AMA: Sound Agriculture Revenue Operations Leader, Mollie Bodensteiner on Revenue Strategy Execution

A pen and paper. That is honestly probably my most used tool for taking notes, prioritizing actions and follow-ups, and keeping myself organized. Outside of that, I think the tool that is the core of the stack is CRM. This is where the majority of the business operationalization happens. Regardless of what type of CRM you have, I think having centralized customer data, activity, and actions is critical for business predictability and scalability.

I tend to like to use a Google Sheet to build this to make sure you have a more table-based structure. Setting not only the attribute name, definition, source of data, systems that store, edit, create, etc. This tends to be the easiest format in my experience for managing and being able to have tabs to support various tables (customers, product, activity, etc.) attributes.

Take this opportunity to sit with the new leader and walk them through your current strategy, why it was developed what your expectations are, etc. Seek to understand their feedback, and perspective and determine a good path forward. You must have an aligned revenue strategy with shared accountability. Start here first. Then once you have alignment determine the proper timeline for execution and technical support. What strategy and technology at one company might not work for another, as humans we like what we know and have found success with in the past, but we must evaluate if it will work in the current.

I think it is important to understand the perspective of the marketing leader as to why they feel that they should control the workflow/automation. Is it because of the system that it is being executed in, or is it because of what actions they own in the process? My advice is first to seek to understand why they believe they should own the automation -- making sure to look at the big picture of the entire experience you are working to create, not just the sub-set automation of a point of the process. Any time you are implementing automation - especially that is external to your customers - it is important to have full alignment as to how this impacts the experience and awareness of when and why it launches. At the end of the day, it should be less about control and ownership and more about what provides the best experience and outcomes for your customers.

When you think about how to leverage communities and partnerships, I think from a community perspective, look at how you can provide value to the members of the community. Community should not be about driving direct revenue, it should be a place where you can build brand creditability through your experience, thought leadership, etc. Help to understand what those in the space need and support them through education and partnership vs sales pitches. Regarding partnership and influences on lower budgets - get creative, and see where you can identify alternative solutions to monetary payment, or if there is a swap component that could provide mutual benefits. One thing I know is that you will never know unless you ask :-)