AMA: Zapier Director, Revenue Operations, Lindsay Rothlisberger on Stakeholder Management

Zapier has always been a remote workplace, so I appreciate how intentional teams are about building culture, relationships and trust. Some of the strategies I’ve found most successful in maintaining cross-functional alignment: 1. Call out misalignment promptly: it’s important to be vocal when you notice folks aren’t on the same page. In RevOps, we are sometimes the first to notice this because we have line of sight across multiple functions. 2. Open communication: We use shared channels like slack and google docs versus keeping correspondence private. This brings greater visibility and allows others to follow along. 3. Regular check-ins and cross-functional meetings to review priorities and goals. We have regular Sales, Marketing and RevOps syncs as well as check-ins for specific projects or initiatives. 4. Shared goals: Our RevOps team aligns to metrics that ladder up into the Demand Generation and Sales goals (e.g. increase qualified opportunities). 5. Operating model: Our RevOps team has an intake process for new projects as well as project phases that include: Strategy phase, defining roles, scoping stage, feedback stage and execution. This has admittedly been tricky to get right – we’re often revising the best ways to stay aligned from strategic ideation to execution. 6. Share / publish your team’s top priorities: This has helped us make sure our cross-functional stakeholders are aware of what we’re working on and how they can support or collaborate with us. 7. Iterative processes: We try to keep our solutions flexible so we can iterate and improve based on feedback from Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and Customers.

It helps that I used to do Demand Generation and have a deep understanding for how challenging and fast paced it can be. One of the best things you can do to improve your relationship with Demand Generation is to partner with them to improve their alignment and connection with Sales. As a “neutral” party, RevOps can be the glue between Sales and Marketing – help champion Demand Gen programs with Sales and help bridge miscommunications or misperceptions about Demand Gen programs. Another effective strategy for us has been listening sessions with Demand Gen. Marketers have a lot of ideas and can come to RevOps late in the game to execute them. This can lead to tension between the two groups. But if you spend time with Demand Gen to understand what are the things they are thinking about for the future, and how might you partner with them to evaluate solutions for those — you’ll start to position RevOps as a thought-partner instead of an execution arm. To stay aligned ongoing, our RevOps team shares monthly priorities with Demand Gen and we give Demand Gen an opportunity to weigh in on those priorities. Having this visibility opens the door for healthy debate in a constructive / contained way.

It’s important to understand the goals and challenges of the teams you’re working with. I’ve found that by considering their priorities and their communication styles you can improve your partnership tremendously. I am going to give some examples, however this is not meant to overgeneralize because teams differ at different companies. Here is how it works for me now: Go to Marketing Leadership (Sales, Marketing, CS): It’s important to communicate how your work aids in achieving these team’s goals. Focus on outcomes like by increasing sales efficiency at this stage in our funnel, we’ll increase rep capacity and revenue by X. With this group, I also aim to provide frequent updates. These are busy, fast-paced teams, so it’s important to be proactive in asking for what you need from them and keeping them informed on project progress. Executives: For executives, I try to differentiate projects as “scale projects” / “foundational work” versus “revenue-driving” / "more iterative, immediate impact work". Then I try to focus on communicating the expected outcomes from RevOps project. With executives, it’s also important to simply listen and ask the right questions to get the context and strategic input that’s enables RevOps to effectively prioritize and execute on the organizations vision. Data / Product / Engineering: With these teams, they often want to be involved early when there are RevOps dependencies on them. Involving them in shaping solutions has helped transform my relationships with these teams. I also like to position RevOps as a team that can help translate go-to-market strategies for our technical counterparts so that they develop the ability to naturally consider the implications of their work on go-to-market as a whole in the future.

It's important to nip tension across functions quickly and don't let it fester, here are some of my strategies: 1. First, take time to understand the root of the tension. For example, what kind of challenges are they facing, are their goals in conflict with others, are their contributions not valued? 2. Create a shared vision or shared objectives across functions. Are there even just one or two goals that you can partner together to achieve versus trying to bring dependent teams or stakeholders along to achieve your teams’ functional goals? 3. Define roles and accountability. We use the DACI framework to align on who the driver, approver, contributor and informed folks are. This helps us maintain alignment and keep decision making efficient. 4. Commit to building trust and better relationships between the functions from the top down. As a leader, it’s my responsibility to make sure I am aligned with leaders of other teams regarding priorities and the most important challenges to overcome. Setting this tone of cross-functional partnership is important. 

When there are multiple functions involved in key goals or initiatives, try to make it as easy as possible to share learnings and facilitate connections. Here are three key principles I’ve used: 1. Be a connector: Look for opportunities to pair cross-functional folks together on a project. Or highlight opportunities where multiple teams may be addressing the same problem in different ways so they can orient around the same goal and reduce duplicative efforts. 2. Continuous learning: Orgs with strong alignment are great at sharing learnings across the org. We often orient toward sharing wins, but if you can build a culture that promotes growth and learning about what works and what doesn’t...then sharing those learnings across other teams who may benefit.. it will help drive mutual understanding and partnership. For example, make sure Sales is sharing customer learnings with Product and Data is sharing past research with Product and Marketing, etc. 3. Leverage tools and documentation: Project management tools and shared processes for launching projects, getting feedback, and including the right contributors are key to reducing friction across functions.