Rachel Truair

I still take on the occasional #revops contract to stay sharp. Most clients bring me in to prepare their campaign data to: 1. Get more reports out of the systems they have today 2. Prepare for future analytics solutions While this may not be good for the RevOps arm of my freelance business, it is good for you! I've given CaliberMind all of my secrets because I've decided this shouldn't be kept secret. There's a right way to look at the CRM and how to communicate campaign information and a wrong way. #MOPs must understand that the CRM should communicate what's important to sales and your executive team. 🛑 Not 🛑 track and report on every marketing touch. You have marketing automation system and analytics for that. I've seen too many #CMO and other marketing leaders tricked by the "View Hierarchy" link in Salesforce. It will not organize your data so it reports and summarizes the information by all those levels. You're shooting yourself in the foot because Salesforce really only allows you to display on parent/child level on a single report. If the view hierarchy worked the way you think it does, you wouldn't be so frustrated by the lack of insights in your attribution reports. (SOMEONE had to say it!) The cat is out of the bag! 👜 🐈 Get the ungated guide to how to configure campaign data to scale here -> https://lnkd.in/gbfrBUym #attribution #marketinganalytics #marketingroi

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Our partnership with Brex now gives us unparalleled insight and breadth in SaaS purchasing reports

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The initial pain point Jaldi was built to solve was optimizing cold calling for inside sales teams. You may be asking yourself, "Usman, isn't cold calling dead?" The short answer is no. Cold calling is not only growing in popularity, but is the channel many decision makers PREFER to be contacted through, 57% to be exact. With a flood of message based automation tools many channels have lost their effectiveness. (Think of your escalating unread email inbox). If you're wondering, "How can I increase my qualified lead volume?", it may be time to invest in a strong cold calling team. It works for us at Jaldi too. #sales #jaldi #startup #marketing #coldcalling #salesmanagement #leads #leadmanagement #deals #dealflow https://lnkd.in/dtZZQfTj

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CSM, get out of the hamster wheel before you burn out. ❌ Stop fire-fighting ❌ Stop with check-in calls ❌ Stop reacting to your inbox ❌ Stop taking support queries ❌ Stop ineffective repetitive tasks ❌ Stop solving for this month's number ❌ Stop emailing unresponsive contacts ❌ Stop only prioritising in-month renewals ❌ Stop manually doing what should be automated A ton of hard work. Very little to show for it. You'll never get out of the rat race if you keep working this way. Here's a different and better way of CSM-ing: ✅ Establish your customers' expected outcomes ✅ Build a Success Plan from day one ✅ Ensure they have the right set-up ✅ Hold customers accountable ✅ Report on and share results ✅ Ask if they intend to renew ✅ Monitor leading indicators ✅ Pick up the phone ✅ Multi-thread Proactive, strategic and consultative. 1000x better. If reading this makes you feel ashamed because you don't know where to start or overwhelmed because your current work situation is too chaotic to create the time for this, you're not alone. Thousands of CSMs feel exactly the same way. I know what you're thinking: -> You can't afford to stop right now -> You don't have time to make changes -> You only need to weather the storm and things will get better I've been there too. But these are the excuses that are holding you back. Nobody is coming to save you. You need to save yourself. So here's my advice: 🛑 Stop everything 🛑 Book 2 days "OOO" in your calendar. And do these 3 exercises: 1- Create a Calendar Blueprint: Set up a separate calendar from your current one. You'll use this to design a new calendar blueprint for yourself. You should add every single thing you need to do proactively in this calendar, it's the baseline for you to start changing the make-up of your working day. 📆 I'll link the one I designed for CSMs in the comments. 2- Book of Business Review: Do a full review of your customers and place them into one of the 4 buckets of priority. This way you can decide which customers to pay attention to and which ones to de-prioritise at this time. 🧰 Engagement prioritisation framework linked in the comments. 3- Calendar Planning Book or delete meetings based on customers you need to prioritise over the coming 6-8 weeks. Craft unique messages to send to these customers with compelling reasons why they should attend. 🤖 Use the T.A.V.U method I shared in the newsletter a few weeks ago ChatGPT can help you be efficient here. Do these 3 things and I promise you that you'll: - get better results - transform your work-life - improve your mental health Create the space. 📥 If you're interested in improving your Customer Success skills, consider joining 10k CS Professionals who read my weekly newsletter on how to build and scale a CS Team [sign up in the comments section]. #csm #customersuccess #customerexperience #revops #saas

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It's time for 2025 budget planning, and the alignment meeting Finance & Engineering is more important than ever. Yeah, yah. I know I'm a marketing leader, but I do think the Engineering/Finance relationship affects the entire organization when planning for the next year. This is especially true with GenAI transforming our workflows. It's crazy out there! You must back every R&D investment with solid data rather than just intuition. Lucky for us, we have Joanne Cheng as our CFO. In her latest post, she shares how Finance and Engineering can work together for more effective R&D budgeting. Read the full post to start planning with clarity and confidence: https://lnkd.in/g5dJxtx8

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Absolutely agree! Unless you're in customer success, it's hard to grasp what CSMs handle daily. They must be consultants, sellers, product experts, industry gurus, relationship managers and incredibly patient - all to excel at their job. When I hear jokes about CS not doing much, it’s clear I’m dealing with someone who has no idea what it takes to run a successful business. To be a CSM, you need to be on your A game constantly, without rest. If you want the best in the industry protecting and advocating for your business, pay them accordingly. End of.

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Another good report from Vendr on SaaS buying trends. (see in comments below) The metric that jumped out at me was ACV for Renewals. Remaining flat. In Q1 2024 Ryan Neu 's take is that as vendors have come across tougher times they are increasing prices to counter customer's renewing with down-sized contracts (presumably less seats) since most vendors charge per license. As a buyer, I have definitely seen this in 2024. Taken together with ARR, this really does imply that Net Revenue Retention in 2024 is plummeting. We are definitely seeing churn, so gross retention is down. And we are Net Retention (ie after upsell and/or downsell) is significantly down. In 2023, the investment guru's were saying that Net Retention of 130% plus was the mark of the very best SaaS companies. And valuations were being heavily influenced by Net Retention. I remember back in 2015 when Mimecast went public, we had net retention of around 110% and it was considered unbelievably good by the investment community. I have a sneaking suspicion that Net Retention of 110-120% in 2024 will again be considered very good to exceptional. Love to hear from folks like Ray Rike and Nick Mehta and Megan Bowen (and others) as to what they think about 2024 Net Retention benchmarks? #ACV #nrr #benchmarks

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So I am loving Steve Travaglini 's newsletters from Winrate We chatted about his new company a few weeks ago. As a #revops nerd my question is ... How do you define Win Rate? I have seen more definitions than you would ever imagine. Truth. And how do you use win-rates to understand your business? ✅ Most simple - total wins divided by (total wins total losses) This is based off the close date of the opportunity. So you close WON 5 opportunities and you close LOST 5 opportunities in a given period (say Q2). You "win-rate" or win to loss ratio is 50% for Q2. Or 5 divided by 10 (5 5). This approach kinda nullifies deals that are pushing during that period. ✅ Slightly more complex - total wins in a period divided by total opportunities pursued in that period. So here you WIN 5 opp's divided by 15 being pursued, so your win rate is 33%. For ease of math, let's assume 5 were lost and 5 are still open. So this raises the question about the open opp's. I have seen the formula adjusted to account for lag or the approximate sales cycle time. Then there is the debate - is your win rate based off count (number of deals) or value (cumulative dollar value of those deals). All very interesting approaches and all relevant. How do you measure win rate? And more importantly, how are you using the metric to understand your business? #sales #winrates #revenueoperations

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