Operations Advice - the B side
Operations Advice - the B side
Additional tips and insights from experts
I was working through a recap of a recent interview with another GTM Ops expert (coming soon!) when I realized that I’d never be able to capture all of the great insight and advice they had to offer in a single post - it’d be the Operations version of War and Peace.
Just like some classic musical hits (like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and “Time of Your Life” from Green Day) were originally from the “B side” of the album, these quotes and insights may not have been in the first cut but have some still bring a lot value and perspective to the table.
Enjoy - and look forward to next week’s interview, it’s a great one.
More Advice From Operations Experts
Tyron Pretorius - The Marketo API, not just for Developers
On automating busy work to free up your time for more strategic projects:
“With automations there’s a lot of buildout initially, but that pays out as it’s saving your time each day. That means I can focus on more strategic things or projects that could actually move the needle versus doing this repetitive stuff day after day.”
On being intentional about focus:
“I think a lot of people nowadays are very distracted by Slack, email, and their phone. So when I’m working, I have Slack and email hidden. So when I’m working, I’m working on what I’m working on. And then I’ll check Slack once I finish a particular segment or finish a section of work.”
“So Slack is not interrupting me. I choose when I look at Slack, so I can be focused and in the zone and be focused until the work is complete and not be constantly interrupted.”
Jason Widup - The Path from Marketing Operations to Marketing Leader
On knowing when something is “good enough”
“The quality should map to the stage of company you’re at. If you’re at a startup, some of the things you’re building need to barely work. If you’re not kind of, or even majorly embarassed by it, then you’ve done too much. We’ve just got to get it working and then get it out there and see if it works. If it’s working well, we’ll come back and pretty it up.”
On avoiding a myopic focus on the data
“All too often, I’ll see an Ops person, and they’re so focused on the data, they don’t take a step back and ask, “what am I even looking at here?” They’re not thinking about whether or not what they’re seeing is even reasonable or possible. You’ve got to make sure the story the data is telling makes human sense.”
Hana Jacover - Why Real Coaching can be a Game-Changer for Your Career
On segmenting your day and using focus to avoid burnout
“Think of your day as a HIIT workout - where you are not doing more than one thing at a time.”
On understanding your brain waves and when you’re in the right state for certain activities
“In our normal waking state, most people are in a dominant beta state. This is a really great state for certain things, like thinking quickly on your feet, or having normal conversation or making decisions.”
“But when it comes to things like deep work, deep thinking, reflective processes, strategic thinking, and creativity, that is not the state that is going to be conducive to your productivity. So what you can do is leverage your brainwaves and get into a state that is better suited for those activities.”
Jon Westover - Striking out on your own
On getting comfortable talking about yourself and the work you’re doing
“One thing I didn’t do early on is I should have been a lot louder about telling my network what I did. But I didn’t want to brag, it’s not about me. This mindset is so common for Marketing Operations professionals - we are not the loudmouths of the company.”
“I had to change my mindset about that and start telling people. That is what helped me get started and led to me getting more clients.”
Cody Guymon - Lessons from a 2x GTM COO
On being a leader people want to work for:
“Care about your people. Care about them and you’ll be good. Care about how to make their life better, how to protect their workloads, and how to help them achieve their goals.”
“As a leader, you’ve got to be able to see what people want for their careers. Knowing what their goals and objectives are and then creating a game plan to go achieve those is important.”
On the dangers of being a people-pleaser:
“I’ve seen some people in my career say yes to everything, but then their stakeholders are wondering why it’s taking so long to get something done. And even though they don’t realize that you’ve been working crazy hours every week, they’re going to be frustrated and express that when it counts - like during a performance review. So you think you’re doing something positive for yourself by taking everything on, but you’re not.”
On the value of disconnecting:
“You’ve got be present wherever you’re at. If you’re with your family, be with your family. If you’re at work, be at work. The hardest thing for Ops people is being ‘always on’, so it’s important to have boundaries.
Nico Ferreyra - Crafting the Ultimate Inbound Experience
On tool considerations for today’s GTM motions:
“Go to market is evolving a lot. There's a lot of stuff happening with AI on the outbound side. There's a lot of stuff happening with companies utilizing a PLG approach. Ultimately, at the end of the day, you need to orchestrate Go-to-Market very quickly. The market changes, demand changes, and demand wanes, and waxes. And the tools that we have, don’t reflect that. One thing we hear from a lot of our customers is that their legacy vendors have not changed in the last four years.”
On a common mistake he sees in inbound strategies:
“A lot of businesses treat inbound like foie gras. And ultimately that's like a systemic failure in terms of like how you're identifying good, good prospects coming through your funnel.”
On the realities of RevOps (and the change to have a big impact):
”Life is hard for RevOps right now. If you're at a fast-growing company, there's no shortage of stuff to do. A lot of companies also just have under-invested in systems. If you can make life easier for RevOps, it’s a pretty big deal given how much adjacent surface area they touch in the revenue team.”
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If you’d like to view all of the OpsScale interview posts (soon including the upcoming interview I referred to earlier), you can find them on this page here.
Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity in the written format.