Jorgen Davidson

New topic: negative signals for GTM. No, not churn signals. Signals that say "they're not going to buy right now". Here’s a real example: You sell marketing automation software. You see a good-fit company just hired a new VP of Demand Gen, and they're showing intent signal spike for 'marketing automation'. Seems like a perfect opportunity, right? But what if… They just installed a leading marketing automation platform two months ago. That intent signal may mean the new hire + their team is just researching, learning about their new tool, not shopping for a new one. Consider both positive and negative signals as you build your audiences, models, and plays. Just like in any good SEM strategy where you build a list of negative keywords to improve your ad conversion rates, you need the full picture to avoid wasting time on false opportunities when you architect your GTM. The value is in the clustering of these signals. E.g. They purchased technology 2 months ago that is within the same category of the intent they are showing again today (think: that’s a technographic signal, with two intent signal spikes X time period apart). The hard part, of course, is contextualizing all this data to get a complete historical, multi-signal view at any account. The unlock is: knowing not just when to engage, but when to hold back. Because sometimes, what looks like a buying signal is actually a signal to wait. How are GTM teams doing this today? Are you considering this as you build your propensity models or even just basic ICP definitions? Talk to me!

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Every once in a while I’ll check in on our First Sale Slack channel and be amazed. Context: We set up an internal slack channel that notifies the team every time a brand gets their first sale with Rebuy Engine Multiple brands getting their first sale within days, hours and even minutes. 🤯 This is becoming a common occurrence  Personalization + Smart Merchandising with Rebuy is one of the easiest hacks for Shopify brands to optimize their store for revenue by enhancing their customer experience Great way to close Q2 for me- we’ve got even more exciting things coming in Q3!

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A refreshing perspective on SaaS retention metrics by Markus Rentsch! Shifting the focus from internal definitions and product signals to purely customer outcomes is what everybody would be interested in. But here's the tricky part: SaaS-related outcomes are often indirect and nonlinear. It's a good idea to set expectations on outcomes during the SLA and measure progress along the way. #csm #partnership

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I was talking to a MarTech leader a couple weeks ago and they paused me and asked, "This seems great, but is it TRULY zero-copy?" While companies like Salesforce have been marketing "zero-copy" aggressively, we're consistently seeing customers struggle with Salesforce Data Cloud's implementation. And, paradoxically— it still requires data copies! At Hightouch, our Composable CDP has been zero-copy from day 0. Marketers can use all of their data, in the warehouse where their data & IT teams are already operating. And if your warehouse isn't perfect (because whose is?) and you need help with identity resolution, sourcing additional data, etc., we've got your back with the rest of our product suite :) Our team just published a quick deep-dive that will help you cut through Salesforce’s confusing marketing and actually set up a zero-copy CDP: https://lnkd.in/e4XuMrBF

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Churn tracking in your CRM - what's the best way to do this? 🤔 This question was posed in RevOps Co-op the other day, And like most things in RevOps, this sounds "easy enough" on the surface, but in reality can get complicated fast, like: Should you track on the account object? Or deal object? Or a custom object? What if someone churns and comes back? Here are some of the things the RevOps community had to say on this topic 👇 📍 You can use the account object You can use an "Account Type" property (e.g. prospect, customer) coupled with a "Customer Type" property (e.g. active, cancelled). 📍 You can use the opportunity object too In this case folks still had the account type = churn, but you'd set this to happen if the opportunity type is "renewal" and the stage is "closed lost" 📍 And if you wanna get wild, you can use products too If you track billing status as the product level, some folks have a scheduled flow that updates the status of the account for the associated products. 📍 A few folks even mentioned using custom objects So there you have it, clear as mud, egh? 🫠 Few different ways you can accomplish this depending on your business and CRM configuration, but all very doable. And if you aren't tracking this in the CRM, you should be. Shout out to Ashish Tayal, Andréa F., Sakinna Gairey, CCMP, Andrew Cooper, Caterina Torres and all the other ROC members who participated in this thread 🧵 Oh and if you wanna join the fun so you can hang out with these awesome people, join the club at www(dot)revopscoop(dot)com 🕺 #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #csops #cxops #gtmops #AllTheOps #salesforce #sfdc #hubspot #crm

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Marketers: we should categorize self-reported attribution as "first recall." The human brain is fallible and memory is malleable. Prospects saw you dozens - hundreds of times and the first time a trusted colleague mentioned your name, it stuck. Or when your rep sent that cold email, your prospect [subconsciously] said "oh yeah I think I know them..." Emir Atli wrote about this today. SRA is another touchpoint to look at but is one of thousands along the journey. How much credence do you give to self-reported attribution?

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Some thoughts on the "RevOps tech as a category is dead" hysteria. 1) Something can't be dead when it never really lived. The category didn't get to PMF, the end, bye. 2) Notice how it's the founders, sales, and marketing people saying the category is dead and the RevOps folk saying "well yeah, because we never needed these products"? RevOps tech in the state that it is now is created by happy ears. 3) A department can have authority and be strategic without a budget. I honestly didn't think we'd need to have this talk, but okay. RevOps isn't a standalone department, it sits over three revenue-generating teams. That means we use the budgets available to those teams to make them better. A captain's armband doesn't make you a captain, and a budget sure as 🦆 doesn't create authority or make you more strategic. 4) RevOps exists to make things efficient. Purchasing unnecessary (let's be honest) software is by default not efficient and needlessly adds operating costs. 5) Every piece of RevOps software I've seen was something I can do in less time, for free, and better with the tech I already have. The category could rise again, but the products on offer need to be - gasp - not basic. 6) Finally, as an aside - supporting vs strategic is a false dichotomy. RevOps can, and should be, both. I have no issue saying that RevOps supports Revenue teams, because that's what we do. We don't sell, we don't market, we don't look after customers. We support those that do, to do it better, faster, easier, and armed with the full context. That's both supporting and strategic in one flacon, and if you really hate the idea that your role supports somebody, it may be time to talk to a therapist.

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Gong's privacy policy update email got a whopping 39.5% open rate, roughly double the industry standard. Some brand-building comes from monumental efforts like launching a new website, putting on a large-scale customer event, or planning an epic Super Bowl commercial. But most of the time, brands gain momentum through small, everyday interactions, like a routine email. If you’ve ever used a software product, you know most companies send out their updated privacy policy around January or February. It’s a yawn-inducing practice most companies invest little thought in. When my team had to send out our annual notice, they asked me for guidance. “Don’t make it boring,” I said. They delivered big time by treating this routine email as an opportunity to delight our customers and add another layer of “raving fandom” to our brand. It started with a startling subject line: “Our lawyers made us do this.” Inside the email, they found our usual lighthearted tone: “Privacy. Protection. Personal Data. This is likely the umpteenth email you’ve received in the past few months that has referenced one (or more) of those 3 words and phrases. We didn’t want to miss out on any of the fun, so we went ahead and also updated our Privacy Policy to reflect the new requirements of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). As it turns out, we are also required by law to update our policy AND to tell you that we are updating our policy. ✅ and ✅.” We even threw in a “Mission Accomplished” Britney Spears meme for good measure. Our email saw a whopping 39.5% open rate, roughly double the industry standard. But its success in elevating our brand didn’t stop there: it went viral and got posted on Twitter (now X), LinkedIn, and Medium, as customers shared their excitement about a potentially boring email actually being funny and entertaining. What YOU you doing to create moments of delight?

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Shout out to all the sales enablement folks, AEs, sales engineers, CSMs, growth marketers and content marketers for having PMMs backs and being their work BFFs. 💛 - PMMs who appreciate your feedback and collaboration

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🏄‍♂️ Scott Leese has a great take on this. Too often I’m seeing RevOps people tout proudly complex comp plans and thinking that it’s ok. Where are we on this? Are there truly products that are too complicated or sales cycles that are so complex that having a quant wizard workbook is warranted to pay your salespeople? When I was interviewing, many members even in Pavilion within the RevOps community, had an air of accomplishment in their structure being so complex that it would take a full onboarding to even understand why the structure was the way it was. I’m open to being called wrong, but I’m 100% in agreement that if the comp plan is too complicated, it sucks, and it’s broken. Having been under many comp plans myself, you easily build distrust if transparency isn’t available and plans designed by people who have never been on a variable comp structure often reflect this. It’s not chutes and ladders, or cones of dunshire, or “who was the best mathlete”, it’s how people pay their mortgage, feed their kids, and live their lives. #revenue #operations #sales #revops #enablement #compensation

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Analyzing Churn- do you know what metrics to look at? How often are you looking at this and being proactive to prevent it? What metrics should you be looking at if you do not have CS Ops? The Infinite Renewals team recommends looking at these first: % Churn # of accounts $$ churned % calculated churn (12 MONTH) $$ renewed # accounts renewed $$ upsold # accounts upsold $$ booked # account booked The above monthly and quarterly It would be best if you also had the ability to drill down on the numbers above to be able to see which accounts made up the $$, #, %

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B2B tech companies: WE'RE DATA-DRIVEN! But also: - We only have one person owning GTM data quality (+ million other things) - Our execs don't trust the reports - Our SFDC data/process = chaos So in reality: - Our SFDC reports haven't been refreshed since 2019 - Our whole team does excelympics every month for the board reporting - The tenure on the revenue teams is <1 year because everyone is burned out Fixing the data isn't easy. But it's not impossible. The first step is making sure you have the team to build what you need. Either internally or internal + external. A team that has the skills and is incentivized AND enabled to make the changes necessary (often an important piece that gets missed). You really can get to a better place where you have reliable data to make decisions. It just takes some effort and focus. #gtmoperations #marketingoperations #revenueoperations  

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Good chance that if you're seeing me in your LI feed, right now there’s a committee somewhere working on designs for your life next year. Sales & BDR quota, marketing budgets, partner targets- your livelihood and your ability to do your best work are being negotiated over a series of strategy sessions, furious deck & data swapping, and ultimately, your model of next year’s plan. Your post-SKO job is being drawn up in a spreadsheet right now. *** I’ve been in the room for annual planning at a ~20k, ~2k, and now a 200 person company, and the complexity/maturity of the process varies but the feeling is the same. Done wrong, planning can devolve into departmental leaders squabbling to duck stretchy commitments and seize resources- headcount, budget, territory, etc. Leaders should advocate for their teams, but viewing planning through a departmental lens is guaranteed to poison the overall plan. Done right- everyone shows up to listen more than talk, to work together on a common plan, and to commit to winning or losing as a team. Everyone's got their role to play, but there’s no such thing as departmental success. The business either succeeds or it doesn’t. The naked culture of the company comes out in the planning process and gets baked into next year’s plan. *** Planning isn’t leadership. But good GTM leaders understand their relationship and are deeply invested in planning. If you’re in the room, take that spreadsheet seriously.

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Imagine this: 75% of the CSMs feel miserable. 😣 And this is not at all CSMs fault! Here's why CSMs feel so: ↔ Having ZERO insights about their accounts. ↔ Spend time resolving support tickets. ↔ Do not talk about value outcomes. ↔ Operate on Excel sheets. ↔ Do collections. Instead, Your CSMs should: ↔ Drive Value. ↔ Run strategic QBRs. ↔ Have 360° view of portfolio. ..and much more! Want to make your CSMs life easier? Introduce CS Ops! Think #CustomerSuccess Think #Ankitify | The CS Mentor

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Big key to being a "revolutionary" Rev Ops analyst. I've worked in hundreds of Salesforce orgs. Everyone of them uses the default Opportunity Probability field in at least some reports for weighted revenue. 80%+ orgs end up just using the default values (or rolling with the number they picked out of thin air when they made a new opportunity stage). 15% of orgs will use something like "this is the close rate we'd LIKE to see at this stage" Probably less than 5% of them actually do the analysis of "if an opportunity reaches this stage, how often do we close it?" This is super easy, and useful to forecasting. Why does no one actually bother to do it?

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Lead sources < campaign outcomes. If you're managing a complex GTM motion, origination is interesting but likely a (first) point in time that's part of dozens if not hundreds of interactions across the buying committee and buying journey. Sixteen years ago, with my very first client, we took data from CRM and ran a regression analysis to see which campaigns appeared to have the most influence on closed-won deals. Heavy on the word "appeared" as causation was (and is) a big question. Sixteen years later, it's still clear that a campaign mentality is what's necessary to predictably build and manage B2B pipelines and forecasts. We may still be chasing that elusive attribution solution, but along the way we've learned for sure that: 1️⃣ No single variable, tactic or source can get full credit for the deal 2️⃣ Some tactics and campaigns are better than others at accelerating urgency and consensus-building 3️⃣ Closed-won deals have a history of a LOT of campaigns over a long period of time Yes there are outliers, but you can't build a practicable/scalable business on outliers. Into 2025: 🔥 Create a campaign mentality and culture for managing demand programs 🔥 As best as possible track all who are exposed to the campaign, not just those who respond 🔥 Don't be afraid of old-school regression analyses that can help you make more confident decisions that create more likely outcomes

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For any PMM having a hard time nailing messaging… Facts - There’s no ‘Don Draper’ moment where inspiration will strike in the middle of a meeting. The good news is you have everything you need. 1. Look at your wins. Find the last 6 months of closed/won deals in your CRM. Find the patterns, and talk to the AEs if you need to. Better yet go talk to the customers themselves. Why did they buy? What made them pick you? 2. Once you have a good sample, use your judgement and distill out 3-5 ‘winning use cases’. These are the foundational proof points of why you’re differentiated. And they’re real 3. Then build the top and bottom. Top = what’s the one unifying value prop across the winning use cases. Bottom = what’s the product capabilities that support those use cases 4. Document this, turn it into your first call deck, and your website nav + core pages Refine this every 6 months. Sales will love it, and customers will actually believe you #productmarketing #messaging

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I can't believe it was almost 6 years ago when I started doing the podcast circuit talking about how RevOps was needed because there would be a fundamental change in the way SaaS works and the economy. Here's what I got right in these early conversations, this one with Dan Martell. 🧾 Current metrics that SaaS companies measure themselves on aren't true signals of the business's health. Looking at 3VC and effective use of capital was and now is the future. 🧾 Using industry benchmarks for your tech segment is more critical than using VC numbers for only high growth as you'll need both a day-to-day strategy in case you aren't a high-growth unicorn (which you are not) or def. in case you are (which again, you are not) 🧾 The future of outbound is personalized at scale, meaning real personalization is at the root of your outreach strategy. The key is the right to offer a message tied to the contact lifecycle. We just implemented a version of this at TrustLayer in 2024. 🧾 How RevOps, more than any other function, boosts efficient revenue gains, sometimes 36%. I saw this in clients when I was the CEO of Go Nimbly. Made this happen as CRO of TrustLayer - as we grow with well-run revops costs stay more fixed and produce more dollars out of each employee. For those of you who don't get it. This is the "check" emoji 🧾. The link to the original podcast is below.

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1 RevOps team or separate CX, Sales, and Marketing Ops teams? I spoke with 4 RevOps leaders this month who all had the same painful story about this decision. Here’s how it usually goes: ✅ Start with separate teams: Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, CX Ops. It makes sense early on: - Processes and reporting are function-specific. - Each exec gets their go-to ops person to execute more quickly. But then the cracks appear: ❌ Siloed data and processes. ❌ Finger-pointing due to misalignment. ❌ No clear view of the customer journey. ❌ Ops becomes order takers and firefighters instead of strategic partners. In the worst cases? Ops teams are stuck defending execs instead of being the truth tellers your business needs. What happens next? Painful consolidation. All 4 leaders shared how they had to merge their ops teams into one RevOps function, rebuilding processes and data foundations from scratch to match the customer journey. The results? Functions work together seamlessly: Marketing generates leads that Sales actually works. Pipeline forecasting gets easier. Sales focuses on customers that retain. RevOps becomes a strategic, empowered truth-teller, and finally gets a seat at the table. My takeaway is that it’s much easier to launch RevOps with this foundation upfront than fix it later. But it takes discipline and alignment, which is more challenging in high growth environments. How has your org thought about this decision?

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