and that’s not what I like. I like startup life. I like the pace of work and having a role where the effort I put in actually makes a difference that I see the impact in other people’s lives, that my opinion, my voice is important and valued. So, one of my compatriots from EAT Club had found HUNGRY Marketplace, had been recruited by them, and learned how they were so gritty and intuitive to find new ways of generating revenue throughout the pandemic and, as a result, ended up doubling in size. So, while other food tech solutions disappeared and went out of the market altogether, they were growing.

He got my attention, and he’s like, “I need somebody to help me build this thing. We had so much done at EAT Club, and we didn’t get to finish our story. Come with me, HUNGRY is nationwide, we have all these cool things, people are going to start coming back to the office, the pandemic is going to calm down, and we need to be ready for hyper-growth.” “All right, sign me up,” so that’s how I ended up here at HUNGRY Marketplace.

What is HUNGRY Marketplace? (7:37)

Barry: Cool. I have some questions based on what you discussed but tell me a little bit about HUNGRY Marketplace before we dive into those things.

Frank: HUNGRY is awesome. We are a food tech startup, obviously, but we are building the premier platform for in-office food and employee engagement, client engagement, and experiences. We have several business lines, the primary one being our food solutions, where we’re currently operating in 10 major metros around the US and expanding to more markets as we speak. So, that’s everything you’ve ever heard of for office catering, meal times, snacks, all of those needs, and the products that developed out of the pandemic. So, our virtual experiences team has launched, essentially, a new company and grown it into a multimillion-dollar business in 24 months.

And so, it’s leveraging our incredible network of celebrity chef talent to create incredible, personalized experiences for companies that want to treat their employees, to keep people connected while everybody’s virtual, as well as apply a lot of value to client retention, client acquisition, and programs like that. So, those are our primary business lines, but we also help with last-mile delivery and logistics. Snacks are going to be coming on in a big way, as well as our cafe and coffee bar team helping to compete with the big boys and help set up onsite cafeterias, cafes, and a food experience for the enterprise-level consumer.

Barry: Yeah, cool. So, food. I’m all for food.

Frank: Absolutely. It’s the best thing to cold call about. Nobody’s afraid to talk to you about sandwiches or share their opinion on lunch.

Barry: That’s also probably fun to market. What’s your favorite snack? And then, just piquing my interest, is it healthy, not healthy, what are people’s snacks? Have there been any trends in the past five years?

Frank: The trend is everybody has their own taste, everybody wants their own thing. So, unless you can find a way to do everything, there’s always going to be some people who are left out. But I think that’s what makes us unique here at HUNGRY is we have this incredible diversity of options in terms of chefs who are going to be preparing full-scale meals versus our snacking options. So, if you have a healthier snacker who wants to have high-quality ingredients, non-GMO, low sugar, no problem, but if you want Pepsi and Doritos, we can help you out with that, too. Every company is different, and you look at the composition of a marketing team versus an engineering team versus a sales team. They’re all going to snack totally differently so you have to make sure that your inventory can meet their needs.

Barry: Do I dare ask who snacks on what in which teams?

Frank: Well, as long as there are energy drinks, you’ve got marketing and engineering covered, and sales is going to be in there as well. Coffee, anything like that, stuff to keep you going when the going gets tough, that seems to be the most popular, universal.

Asking for Help Isn’t a Bad Thing (11:33)

Barry: Mm-hmm, yeah. Well, I hope the coffee is also for things when the going is okay because I drink five cups a day, so, hopefully, it’s not just for when it’s tough. Okay, cool. One thing that you mentioned during your background is that you learned how to ask for help which I think is interesting and very pinpointed idea. So, my question for you is, how do you ask for help? How can listeners ask for help better when they’re learning to be a better rev ops person or wherever they’re in their career?

Frank: I think the first step is you have to recognize that asking for help is not a bad thing. Oftentimes, asking for help will get you to a solution faster and help you bridge a gap that you didn’t know how to approach. There are a lot of different ways of asking for help. Usually, the first person that I ask is Google. Hey, Google, how do I do this and see if I can self-solve my problems.

But more than anything, being willing to talk to anybody, anybody within your company, within your department, or especially outside of your department. You’ll start to figure out who the key players are, there’s always a couple of people within each team that always make themselves available. Hey, I can answer questions. You can hit them up on Slack, and you keep it quick and simple. Point me in the right direction. Also, make yourself available as that resource in return. There’s very much a quid pro quo nature to a lot of business. So, if you’re asking for the help of others, make sure that you’re there to return that favor.

Barry: Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I struggle with asking for help because I feel guilty because I know how busy that person is. Is that something that you ever faced?

Frank: Absolutely. And that’s my own problem, too. Obviously I say you need to go out and ask for help, and you can leverage your resources for success, but I forget that rule all the time. Just yesterday, I was talking to my friend who brought me over, and I told him, “Man, I am underwater. I’ve got a bunch of tactical stuff that needs to be done, and there’s even more important strategic things that I’m struggling to get to.” So, identifying people that I can, can I get some help here? Can I reset my timelines and deadlines? Asking questions is huge, but when people are busy, those are probably the people that get asked the most questions, and that’s why they stay busy is because people are coming and asking them for help.

So, I try to put in and out for them. Hey, I have this question, or I’m working on this project. Can you help me with this small piece of it so they can understand what the time commitment might be? Or, I ask them straight out, “What’s your workload right now? I’ve got some questions here. Can we schedule a time?” Instead of asking, I need the answer right now via Slack, send it to me. How can I make this easy for you to help me?

Barry: That’s interesting. It’s like a soft sell if you will.

Frank: Yes. You have to come back to these people over and over again. You work with them. So, you always have to make sure that you maintain those relationships.

Building RevOps: Strategy vs Tactics (14:51)

Barry: Absolutely. So, now you are head of rev ops at HUNGRY Marketplace. Is it just you doing sales ops, marketing ops and customer success op?

Frank: Well, that’s the nature of the beast. It’s revenue operations, so it incorporates those three core functions. Anything from the moment you hear about HUNGRY Marketplace to the moment you decide to sign a multi-year commitment with us or go through a renewal, etc., anything that touches revenue, I’m helping us to become more efficient, automated, and streamlined. As the first hire, yeah, we haven’t brought in additional resources yet, but we always have functional leaders who are very resourceful. They’re utility players.

I get a lot of help from the VP of sales from the head of marketing. These leaders are in a similar boat where they come up with a strategy, implement a bunch of stuff, and then we tag team on different projects. But very hopeful to grow my team soon to help provide greater levels of support.

Barry: Yes, it makes sense. And then, I imagine that if you’re the main or the only rev ops person there, it’s probably hard to balance strategy versus tactics. So, let’s talk about prioritization, and is there even time to do anything beyond tactics if you’re the only one there. 

Frank: Yeah, this is the constant battle, strategic versus tactical. To be a real leader in revenue operations, you must be involved in these strategic conversations. You have to have a seat at the table. So, putting yourself into those conversations is essential for your success because you can help ambitious sales leaders with big quotas and big goals to build in a more sustainable fashion. You can be in a conversation, they’re like, “Yeah, we’re going to measure X, Y, and Z,” and you’re like, “Okay, do you know how to measure those things? How do you want them measured? What unit is that? How are you defining these things? We should write some of this stuff down because, six months from now, we’re not going to remember what we did in this conversation.” So, that’s the strategic side of the house.

The tactical is, once you’ve created a process or implemented an update change, maintaining it, helping new hires who are coming in to figure out where are the resources, how do I interpret them, how do I turn this into action in the CRM, how do I use the different prospecting tools. So, I am helping about 80 reps today. We’ve seen incredible growth lately, so our user count in the CRM is huge. So, it can be anything from getting app mentions in HubSpot saying, “Hey, it looks like this one’s open and available. Can I start to work on it?” But bigger picture, with this much work, how does prioritization happen?

Well, I always create a hierarchy of requests in my head. So, top of the list would be anything that the CEO asks me to do. I report directly to him, so he gets my full, undivided attention whenever he needs it. Typically, his requests are going to fall into bucket number two also, which is anything that drives revenue or protects and retains revenue and then third is everything else. So, CEO first, generate revenue, protect revenue, and then all the other stuff, that’s how I try to prioritize my day. But the work piles up quickly, the tactical work piles up quickly, and if you find yourself getting pulled exclusively into tactical and you can never be strategic, you’ll start to experience a couple of things.

One, you’ll probably feel overwhelmed, and you won’t enjoy your job as much because you’re just doing it, and those of us in rev ops think of ourselves very highly, and we’re thinkers and creators. And so, if we’re just doing, doing, doing, doing, checking things off of a list, it’s hard to keep your happiness, your motivation in the role. And that’s where, again, asking for help is important, asking for due dates and timelines.

Everybody comes with a request, but nobody says, “Oh, yeah, it can wait a week,” everybody wants their thing right now. So, getting timelines and deadlines from them helps with prioritization as well and being very candid. Keep a good list of all your requests, and be very clear in your communication. I have X, Y, and Z that I’m working through, and then I can slot you in after this, so setting expectations with people.

And then, if you get completely swamped, that’s when a conversation with whoever you roll into. Here’s how I’m prioritizing this. Here’s all the things that are on my list. Do you agree with this? Let’s realign around everything in the rev ops world, maybe we need to move a couple of things back and forth, but at least I know, one, I’m going to be doing what my primary customer wants, and two, they have a line of sight into the volume of work, into the types of requests and asks. And then, when I can come and say, “Hey, we’ve got a dozen strategic things and 40 tactical, if you want to grow us and move the company forward, we got to get through these strategic things, so I’m going to need a tactical asset to help me get through this stuff.” Keep the lights on, maintain our tools and systems, help with onboarding so we can get these things that move the needle, get them defined, documented, and rolled out.

Barry: Yes, it’s good advice for everyone, even experienced rev ops people. So, right now, your day, what percentage is falling into buckets, on average?

Frank: I’m in a swing right now towards much more tactical, and I’m starting to build up a backlog of my strategic tasks. So, I’d say, right now, I’m about 70 or 80% tactical, 20% strategic on a daily basis.

Barry: And I guess, would the goal be 40/60, 50/50? What is a rev ops person’s goal for strategy? And again, goal doesn’t mean that you’re upset now, but it’s more of, ideally, if we have all the resources and what you’d like to be in the future.

Frank: I think that depends on where you’re at in your career. For myself, I’m almost a decade in now, and being in this role, I’m the head of revenue operations. I want to be 80% strategic. I’m happy to jump in and take care of some tactical things, but I want to be a strategic thinker because there’s so much growth potential in our marketing, our sales, and our client success teams that are being built out, now is the time to get into; who are we, how do these revenue operations teams function, what do we want to achieve, what do we want to measure and how are we going to do it.

That’s so critical to us achieving our growth, and that’s what makes me happiest, facilitating those conversations. We’re getting documents and requirements and putting it all together. So, for me, I want to be swung way in the opposite direction of how I am right now, but I work through this, and it ebbs and flows through the month. Beginning of the month, I can be more strategic. Towards the end of the month, it’s very tactical. Close out the month and then start the next.

Barry: I was talking a few months ago with Jason Reichl, now he’s an evangelist at Go Nimbly, on the podcast, and he was mentioning that it’s hard to focus on strategy if you only have a few people doing rev ops because, then, you have to have someone that does tactics. Five years ago, who was the person doing these tactics? If rev ops is generally a relatively new position, who was doing these tactical things and maybe strategical things five years ago?

Frank: Five years ago, either it was being ignored a little bit, or it was on the shoulders of the sales leaders themselves. Sales directors, VPs, and CROs were responsible for creating and executing their own strategies. And maybe they could pull in an analyst or somebody from another team or from finance to help try and back some of the decisions up with data, but it was typically up to the sales leaders. So, now, being able to have a partnership where they’re like, “Okay, I’m going to turn on my strategic thinking brain and have an in-depth conversation with my rev ops person or my rev ops team for an hour,” it’s much more efficient because they can get out what they’re trying to envision.

And, if your rev ops team is good, they can also help you find the truth. You have an idea, but you don’t have it totally fleshed out, rev ops are there to help facilitate idea creation, define it, and turn it from an idea into reality. Before rev ops, it was maybe somebody would have a random analyst or somebody who was good at tools and systems and would help out, but it was all on the sales leaders.

What Belongs in the RevOps Function? (25:52)

Barry: It’s interesting and okay, cool. Before, you mentioned that the number two thing that you listen to is the CEO, and then you also make sure it’s attached to revenue. Would forecasting go under revenue, or does forecasting go under as part of sales and helps with revenue but isn’t directly revenue? I was curious about that.

Frank: Forecasting is 100% revenue. It certainly is in my world. Now, the world of food tech functions a little bit differently than traditional SaaS. There’s a couple of different ways that companies can model how they want to go to market but, oftentimes, you’re going to have higher operating expenses because you’re going to be sourcing food, you’re going to be figuring out delivery, you have packaging, all of these other things that need to be paid for before you deliver your product to the consumer. It’s not like, “Hey, we need 50 licenses set up and then your implementation fee.”

So, our forecasting is very closely tied to revenue because, when a deal closes, that annual value or that monthly value doesn’t come in one lump sum. We have to then go and earn it every day as we’re executing. So, being able to accurately forecast when new customers are going to come online, it directly impacts what we are going to see in the bank account and what we can do with those dollars to help continue growth.

Barry: Okay, cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What is an example of not revenue for the rev ops function?

Frank: So, if you’re doing stuff in rev ops not related to revenue, you’re probably doing it wrong because revenue is in the title. So, things that are revenue adjacent or turn into revenue, I think the technology stack falls heavily in there. Being able to create a cohesive ecosystem of tools that’s not so many that it becomes overwhelming for reps and that the tools are properly integrated between each other. 

There’s a huge difference between implementing a software and optimizing a software. So, throughout my career, I’ve seen most tools are 100% implemented and 40% optimized. So, how do I make sure that we’re using all of the features? What are the different things that could add value? There will always be immediate wins that are super apparent to a salesperson, but they don’t have time to dig into a tool and research all the things it can do.

So, a rev ops team, specifically a systems analyst, a big part of their job is driving adoption of the tools and full utilization because you’re going to unlock additional value that way. For example, I have an intern working with me right now from San Jose State in the entrepreneurship program. It’s a great, great program with top-quality students. And I gave her access to our ZoomInfo account and said, “Hey, I need some help.” ZoomInfo does a million things. It’s huge; it’s like trying to read a dictionary and retain all of it. I don’t have the bandwidth. Even though it’s fun, I can’t justify spending my time there.

And she went through and was digging through different company attributes and how to automate different things and workflows, and we’ve seen a huge improvement in the adoption of ZoomInfo. I’ve got more of my users in there on a daily basis. They’re utilizing their credits, they’ve set up saved searches and workflows, and we found some unique searches that help us find highly qualified prospects better than we did before.

The way we were using ZoomInfo 60 days ago was, that we have a general idea of our ICP, and this is who we’re targeting. The way we use it now is, I actually know that they are a fit, 100% for our product, and now I know who I need to go and talk to. And look at that, they were created in HubSpot this morning automatically and then enrolled into one of my sequences. And that’s, in a big part, due to an intern who had some bandwidth to figure out how these tools work and how we make them better.

Barry: And ZoomInfo, let’s say a salesperson or a VP of Sales buys ZoomInfo, then would it still be as much under your plate if it’s something that they even bought without rev ops?

Frank: Yes, it should be. Anything that’s going to be supporting sales teams, even if it’s part of the sales team, you should have a rev ops person involved with that. Even at the evaluation stage, especially at the evaluation stage, I should say, the way a salesperson looks at a tool is totally different than the lens that a rev ops person looks through. And I’m always surprised how salespeople when they’re being sold to, they don’t see the tricks and the things that they do when they sell to convince a person. They’re like, “Oh, man, it’s going to be so cool, it’s going to be” I’m like, “You’re a salesperson. You do this to people. You got to have critical nature. You got to be a little skeptical. It’s healthy.” So, that’s where my role comes in.

“So, when you say this is a native integration, does that mean you’re using Zapier?” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah, usually.” “Okay, so it’s not native. Okay, so it’s going to require extra work.” But yes, anything that’s going to be supporting a sales team, used by a salesperson, no matter what their seniority or responsibility, that should be under the purview of rev ops.

Barry: Yeah, that’s hilarious. My wife was reading a New York Times Best Seller book about therapists talking to a therapist, and she’s like, “I know she’s playing these games, but I need to speak about it anyway. I know the strategies that she’s doing, but it’s still good, it’s still healthy to speak about it.” And so, I guess it’s funny. Some people notice it, some people don’t.

One of my favorite things is when I notice my friends, who are salespeople, sometimes talk to their friends like they’re on a sales call. I’m like, “Oh, I know that strategy. I’m not a sales guy, but I read some negotiations blog posts and I know that. You repeating the last few words of what I said because you were a little confused gets me to talk more about it, I get it.”

Frank: Yeah, and it’s a strength that rev ops people start to develop. Who gets sold to more than a rev ops person or a VP of sales? I’ve actually found a lot of the experience that I’ve gained over the past five years from being sold to. It helps me talk to our reps. It helps me provide advice, particularly when it comes to we’re developing sales training and methodologies and rolling those out to the teams. Being able to say like, “Hey, I know you guys have sold a lot of deals, but I’ve bought a lot of things. I’ve evaluated a lot. I have seen good salespeople and bad salespeople. Let me help you. Take it with a grain of salt, but I’ve evaluated over a hundred SaaS tools and managed dozens of them. Let me help you and give you a view through the buyer’s eyes.”

Barry: I love that. Best practice from the other side.

Frank: Yeah.

Top RevOps Tips (34:00)

Barry: That’s awesome. I think we’ll have to do another podcast then about those top 10 things that you learned from being the buyer. What is one thing you have seen from the buyer perspective that some of your sellers missed the most? 

Frank: The biggest one is being an active listener, and that’s hard. It comes with time, becoming conversational and being able to talk to somebody, but I oftentimes will, “Oh, yeah, we’re thinking about doing this, and we’re developing a strategy around how we’re going to survey prospective clients and new clients.” And I leave it very general, it’s high level, and it’s an open door and they think, “Oh, cool. I’m glad you’re doing a survey project. So, what’s this?” And then they change the question. They could have dug in, and asked me three or four more questions. I’m often surprised at the lack of questions asked in general. Obviously, everybody knows, and you ask first, second, and third-level questions, but I’ve been on a lot of sales calls where I’m asked almost no questions. It’s like, “Hey, how’s it going? Build rapport. Here’s a demo, I hope you like it.”

Barry: Right. That’s funny. Okay. To close off today’s podcast, let’s talk about three tips of advice for people that are trying to break into rev ops that haven’t yet, and then three pieces of advice for people that are the lone wolf in the rev ops at their organization.

Frank: Okay. All right, off the top of my head. So, if you want to get into rev ops, I would say don’t be afraid to try. You look at the job postings, and the list of required skills is massive. You need to be CPQ certified, a Salesforce administrator, you need to be proficient in Tableau, and you need to write SQL. And I’ve tried to learn SQL, but I’ve never successfully learned it, and I’ve never actually needed it to this point. Not saying that it’s not important, but where I’m faced with a challenge that needs SQL, I’m friends with people on our tech team, I’m friends with people in other departments, and I can ask for help.

I’m learning how to learn something new. Everybody’s got a different learning style. Some people have to learn through doing, some are visual learners, and auditory learners. Figure out how you learn things and become very good at it because, nine times out of 10 and particularly since it’s a newer field, companies don’t exactly know what they want to do, they got a lot of questions, there’s interesting things, they’re reading cold emails from other companies, and we should be doing X, Y and Z. So, they’ll come to a rev ops person and say, “What’s this? How does that work?” And it’s okay to say, “I don’t know, but I can find out.” So, being able to then do the research, find out, and come up with an opinion. It’s an opinion, it doesn’t have to be 100% correct, but if you can back it up with some data or you could show them how you did the research, hey, we’re in a much better position now than we were 48 hours ago when this was a question.

So, figure out how to learn, don’t be afraid to jump in and get started and work on your people skills, and become somebody that people like to work with. Because in this role, you’ll be expected to work with all sorts of people in different departments who all have different things that they care about. So, if you can figure out, first, how to talk to anybody and then, second, how to ask them questions to figure out what they care about, your life will be that much easier when you get into a rev ops role. So, I think those are my top three for somebody who wants to break in.

Barry: All right, cool.

Frank: All right. All my lone wolves out there, I feel you, but we’re in this together, and we’re fighting the good fight. Asking for help is the biggest one. And we talked about asking for help internally, but I think one of the biggest areas that I’ve succeeded in getting help is from our vendors. And this has happened at every company I’ve worked at; you have a dedicated rep, why don’t you leverage them? Why don’t you talk to them? What’s the relationship like between that vendor company and yourself?

We’ve been working with HubSpot for a long time, but we had been focused on how we build out our tool, but we didn’t spend enough time nurturing our relationship with HubSpot. I’ve been able to build great relationships, friendships almost, with our account rep and CSM. They’re providing me with best practices. I don’t have to search the knowledge base. I can ask them, and they’ll send me three targeted articles that precisely answer the question.

You can even get some free consulting out of them. As an individual contributor, help them feel your pain a little bit. Hey, I care about this, I like your tool, and I want to use it well, but I’m running out of time. Can you help me do this? Can you build a report for me so that I can see it? You’ll get them to help you become their favorite admin. You don’t have to do anything special. There’s no extra sending gifts or presents but be a partner that they want to work with. 

One of my favorite things is using ZoomInfo, figure out who their boss is and then send their boss a note that says, “This person’s doing a great job. I’m needy and they’re meeting my needs and I thought you should know that they’re awesome,” because getting recognition at work is huge and that took me 10 minutes.

What else? Take time, at least once a month, to look at your workload and redo your list of your strategic things that need to be done and your tactical things so you can be keeping an inventory on that so you could be always as efficient and effective as possible.

And lastly, make sure that you continue to find ways to have fun and interact with your salespeople. Nobody parties better than the sales team. Nobody has a better happy hour. And if you’re skipping it, you’re missing an opportunity to build relationships with them so that, when you’re getting ready for the national forecast or a board of directors meeting and some things are out of date in the CRM, instead of being like, “These freaking salespeople, they never listen to me, they don’t follow the process.” You can hit them out, “Hey, Ryan, can you help me out with this?” Like, “Hey, no problem. I’m so sorry, it won’t happen again.”

Put in the work to make them understand that you’re not an adversary, but you’re there to help them and help the company grow. So, these are the things that I try to do to help make my life easier when I’m a one-man team.

Barry: Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of them can actually be used for every position. I even try to reshuffle my priority once a week. So, that’s amazing that you have it in your head that you’re able to reprioritize it throughout the month. Well, Frank, this was awesome. I learned a lot, and I hope our listeners or whoever is new to this podcast learned a lot. And, if whoever’s listening is interested in joining as a guest on the podcast, they can reach out to us at DealHub. And Frank, it was awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Frank: Yeah, thanks a lot, Barry. And, anybody who wants to, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’d love to make some additional connections. The rev ops community is great. It’s very welcoming. We all want to help each other. So, if you’re getting started, want to get pointed in the right direction, or think HUNGRY sounds like a cool place to work someday, I’d love to meet you.