Sandeep Jain:

‍Hi. Welcome to the 19^th episode of “The Enterprise Monetization” podcast. And this is your host, Sandeep Jain. In this podcast, we invite thought leaders from enterprise monetization space, that CPQ billing so that you can learn about challenges, opportunities and best practices in monetization. Today, I'm pleased to invite Steven to the show. Steven is a seasoned revenue operations leader, having worked at several high growth startups, like Logical, Optimizely, NewsCred and others. Currently, Steven leads the revenue operations and go to market strategy at Truveta, a late stage health tech startup based out of Seattle. With that, I want to extend a very warm welcome to Steven.

Steven:

‍Thank you for the warm intro. Great to meet everyone and excited to be here.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Awesome, Steven. So let's get into that. So before we go into the deep intricacies of Quote-to-Cash, could you just share a fun fact about yourself with our listeners?

Steven:

‍Yep. So fun fact about me is, I'm a big New York sports fan, Nick Smith and jets. So lots of hope and despair. But hopefully, with Aaron Rodgers coming to the Jets, there's at least some type of hope. And then I have a six year old daughter and a two year old son, and I'm an avid runner. I've actually done two marathons and have a triathlon on my bucket list. But I think I'm quite a few years away from attempting that.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Well, that's quite a few activities. Marathon just takes a lot of your time, especially with young kids. So it's interesting that you can do.

Steven:

‍It does.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Very nice. Cool. So let's go to the Quote-to-Cash then Steven. But before that, could you also give a quick background? And I shared a quick background with our listeners. But could you tell why you made the changes? Why revenue operations for yourself? Like what made you interested in this space?

Steven:

‍So I actually got my Bachelor's in Behavioral Science at my masters in School Counseling, but started my career at two different Salesforce consulting partners. And the benefit of Salesforce is it's ever evolving, and it's self-teaching. So you could take your career as far as you want to go. The propensity to earn in tech and SaaS is much greater than it is in education. So my long term plan is to be able to continue to help these startups grow, either IPO or get bought out. So this way, I can retire early, and then have time to do passion projects in the education space.

Sandeep Jain:

‍That's very interesting. We'll talk more about education space towards the end of the podcast. But before that, could you tell a little bit more about Truveta? And what stage of the company is and bit more information?

Steven:

‍So Truveta is a fairly new company actually, they just became and they were pre product. Now they have a product to sell. They're about $15 million in ARR across 10 different companies. They are essentially a way for de-identify patient information across multiple health providers. So you have Montefiore Hospital NYU, all these hospitals that have data on people. So Truveta will de-identify them. And then sell those data sources to people who are doing clinical trials. And then based on that, they'll be able to figure out and learn techniques on how to better design vaccines and better people's health. So long term vision, extend people's lives which I think is pretty robust.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Awesome. And how big is Truveta? Like how many employees?

Steven:

‍So surprisingly, for it being just coming out of pre product, it's about 260 people. It's heavily backed by Microsoft.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Got it. And it's a team based out of Seattle or are you guys distributed or across the US across the world?

Steven:

‍Pretty distributed, I would say 90% US based, 10% elsewhere, and the elsewhere being like British Columbia. So pretty much on that same three hour time zone, which makes it easy.

Sandeep Jain:

‍I'm sure it does. And let's talk more about your role within the company. Could you talk what you do in the company? How's your team structured? What's the charter number of people so on so forth?

Steven:

‍So it's actually funny how I joined Truveta. So I was at a company called “Welcome Software”, another SaaS company in the MarTech space, they were ultimately acquired by a company called Optimizely. At that point in time, I knew that was not a place that I wanted to continue my career at. They already had built out revenue apps team, and I didn't want to take a step down. So someone who was at “Welcome”, went to Truveta. My buddy said he was going on paternity leave. So that timing worked out perfect. So I was covering for him, signed a six month contract, and now I'm a full time employee there. I believe in a fully integrated revenue operations structure. And for me that four pillars, it's people, strategy and process, data execution, and then revenue enablement. And I like to say revenue enablement, because the same things that sales needs to be trained on, your customer success team needs to be trained on the same thing. Your product company, features are going out left, right and center. If they're not getting trained on the same thing, and they own a number, they're never going to hit their commission number, which then means the company won't hit their goals.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Understand. Could you talk more about the role of yourself in the company? Is it revenue operations? Is it like CPQ Billing, all of the above or…?

Steven:

‍So I report directly into our CRO. So everything from creating alignment between sales and marketing, to defining the entry and exit criteria for each stage. Commission planning, so the compensation, the way we pay our employees are those through my team. We in order to ensure that there's no single point of failure, all reporting comes through my team. Because as you know, if the VP of Marketing runs a report, and the CRO runs a report, and those two numbers come back as something different, it calls into question everything. So if we have a standard team that's doing it that knows the ins and outs, it relieves that headache.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Sounds good, Steven. And how many people in your team?

Steven:

So I have a team of five.

Sandeep Jain:

Got it. That's a good help actually. I've seen it. Five is not a big number, but still is bigger than what I've heard for a team. 

Steven:

Normally, I'll step into an organization where I'm a team of one and have to prove ROI and value, revenue operations as a revenue accelerator. I want to be able to prove that then it's a lot easier to then go ask for the additional headcount.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Make sense, Steven. Could you talk a bit about your business model? Given what you said earlier about Truveta, it seems that sales-led is going to be a big motion, not sell. Maybe resellers, just gonna talk about one of the big channel for you? 

Steven:

So another good question. Being so early in the company, I think it changes. We have member partners, who are we're buying the data from. And that's one stream of revenue. And then the second stream of revenue is where we're actually going out to a healthcare company to sell that data. But as the product is currently built, it is not set up for product led growth, which as you know means there's going to need to be a need for onboarding and hand holding. So we are looking at making it less of a handhold approach. So this way we can have that product lead growth motion.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Understood. Well, that's interesting about Truveta, because you have two-sided business model, you buy and sell, that's interesting. What are the systems that you use to support this workflow?

Steven:

So from a CRM perspective, Salesforce, marketing is Pardot, we have Zoominfo from a data enrichment standpoint. We utilize Gong for conversational analysis. We also use that heavily for onboarding. So here's a folder of what a good demo looks like, what a bad demo looks like, here's what a good competitive takedown looks like and everything in between. I don't think we're tech shy. I think, like most organizations, we have more technology than we actually need. But luckily, we take the stance of only signing one-year deals. So this way we're able to get out of those one-year deals.

Sandeep Jain:

‍Understood. And how many sales reps do you have, Steven?

Steven:

That actually a question I don't know. I want to say four. 

Sandeep Jain:

‍I would say for a team of 250 people. 

Steven:

Oh, team. I thought you said investors. 

Sandeep Jain:

‍Sales reps.

Steven:

We have about 260 employees.

Sandeep Jain:

But how many sales reps, like how many people who are…?

Steven:

We have a CRO, and then seven reps. And then we just layered on a SNB/SPR team of three. So you can call that roughly 12 people.

Sandeep Jain:

Got it. And what are the system that you use to send out quotes today? Is it manual, or are you using a system?

Steven:

So right now, very manual. It's a Word doc, everyone has to go in and type it up. It never aligned with the products that are in Salesforce. But part of my role has been building the infrastructure inside of Salesforce to be able to support a tool like CPQ, whether that's Zuora or Gong, wherever the case may be, but ensuring the infrastructure is there. If, for example, on the products, opportunity products level, the line description or that line description, then can be a merge field in the table that describes what they're actually paying $30,000 for. So the infrastructure is built. We're just haven't prioritized buying a tool for yet. 

Sandeep Jain:

Understood, and do you know what you use for invoicing today?

Steven:

Invoicing is NetSuite.

Sandeep Jain:

Understood. So your responsibility is to manage Salesforce and the Quoting aspect and the part of the marketing side as well? 

Steven:

Correct.

Sandeep Jain:

So what are the big challenges for you, Steven?

Steven:

Bandwidth. 

Sandeep Jain:

Could you talk more about that, like in the sense of too much to do, or too complex?

Steven:

I think in any startup, everyone's going to have the same answer. The priority for today is not going to be the priority for tomorrow. And, conversely, you could have just worked a week doing something that related to a business goal that is now no longer a business goal. And that goal has changed, and you have to scrap everything. But more importantly when you're a team leader, being able to maintain that team's mental health, like they just spent a week doing work. And it's basically going down the toilet, and they have to start again. So lots of challenges there. 

Sandeep Jain:

Understood. What about in your daily operations workflow, like when the reps are doing the Quoting of a Word doc? Are you responsible for copying the data from the Word doc to Salesforce, or are reps doing it by themselves?

Steven:

Good question. So when I joined, there was never if you went to an opportunity, there was no order form or quote attached, which then downstream customer success, does has to go and find where that contract lives. So one of the first things I implemented was ensuring the quote proposal and signed contracts all get uploaded to the opportunity, and then added in validation rules to ensure that it happens.

Sandeep Jain:

And the how do you copy the data from the PDF file to an opportunity product level, or do you code out of Salesforce directly?

Steven:

So right now it's still very manual. So they're literally opening up this base Word doc, copying and pasting. Luckily, we only have 11 clients across the 50 million in ARR. But all templates are different. So it's hard to interpret and standardize. 

Sandeep Jain:

Understand, I get what you're saying, this is too custom solution at this stage. 

Steven:

I’m moving them in the right direction. But you can only do so much in a day.

Sandeep Jain:

Have you any experience in your past life or the CPQ tools like one of the things that you liked or disliked? And the purpose of the question is for folks in RevOps who are listening to this podcast, what are the things that they should be aware of when purchasing a CPQ tool? Like, when should they purchase a CPQ tool? When is it too early, too late, things of that nature?

Steven:

So from my point of view, the two CPQ tools that I like best are the one directly from Salesforce, Single Vendor, Single Contract, easier to get a discount. And then the second one being Zuora, but I think Zuora is starting to fall behind in terms of their capabilities.

Sandeep Jain:

Okay. Anything that you did not like about these tools?

Steven:

They're not cheap. And it's not something you can just set up in a day. CPQ implementation takes six to eight weeks if you bought Salesforce CPQ between building it sandbox, testing it out, production, testing, rollout, all of that. So if there was something that that not only beat the price, but the Return on Investment quicker, it would be a no brainer. 

Sandeep Jain:

Understood. And what are the priorities for you, Steven, in the next few quarters? I know you talked about moving away from the Word document for quoting. Is that a big priority for you, or are there any other priorities?

Steven:

So I would say, for me, it's a priority. If we asked our CEO, I think he would disagree. But I'm a fan of since we're still a lean team, it's a lot easier to train 11 people than it is to train 100 people who have 100 different bad behaviors.

Sandeep Jain:

That's an interesting perspective, Steven. And what I've heard interestingly, on the similar lines is somebody mentioned about “Quote is your competitive differentiator”. And I'm a vendor in this space, but we are also customers. So we get quotes as well. And some are so bad looking that it's hard to even get information about what you're purchasing, what price, what is the discount, and how long and just becomes hard to process a quote just mentally. So I don't know if you have seen or heard quotes looking good, how easy it is for reps to generate quotes as a competitive differentiator for you as well. 

Steven:

I would say, Conga does well, which is now I think Nintex, or vice versa. They worked on merge fields. So I knew I could easily pull any field into this table or this section. And from that standpoint, it was easier to maintain from a scalability standpoint. Did that answer the question?

Sandeep Jain:

Yes, it does. And when you're looking at the products like Salesforce CPQ, that you have used in the past, anything that you would like to say, look at the CPQ, what did you do this, it'll make my life easier, or make the life of my reps easier. Any recommendations you have on product improvements?

Steven:

I think apparently salespeople are not data entry people, so anything that we can do to remove the friction point from them is key. And for me, when I think about CPQ, one of the things that come to mind is forecast accuracy. In an early stages deal, we don't actually know what we're selling yet because solution scoping hasn't happened. So ‘Rep A’ might price a small deal at 25,000. And ‘Rep B’ will price the same thing at 50,000. And now we're overstating for our forecast or vice versa. And that ultimately hurts as the quarter goes on. So if there was a way to solve for that earlier on. And maybe you have talked to other people who have solved this, I've solved it with packages, but then that just means later down the line, they have to delete the package and add the actual product. So it creates a roadblock. 

Sandeep Jain:

Steven, are you talking about multiple codes for the same customer when you said ‘Rep A’ versus ‘Rep B’?

Steven:

So John Doe is “Rep A’, Jane Smith is ‘Rep B’. They're both pricing a small deal at two different prices, which then that means when we're looking at our forecasting. Either one of them is overstating and the other one is understating, and that hurts the ability to get used to accurate forecast.

Sandeep Jain:

And I'm assuming that these are two separate deals?

Steven:

Yeah, two separate deals. 

Sandeep Jain:

The same product, they are quoting it differently. 

Steven:

Exactly. 

Sandeep Jain:

Isn't that what a CPQ supposed to do, have a price normalization so that they're sharing the seamless price, but if they're discounting it, then it goes through an approval to a deal desk or something like that?

Steven:

Yes. But since we don't actually know what we're selling. So let me take a step back. Our stages are qualifying, solutions, scoping, contracting, we don't know what we're actually selling between solution scoping, and negotiating. So what they're putting in and qualifying could be two different values. 

Sandeep Jain:

I see what you're saying. 

Steven:

Which is more of a forecast issue than it is a CPQ issue. But I can definitely see CPQ being able to solve for this by saying, I don't know, CPQ small, CPQ medium, CPQ large, and then build a validation rule when solutions scope happens, replace it with the right product, something similar to that.

Sandeep Jain:

You're absolutely right, Steven. So CPQ one of the jobs. For good CPQ is to allow you to maintain pricing controls on the products. And then I believe that should solve the use case, I think that you're talking about. Have you had any problems with by the way CPQ to the billing interface in your existing company and your earlier companies?

Steven:

I haven't, I'm sure reps have. But from my standpoint, I haven't.

Sandeep Jain:

Understand. So in your case, when the quote gets closed, the billing team comes in and looks at the data and the CRM generates an invoice to NetSuite or whatever billing system that they're using?

Steven:

So what I'll normally do is rather than have the rep move the deal from stage five to closed one, I'll have a move it to close one pending “Finance Review”. And during that review, that gives finance sales and operations, the ability to create alignment to ensure that the contract aligns with what's in Salesforce. Finance has the billing contact. If there's a purchase order that's needed, that information is collected. So more of a downstream alignment, whereas most of the time, you're hearing marketing and sales alignment.

Sandeep Jain:

Understood. Steven, anything else? Any recommendations on or any remaining recommendations on CPQ? Because this is our sales force, the data integration. Any other ideas or suggestions that you might have? 

Steven:

So there's actually two. First one, “10X”, and then “12 rules for life”. 

Sandeep Jain:

What did you like about these books? Are you reading these books currently, or have you done reading the books? 

Steven:

Yeah, so I'm still reading “The 12 Rules for Life’. It keeps popping up on my like my TikTok feed. So I figured I would support him. From the 10X rule, the way they go about explaining goal setting, big hairy, ambitious goals. I think it's key for not only an individual but also for a team because you're not going to win every time, but at least you're able to see the progress that you made and how close you got to that goal. It takes on, I don't know, the biggest and the best failures in the world, right? 

Sandeep Jain:

That's good to know. Steven, thank you so much for these recommendations and thank you so much for your time today.

Steven:

Yeah, definitely.

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