The Digital Utopia Podcast Episode #16

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About the podcast

The Digital Utopia Podcast is for SMB Marketers and Business Leaders looking to align their Marketing, Sales, and Service departments so they’re part of one powerhouse growth team.

Each episode will dive into the strategies, philosophies, and tools that will change your approach to organizational growth, give you renewed focus and clarity, and allow you to build a brand that not only helps you stand out—but win.

The Digital Utopia Podcast is produced by Digitopia and hosted by Frank Cowell and Joseph Freeman.

Episode transcription

Frank
Technology has become a great enabler and equalizer. But now that very same technology is creating chaos because organizations are adopting all of these little tools and apps and the amount of data that's being generated. And the amount of sub processes that are being installed are creating chaos. And so now someone's got to step back and unmark all of that.

Intro
You were listening to the digital utopia podcast, a resource dedicated to helping b2b leadership and executives gain clarity and focus in a chaotic marketplace.

Frank
Hey, gang, welcome to the digital utopia podcast episode 16. I'm your host, Frank Cole. And I'm joined by my co host,

Joe
Joseph Freeman.

Frank
How are you?

Joe
I'm good. I'm good. Like I'm always good.

Frank
You're always good.

Joe
Yeah. I mean, you are what you choose to be.

Frank
This is true. I somehow think that you might be lying.

Joe
About being good. Yeah. I'm good.

Frank
You're good. Yeah. Alright. Let's get into it,

Joe
man. Let's do it.

Frank
What are we talking about today?

Joe
Well, we have been talking about marketing and sales teams, some of the alignment there. I think today we're gonna step back. And we've referenced a few times in past episodes, the term rev Ops, right revenue operations,

Frank
revenue operations,

Joe
operations, and I think it's time to dive a little deeper into what that means.

Frank
Okay,

Joe
what it's for.

Frank
All right,

Joe
who's in charge? That kind of stuff. So so let's let's dive in. Let's start with a general definition.

Frank
We're going to,

Joe
we're going to dive in the deep end. And then we're going to paddler

Frank
we're gonna jive to the deep end.

Joe
Yeah.

Frank
Did you say jive or dive?

Joe
I'm a musician.

Frank
Okay, so you're gonna jive? We're gonna like kind of ad lib this with like some like, slap bass or something. We're gonna add live into the deep.

Joe
That's a whole bunch of different things mashed together. But yes, we are going to do that. And I would like to start with a definition. What is DevOps?

Frank
Yeah, so my official definition or the definition that we've officially aligned on is, it's a business function that aims to maximize an organization's revenue potential by driving full funnel accountability through the alignment of marketing, sales and service across process, platform and people. And what I really love about this definition is that it really touches on the holistic nature of what revenue operations aims to achieve. But most importantly, is what we say at the very top of that definition, which is it's a business function, meaning there is a person or persons who are responsible for driving that full funnel accountability. And then you know, the alignment of marketing Sales and Service Cross prospects, process platform people, that's just some how language, but ultimately, what we're talking about is it's a person or persons who drive full funnel accountability to ensure that the organization's revenue potential is maximized.

Joe
And what do you mean by funnel a lot of times we think of funnels in terms of marketing, but you're talking about something bigger than just marketing here.

Frank
Oftentimes, they talk to organizations I like to talk about as their growth funnel. Like if they were to look at the journey that their customers go through from beginning, you know, from what we call stranger to fan, like that funnel, like the macro, funnel like that, across that entire journey. And so the reason this is important is because not only are we creating internal alignment and consistency, but we're creating external alignment and consistency. And that's really important in today's world. We've talked about in past episodes, how today's buyers, regardless of the industry in the product, today's buyers have really high expectations about their experiences. And it doesn't matter if you're selling nuts and bolts and washers or you're selling, you know, like shake weights, you know, to in the morning, through an infomercial, like buyers have a very specific set of expectations about how they will be dealt with and what you should know about me and so on and so forth.

Joe
Yeah. So, rev Ops, if you look it up in Google Trends,

Frank
by the way, did you ever buy shake weight,

Joe
please tell me. You did not. Nobody ever bought a shake weight. So if for those of you who are in San Diego, there was a guy that would hang out in downtown San Diego with his shirt off and just do it shake weight. It was so epic and glorious. Wish I had footage of it.

Frank
I mean, anyway, I've never purchased a shake weight.

Joe
Sure you haven't. So rev ops. If you Google trend this if you go online and go to Google Trends, look it up it it's really a term that started to gain traction the last like three to five years. And there's not really anything. I mean, I don't even know if that term existed before then. So why all of a sudden the rise in this we've needed alignment for years business is not a new thing. marketing, sales service teams, they're not new things. These are not new ideas, Why all of a sudden are people talking about alignment for the first time?

Frank
A couple a few reasons. You know, one, technology has become a great enabler and equalizer. But now that very same technology is creating chaos. Because organizations are adopting all of these little tools and apps and tips and tricks, and the amount of data that's being generated, and the amount of sub processes that are being installed, are creating chaos. And somehow someone's got to step back and kind of like unmock, all of that. Right? That's not saying you have to get rid of all that tech, but someone's got to find a way to bring it all together. So that way, there's meaning to the organization. So that way, all of that data is unified across that customers lifecycle with your brand,

Joe
right? Yeah, I think that's really interesting. We talk a lot about data. I think a lot of companies talk a lot about data. And there's this feeling that now there's so much data available to everybody through every app and every tracking pixel and everything. But at the end of the day, if you are not using that data in a smart way, if you're not looking for the insights from that data, it really is meaningless. It's just extra ones and zeros. Yeah, I think people end up over architecting their tech, to be honest, we talked about this before the show started would have we ever done that ourselves.

Joe
I want to plead the fifth on that one.

Joe
We are the king.

Frank
Yeah. And I like, Oh, yeah, it's Oh, my God, and the rabbit holes, we've gone.

Joe
This is the official apology to every team we've ever built.

Frank
Yeah, if you've ever worked for me, and Joe, I am sorry. Joe and I are tech nerds, and we love to architect the shit out of everything. Right? And we're learning while then

Joe
we look back on it and decided could could have been so much simpler.

Frank
Yeah, we're learning.

Joe
We're learning

Frank
we're learning

Joe
and many years later,

Frank
but essentially, tech is this great enabler. And this great equalizer is also you know, creating chaos. And so there's, there needs to be an answer to that in terms of, you know, the the process, people, and even more tech, believe it or not, like the answer to the tech problem is some additional tech, but the right tech and in implementing it in the right way. So that's one and then number two, is just organizations today are having to get more done with less. And so the need to be efficient and aligned is critical and imperative, it's just more important than ever. So that's the second driving needing the third driving need is that is what I touched on just a moment ago, which is the experience that buyers have with your brand. The expectation is really high in terms of what that looks and feels like and how consistent that is going to be. You know, I often talk about in my talks. You know, I remember the the day I put the I used to wear an Apple Watch. And I remember the day I had the Domino's Pizza little app on the watch. And I use the Domino's Pizza app, by the way. And for those of you who are going to hate on Domino's Pizza, it's great pizza Shut up. And so they have this thing called your easy order in the app,

Joe
the app is amazing.

Frank
And so I was like, Hey, I'm gonna put this on my phone. I check this out. I literally tapped My my, my watch. See that I put on my watch. I looked at my watch three times. And 17 minutes later pizza was at my door. And I was just blown away. Now this is coming from someone who has built many web applications. And I get how all this stuff works. Like you're not going to tell me about like how the background API's and the servers worked. And none of that's going to amaze me. But I was amazed and blown away that three taps on this watch and pizzas at my door.

Joe
By the way, huge shout out to our sponsor Domino's Pizza.

Frank
Did we get a sponsor yet? No. It fits Domino's. Thank you. I expect only pizza out of that deal.

Joe
Okay, so what's your point with Domino's Pizza?

Frank
My point is is that is just creating expectations for how we interact with brands. And we don't compartmentalize, we don't say, Oh, well, I expect my Starbucks and my Domino's Pizza to big treat me this way. But you know, expect my you know, b2b, you know, tech vendor to treat me another way. It's like, no, we're just becoming spoiled as humans, right? We're just becoming spoiled. Everything's within a few taps. So I'm not suggesting every organization has to have like a three taps Give me my thing kind of app. But you have to know that there are high expectations for how people want to be dealt with. And so those are kind of like the three big drivers for Rev ops and ultimately, all of that amounts to just more overwhelm more chaos.

Joe
Yeah, yep. And we talked about three big pillars. So we kind of preach there's three big pillars to rev Ops, right. And you can go talk to any company that's talking about DevOps, and they probably have their own way of articulating what it is and how to do it. This is how we talk about it right process and platform in people.

Frank
Yeah, those are the three big pillars and you have to create alignment with those things for marketing, sales and service. So means your marketing team sales team and your service or some people call success, customer success, it means those names are interchangeable. That means those three teams need to be aligned on the process process meaning the process as it relates to that macro funnel, what is that journey your buyer is going to go on? And, and the three organizations, the internal organizations need to be aligned.

Joe
So haven't marketing teams been spearheading this forever?

Frank
You know what, bless their hearts marketing teams have been trying to talk about this alignment for quite some time

Joe
with buyer journeys. Yeah, but the mapping and right,

Frank
there's a lot of great work being done with my fellow marketing, brothers and sisters. But bless their hearts. Unfortunately, marketing departments oftentimes don't get the respect they deserve in the business world. And so they haven't been able to make a lot of impact in this area. That being said, I would suggest that this idea of rev Ops, and someone can fact check me on this, this is just a hunch. My hunch is it was born out of the marketing world. Because some smart marketer out there realized that there needed to be a way to derive this full funnel mindset across the entire organization, because they saw where the world was going. Right. And they saw that they can do this lifecycle tracking, they can do this data tracking, and they can give better insights to the entire organization and create better experiences for their buyers. And so my hunch is this was born out of the marketing world, in good on them for whoever, you know, wherever this came from, for like putting this lens on it. But certainly marketers have been talking about these kinds of things for some time. Yeah.

Joe
Yeah, you know, it reminds me of like a wedding coordinator, right, where you've got your DJ, and you've got your wiki, that one, and you've got your your food vendor, and you've got the people set up the chairs, you got all these things, and they actually can set up a wedding, they all know how to do their job, they can do it and dance around each other, and probably pull off a wedding in some way, right? But the wedding coordinator comes in, and they they plan it all, they make sure that the timelines are right to make sure people aren't stepping on each other's toes. And when something actually does go wrong, which it will, they're there to help. Bridgette and Ben did it. Right.

Frank
Yeah, I mean, so that's why I think that's a great analogy. Because, you know, at the top of this when we talked about, you know what rev ops is, I think a lot of people get really caught up in the how, like, for example, there's a Forbes article, really good Forbes article, actually, I'm not putting the article down, that talks about DevOps. But, you know, they, I think the view on it is too tactical and too narrow in terms of, you know, in one particular part, they talk about how technology is really the the central driving thing of rev Ops, and it's about automation. That's like, well, that's not entirely true. There's process. There's, there's people alignment, in the technology, believe it or not, I think automation is one of the one of the bottom of the list things in terms of, you know, what needs to happen with technology as it relates to rev up so well,

Joe
let's talk about that for a second. Because that comes up all the time, right? When we work with people, they often want automation, they want to make their sales teams life easier, by sending out emails automatically, they want to make sure that the marketing team doesn't have to lift a finger when it comes to segmentation. It's all automated, right? I think what we've found is, the best way to do that is to first do it all manually, and work out the bugs, you know, with your manual MVP, you know, figure out the prototype of what works first. And that's really the process, document all that and then look for the things in that process that are just mundane and repeatable and automate those things.

Frank
Yeah, I think you're you're dead on I often tell people, when your teams become overwhelmed with the work and the mundane,

Joe
then you automate those things. And that's when it's time.

Frank
But you know, if you're an organization that only needs two to four clients per month, what the hell are you doing, trying to like automate that. They're just go get that just go get them. Now, we talked about this in previous episodes without just going if you have that kind of volume needs, just go get it right. So to me, I think automation is great when you're dealing with one of two things and or two things, you know, the interchange of data and information between those different areas. So automation is great for that, right, make sure that this particular contact now gets switched ownership to this next, you know, area of the business, make sure that the data is in sync and that the life cycles are mapped and matched up especially if between two different systems. The same life cycle is worded differently. So automation is great for that those kinds of things. And then the other piece is when you're simply dealing with large volumes of information or contacts or data, okay?

Joe
We're talking a little bit philosophically about DevOps here. I want to bring it down, I want to get to tactical. But I do want to bring it down to if somebody is interested in this, what are the steps towards implementing this? I think that we should talk a little bit about process and platform and people and what goes in to each of those and why we've broken it into those three categories.

Frank
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about that.

Joe
So we talked about process, what are we talking about? Are we talking about process for, you know, running marketing campaigns, are we talking about process for outbound sales, what is process,

Frank
ultimately, the way I see it, and we talked about this, I talked about this in the book, building your digital utopia, it's essentially the process of how you're going to create differentiation with very specific audiences that you're trying to win with, and you're trying to put your best, you know, attempt forward, to create differentiation in the marketplace and go when the right kind of clients and opportunities and whatnot. So the process of that is what those three teams need to be aligned on, they need to be aligned on who they're going after, why they're going after them. The point of differentiation they have with that, who, how they transform that person's life. And the reason it's important, they all get aligned on that is because then they all need to agree on the experience that that person's going to go through across each of those functions within the business. And so everyone can get aligned and hyped around, you know, going and getting more of that kind of, you know, buyer persona, that kind of client into the business. And so when you start to then get into the tactics, then you're talking about things like oh, then what is the messaging to that person? what ultimately is going to be the offer? How are we going to generate leads? How are we going to nurture that person? How are we going to vert that person to a client or customer? How do we turn that customer into a fan. And so it's having a tactical plan to support that strategy, have a seamless experience from stranger to fan, that's the process. And so, really critical, because otherwise, you know, who sales may want to sell to maybe different than who marketing is marketing to? And that may be different than who the service team wants more of?

Joe
Right? I think that's really important. I think that when we talk about a process for moving someone through all of the different lifecycle stages, what we're really talking about, is everybody getting together. So when I say everybody, I mean marketing and sales and service representation, and talking about what is the journey we want this person to take, what's the experience, we want them to have, from the very first time that they see an ad or hear our business name, all the way to when they are, you know, singing our praises to their colleagues and friends. Right? Right. We want to understand what is it that they experienced that whole time, and whether that's a year long journey, or whether that's a lifelong journey, mapping it out? And then working backwards from that, to understand who's responsible for which part of that experience? And what are the metrics to let us know in each of those areas, that that person is actually experiencing what we thought they should want you to do that. And that's an oversimplification. But once you do that, then you can start extrapolating all of the different micro processes that need to be in place to help facilitate the, you know, hitting of those metrics, and to actually help facilitate an experience that you can look back on and say, Yep, that that customer experienced the entire journey there. Right, right.

Frank
Right. One of the things that we talk about when it comes to process is this idea of top down optimization. And so when those three teams get together, and they decide on Okay, who's are who, what's the differentiation, what's the offer, what's the transformation? What is the journey look like? The high level tactics of that journey before you get in the weeds. When you look at top down optimization, you start at the very end of the line, and you say, okay, who are fans? Who are we really great for? Who do we do a great job with. And you use that to then inform, you know, who your who is going to be, as you hyper focus in right, and be and the reason that's important is because the hyper specificity, which we've talked about in that past episode is really critical because and that top down optimization, because every organization has a limited time, budget and resources, right, nothing is unlimited. So the job is to make that all of those resources as efficient as possible to get the most output based on the input that you have at your disposal. And so you have to know, who are our best clients? What are our best offerings? What does our team love doing and where are they best in the world, and that needs to be exposed in that conversation. And this is where I truly believe the service team should be driving those decisions in the marketplace pretty heavily. You know, because as marketing goes out to market and try to create engagement with audiences, they need to be heavily influenced by the service team, they need to feel confident. If you bring in this type of person who has this type of problem and you sell them this type of offer, we're going to hit it out the park, and that alignment is critical.

Joe
Yeah, so to sum up process, we're talking about somebody who's governing the goals and the objectives that we're setting the buyer personas, we're creating the business math to support, you know, the acquisition of those buyers, and really, ultimately, the experience someone who's helping to define it and then govern it, as it's implemented across all of the three different departments. Right?

Frank
Yeah, absolutely. And those are the big, you actually hit the five big things that you need to have major alignment on.

Joe
What those three goals objectives, buyer personas, business, math and experience,

Frank
Correct. And when we say experience, we mean that stranger all the way to fan, right? Like what is that high level macro experience, and just at a high level, what engages them and turns them into a lead what nurtures them and turns them into an opportunity? You know, what turn what offer turns him into a customer? What things do we do to turn them into fans at a high level?

Joe
Right?

Frank
And everyone should should look at that on one sheet of paper, one sheet of paper and say, Yep, that's it, right? And then when you have that kind of alignment, then all the tactical details can spill off of that.

Joe
Well, let's talk about tactics. So now let's move into platform. We talked about process, let's move into platform. What do we mean when we say platform is a pillar of RevOps?

Frank
So platform is all the tech that then is related to the process. So the reason we put process platform people in that order when we say it, is because one dictates the other? So now that we've defined process, that is the driving thing, right? That dictates everything. So the first thing that gets dictated is platform, right?

Joe
We got to find a way to bring it to life,

Frank
we need to know what tech do we already have? What tech is missing? Where are there gaps,

Joe
or overlaps

Frank
and overlaps in the data. And so we need to examine that. And we need to bring all of that into alignment. And so that we have to have data integrity across marketing, sales and service. And, and if we don't have that, then the process breaks down. Right? That's why process is first, it's always first, right? It's the strategy.

Joe
Okay, so what is the technology supposed to be doing for us?

Frank
Okay, so at minimum, there's a few things, I'm gonna rattle off here, and you can do a whole lot more. And one of the things you want here is automation. Automation is definitely something that in the traditional sense, when people hear automation, with workflows, and all this other stuff, it isn't it is valuable, and it can be used in a very cool way. But it in my opinion, it's not the minimum requirement.

Joe
Okay.

Frank
So at minimum, we're talking about relationship lifecycle tracking, meaning, as your contacts move from one area of the organization to another marketing, sales, service, or success, whatever you call it, the lifecycle that that contact has in your database needs to change and be updated across the other systems. Ideally, it's one unified system, but many organizations it's not. So as they move into the service system, the marketing and sales systems need to be updated about that status. And the reason that's important is because as you go to communicate with these people, you need to do so in a relevant way. Like, how terrible is it for marketing to communicate with a contact, that's a customer, but you're communicating with them as if they're a prospect still,

Joe
or maybe even an opportunity? It's hard to do sometimes to see if there's a sales conversation going on already. It's easy to see if their customer in most systems, right, right. But a sales conversation has already been started, there's a personal relationship had and then they get a generic email saying, Hey, want to talk? Yeah, right. Yeah, I have some I have relationship with some brands where I get that, right.

Frank
And they're like marketing to me as if I'm still, you know, a prospect, which by the way, that's hard to do.

Joe
I get those too. And I, my first reaction is how stupid and then I think, you know, it's actually hard.

Frank
that's why rev ops is now a thing

Joe
Exactly.

Joe
Because that kind of stuff is happening, why the technology that was a great enabler, and empowerment tool is now also the devil, right? And it's the thing that's causing these problems. And so now you kind of need to go back and fix your technology. That's why we call this platform so we want to bring lifecycle tracking into integrity and alignment across all the systems. The next thing want to do is be able to understand marketing attribution. At minimum, we want to understand where did the contact come from? And what efforts are campaigns influenced that contact along their journey, right? There's a lot of ways you can look at attribution and they can get very complex and the and whenever I teach this people, I specifically tell them, Look, if you're here and you're a data nerd, and you know about all these complex models, that's not the point. The point As you just have minimum have to understand what effort originated the contact, and additionally, which efforts touched the contact or influence the contact along their journey. That's important. Because, again, if we're talking about top down optimization, we want to understand, how do we do more of the stuff that's working? Right? And if the only way you're gonna know that is if you have the life cycle tracking, right, so you know, who became an opportunity who became a customer? Right?

Joe
Yeah, it is important that, you know, we hear the old adage, I know, half of my advertising budget is wasted, I just don't know which half right, that's just not true anymore, we actually know, we can tell where those dollars are going. And we should be able to tell which of those faucets to turn off, which ones are actually kind of leaky, right and get rid of them.

Frank
Which is also why I say the second part of attribution is knowing which efforts influenced or touched because there are a lot of executives who make very, very bad decisions and say, you know, they want to turn off anything that didn't originate a customer. And that's a bad idea, because what ends up happening is there are a lot of efforts that will originate the contact, and then that contact isn't a buyer right away. And then you'll see that there's all these other efforts that touch the contact, and the very, very much had an impact on pushing that person over to to become a client. Right. So that's why it's important understand both. The third thing is in contact engagement history. This is so critical, it goes back to what we talked about earlier, where buyers expect to and clients expect to be treated in a in a manner in which you know everything about them. Because they've given you all this data, what's the worst thing in the world to call an 800 number, putting your credit card number, and then when the person gets on the phone, they asked you what your credit card number is, or your account number, right? That's terrible, that everybody hates that experience. So in a similar way, your prospects, your opportunities, your clients, your fans, they expect you to engage with them, and leverage what you know about them. So that engagement history is important have on the contact record, the people servicing the client once already claimed need to be able to look back at that record and go, Oh, I see that they actually came into our world, they came into our universe from a webinar that our marketing team put down. So I know that about them. So now I know what their original catalyst was, I know what their original pain point was. And now I can address them in that way. And, and be relevant to them and give them even more value.

Joe
Yeah, but not be creepy, right?

Frank
It should be creepy. Creepy.

Joe
Well, we all love the convenience of being tracked. But nobody actually wants to be tracked

Frank
me, we're not going to call our clients go like, so I saw this webinar you were on? We're not going to do that. Don't do that. All right, don't do that. For thing, data standardization. And so that's the reason this is important is you want to make sure that you know what, what marketing cost him qL sales calls and QL. And you know, what? Contact criteria is required from one area of the organization to the next is agreed upon and standardized. Otherwise, you'll end up with contacts at different places within this journey. And they don't mean the same thing.

Joe
Yeah,

Frank
to each other. So it's really critical that the three internal organizations agree, when do lifecycles change? What's the criteria for change? Who owns it? What's the trigger for who owns it?

Joe
Right?

Frank
So that data standardization is really critical. And then finally, analytics. And I'm not talking about Google Analytics, although Google Analytics is an important tool in the tactical Arsenal, I'm talking about full funnel analytics, someone has to be able to bring all of this together and say, Here are our buyers. And here's how much they spend, and you know, X number of buys per year, blah, blah, blah. And this is where they came from. And this, this is the kind of time they spent in the sales process. Someone needs to be able to like, see that entire journey and run an analysis on the entire journey. So that way, the executive team and everyone else understands like, oh, okay, it's these particular audiences with these particular topics who've been engaged in these kinds of ways. And given this kind of value. That's where we're winning. And so that's really critical to have full funnel analytics, that's going back to that term that we used earlier. We're not talking about just Google Analytics. That's a tool for marketers, right? Full funnel, rev ops analytics is a tool for the heads of each of those areas and the executive team,

Joe
right. So we're saying to get your platform in, in alignment, at minimum, you need relationship lifecycle tracking, you need marketing, attribution, contact, engagement, history, data standardization, and analytics. And that's not an exhaustive list, but that's kind of the bare minimum.

Frank
That's the minimum, right? That's what you're aiming for. You know, at minimum once you have that, you're you're good to go. You know, you can do a whole lot with that kind of base layer there.

Joe
Yeah. Whether you're using one system to accomplish that or many system on credit, it's easier to use one. But if you if you need to you can there's middleware out there that can help you connect the different systems correctly. Actually, as long as someone who knows what they're doing is governing all of this, right, you know, through a rev ops lens through those rev ops goggles, then you can you can accomplish that correct. And then finally, people, that's our third pillar, so process platform and people what do we mean, when we talk about people in RevOps?

Frank
Well, you want to make sure that everyone on your teams are empowered with the right training tools and data, because ultimately, you're trying to get them to become one powerhouse growth team. It's ultimately what you're after. Okay, and so we have defined, and this, this, you can define it any way you want. This is our preference for the definition of the the sub departments within within Rev Ops, people, we have four, strategy, content, engagement, and platform. And so I'll give you a brief overview of each of those. So as the Strategy Team aims to drive the overarching direction of the program, they want to analyze the data. And they're really just trying to identify bottlenecks. That that's what the strategy team is doing. And typically that consists consists of whoever your main rev ops leader is the analyst, the director, and then the heads of each area marketing sales service. And ideally, the GM CFO COO, is involved in that as well. So we're talking about five people,

Joe
right, whoever has a vested interest in growth,

Frank
correct? Yeah. It's the heads of each of those areas, like you said, the people that have the vested interest in the growth, and those people are going to meet regularly to ensure that everyone's in alignment and nodding their head about the process. Yep. This is who we're going after, this is the, this is the offer, we ultimately want to sell them. We agree this is the kind of transformation we bring, we agree this is the high level messaging. This is the kind of experience that we want for them. And then once that's defined, and then these are the results we expect, okay, so that's your strategy team. That's your strategy team. Okay, that then similar to process platform, people, where one dictates the other, that then goes to the content team, where then the content team will say, Okay, now we're going to develop an optimized content offers to address the bottlenecks that have been identified by the Strategy Team. So it's really important that the Strategy Team then doesn't dictate the tactics. What they need to do is expose where in this process, there's a bottleneck to growth. So the content team, the content offer team can come in and say, Okay, I see we've got a bottleneck here. We have a problem with our offer here. That's why there's a bottleneck. And so let's go to work and, and work on the offer, or Oh, we have a bottleneck here where we're not generating leads. And so we have a content problem here. So let's address that, Oh, well, we're not turning people into fans. That's the bottleneck. So now let's develop the content and offers and the support mechanisms to be able to better serve our clients so we can turn them into fans. So they're, they're going to develop content offers to address the bottleneck as defined by the Strategy Team. And so they're the ones who are going to get a little bit more tactical. So they have a content and offer strategy they'll do. But it's in context of the overarching strategy, right? And so then they're gonna get a little more tactical and say, okay, it's these pieces that we need to develop, we need a knowledge base set up, or we need a live chat, or we need to set up a net promoter score survey, or we need a better lead magnet, or we need better nurturing. I mean, these are all the tactics, and the content team is going to, to then define those things and build them out based on the bottleneck that was dictated to them. So no longer if you have a content team, no longer should your content team just be like producing all over the full spectrum. They should be focused on the bottleneck,

Joe
right.

Frank
And this is the number one mistake I see with organizations that do content marketing, is they're just doing a lot of content marketing. And the Strategy Team, or the executive team isn't focusing them on the bottleneck. Because I will tell you, most organizations, they don't necessarily need content and offer attention across the full spectrum across the full funnel. They, most organizations needed to be honest, they needed to turn their customers into fans, and they're failing at that. And so let's put the content team to work there. Because if we turn more customers into fans, we're gonna get more referrals, we're gonna get more repeat buys, average order value is going to go up, we're gonna get testimonials, we're going to get reviews, right? All of that is gold, for more leads, right for you, turning your opportunities into customers. So that's the content team. And then so once the content teams develop the content, then the engagement team takes that and their job is to mobilize the content. Their job is to get that content in front of the right people at the right time. So this is really relevant. When we talk about, like, if you're advertising to new people, they're going to make sure that that content is in front of them. new people, if they're nurturing your database, they're making sure that your database is getting nurtured properly, and the email blasts are going out. And they're making sure certain audiences are aware of new content and offers, but the engagement teams job, again, mobilize that content and get in front of the right people at the right time.

Joe
Yeah, I think it's important to as we were developing all of this one point kind of refer to that as the advertise meant, or, you know, promotional team, it is that it's advertising. But it's more than that, too, right. They're putting, they're putting the content in places that extend beyond ads. Sometimes,

Frank
yeah, the reason we went with engagement is because if you look at what happens once you develop a full funnel experience, there are points where you drive engagement. And then there are points where you drive reengagement, right, and so the engagements a better word, because ultimately, you're trying to create that one to one conversation. Right? Whereas, and you can call it promotion to because you are promoting things to the right people at the right time. that's a that's a fine word. The lens on that, though, feels much more one way. And so engagement to me, it really drives home the point that it's supposed to be two way, right? You're supposed to try to get to that one to one conversation and drive real engagement between these people and the brand,

Joe
right, but at the end of the day, all I'm saying is it's basically advertising, you're basically just promoting all of the content. I just want to make it clear,

Frank
yeah, if you're, but that's why I like to word mobilize, yeah, get that you're gonna move the content now and get it mobilize and get it in front of the right people at the right time. So it can be a an advertisement on Google, it could be just social media, which, if you're not doing paid social media, just doing organic social media, most people wouldn't think of that as advertising per se. I mean, in a raw sense, like, it's all advertising, it's all promotion. It's all engagement.

Joe
Okay, so we got a strategy team that then dictates what the content team is doing, which then the engagement team picks up and runs with. And then finally, we have the

Frank
platform team. And so the platform team really is there to support heavily supported content and engagement teams. And so what they're going to do is they're going to set up, maintain and grow tech so that they can enable those activities to happen and provide insights to the team. So this is your webmaster. This is your automation implementation, right? Like if you have a special like of use a system like we talked about often HubSpot like this could be your HubSpot. implementer. And a webmaster Yeah, like that. That was a typical two person, platform team.

Joe
Yeah, it could be Marketo. It could be Salesforce, just somebody who knows the tech and knows how to get their hands dirty in the tech to make it do what you need to do.

Frank
Yeah, cuz the content team often do their own publishing, the tools are easy to use, they'll do their own publishing, the engagement team has their tools that they use to, you know, advertise and promote or send out emails, they, those tools are easy to use. But when it comes to like, Hey, we need this really advanced list set up. And we're not quite sure how to do it, or we need a workflow setup to do these things. Or we need this integration to take place between this system and that system. We were really trying to get this like bought programmed out in enabled on the site, like that's going to be your platform team. They're going to do the stuff that's more technical developers and software experts. Yeah, systems, systems oriented people, logic oriented people, again, your content team should be doing a book of their own publishing with the point and click tools that are there once the platform's

Joe
already asked, am I you know, I think it's important to we keep saying team, and it can be a team that can be an internal team, or that can be a team comprised of internal and external, right? Correct, whether it's freelancers or an agency, or you can comprise these teams, however you want. And I think in some cases, maybe even in platform, specifically could be a person, right? Correct. It could be by using the word team,

Frank
correct. And by the way, on your I want to go back to when I forgot on your content team, you know, that's going to consist of typically what we see as someone who's leading the content strategy, you've got someone who's producing content, like doing the writing or the video assembly or you know, or doing the interviews. Then you've got a media designer and I'm reason I was a graphic designer is because the media designer, you should have someone that can put together graphics, but they should also be able to assemble video, like basic video and

Joe
edit a podcast

Frank
and edit a podcast. Exactly. So you call that a media designer.

Joe
That's a shout out to dJ

Frank
dJ. Oh, man, what would you do without DJ puts this together? And makes us sound smart.

Joe
You know what we would do without DJ? It'd be the thing we did for the last five years, we would talk about doing a podcast, we wouldn't do it. And we would schedule time to do it. And then Friday would come and we would go to lunch.

Frank
Yeah, drink margaritas. Maybe that's another show Arianne. We include Margarita as with this show, although we do this early in the morning. So I'm not sure how I feel about that. Okay, back to the content team. So I mentioned those three people, but it's really critical that your subject matter experts are participating in the content team. That's really critical. And that means like your engineer who like comes in and like, just wants to, like, code and do engineering stuff and then leave. Like, Bob, you gotta you got to join in on this, because your feedbacks important. And I know this is gonna make you a little grumpy. But I'm going to give you your favorite coffee and whatever else like, come on Bob, and we're going to, we're going to have you join in on this. So you need to make it fun for Bob, right? Because your subject matter experts aren't always the like, the people who are going to be like, yeah, let's have a meeting. And I want to, I want to do this interview for you. Have a meeting and I want to, I want to do this interview for you know,

Joe
but they're, they're critical. They're so important because so often content thought leadership is sent out to content farms or you know, an agency or something at the end of the day, nobody but you can write about how smart you and your team are, or how good your product is how good your services, you can try and afford that. But it just never works out and look to make this easy. If you have a good content producer, they'll just interview Bob. Right, Bob can say it in Bob's technical way. And somebody can interpret that and make it human speak correctly,

Frank
they can then transcribe it, turn it in, they could have a video that they put on YouTube, they can transcribe the audio to do a podcast, they can do a written version for a blog post, they can create an infographic of the key points and have another visual asset, you can turn it into slides and do a recorded webinar, like from that one interview with with your subject matter expert, you can get a lot of content, but it's important that the source of the information comes from the subject matter expert, that that's really critical. So I just wanted to make sure that was clear that your content team, yeah, you're gonna have a strategist and a producer and a media designer. And those those are like the more marketing like people, if you will, but the subject matter experts are critical. So you've got to get those people on your team involved. And so we're not talking about necessarily hiring 17 people to make this team come to life, it's about making better use of the people you already have. And if you need additional help, then you can fill in the gaps. You might say, you know what, let's have someone come in and direct us on rev Ops, and do the content piece, like help us push the content over the edge, that's a wonderful solution. Right? Instead of these agencies who like want to get the entire lifecycle of your business, the entire spectrum of your business, which I think doesn't like set companies up for success, by the way, like these kinds of things have to be taken seriously once and for all. And the organizations have to internalize them, right? But if you need outside help for just one or two pieces, that's the ideal scenario, right? have people come in and say, Hey, lead the strategy piece, and you know, lead the content piece, the rest of the stuff we'll handle, we're going to use people we already have. And ultimately, that's what should be happening. Your people should know how to do this stuff, right? shouldn't just be you write a check and throw over the fence and then say, what happened? Nothing works like that. Like you can't like write a check to your gym and be like, I'm fit now. You got to show up and put in the work.

Joe
Is that what my problem is? I've been paying that $47 a month for years and nothing's happened.

Frank
Look, when you can like be consistent like me and get jacked like me? Yes.

Joe
We're gonna put a picture up of Frank. museo Jackie actually is

Frank
Oh, yeah, not quite.

Joe
Okay, so we talked about why was RevOps created, we talked about kind of the need, where it came from, if you are a business owner, or somebody who has any stake in the growth of the business, and you're asking questions like, why can't we generate revenue more consistently? If you're saying our processes isn't working? Our leads are crap, then probably Rev. Rev ops is for you. You know, that's, that's kind of who this is really working the best for? We talked a bit about the three P's our process our platform, and people Yep. And I think that covers most of RevOps, what would you want to leave us with?

Frank
Well, I think if you want to learn more, so we talked about this in a lot of our episodes, but definitely go check out the methodology that we've developed that is this if Reb ops is the overarching, you know, strategy of what you're trying to accomplish, then the methodology we've developed as the player is our playbook on how to make that happen. Right. And I would say it's the the playbook on how to implement Rev ops. It's called the digital utopia methodology. And you can learn more about it at building your digital utopia.com. And there you can learn about the book, you can get access to some free templates that some strategy documents, there are more episodes of the podcast, we'll have some other really cool things that we're launching here in the near future as well. So go to building your digital utopia comm if you're here today, and you're interested in this idea of rev ops and how you can bring your team into alignment, so that way you can operationalize and maximize your organization's revenue potential. Go check it out, buildingyourdigitalutopia.com. Folks, that's all we have time for. It's been great being here with you today. Go forth conquer have an amazing day.