Latest / Straight To Voicemail / Balancing Data and Gut Instinct in B2B Decision-Making | Colt Steingraber, RevPartners
Transcript
- Adam Sockel (00:01): I'm Adam Sockel. Colt Steingraber thinks a lot about revenue. In fact, he thinks so much about it that it became part of his job. He is the senior team lead for the marketing team at RevPartners. And what RevPartners focuses on is engineering revenue outcomes for go-to-market owners on HubSpot. It is very nuanced and sounds very nuanced. There's a lot that goes into that job. When it comes to B2B and specifically B2B marketing, it's always what's the next best thing? What's the next campaign? What's the hot trend that's going on? What are the things we need to be focusing on? But what I really appreciate about Colt is that he makes sure to spend time every single quarter, not just looking forward, but looking back, understanding what they did, what worked, and what they need to change. In a world where everything is always, what can you do for me next? (01:02): I really appreciate how thoughtful he is in terms of what actually happened that went well. So I asked him about a post he did recently looking back on H1, and asked him a simple question with a very nuanced answer. With B2B moving faster than ever, I just wanted to know what is the importance of looking back and how do you actually implement those changes throughout the year? (01:28): Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. At the tone, please record your message. Colt Steingraber (01:35): Hey Adam, sorry I missed your call. I was giving my cat his daily asthma medicine. If you've never seen a cat use an inhaler before, you are missing out. Really glad that you asked that question because it's something I talk about a lot in my role at RevPartners. There's no secret that B2B is moving and changing fast, but I think the problem for a lot of marketers is that revenue attribution doesn't. It's still very much a slog. And I'll admit, I'm a little spoiled. I work at a company with a pretty mature CRM. We track the data we need and have a shared framework for interpreting it. It's called the revenue performance model or RPM for short. We run a QPR after every quarter, like most businesses. It's our opportunity to look back at performance and use what happened to inform what comes next. OKRs, investments, priority shifts, campaign focus, you get it. (02:22): But a productive QPR really I think starts before the meeting. Your CRM has to be mature enough to capture accurate data across the entire customer journey and life cycle, and then you have to translate that data into action. So with the RPM, we start with primary KPIs, volume and conversion. Then volume shows you how much is moving through each stage of the funnel. Then conversion shows you how effectively it's progressing from one stage to the next. Then we break those numbers down using secondary KPIs, so things like source, campaign, persona, business type, industry, really the who, what, where, when. And that helps you process the results where the performance is strongest or weakest, where certain patterns come up. And from there, you can investigate the why. So the next piece is really structuring that data so you can compare it month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year, because a number in isolation can elicit or create an emotional reaction, but a trend gives you evidence. (03:24): And then when that data's reliable, it's objective as opposed to being subjective. Sales, marketing, customer success, rev ops, executive leadership, they're all looking at the same reality. And that means there's no ambiguity around what happened, and then you can spend more time aligning on what to do next instead of arguing about what happened. And that means you can double down on a channel that generates less volume, but produces stronger conversions or larger average deal sizes. You can pull back from something that creates a lot of activity, but low pipeline. And then maybe there's a certain persona or business type or a type of engagement that creates more ARR or stays with your business longer. So really those insights make priority shifts easier to spot and execute, whether that happens at the beginning of the year after a QBR or even in the middle of a quarter, because sometimes you can't wait for the next QBR. (04:12): You might see evidence to know that the current plan isn't working or there's a strong opportunity to pivot and you have to make a change mid-quarter. That happens a lot. But those decisions to change really require a combination of data, gut instinct, and then cross-team approval. The data that you're using or that you're looking at, it doesn't eliminate judgment or instinct altogether, but it does give your judgment something real to work from. I think the last thing I noticed, your QBR needs to turn insights into commitments. So what are we changing? What are we continuing? What are we stopping? Who owns the decision? And really what results do we expect and which KPI is going to tell us if it worked or not? So to me, looking back at performance, it only matters if it changes what you're doing next. And our point of view is that the RPM gives you the evidence and then your QBR is the opportunity to turn that evidence into action. (05:03): So I know that was pretty long. Hope it was helpful. I'm probably going to get cut off now, but hope to talk soon. See you. Adam Sockel (05:16): Thank you for listening. Want your podcast to do more? Subscribe to our Big Little Wins newsletter because it's never just a podcast.