Brianna Dunbar-Demike
I had like three or four actors come with me to this lunch who are much older and I was like, just don't say anything. I'm like, this is what your acting job is: you're the director of this, you're the director of this and we went to lunch and closed the ($1.2M) deal that week.

Ross Pomerantz
Wow, there's a lot of salespeople that are gonna listen to this like, how do I get this in my budget to hire actors? You want to talk to clients? Sure!

‍

*Beyond Quota Intro*

‍

Pouyan Salehi
We're back with another episode of Beyond Quota. I'm Pouyan from Scratchpad. We've got Corp here with us and really excited for our guest today who [is a] content creator, salesperson, RevOps, has started your own [business]. I don't even know where to begin, but welcome! We're excited to have you.

Brianna
The most important one though, is mom of three soon to be four. That's my number one.

Pouyan
Congratulations.

Brianna
Thanks.

Ross
At what age will they be handed a call list and a phone?

Brianna
So my now eight year old actually started his first company when he was six.

Ross
Okay what took so long? So you got a late bloomer. Okay, great. You still have a chance with the other three.

Brianna 
Yeah he has a dog treat business. And I was like, alright, we sat down and built the website, we build all these things. And he said, okay, like, how do I sell and I was like, you make those dog treats. We're gonna go to the park and you go to go to each person that has a dog and you're gonna sell.  So yeah, he's already gotten his 101 and he rocked it. He ended up making in the first year over $600. And he originally did it because he wanted a Nintendo Switch. And I'm like, I'm not buying you a switch. You have to save up your money and buy it. And so that's what started the company. But yeah I've already got them. I've already got them trained.

Ross
It's a good thing he didn't put in the market. It's good that he spent it on the Switch. Something that'll bring years of joy.

Brianna
He has a big head because he thinks he's the man now. So he walks around with a checklist while his sisters actually roll the dough and stamp that treats and he's just like, are you working? Are you working? And I'm like, okay...

Ross
Supervisor already. He's already middle management. Dammit. Asking them to update their pipeline.

Brianna
I make him pay them. I was like, this is RevOps. No one works for free. You know, you have to you have to do all of your costs of goods and your resources and how much they are. So.

Ross
Mom my cogs are too high. Says an 8-year-old. Great, great. Wait, I need to drill into something real quick. She said RevOps.

Pouyan
She said the magic word.

Ross
She said RevOps. What the f--- is RevOps? Like? What is it? It's it seems like this new creation from 2016. Someone was like, let's put "Rev" in front of "Ops" and make it sound sick.

Brianna
Well, I have my own theory on what RevOps is. Here's my opinion. You have sales, you have sales operations, everything that's sales, so that's like your inbound, your outbound, all of the sales that rolls up to that. And you have marketing. And you have all the people that are digital creating and branding and strategy, and oh, let's throw this event. And then you have fulfillment. That's like Customer Success type stuff. And it's like, once that deal is closed, you have to fulfill. And I think what happened is all of these people did not want to take responsibility for the overall picture. So someone came in, the CEO probably, and said, I'm not doing it. And the COO was like, I'm not doing it. So they said, let's create a CRO or RevOps and RevOps will oversee marketing, sales, and fulfillment. And so for me, I think RevOps is all three of those together. Because the operations of all of your revenue, don't stop at either of those departments. It is a complete cycle from your branding, and you're creating a strategy and you're implementing whatever that strategy is to MQL goes to SQL and now you're trying to make an Opp and close the deal. And now you've closed it. And guess what, that's great. Bravo, you made some revenue, but it does not matter if it's costing you more to fulfill that revenue than what you sold it for. And so that's what I think RevOps [is]. It's like the boss of all of those sections to make sure we're meeting our targets, we're closing deals, and then we're profitable off of those deals.

Ross
Is that not what like the VP of Marketing and CS and Sales roll up to a CRO? Like, isn't a CRO holding each of them accountable for their kind of line of business?

Brianna
I mean, if you have a CRO sure, but I also think like when you get to the point of CRO, it's so much more than that, because that is also like your internal business as well. Right? In my opinion. I think that the CRO is like the profitability of the entire company, not just the marketing, sales and fulfillment that you're doing. There's, there's probably a ton of other things that the company can do to make money. But you need like a RevOps person to oversee at least those three facets of the company.

Ross
So how does one become a RevOps? How does one become that? Like, how do you do all of those things? Well, like do they come out of one of those three, and then have to learn the other two? Like, are they getting a strategy degree? From Business School?

Brianna
I mean, that's a great question. Because some people may be like, Oh, I got my MBA, and now I'm a professional and I can RevOps it. My own journey personally, I have a heavy project management background, and a heavy customer success, fulfillment background. And then I paired that with marketing. So I had like two out of the three. And then my most recent opportunities of work, started going into account growth, and strategy. And with that comes sales. And so for me, personally, I had heavy in two out of the three and like half of the third. And so when I started at Skaled, my current company, I had to learn just a little bit more to get me to that fulfillment of sales. And so now I personally have all three. So I really think it just depends on your personality. And for me, I could take all of my other ventures that I had in the past and say, Oh, I did all of these things. I just didn't know they had this particular name or this particular strategy, or terminology. Or like, I just have to tweak a way that I did it. But I was doing this already in, you know, running my own company or growing someone else's brand.

Ross
So you're like this tool might save five minutes of a sales reps time and a sales rep, we pay them at $50 an hour. And if they can close this many more deals, or not this many more deals, that's how you're gonna decide whether or not that exorbitant cost of I don't know... Scratchpad, for example. Is worth it.

Pouyan
Have you actually done that, though? Because you're right, it's very much a manufacturing like industrial engineering type exercise.

Brianna
It's like that whole viewpoint of if someone's a good salesperson then they would make a great sales manager. And you're like, No. Not true. Or someone's a great engineer, you can be a great engineer manager. No. And I think sometimes what happens in the RevOps is like, you're really good at sales, and you're really good at your own number. And they're like, oh, let's like, make you RevOps. And so I think that to me RevOps is a very detail-oriented, operationally-sounded, project manager, minded person.

Ross
Which one is most important between customer success, marketing and sales? And why is it quite obviously sales?

Brianna
In my opinion? I think it's customer success.

Ross
That's a made up tech term! What is account management? What is like support? It's like the generous, it's like the kind way of saying customer support without offending.

Brianna
It's more fulfillment. It's more fulfillment.

Ross
Making sure they get the most out of their product.

Brianna
Exactly, because it doesn't matter how many people sales sell to and convert and marketing bring inbound, if you're not making sure that the users are enjoying your product, utilizing your product, staying on your product, then you're just gonna have this crazy amount of churn and what does it matter all those other efforts that you're doing? You're just going to constantly get new people in, and then they're just gonna leave. So it's to me it's the fulfillment of are you, customer, getting the most ROI out of what we're selling you? And if not, let's help you figure out how to do better. How to use us better.

Ross
I'm putting that on the product team.

Pouyan
But how do you how do you get the customers in the first place?

Brianna
Yeah, I mean, valid, valid.

Ross
There's no churn if they're not there.

Brianna
You asked me which one was the most important. Not which one is

Ross
Is the best.

Brianna
was the most needed. Well, I mean, I guess I'd still kind of need it but yeah.

Ross
I hope no one in Customer Success is listening to this. Because they're still getting laid off first. Of all three of them they're still getting laid off - ahh marketing's getting laid off first.

Brianna
Yeah, I was gonna say usually marketing is.

Ross
They're already out back getting put down.

Pouyan
No, but what you would do in that case though is you would then make sure that they are happy. Because what you care about is getting that commission check, right? So then you close the deal. And then you are going to be part of the implementation essentially do the job that is called CS.

Brianna
Right, the salesperson would have to do that. And then guess what that keeps you from doing? Selling to more people.

Ross
Some places you get to keep your clients and then you are doing growth and kind of like new business at the same time and that would always be my preference. That would always be my preference as a sales - like I hated the whole pass them on. Somebody else's responsibility.

Pouyan
We hear a lot of complaints from sales. I gotta update Salesforce. My managers on my back. Like all of these things, right? Yet another tool that RevOps is introducing that we need to use. What sucks about being in RevOps? What are the complaints that RevOps people throw out?

Brianna
Oh, man. Yeah, I think you said the biggest one is from sales point of view, it's I have too many things that I need to do, too many red tape, I just want to sell. I just want to sell. Like I just want to be an Enneagram four seven. I just want to be free. I don't want to have any of these rules. So that's probably the biggest one that we get from sales and for marketing and look... I say this coming from a marketing background.

Ross
You don't have to caveat everything here. Not in this house.

Brianna
They complain about everything!

Ross
Like working. And being productive.

Brianna
Everything. My poor husband, he's an engineer, he's in AI. And he comes home and he's got this product, and he's trying to get marketing to help. But he's talking about marketing and his interactions. And I'm like, Yeah, dude, it's marketing. They suck. Like, they don't want to help you. He's like, why don't they always complain that they have all this work? You never want to help me? And blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Yeah, because that's like part of the job description for a marketer.

Ross
Yeah drum circle at 3, trust circles at 4, kombucha tasting at five, like, where do you fit that in? Where do you fit that in? One-pager that takes like what... 2-3 years? You got to get that right.

Pouyan
Tell us a little bit more about your sales experience. And I'll qualify this a little bit. There are some some people that may or may not be on this podcast right now. That also talks about RevOps people and how a lot of them don't have any sales experience coming into it and all the sudden telling salespeople what to do. I'm not I'm not pointing fingers or naming names or anything, but-

Ross
It was me. Oh, yeah. It was very me.

Pouyan
But you actually have - you've got some sales credit.

Brianna
Yeah, I mean, I think my my sales cred is really from starting my own company. Because prior to my own company, I was really on the fulfillment side, the customer success side, I was actually the one who was always upselling because of the performance of the accounts that I was managing. When I was working at Upwork, I was overseeing $10 million in revenue myself. Fulfillment. And not that I had a quota, but I was always looking to sell like solution selling when I heard on the call that they were having other issues. So I think it started there. But it was really spawned because of the work I was doing, not necessarily going out and finding new new folks are new deals to close. I actually hated initial sales calls, and I absolutely hate the follow-up to it. Because it's hard and frustrating and time consuming, and you can't optimize it. So then when I left that and did some content - I mean, it was my own company. And I had clients that were inbound that came to me because they knew what I did or they had worked with me previously, and they wanted to work with me again. And so there was that, but there was, but once you start having employees and office space and internet to pay and 401k's to contribute to you feel the burden of [needing] new customers. So that's probably where I started my own outbound techniques to try to close deals. And sometimes that meant cold calling, which I hate, which I'm sure everyone hates. No one likes cold-calling.

Ross
No one likes cold calling. Anyone who says they do are -

Brianna
Lying.

Ross
Or very likely a psychopath. A liar or a psychopath.

Brianna
Liar. But, you know, there were just other techniques that I did instead, like, in the time, that were probably a little bit more advanced than now. It's like modern day sales. And everyone's doing this kind of stuff. But like the heavy LinkedIn approach. But also like, something that we did was - and this was in 2013? Having little video cards, where you're recording yourself on the video, and then actually mailing it to someone. Just trying to come up with some creative ideas. I think my best and most memorable account that I ever closed was with eBay. And I was telling Ben this the other day was that it was $1.2 million deal. They were they were creating, like 10,000 buying guides, and I was like, give them all to me, I'm going to create them all for you. You want them in nine months. Got it, I can do it. And at the time, I think I was like 27 years old. And I looked super young. Pretty sure I was also pregnant with my first child at this time. And I was like a team of one, and then a bunch of freelancers in the back. And they're like, Okay, we really love your proposal. We love what you have to say we loved your samples. We love all that stuff. Let's meet! At the time I was in Mountain View and they're in San Jose so they're like, just come down for lunch. And I'm like, Yeah, okay, you want me? This 27 year old pregnant woman to waddle into your lunch with your VPs and your Directors and be like, Yeah, I'm a party one, your SOW is for $1.2 million, that I'm asking you to fund 50% up front. Yeah. Okay, sure. That's really gonna work out well. So what I did was I went to Craigslist. And I hired a bunch of actors. And I had like, three or four actors come with me to this lunch who are much older. And I was like, just don't say anything. And I'm like, This is what your acting job is. You're the director of this. You're the director of this, and we went to the lunch and like, closed the deal, like that week. But sometimes you just got to do what you got to do, you know?

Ross
Wow. Wow, a lot of salespeople are gonna listen to this and be like, how do I get this in my budget to hire actors to be like, yeah, you want to talk to like a client. Like you want testimonial? Yo, I need you to come in here. And how great this is, and say you work for this company. I'm going to create a LinkedIn for you. Okay, trust me, it's it's gonna work. That's a bold move walking in there. I mean, like...

Pouyan
We could do a whole episode just on that.

Brianna
Yeah, I did other things like that. Like, for example, there was another company [and] I wanted them to think that we appeared bigger. And so I was like forwarding emails to fake aliases and then answering the emails on a fake alias that they thought it was different people the entire time but like I was a [company of] one, you know? It's like oh, well why don't you connect me with your your AP or invoice or your this or that? I'm like, Yeah, okay! Hold the line! And like forward it to myself. But I think the actor's one takes the [cake] and by the way, not only did I get that 1.2, but then they resigned the next year for like 2 million and the next year for 2 million so I'm like, it was so worth it. I would have lost out on like $5 million if I didn't do that. 

Pouyan
Did those actors later become salespeople?

Ross
Yeah, that's what I'm like. What happened to those actors?

Pouyan
What happened to the story?!

Ross
Yeah, where do they end up here? So you're actually a sales savage deep down and you just don't even understand or realize? You don't realize it. You don't even realize it!

Pouyan
I am bummed we didn't get to talk about your podcast so I think we may have to do another session at some point if you're up for it.

Brianna
Oh my god, I would love that.

Ross
But we should plug the podcast.

Pouyan
Yes. We wanted to wanted to give - this is your chance. So plug the dog biscuits, the businesses, the podcast. Anything and everything. Yes.

Brianna
Okay, well, so the podcast is Badass Basic Bitch. Started it last year in March. We just got our millionth download a couple of weeks ago. So it's going really well. And it's all about seemingly ordinary women doing extraordinary things. And I started it because I felt as though it was really hard for women to have their story heard unless they were like the Sheryl Sandbergs of the world. And we talk about everything from financial advice to being an influencer, mental health, nutrition like literally everything but it's always featuring a guest, a woman guest who is just killing it in their field, which has been really exciting. And you can find me there. You can find me on Instagram. @BadassBasicBitch is the podcast Instagram handle. And then my own handle is @MomBossInAustin. Or you can find me on LinkedIn, at Brianna Dunbar-Demike. So lots of platforms.

Ross
Everywhere you could possibly be find her there. And then the last thing we have one final question. I guess it's like a two part question. But we always ask, you've got the biggest Lax game of your life coming up. You got the air pods in. What's the one song you're listening to to get jacked up?

Brianna
Oh my god, something Tupac. Hit 'em up.

Ross
Great.

Brianna
Hit 'Em Up by Tupac I'll say that.

Ross
But how about how about a sad song? A recovery song. It's more Tupac!

Brianna
I know I was like maybe Dear Mama. I don't know like that's a sad song.

Pouyan
Well, thanks so much again for joining us. This was awesome. And hopefully we'll do it again.

‍