From Button-Pusher to Strategic Growth: The Future of MOps with Chris Willis

Platform-agnostic marketing operations focuses on mastering operational fundamentals rather than single-tool expertise to survive technology disruption and company mergers. This roundtable explores why marketing operations existed before marketing automation platforms, how operators should view themselves as strategic business partners enabling marketing execution and measurement, and why RevOps alignment creates better outcomes than marketing-only reporting. Learn strategies for transitioning between platforms like Marketo, HubSpot, and Eloqua while maintaining career growth through operator mindset over technologist identity, plus practical advice for building marketing operations from scratch with outcome-driven rather than task-driven frameworks.
 

Chris Wills

He has been in marketing and revenue operations for 16-17 years and is a 5-time Marketo Champion. He is the founder of GTM Rankers and works as a freelance consultant with leading marketing operations consulting agencies. He specializes in helping organizations with go-to-market operations, platform migrations, and strategic marketing operations across multiple platforms including Marketo and HubSpot.

Transcript

Kawal: Hello.
Kawal: Welcome to a new episode of our roundtable series, Ops in Motion.
Kawal: I’m Kawal.
Kawal: Today, Chris Wills has joined me.
Kawal: He has been a marketer champion 5 times.
Kawal: He’s a founder and GTM operation consultant at GTM Rankers, and he also worked as a freelance consultant at many leading marketing operation consulting agencies.
Kawal: So, hey, Chris, good morning, and I’m so excited to have you here with me and really excited for today’s conversation.
Kawal: So, let’s get started.
Chris: Yeah, sure.
Chris: Let’s get started, and do you want to start with an introduction about yourself?
Chris: Tell me more about yourself.
Kawal: I thought you gave an excellent introduction of me.
Kawal: So, a little bit about myself for those who don’t know me, I live in the Mountain West area.
Kawal: I live in Wyoming now, moved, lived all over the place.
Kawal: I’ve been in marketing ops for really rev ops for about 16-17 years.
Kawal: So I’ve been in different revenue, marketing, sales operations roles for quite a while and really, it’s interesting because I think we’re gonna talk about this a little bit later, but like, like my career has been constantly evolving and recreating itself over time.
Kawal: Like, I’ve been working kind of professionally a lot longer than marketing operations has been in existence, even though I’ve also concluded that, that most of us I have been doing marketing operations probably longer than marketing operations has been in existence if that makes any sense, but I love, I love, I’m one of these weird people that love change, so it doesn’t really scare me.
Kawal: I think it, I think if it doesn’t scare you a little bit, you’re a little nuts.
Kawal: I think we, you know, we as operators should embrace and accept and own change because ultimately that’s what makes us successful.
Kawal: Professionals, especially in today’s environment, where there is constant change.
Kawal: Right, I mean, I totally agree with you.
Kawal: We have seen over this one decade, like so much of changes in marketing operations.
Kawal: We just started with supporting different teams with different tasks and creating those workflows, and trying to send those emails out, right?
Kawal: And we had that data, data was part of some other team, and you know, the processes were part of the other team, but slowly and gradually, op started taking the ownership of that, and they have made immense progress in terms of.
Kawal: Aligning that and strategizing them and making them work for how they’re supposed to work.
Kawal: So that’s, that’s been really great, I think.
Kawal: So, as you also mentioned that you’ve been in marketing operations for more than a decade.
Kawal: So what marketing operation looks like today was very different.
Kawal: I mean, a decade ago, right?
Kawal: What started was like campaign support that evolved into strategy, data, and even revenue ownership, right?
Kawal: So, from your perspective, how has marketing operation evolved and looking ahead, what kind of long-term career options do you think this field can really open up for people who are building their career in this field?
Chris: Well, thanks.
Chris: Well, and also thinking, thinking about like the evolution of marketing.
Chris: Operations.
Chris: I really thought about how marketing operations has been around much longer than, you know, 10-20 years or whenever, the official title existed.
Chris: Thinking about the fundamentals, which I tend to think about a lot.
Chris: Ultimately are the fundamentals of what we’re trying to accomplish, what makes us successful as marketing operations or like I would even expand this to revenue operations.
Chris: I’m a big believer that marketing operations is part of a Larger revenue operations ecosystem.
Chris: I define it a little bit differently than it’s being defined right now, but ultimately, if I think about like the core of what marketing operations does, it’s, we essentially enable all of the creative and communication and like revenue impact side of marketing and all of the revenue functions that are connected to marketing to essentially be able to execute, execute predictably and be able to measure performance.
Chris: So this has existed long before marketing automation systems existed.
Chris: Part of my career evolutionized, I, I was initially a database developer and when I started my career, went back to school to get my MBA and I got my MBA in brand marketing and largely to do CPG, you know, push boxes of Fruit Loops out on the, the shelf with pictures of, you know, Disney characters or, and I, I’m sure I’m botchering somebody’s marketing campaign right now saying that.
Chris: But ultimately, and I somewhat got this during my internship, that essentially what brand marketing professionals are doing in these companies is essentially marketing operations.
Chris: It looks a little bit differently from what we do in B2B or what the B2C marketing operations folks do, but essentially in that world, and I’m gonna be dating myself a little bit, but you’re essentially planning out calendaring.
Chris: Campaigns, planning measurement strategies and doing a lot of data analysis to determine what worked and what didn’t work.
Chris: And instead of, you know, the BI tools and the spreadsheets and the marketing automation systems is you’re essentially working with like category managers and getting data feeds from retailers, but essentially the fundamentals are the same.
Chris: You’re enabling marketing to execute and measure impact on revenue.
Chris: So, thinking about that, fast forward, I started in sales operations to some degree.
Chris: I was a marketing operations, like somewhat of a marketing analyst, sales operations hybrid.
Chris: I set up Salesforce for a small acquired company and then they noticed my CRM skills were excellent and they decided to put me in the sales ops group and I worked with like our enterprise sales people doing pipeline management, but always had a love for marketing and, joined, joined several kind of organizations really focused on Marketo, and I love Marketo.
Chris: I’ve become a little bit more platform agnostic lately, and we can talk a little bit about that a little bit later, but really, you know, really believe in You know, helping marketing really execute, execute well, and also align with their sales partners.
Chris: So, I love that I started in sales ops because I also have that perspective of looking at the entire supply chain of revenue, not necessarily just at, you know, we’re just getting an email out or we’re just gonna run a webinar, but looking at like, OK, how does this impact things downstream in the sale, in the sales organization.
Chris: I think when we started, like we were essentially the stewards of these, you know, the marketing automation system, the marketing tech stack, and essentially we could become experts in one tool.
Chris: We could be experts in, you know, you know, Marketo or HubSpot or Eloqua if you’re, you know, you’re still in the Eloqua world, which I know some of, some of you all are, but there is, and largely I’m gonna date myself a little bit, but like But largely technology has continually evolved and so we’ve had these large tech hype cycles over time where one technology is seen as the end all be all of all things.
Chris: I remember when it was the internet, and it was Microsoft-owned.
Chris: I mean, so talk about like, talk about evolution.
Chris: I remember when Microsoft owned the internet, which is ridiculous to think about now, but there was a day when that happened and like I’ve seen how people base their careers on one particular technology, and then something happens in the market, because everything’s market-driven.
Chris: Something happens in the market where that technology gets upended, either it is.
Chris: relegated to a different place in the tech stack, or that vendor changes strategy, or that vendor gets acquired, and you always have to adapt.
Chris: Today, it’s the adoption of AI and like it’s definitely still moving up the hype cycle, and I think at some point, we are going to have a point of disillusionment where we’re going to ask the question, what are we really doing with this?
Chris: What’s the value of this?
Chris: And ultimately thinking about things like the human cost of deploying AI in certain places and determining how do we, how do we create an AI centric world that, allows us to be profitable, allows us to be productive, but also works towards human flourishing, which I think we’ll, we will eventually get to, but I don’t, I think those questions are starting to be asked, but we’re gonna get there.
Chris: But if I’m thinking about like, you know, long-term career options, one thing I would definitely encourage people in this audience to do is really think about the fundamentals.
Chris: Think about like what ultimately makes us valuable as operators and think about the human side of what we do.
Chris: Like, we’re essentially the group that’s helping marketing, marketing execute, connect with business partnerships and sales and measure the effectiveness of what happens, and I would also add, because I’ve seen a lot of weakness when we just look at this from the technical perspective, be able to tell a story around it.
Chris: You have to be able to tell a story around it because, for one, those are the things that are not going to be able to be automated out through AI.
Chris: Those are the human side, the strategic side, using our human intellect to bring value that cannot be in automated systems.
Chris: But also, these are also things that are platform agnostic.
Chris: So ultimately, if you’re, if you view yourself as doing these things and being, being an operational steward of how marketing succeeds, ultimately, how you get there, which is primarily determined by company IT strategy, marketing strategy, vendor, price negotiations, all of those things.
Chris: You can do that with Marketo, you can do that with HubSpot, you can do that with Eloqua, and if you think of yourself as a business partner, and learn how to apply different tools to that, it makes you very valuable in the space, especially with as much switching and technology disruption that’s happening right now.
Kawal: Yeah, I mean, marketing operations has evolved, as you mentioned a lot, because earlier we were just thinking of tasks.
Kawal: Now we start, then we started thinking about how it could be developed as a strategic function, and now we have AI in the mix, so we are still, you know, AI is high, and we are trying to use AI as much as possible.
Kawal: And then we are also trying to see how we can add the human element there because AI right now is not that leveled up, or it’s not at that position to do that work for us, which humans can do that so we always need a human intervention. There would be like a few more years for AI to reach there, or maybe AI may not reach there.
Kawal: So that’s really, you know, difficult to say today, but yes, marketing operation evolution has been so lovely in terms of the tools and the processes.
Kawal: Because we had a bunch of tools earlier, we had just 2 to 3 options in terms of, you know, CRM or marketing automation platform, but as we move forward over these years, we have a vast number of options or stacks available to us.
Kawal: It’s tough for enterprises or even the startups to decide like which tool they would go with, because some of them would have one feature which is really good at that, the other may be missing that feature, and I think in that process also, These are adopting a lot of tech and that is also, I mean, it’s not good, but yes, we want to learn more with technology, we want to do more with technology.
Kawal: So yeah, we have seen a lot of this evolvement in the marketing operation world.
Chris: Well, one thing I’d also add with technology and like, especially folks who are in-house and I spent most of my career in-house as a consultant, I, I do work with a lot of companies that are like in doing a lot of mergers and acquisition work and So, one thing that you will see, and this really goes to the why of being platform agnostic, is that, you know, when a company is growing by purchasing other companies or like in the startup world, there’s a strategy for you to get acquired by a larger company and you may be, let’s say you’re on a startup company and you’re using HubSpot and if you really think of yourself as, as a HubSpot person and you’re not thinking about those larger bits, then there’s, there’s a lot of disruption that you’re going to face and there’s risks that you face when your company gets acquired because all of a sudden, if your op skills equals your map skills or whatever technology skills, as soon as that technology is taken away, Either you have to look for the next thing, which I would then really ask the question, are you a marketing operator or are you just a technologist?
Chris: And, and that’s OK, that’s a decision you can make, but if you really want to be an operator, you have to think in operations terms and that will require, at some point, you to get outside of your technology and basically learn, OK, how do these other technologies do X?
Chris: You know, life cycle management, campaign execution, etc.
Kawal: Right.
Kawal: I mean, well said, Chris.
Kawal: I mean, it’s essential not to be tool-agnostic, as you said, the term is really correct.
Kawal: We should know the strategy behind the tool and how it’s making it work, rather than just focusing on tools, because tools may change tomorrow.
Kawal: Today, we have Marketo or HubSpot; tomorrow, we may have some.
Kawal: Other tool, so yeah, that’s, that’s really a different scenario if you’re not learning all of those skills, which is more important than the tool skills, I would say.
Kawal: So I have seen that one thing we all have experienced or felt is that marketing operation goal does not really stay within one single tool, right, as we are discussing also, and we are constantly hopping between marketing automation platform tools.
Kawal: And the CRMs and the enrichment data, the day-to-day activity that we do in the office.
Kawal: So what’s your take on like, marketing operational professional developing different skills across multiple platforms?
Kawal: And do you think it is better to go deeper on one and spread your expertise later, or learn all of them together?
Kawal: And if someone wants to keep growing, how do they?
Kawal: Can start, like the tool or the knowledge they should start with, or what do you think is the most practical way of adding new skills without, you know, feeling overwhelmed or like I’m doing too much.
Chris: Absolutely, and I would definitely encourage, like, I mean, this was my own story.
Chris: You know, developing deep expertise in a tech that has some staying power is definitely essential and it’s a good way for you to one, get into ops because generally speaking, All ops roles are kind of technology enabled roles, so, you’re not, you’re not necessarily pigeonholing yourself by developing deep expertise in a tool that has some staying power.
Chris: So for me, it was Salesforce.com initially, and then I bolted on Marketo on top of that and really became deep as A Marketo expert, obviously recognized through Marketo as a Marketo champion for like the last 5 years, which makes me feel, I think, more old and accomplished, to tell you the truth.
Chris: But that being said, like, once you understand, and that’s why I come back to what the fundamentals of what we do is, like, ultimately, these tools, so CRM, pipeline management, lead management, helping sales organizations, revenue organizations understand what their pipeline is.
Chris: They want to be able to have better predictability around their sales process so that they can forecast.
Chris: That’s essentially the why behind Salesforce.com.
Chris: Marketo or any marketing automation system, so put HubSpot, Eloqua, Pardot, Inflection, you know, put those in there.
Chris: Essentially, what are you doing?
Chris: You’re executing your marketing activities and doing like life cycle, which is marketing pipeline management and aligning with sales, so you’re, you’re having to talk with your CRM partners a lot and ensuring that everything that you do is measurable.
Chris: So, ultimately, every tool, every marketing automation tool, regardless of, you know, all the hype around it, I know.
Chris: Like inflection, just like, you know, is getting a lot of hype because they’ve just released this kind of this more AI-centric mechanism, but everybody’s got AI in their platform, like Adobe’s building AI into Marketo, HubSpot’s building AI, this Breeze ecosystem in HubSpot.
Chris: So, you know, but ultimately, the fundamentals haven’t changed.
Chris: And so what I would recommend is just understanding that.
Chris: There are certain core things that every marketing automation system has.
Chris: And I’ll just stay with marketing automation.
Chris: You could go into any Martech system, like, essentially, it’s doing one of those things.
Chris: It’s understanding that it is doing these core things that marketers need to happen.
Chris: I mean, this is going to sound very basic, but just raising your hand and signing up and saying and volunteering for projects and just being willing to be stupid.
Chris: And ask a lot of dumb questions.
Chris: For me, I got this, you know, this aha moment about a, about a year and a half ago.
Chris: I was, you know, trying to, you know, obtain clients, and I had talked to an old, old coworker that, like, she and I had a great working relationship when I was in-house.
Chris: I was a very valuable extension of her team as part of a, like, a center of excellence team that I was part of, and like, I am, you know, was considered the tip of the spear.
Chris: Person on, you know, in the organization, right, so I had, we started talking.
Chris: She had Marketo, and she was taken on a new role and asked, OK, like let’s put together a package.
Chris: So I came back and, you know, put together some options and Then she came back and said, well, and she was working for a smaller company and Had Told me that they were considering going to HubSpot and probably for several reasons, but I won’t, you know, I, again, I will very quickly say I definitely prefer Marketo over HubSpot.
Chris: I work in both, but I love a lot of things that HubSpot does.
Chris: But it was, it was definitely an aha moment for me that I was pigeonholing myself by being in one marketing automation platform.
Chris: So, for me, this is what I started doing is I just started people, working with people in my consulting network and just say, Hey, if you’ve got like HubSpot work, I would love to get involved.
Chris: I would love it, and I took the same.
Chris: I took my own advice that I would give to any marketing operator who was starting in marketing operations, in any system, which is to start out doing campaign ops.
Chris: And because that’s the core work that these tools do, so I started doing, doing some campaign ops work for some clients and my operator mind started taking over because it doesn’t shut off and you start seeing operational inefficiencies, you start seeing how the tool does all of these bits and pieces, and then you get into, and this is why you’re in fundamentals, you get into problem solving mode.
Chris: And then you learn how to solve these operational problems they have.
Chris: And so, this is how I started my kind of started kind of incorporating HubSpot into my world.
Chris: Thankfully, you know, thankfully, it was a relatively short learning curve because it was a reasonably straightforward system.
Chris: There are a lot of weird things in HubSpot to learn.
Chris: Like, I wouldn’t call myself an expert yet.
Chris: Anybody who says that HubSpot is easy is lying to you.
Chris: There’s a lot of complexity in there.
Chris: Like Marketo, it’s simple but complex at the same time.
Chris: So, that’s what I would just say.
Chris: Don’t, don’t follow the hype.
Chris: Now, if you’re using HubSpot, get good operators to use it.
Chris: They will tell you, you don’t need operators.
Chris: It’s a lie.
Chris: You need operators, but, but ultimately, like, you know, ultimately, my goal was not to become a platform expert in another tool.
Chris: It was really to look at, like, look at all of these and find common denominators, really to be more focused on ops and being an operator.
Chris: Because again, I would say the tool, like the tool, matters, like the tool that your company uses matters.
Chris: So if your company uses Marketo, be a Marketo expert.
Chris: If your company uses HubSpot, be a HubSpot expert.
Chris: But ultimately, you’re your job is to be an operator and an enabler of marketing.
Chris: So that happens regardless of whatever tool you’re using, and I think that’s the mindset we have to have is being that ops-focused person rather than a technology-focused person.
Chris: That’s going to make you a lot more valuable in the long term, too.
Kawal: Yeah, right, because if we are looking, only from the tool perspective and we are just learning the tool, we are going to be that button pusher who just push the buttons and Send things out, make things work, same things together, but at this point, I think it’s essential to think strategically and stay curious because we have a lot more going out in the marketing operation world in terms of AI, in terms of tools, and so many things keep evolving.
Kawal: So staying curious and, you know, learning more with your colleagues and getting involved in different types of conversations regarding tools.
Kawal: Maybe some Slack communities give.
Kawal: You’ve got some nice information about, you know, people asking questions to each other, and when they’re asking, and the other person is answering, you’ve got to learn many things about those new tools which you might have maybe, maybe tried on a trial version or heard from one of your clients.
Kawal: Once you look at those things, you would really learn a few tips and tricks from those tools from those communities and yeah, focusing on, yes, focusing on processes is really important, not just.
Kawal: Platform, as you said, because we may lose our jobs or if there’s a merger and acquisition, the tools might change because the acquiring company would like to use their operation tools and would not follow what is being used earlier.
Kawal: So there’s a lot of migration implementation and new adoption that keeps happening.
Kawal: So to keep us in pace, I think we should start thinking about strategically and about the processes and not just, you know, get, you know, hooked on to one tool.
Chris: 100%.
Chris: I would love to learn a little bit about your journey, Kal.
Chris: Like, you’ve taken a fairly similar path to starting your own agency and really enjoy your content.
Chris: So, what are some of the dos and don’ts that you would advise before somebody starts this journey?
Chris: And I don’t know if I really even talked about my own journey, you know, I was talking.
Chris: And a little bit more kind of a little bit more high level, but I was, you know, I’m really curious, especially as somebody who’s been in the consulting space for really only 2 years now.
Kawal: So I would say it’s always been a mixed emotion, but it was exciting, and there was a lot of learning and starting an agency sounds very glamorous.
Kawal: Hey, I’m going to do something on my own.
Kawal: You get that.
Kawal: You get that control and, you know, a chance to build something of your own that you’ve always wanted to do.
Kawal: But the other side is also, you know, you have to work late at night on different issues to solve things.
Kawal: There are client calls where you are like a strategist and also the executioner, and you have to maintain the balance between working in the business versus working on the business.
Kawal: So I have been through that, and I think you would have also been there.
Kawal: So the do’s, for me, is I think I would suggest.
Kawal: Someone who would like to start something, make sure you have a strong network before you leave or plan to do something, so that you have your first source of clients or mentors or referees who can be helpful for you to start that journey, because starting is crucial and start small and focus on repeatable frameworks.
Kawal: So you have some tools where you are very good at, or some processes very, very good at, so you can start with that and then later build on.
Kawal: Those custom one-off solutions that’ll help you to scale you nicely, you can take care of those processes well as and when it comes and also taking client feedback regularly and seriously is essential because it’ll help you, you know, shape your services.
Kawal: It tells you like what is, you know, needed to do or what you’re doing is really good.
Kawal: You can just enhance it.
Kawal: So different learnings out there than the don’ts, I would say, like try not to do everything yourself.
Kawal: So, what happens in marketing?
Kawal: It has happened to me also.
Kawal: So when I started, I was like, I have to do everything on my own.
Kawal: So I try doing that, try to, you know, outsource or have an intern if you cannot have full time, someone with you working, so who can assist you, an intern can assist you in your day to day activities or help you with some of the internal processes and don’t leave the internal processes the back seat because internal processes like contract management, invoicing, onboarding those interns or full time.
Kawal: Employees in your system can make or break your client experience.
Kawal: So if a client is not happy with that experience, they’re not gonna get that pleasant experience of working with you.
Kawal: And also, don’t chase every opportunity.
Kawal: Focus on the clients and industries where you think you can make that impact.
Kawal: It’s gonna be good.
Kawal: You’re very sure, you’re 100% sure that this is what you want to do.
Kawal: This is what you’re very confident about.
Kawal: So yeah, the journey so far has taught me that running an agency is about.
Kawal: building connections, trust within the people, managing team, and establishing the foundation that can, you know, survive the up and down that the marketing ops world keeps going and also the organization keeps going.
Kawal: And at the end of the day, work is rewarding because, as I said, everyone likes to build something of their own and on their own.
Kawal: So that’s really exciting, and it’s been for me also.
Chris: Nice.
Chris: Yeah, I would, you know, looking at my own experience, would say a lot of the same things.
Chris: I’m very grateful to have like a lot of kind of backend help in my own, in my own organization and have found, you know, I’ve definitely found a need out in the market for a lot of the skill set.
Chris: I, I got some excellent advice.
Chris: I work with some really great fractional CMOs and good big brand agencies, so folks like ME Collective, Digital Exhaustion, Market Growth Consulting, and that’s been very helpful, especially getting started with those first clients.
Chris: So, as your relationship does, and your network doesn’t necessarily need to be like, OK, you need to go and hit.
Chris: Up a bunch of CMOs.
Chris: Some folks have those relationships that will get and like attract exciting, amazing projects, and just getting aligned with those folks is a great way to start.
Chris: I, I definitely concur, like your network is everything.
Chris: So, like, you know, this is true if, if you’re laid off and you’re looking for, like, you’re looking for your next ops opportunity, or if you’re wanting to go out on your own, your network is everything.
Chris: So, you don’t, you don’t need to take, you know, don’t make it more than it is.
Chris: It’s just getting to know people, it’s just connecting people and being helpful, but definitely invest in it because it will pay off in the long run.
Kawal: Yeah, you’re right.
Kawal: Definitely.
Kawal: So I think the other thing I can think of is like, if I had to start with a blank slate, what would be the ideal marketing operation function should look like?
Kawal: So, what do you think about it, Chris, if you had to start, you know, with a blank slate, what do you think the marketing operation should look like, how it should start, and how do you think you would think of it?
Chris: This is where I get to be very controversial here.
Chris: I’m curious about what you think, too.
Chris: So, so, when I was in my sales ops role, my, my leader used the term business partner a lot, and it’s really stuck with me.
Chris: Ultimately, that’s kind of the core of what I would create in a marketing operations organization.
Chris: So, not just thinking about a role because I don’t believe that we could, you know, in the myth of the unicorn, you know, the unicorn mops person that does everything, like what we’re enabling, what we’re trying, the problems that we’re trying to solve are way too complex.
Chris: So, I would start with, you know, a strategic enabler and a business partner and a business partner thinking.
Chris: Thinking in terms of, like, how can I create value for my partners, so marketing, sales, sales development teams, also downstream.
Chris: I mean, because everything that impacts revenue, like essentially marketing, is the top, top of the funnel when it comes to revenue.
Chris: So, thinking about like everybody down the revenue organization, including your accounting team, your legal team, your, you know, your invoicing, processing team, like how, how do we need to connect?
Chris: With all of those bits and pieces, and not just kind of staying.
Chris: I wouldn’t build a marketing ops organization that just stayed siloed into the marketing organization and just did marketing things because I think we’re limiting our value and we’re limiting our strategic impact.
Chris: And I really picked up a lot of that from being part of a large digital transformation project where my eyes were open to a lot of this machinery and what we needed to think about as operators.
Chris: To really be more of a business strategic and business partner, and I would like this is the controversial part, I would not have it aligned to marketing.
Chris: I would have it part of a revOps organization so that all of our revenue ops team members, whether it’s marketing, sales, lead management, customer success, customer, you know, product.
Chris: Product operations, we’re all talking together.
Chris: You think about organizations like a function, how they’re aligned.
Chris: So ultimately, I want to think about like what are my primary relationships in, what are my primary relationships.
Chris: So my primary relationships are really with my other operators, and then going out the concentric circle is my business partners, my primary business partners.
Chris: So, ultimately, that’s marketing.
Chris: I have to be very tightly aligned with marketing, but I also don’t want to be in a position where marketing is driving all of my goals, which is why I would recommend RevOps alignment.
Chris: That’s, has to be very carefully managed, though, because if we don’t, if we can be tight business partners with marketing, that relationship falls apart very quickly.
Chris: But we also have to have a tight business relationship with our SDR team and our sales team.
Chris: So, that RevOps alignment allows that very, very well in the concentric circles.
Chris: So, if you think about starting with fellow operators, going to our business partners, and then all the support functions that we need to make everything happen.
Chris: So like our IT and our accounting and invoicing, yada yada yada.
Chris: And really think about it from a, like, what are we trying to do?
Chris: Think about it being outcome-driven versus task-driven.
Chris: One ditch I see a lot of marketing operations teams get into is like, we’re gonna think of ourselves as, you know, we’re producing all of this stuff, and we’re, we’re doing the task and the ticket management, and ultimately, that’s not what gets you the seat at the table.
Chris: What gets you a seat at the table is that you can demonstrate and communicate that you’re driving business outcomes.
Chris: So, ultimately, if I were to design a marketing ops function.
Chris: Marketing ops organization, it really needs to be focused on these three things.
Chris: Now, I’m curious about what you would think.
Kawal: Yeah, so I think I would think on the lines of being that strategic growth engine, so wherein, you know, have different things connected and different, you know, things are working together.
Kawal: So obviously being a strategic partner is really helpful because marketing operations is sitting at the intersection of marketing, sales and customer.
Kawal: Experience or customer service, now we are trying to help shape the go-to marketing strategy and not just, you know, managing the tech stack, and that means that operations should be part of the conversations from the beginning.
Kawal: So we would be influencing the revenue, revenue decisions and priorities with the data and the insights of the reporting that we would do.
Kawal: So all of these are very important, and then the other thing would be like connecting the technology and the clean data.
Kawal: So what goes into the.
Kawal: System is like, you know, that’s what you see, and that’s what runs the entire mechanism in the tech stack.
Kawal: So the tech stack within the organization should be integrated and should be maintaining the data sanity, and we should keep the data unified so that what happens in the processes that come out of it or the processes that we run are measurable and scalable.
Kawal: The focus should always be on having fewer tools that do good work, and you know, which is like aligning.
Kawal: With the revenue that we have, deeper adoption and governance are really controlled, and the other last thing would be like people and process excellence.
Kawal: So I would like to structure the team around, you know, specialized roles.
Kawal: We have data analytics have automation and workflows, and we have integrations, and we have enablement.
Kawal: So at the same time, I would embed a culture of continuous improvement, you know, learning, just like processes, speed is maintained, and we are always.
Kawal: Finding the process, there’s clear ownership.
Kawal: So these are the things I think would help, you know, making marketing operations more successful.
Kawal: And again, if I have to measure, I think I would not try to measure this by operational efficiency, but I would see the business impact that is, you know, being driven by, you know, looking at the pipeline influence we have revenue efficiencies that’s been, driven, and then the customer life cycle, what it has been so the.
Kawal: The idea of marketing operation function is, is not just being the, but it should be the backbone that ensures that marketing is accountable and scalable and driving the real growth, and it is aligning with the business, you know, very important to have that, being driven by that.
Kawal: So that would be the starting point that I would think of if I were given a blank slate to run this in any of the organizations.
Chris: Fully agree.
Chris: I love your perspective that’s.
Chris: Amazing.
Chris: Thank you.
Kawal: I mean, your perspective on this was also really lovely.
Kawal: I really enjoyed the conversation with you, Chris.
Kawal: I think we had, we touched, different topics at different levels.
Kawal: And we also went deep into a few of the topics.
Kawal: That was really nice.
Kawal: So I think we’re almost end of our discussion, and it was really, really nice talking to you.
Kawal: And thank you, Chris, for joining us today.
Chris: Thank you so much, Kawal.
Chris: It’s been a pleasure.