Learn the most important takeaways from LeanData’s conference from senior sales, marketing & RevOps leaders who attended the recent OpsStars event.
Welcome to our collective roundtable article highlighting and sharing the takeaways a highly skilled group of B2B technology sales & marketing / marketing ops professionals with a collective 100+ years of experience gleaned from the recent Dreamforce / LeanData “OpsStars” event in San Francisco, held on Wednesday, September 18th!
TL;DR: For those who want to get to the juicy stuff first!
- Takeaway #1: RevOps and GTM strategies must evolve to be buyer-first.
- Takeaway #2: AI and technology effectively (not just efficiently) scale GTM teams, not replaces them.
- Takeaway #3: Merging sales operations and marketing operations best enables buyer-first GTM approaches, boosting revenue as a result.
Participant Intros: Meet the sales & marketing leaders bringing you their takeaways and highlights from the OpsStars conference!
- Matt Payne, Founder of LeadSwell, a lead generation company specializing in B2B Tech: Has 25+ years of experience helping B2B Technology Brands, Agencies & Publishers generate content syndication leads on a Cost Per Lead (CPL) basis.
- Chris Kilkes: Longtime (20+ years) marketing leader in B2B and B2C industries using data to make marketing investment and management decisions wisely.
- Jennifer Ziman, Founder of Kindling Media: has 25+ years of experience working across global brand, demand, and direct response marketing for both fortune 500 and mid-size B2B and B2C/D2C brands.
- Jason Love: Highly experienced marketing and sales operations leader with 25+ years leveraging cutting edge technologies to make GTM orgs faster, better and more successful driving revenue.
Q&A:
Moderator (Matt Payne): Kicks off the virtual roundtable / article by asking:
- Q: What was your biggest takeaway from OpsStars?
- A: Jen Ziman:
The most important takeaway is that RevOps and GTM strategies must evolve to be buyer-first. Success hinges on aligning internal processes with external buyer behavior. Organizations that focus on creating empathetic, intuitive, and proactive buyer experiences—by leveraging AI and empowering managers—will be the ones driving durable, sustainable growth.
- A: Chris Kilkes:
I learned that the big shift my team made in conjunction with my last company’s sales & marketing teams in 2022-23 has an actual name – Buyer Focused marketing! More importantly, the success I saw with buyer marketing is being seen across the industry validating our strategic B2B sales & marketing shift. At the time we kicked off the shift there wasn’t a name for this focus just yet that I know of. We made the shift over two years ago globally, and just as highlighted throughout the OpsStars event, once we shifted to focusing on the Buying Committee all up (vs. handling lead by lead) we saw greater sales acceleration and much more revenue generation as a result – seeing 10-20% faster time to sale at 20% lower cost per MQLs.
- A: Jason Love:
I mainly attended OpsStars to learn more about how other’s have implemented Buying Groups. Buying Groups make total sense to me because they align to key learnings and best practices for lead follow-up and conversion:
Define your buying personas
Opportunities progress faster when you have multiple contacts engaged
An Inquiry or MQL can be a signal, even if that particular lead isn’t the right person to work with Sales, so look for other engagement and leads within the company.
Multithreading can be effective
- A: Matt Payne:
Echoing what you all are saying, a key learning I had came from Terry Flaherty’s (from Forrester Research) Buyer’s Journey session that until sales & marketing organizations recognize the need to focus on the buyer’s journey this kind of Buyer-focused marketing is impossible. It requires a big organizational commitment as Jason notes, but also a clear understanding of the Buyer Group itself and the understanding that there is a need to focus both sales & marketing efforts on that Group’s buying journey.
Q: If you had to share your top 3 learnings from the event what would they be?
- A: Jen:
Align Your Revenue Process with the Buyer’s Journey: Many sessions, including those on Buying Groups and Cognism’s infrastructure, emphasized the importance of aligning the revenue process with how buyers want to buy. Shifting from MQL-centric approaches to opportunity-centric and buyer-led processes is critical. Understanding buyer signals and context allows for better lead nurturing and more efficient revenue operations.
The Role of Frontline Managers in Sales Accountability: Sessions on sales accountability highlighted how crucial frontline managers are in fostering a high-performance culture. Managers should be trained not just to hit numbers but to be effective coaches. They must use data-driven insights to differentiate between reps who need support and those who aren’t performing, while maintaining a culture of radical candor and continuous feedback.
Embracing AI for GTM Transformation: AI’s role in revolutionizing go-to-market (GTM) strategies was a key theme. Tools like 1Mind and Tofu are enabling hyper-personalization at scale, making it possible to iterate on campaigns and optimize sales conversations in real-time. Companies leveraging AI for both top-of-funnel and sales execution are likely to accelerate their growth by making smarter, data-driven decisions.
- A: Chris:
The day’s events were so engaging that I ended up taking 12 pages of notes! A few key items really stood out for me though:
The pivot from efficient to durable growth: I found this concept really resonated with me in particular as articulated by Karan Singh (VP, LaunchDarkly) noted. Now it’s not just enough to grow at any cost, but instead to create a consistent demand engine driving ongoing growth, some of which will be efficient but others not especially when what demand orgs need to deliver now is a best-in-class customer experience. It used to be a good product-market fit could drive the majority of a company’s growth. But just like low interest rates and cheap money, solid product-market fit isn’t enough in an ever more competitive world. Highly focused, experienced GTM orgs with solid relationships with the C suite and customers will be the ones that grow best.
AI scales the SDR in a low-resource world – it doesn’t replace them entirely: With all of the market chatter about AI replacing people, it was refreshing to hear from multiple vendors in the “Superhuman SDR” session a more pragmatic AI use case. Namely that AI can be used to help fill in SDR gaps in either resources or skills but that it can’t replace (and shouldn’t) humans in high-touch face-to-face interactions. Instead it helps handle the grunt work speeding up operational process enough that SDRs can prioritize more of (aiming at most of) their time talking to prospects and customers. Speakers shared a wide number of useful tools such as LeanData, Nooks, Lavender, Reggy, CopyAI, ChatGPT among others.
Aligning with the buyer process has always been important – it’s becoming an absolute prerequisite to success: Having worked in marketing for a long time, typically in non-customer facing roles, it’s all too easy to simply trust your research and sales feedback about your customers journey. What I find works best, is working closely with your sales team to attend sales calls, attend events with your customers, get to know them, listen in on SDR calls – the best thing a marketer can do to become a better B2B seller is working more closely with their sales peers and customers. That relevance only increases the effectiveness of everything a marketer produces.
- A: Jason:
Hearing recommendations and real-world examples gave me a lot to think about, and also more questions.
Comments like, Stop using MQLs and use Buying Groups instead…
…or What is better, one lead who downloads 3 whitepapers or 3 leads who download 1 whitepaper?
Everyone seemed to agree that 3 leads was better.
But don’t we have to now contact those 3 people?
Wouldn’t we send them to Sales as 3 MQL’s?
Or do we create one Opportunity with 3 Contacts and pass that to Sales? Maybe it’s both as we start and mature on the journey?
Whatever you do, making a change like this isn’t small, and requires planning and alignment between Marketing, Sales, Analytics, Data Engineering to be most successful..
Q: All of you have long experience in marketing and marketing ops (sometimes both), what do you think of the concept of RevOps replacing marketing and sales ops?
- A: Jen:
RevOps is not replacing Marketing and Sales Ops but rather uniting them under a more comprehensive framework. The concept of RevOps is about breaking down silos between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success to create a more cohesive, efficient approach to driving revenue across the entire customer journey.
It is important to understand first the role of RevOps as you’ll see how that differentiates from Marketing and Sales Ops. RevOps aims to align traditionally separate teams (Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success) under one operational strategy. This ensures that the entire go-to-market (GTM) process is aligned with the buyer’s journey. GTM Operations or RevOps encompass all aspects of the revenue process, including product and customer success, to deliver a holistic revenue strategy.
One of the main challenges discussed at Ops Stars is when RevOps is just a rebranding of Sales Ops or when it’s reporting to a CRO who doesn’t have authority over Marketing and Customer Success. This creates silos, which RevOps is meant to dissolve. The best RevOps models fully integrate these functions, ensuring cross-team alignment and shared goals.
The evolution of RevOps into a strategic function means it’s not about replacing Sales or Marketing Ops but expanding the focus. RevOps now includes data management, process optimization, and technology across all revenue-generating departments. This helps ensure that all teams are working toward the same metrics and KPIs, streamlining the process for better results.
In summary, RevOps isn’t replacing Marketing and Sales Ops; it’s evolving them into a unified function that enhances collaboration, drives efficiency, and aligns all GTM teams with the overarching revenue strategy.
- A: Chris:
Personally I have a lot of marketing operations experience having managed ad ops and marketing ops teams for years. However, the concept of RevOps was new for me but makes so much sense since the chief goal is to better bridge the gap from the MQL to the SQL, a traditional stumbling point for any B2B sales & marketing organization.
Why is this important?
What RevOps is hoping to do mirrors what marketing should be doing, but typically doesn’t – seamlessly bridge the gap between brand, acquisition and CRM segments of the consumer journey.
In previous roles at Microsoft and 500px I had the unique responsibility spanning all the way from brand level through to acquisition and on into customer engagement (CRM) and even reactivation of lapsed users. Unique experiences that I don’t think many marketers possess. What made the experiences even more unique was that Microsoft operated at macro scale managing 350M global users while 500px operated at a much smaller (but more nimble) level of 3-4M global users allowing me to have two very different experiences of the same working model.
What this taught me is that the more closely multiple segments of the funnel work together the more effectively the marketing organization operates since a leader and their team has full insights and understanding of the complete customer journey. This understanding works wonders in assuring seamless handoff between segments and resulted in lower churn (CRM), higher revenue (acquisition) and much greater customer satisfaction.
Bringing together sales ops and marketing ops offers that same seamless potential, since it gets both organizations focused on the same shared operational foundation. This hopefully helps eliminate the traditional disconnect that can result in teams pointing fingers at each other when things don’t work rather than working collectively to solve problems faster and with greater impact in this new world of RevOps.
- A: Jason:
For myself, the most interesting and relevant (to this topic) session was the “Is GTM ops just a fad?” session. It taught me (and reinforced too) three key items in my mind:
GTM Ops and RevOps are largely seen as the same thing, but the terminology change is a response to the narrow focus of some RevOps teams.
Companies should avoid rebranding ops teams without truly expanding their scope to include marketing, customer success, and product operations.
The ideal operational model involves uniting operations across the full customer journey to truly drive holistic business growth.
- A: Matt:
Going back to Terry’s session, the top three things I learned focus on how to carry out and execute a buyer focused sales & marketing strategy. As noted by Terry the 3 key steps are:
Conduct a strategic assessment: Is your current approach working? If not, consider the alternatives.
Audit your technical & data systems: tech stack, automations – are these working best for you? If you switched to focus on the buyer’s journey would your infrastructure still work for you?
Can you make the economic case? In order to test a new strategy like this both sales & marketing orgs need to build a clear relationship of trust with their leadership. Only then will you get the resources you need to change.
Q: One hot topic at this year’s OpsStars was the concept of “buying group” focused marketing, had any of you previously heard of this? Have you done it? If so, how did it perform?
- A: Jen:
Many of my clients now and historically leverage buying groups in marketing strategies. Another name for buying groups are buying committees. Marketing to buying groups is crucial in B2B (business-to-business) environments because decision-making in B2B purchases typically involves multiple stakeholders rather than a single individual. There are several reasons why focusing on buying groups is essential in B2B:
The decision making process is complex.
B2B purchasing decisions often involve multiple stakeholders from different departments (e.g., procurement, finance, IT, operations). These stakeholders form a “buying group” and have varying priorities and perspectives. Marketing to buying groups helps businesses address the collective needs and concerns of all involved decision-makers rather than just appealing to one individual.
Marketing to buying groups or committed provides increased alignment with modern buyer behavior.
Today’s B2B buyers are more informed and empowered. They conduct extensive research before engaging with vendors and often wait until they have narrowed down their options before interacting with sales. By targeting the entire buying group, marketers ensure that all key decision-makers are engaged at various stages of the journey, improving the chances of winning deals.
It improves sales efficiency.
When marketing targets only individual leads, sales teams may struggle to engage with all relevant stakeholders within a potential customer’s organization. By marketing to buying groups, you provide sales with more context and a better understanding of who the decision-makers are, what their roles are, and how to tailor their pitch to the group as a whole.
It enhances the customer journey experience.
Marketing to buying groups ensures that all members of the buying team are exposed to consistent messaging and relevant content that speaks to their individual concerns. This leads to a more cohesive and effective buying experience, addressing the needs of all stakeholders and improving overall satisfaction and trust in your company.
You’ll see higher conversion rates.
Since buying groups collectively make decisions, engaging the right set of individuals within an organization boosts the likelihood of converting leads to sales. Targeting all key decision-makers (influencers, approvers, end users) helps ensure no critical voices are left out of the sales process, increasing the likelihood of a successful sale.
It improves the ability to handle larger deals.
Larger B2B deals typically require input from multiple departments. By marketing to the entire buying group, companies are better positioned to handle larger, more complex deals by addressing the collective concerns and aligning their solution with the broader business needs of the prospective company.
I always try to encourage clients, when budget allows, to target all of the key buying group members. In B2B sales, buying decisions are rarely made by one person. Marketing to buying groups allows companies to align their messaging with the needs and interests of multiple stakeholders, ensuring a more strategic, targeted, and effective approach to winning deals. It shifts the focus from individual leads to the entire decision-making body, which is key in the complex, multi-layered B2B buying process.
- A: Chris:
I echo everything Jen noted above having seen it work in action myself.
In my most recent experience, the shift to a Buyer Group (aka we referred to them as “Buying Committee,” an alternative name as Jen notes above) allowed sales and marketing to pursue a more bespoke global approach (essentially allowing us to place accounts into 1:Few or even 1:1 ABM programs) to our large enterprise prospect and existing customer accounts.
Rather than having country managers in sales & marketing pursue leads at the micro level instead across all geos globally sales & marketing teams took a macro approach to these large accounts aggregaing the 100s of leads generated by enterprise accounts, sorting them into their relevant personas, prioritizing the buying committees and the personas within them using intent signals and previous engagement behaviors (for existing cross-sell customers) and then developed both holistic and individual sales & marketing campaigns aimed at these aggregated audiences.
This consolidation of effort globally streamlined our time-to-market (campaign development was cut from quarters to months), allowed us to develop full-funnel brand-to-demand campaigns (previously we only aimed at conversion), and resulted in lower costs (cost per MQLs) and higher revenue (we were able to identify and close accounts up to 20% faster than previously).
This more efficient approach ended up being far more effective!
- A: Jason:
Forrester’s Terry Flaherty and his session on Buying Groups resonated for me just the way it did for everyone else. In particular the most profound takeaway I learned was:
Pivot your B2B marketing to an Opportunity-Centric Motion: Terry emphasized better aligning the revenue & buying processes – creating little space between them eliminating friction in the process. Buyers have long been in control (the whole Challenger Sale model 10 years ago highlighted this) but are even more so today, they’re highly reluctant to reach out prematurely. Companies must cater to this by providing open access to information, creating connected experiences, and responding immediately and proactively when buyers are ready.
My Key Takeaway: To succeed, organizations must first align their revenue process to how buyers buy. Only after this alignment can they focus on improving the internal collaboration between sales and marketing.
- A: Matt:
I’m a big fan of Terry’s session as you can tell by now! A key concept he really highlighted and educated me on were the recognition and use of “Buyer Signals.” According to him, buyer signals serve as foundational insights and triggers for sales & marketing actions: Flaherty explained the importance of leveraging buyer signals as a foundation for actionable insights. These signals provide the context necessary for creating a timely, opportunity-centered approach based on rigorous data analysis and comprehensive RevOps infrastructure execution.
Event Summary:
For all of you whom have made it thus far in our roundtable article – thank you for reading!
There’s a lot to digest but we sincerely hope all of this information based on our experience is useful to YOU!
Everything we saw or heard validates for us that the B2B marketing industry is undergoing profound, rapid change and there’s a lot for the average professional working in the space to keep up with. Our intention with this virtual roundtable article was to capture and share some of the biggest insights we learned in our time together at the OpsStars event.
To recap, our three key takeaways from our collective time at LeanData’s “OpsStars” event were:
- RevOps and GTM strategies must evolve to be buyer-first.
- AI and technology effectively (not just efficiently) scale GTM teams, not replaces them.
- Merging sales operations and marketing operations best enables buyer-first GTM approaches, boosting revenue as a result.