From Ticket-Taker to Strategic Influencer with Sarah Lane-Hawn

In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, we are joined by Sarah Lane-Hawn, a fractional marketing leader and consultant who helps organizations shape their go-to-market strategy and build operational infrastructure with intention. Sarah brings experience leading both marketing operations and demand generation, offering a clear view of how these functions can work together more strategically.

The discussion focuses on how Marketing Operations professionals can move beyond the “ticket-taking” mindset and step into roles that drive real business impact. Sarah shares how understanding the “why” behind requests, influencing decisions, and aligning with organizational goals can elevate both personal growth and company success.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why a human-centered strategy is essential to the future of marketing operations
• How MOps professionals can gain credibility and influence within their organizations
• The difference between building for reporting versus enablement
• Practical ways to bring strategic thinking and intuition into daily work

This episode is perfect for Marketing Ops, RevOps, and demand generation professionals looking to increase their strategic impact, build stronger partnerships with stakeholders, and find more meaning in their work.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: From Tickets To Strategy
• 3:13 Defining Human-Centered Ops
• 7:13 Reducing Friction Across Teams
• 11:43 Extend Human-Centered Thinking To Customers
• 17:08 Cross-Functional Experience And Empathy
• 24:07 Building Credibility And Pushing Back
• 30:47 Reporting With Context And Trust
• 37:57 Handling “It’s Broken” Without Fire Drills
• 43:12 Practical Moves To Escape Order Taking
• 49:37 Org Placement: Reporting Vs Enablement
• 56:47 Data, Gut, And Behavioral Reality

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:24

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast, brought to you by MarketingOps.com and powered by all the MoPros out there. I'm host Michael Hartman, joined by no one today. None of my co-hosts, at least. But I am joined by a guest, and our guest this week is someone who's been on both sides of the fence, leading marketing operations teams and supporting Demand Gen as a marketer. Sarah Lane Hahn is a fractional leader and consultant who helps organizations shape their go-to-market strategy and build operational infrastructure with intention. Today, she and I are going to be talking about how marketing ops professionals can step out of the ticket-taking mindset and into a more strategic, human-centered role. So we're going to explore how to better understand the why behind requests, influence decisions, and align work with both business goals and personal growth. Sarah, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14

Thanks, Michael. I am excited to be here ever since we started talking about kind of this topic. But also just companies as a whole. Like if they're growing their operations team, I have some clients right now who are starting their operations team for the first time. And so these are great conversations to be had at any stage of development of thinking how can we make the most out of operations and not isolate them and not fall into the pitfalls that so many companies have.

SPEAKER_02: 2:04

Yeah. I've been excited about this. This is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. And I know a lot of our listeners and um people in the in the community uh often are lamenting how hard it is to get out of that ticket taking mode and this would be seen as more strategic. So why why don't we start with um you know your perspective on this and and what's missing in many of the conversations that our marketing ops professionals have today? Um I know one of the things you said to me is that you've yeah, well, there's a lot of focus on tech and attribution, um, but not enough on, I think you called it this human-centered strategy. So why don't you kind of talk through what do you mean by that and like how maybe a little bit about how you think about it differently?

SPEAKER_01: 2:50

Yeah, there's a couple of pieces there. Um for one, it's the day-to-day actual workload. Um, I think if you even look at job postings today and how we list out the responsibilities for a standard marketing ops person at any level of expertise, it's going to be a lot about tech ownership. Um and that's true. Like I'm not saying that's not a big priority of the things that we own. Um, but what you don't see a lot of is the responsibilities to be a hub of information, to bring solutions to the forefront, to see how data informs um strategies across departments. Um, and those are things that I think we're uniquely situated to do. Um, the human-centered strategy is something that is really important to me from an operations mindset. And I think it's something that has helped me kind of branch out from um just kind of the the marketing team or the ops team that I'm sitting on at the time is because a lot of our work spans teams, right? Like we're working on how do we hand off leads to the VDRs or how do we um circle back to the sales team based on the marketing initiatives that people are engaging with? And so when I'm doing that, one of the um paramount things that's important to me is how do I minimize friction for those team members? So, not only how do I just hand them the right things and check the box and say, yep, it got there, but did that now take extra time out of their day? Does that new process now cause them more frustration than it does help? So even if the data's good, what is the human cost of doing it?

SPEAKER_03: 4:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:41

And how can we make that as efficient as possible? Because at the end of the day, we're enablers, we're the helpers. We're here to make sure that people can do their job and have, you know, the highest and best use of their time. Um, and so kind of keeping that human-centric piece to anything we're building so that it's not just stuck in the tech and the theory, but like in our actual day-to-day lives, how does this influence us?

SPEAKER_02: 5:08

Yeah, it's it's interesting because I like for people who are listening only, like I'm sitting here nodding my head and smiling because that last bit reminds me, you know, I tell people all the time, uh, you know, one of the things I think a lot of marketing ops and marketing teams want is a view through into pipeline and impacts and all that. And so they go, like, well, we need we need to go ask salespeople to do X, Y, or Z, right? Update their stuff and all that. And I often, and like what I want, I always tell them like you need to think about how this is gonna affect their ability to do the things that they actually get paid for, right? And if you're gonna go ask them to do some extra work uh or do something in in addition that is gonna like get in the way of that, you're probably not gonna have much success. Yep. And I think I think that's a like and it like that's a specific example, but I think your point about like understanding that from other perspectives is is a good thing to know. I am curious though, in the human kind of the human side of it, um there's obvious stuff that we talked about just then, right? Internal kind of component of it. Do you think there's also a component of it that should be external facing? So whether it's customers and prospects or partners or agencies, like uh think about that part of it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:23

100%. I mean, I think that um if we're focused on driving efficiency, which I think is a lot of our role and operations, um, then that efficiency also translates to the prospects um and customers. And so how people engage with our website, even if we're not the owners of that, if we're the ones tasked with forms and integrations, then how do we set up forms in the cleanest way to be frictionless from a perspective, you know, prospect view? Um, how do we make sure that when we're um putting in data that's going to be used by the sales team, and then further that gets handed off to the success team, that it doesn't get degraded over time so that when you're talking to your customer success manager, you're not answering questions that you asked during the discovery call, right? Like sure, how do we just make sure that some of that redundancy in their experience doesn't happen by making the operation side of things very clean?

SPEAKER_02: 7:29

Yeah. I mean, what I've experienced, I guess an example when I was responsible for some website stuff at a big tech um semiconductor company. And you know, we a lot of what we had built out on the site in terms of navigation was really centered around how we were organized, but not really around then how our products were organized internally, but not really around how customers thought about it. Yep. And so I found myself being initially one of the only voices going, but like I just because it's easier for us, like why are we making it harder for our prospects and customers? Yeah. So um I'm a I'm a big I'm a big fan of that too. Yeah. So I think it's like that's to me, that's what I think of like human-centered is thinking about all of those stakeholders. So yes, absolutely. So yeah, yeah, one of the things I mentioned in in when we introduced you is that you've worked across in both like demand gen and general marketing roles as well as ops. And um, I'd be curious how that has shaped your approach in how you think about strategy planning and kind of doing that stakeholder management. Yeah. Um, I know like I give an example, like my experience, even though it was short-lived, I was in sales for a long enough period of time to realize how bleeping hard that job is. Yeah. Um, and it's really informed how I think about that now. So, but I'm curious about what yours is from your experience.

SPEAKER_01: 8:55

Yeah, I mean, my background's definitely weird. Um, but you know, I worked in tech for a long time, but I've worked in um like CX from a strategy perspective. Um, and so been on that part of the house. I've worked within the marketing teams and departments. And then um I also did do some um consultative sales both on the front end and on uh the client success side. And so I've really bridged and kind of followed through the full life cycle of clients in different different places. Um, and I do think that that created a lot of knowledge and empathy um for all of those different pieces and parts, right? Um so I do think that, you know, just kind of that human empathy is helpful and is part of the reason why I do care about reducing friction. Um, but you talked about stakeholder management. And I think that has really just come from um the practice of asking a lot of questions um and not being afraid to put myself out there and say, hey, I need 30 minutes with the director of sales. Um, and just asking for that and then making sure that that time is valuable for them as well, and being able to say, okay, here's what I'm seeing happening from my, you know, perspective and point of view. Um, but where are you running into friction points? What if I could solve it for you in the next week would be monumental for the team? Um, and then making sure that like, you know, your priorities and their priorities can kind of align somewhere so that there's a win-win. Um, and I found that the faster I can find those win-wins with my like senior leadership team members, the faster that then I had internal champions who were like, okay, this person is worth my time, it's worth talking to because I know any conversation we have together is going to get something done and it's going to move the needle. Um, and so that started really helping me have more kind of credibility um within uh companies and be able to work more cross-functionally. Um, and so that was that was really helpful. And then working within kind of the demand gen space, um, I think has been really good because you get more of a creative mindset um for a lot of things and you start to understand how in the marketing world there's a lot of work done that isn't going to have great metrics that come out of it that point you in a very clear direction or have causality tied to it. Like it's just not how it works. Um filled with ambiguity, right? There's so much that's like a psychological, you know, adventure. So um, so that was really helpful because I think if I had just jumped right into ops and was just doing kind of data analysis um and setting things up from a logical place at all times, I wouldn't understand like why this isn't being used, why is this not being adopted? Um, but knowing now like what marketing actually needs to do their job successfully, to then it be a successful handoff to sales, to then that be a successful handoff to CX, I can prioritize so much better what initiatives a company is needing because it's not based off of my own bias of, hey, this is how it should be.

SPEAKER_00: 12:21

This is the right way to do it. Instead, it's hey, this is gonna help, and we'll get to the right way of things along the way, but this will help you in the next month. So we're gonna start there.

SPEAKER_02: 12:32

Yeah. I I love that point about like it's it's not the way it should be because I think there's a lot of people who go like they just don't get it. This is the way it should be. And there's a like there's a no matter what that is, right? There's some sort of cost associated with it, right? In terms of if what affects other teams and things like that. What um I want to circle back on a couple of the things you talked about though. So I'm I'm curious. Uh, first, you talked about um going and setting time up with people and sort of proving your value and all that. Um, one and I highly recommend that to people, right? To get to understand um what motivates those other people, what their priorities are, but also I I love that you said you found ways to try to help move the needle for them, right, as a part of that. What I'm wondering is if down the line, if that has paid off for you and being able to then push back or sort of have the conversation about you asked for this, I think this is more a different priority. Does it do you feel like that kind of investing in that up front gives you the opportunity to have uh you know to to give the people the no without saying no, right?

SPEAKER_01: 13:39

Yeah, for sure. I and I think for me, it's also a personality thing of figuring out how to navigate personalities of different people and what's valuable to them, right? Because at the end of the day, that's the currency that we're working in in the professional space, is um is respect and kind of benefit to each other. And so um, if I can earn your respect quickly by showing you that I value you and that I'm here to be a support to you, um, and then I can show my value by actually implementing something that does make your life easier, um, then I start to have some actual currency to work with. Um, and from a pushback perspective, uh, I've always tried to frame things in a collaborative mindset. And so I can disagree with you 100%. It doesn't mean that I have to come in hot every time and be like, you're wrong. We need to do it this way. This is why you're wrong. Um, so instead, being able to always frame it in a format of, okay, um, here's what I've seen. Here's some of the things that I think we'll lack if we go that way. What if we did it this way? Yeah. Um, would that be of benefit? Do you have any reason why that wouldn't be okay? Even if it did something a little extra that you didn't need, right? Is it okay if we build it?

SPEAKER_02: 15:05

And if it was a step in the right direction, maybe not all that you needed or one.

SPEAKER_01: 15:10

Yeah, exactly. Is that good enough for now? Um, so yeah, those those conversations are a lot easier when the person is like, they already know that you know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03: 15:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

And so they if they feel like your recommendation is founded on something, even if they can't fully follow it, um, and they don't feel like you're confrontational for no reason, um, but know that like if you have an opinion, it's it's based on something of importance. Um, I think that really helps.

SPEAKER_02: 15:40

Yeah. I mean, one of the things I l I have literally said this to other stakeholders is just simply good what if they come with feedback and it it's easy to feel like it's a personal attack, even though it's not, right? Because there's ego tied up into what we do. And I always tell people give like I want your unvarnished feedback, suggestions, ideas, right? I want them all. Yeah. I at the same time, it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to move on everything at the speed at which you want. But the reason I tell them I want it is because when I hear one person tell me about something, right, and the context around it, um, it it may not seem like a priority. But if I start listen, if I'm listening to enough people, right, I may start hearing a similar pattern. It may not be exactly the same, but it's like the same. And then I'm like, oh, this is something we should go address. But if I come in hot or uh tell people they're wrong or whatever, right, that shuts down that line of communication. And there's a missed opportunity at that point.

SPEAKER_01: 16:39

Yep. Absolutely. Well, and I always like to keep a wish list of stuff. And so when people do come out of left field with like, oh, we should really do this, and it's something super far-fetched and has nothing to do with anything that's a priority. Being able to just go, cool, I'm gonna put that down. Um, it's not on the priority board for right now, but like, you know, if this continues to be something that's happening in the next month or two, like let's circle back to it again, you know, and like that way it's at least been heard. Um, and I do think that having that has saved me from a lot of conversations of having to like vet those requests right then and there, because if I did, it wouldn't have been a positive vetting for that person. Um, so I do think that that does end up helping.

SPEAKER_02: 17:26

And I think that's all some people sometimes that's all people want is to know that they've been heard, right? Yeah, trite as that sounds. But I think that's like it's sometimes people are saying something coming up with an idea. And it's not um I need this now, right? It is I've got this idea. Can we think about it? And maybe it gets on uh gets on there at some point. So that's I think that's an interesting, like that by itself is really like just this idea on how to handle those situations is something that people should be practicing and trying to do for things that feel comfortable with them, right? Right. Now the other part you talked about was uh your experience you worked in, you said customer experience, but it sounded like I don't like is that like customer success, customer support, or was it a customer experience from uh it was customer support for software?

SPEAKER_01: 19:22

And so it was um, we were strategists, was what we were called. Um and so it was very much understanding the tech, understanding the client's business, and then being able to connect the two um to help make them a sticky customer for us and helps adopt the software. Um, so very much still from an advisement perspective, um, but working really closely, you know, with the sales team to onboard new clients and working really closely then with the marketing team um on case studies and being the voice of the customer there. So um, yeah, I think it was pretty standard like customer success, but from like an enterprise perspective.

SPEAKER_02: 20:08

It's just the reason I ask is because I as many people we talk to, right? I think a number of people come from other parts of marketing into ops, or some have come from a sales or sales ops standpoint. I I don't hear a lot of people talking about experience in that kind of role and how it incorporated. I kind of think about that again, this human human-centered part. I think that would be really valuable to understand the impacts to customers and the onboarding process or whatever, whatever it is that your company does as a new customer comes on board. Um so I like I I I hadn't really thought about it. So that one was like eye-opening. I'm yeah, well, sort of marinating on that one.

SPEAKER_01: 20:48

I think that's true from a company perspective, too, like in reverse, in terms of who pursues developing operations um as a team and as somebody that they invest in. I think a lot of times it comes from the sales department. Some of the time it comes from the marketing department. I personally have not seen it initiated from the CX department. And I would love to see that happen. Um and I would love to work with a company who their, you know, director of um client success is like, we need to focus on client success operations. Let's at least get a fractional person in here because there is so much wonderful human-focused data at the CX level. Like you have actual information about um the relationship of the brand with the human and what is actually meaningful to them and what makes them come back again. Um, and if you're in uh like software, like what leads to product adoption, what leads to expansion, you have all of this information that's never, or shouldn't say never, infrequently digestible in a way that it gets back into the go-to-market motion. Um, but if you could start there, like instead of ending there, I think you could have such a powerful operations um initiative going in the company.

SPEAKER_02: 22:20

Yeah. I mean, we had we had an episode not too long ago where we talked to somebody about the uh customer marketing, which I feel has been de-emphasized in many, many places. Yeah. In in the pursuit of new logo acquisition. And um you know, even things like just the simple like what's that experience from being a prospect to a customer um can can set the tone for whether like if you've got a um got a contract that has a limited life, right? You know, that first initial experience is gonna be huge in terms of the likelihood that they'll continue to be a customer, is like my experience. So yeah, for sure. Um okay, so like kind of going back to the marketing apps folks a little bit and this perception that uh or at least this feeling that a lot of people in the space that I hear about talk about is feeling like order takers. So I I have my own theories on why that is there. And we've kind of probably touched on some of them, but like why do you think that happens? Why do you think the people have that perception and maybe others have perception about ops as well? And how do you how do you what would you suggest for companies or marketing ops pros to get out of that and f from being the default?

SPEAKER_01: 23:43

Yeah, so I think part of it is just lack of understanding from you know executive um leadership. And I think that's true of of most kind of technical roles, right? Um they can only get into the weeds so much, um, even if an executive was willing to just like shadow ops for a day, like I still don't know that they'd have a great concept of what it is we do because every day it's different. Um, and so they they're only gonna be able to have so much of a concept of um of everything that's possible, right? Um, and so I think the default's always gonna be I have a need. Who do I need to go to to answer that need? Oh, it's marketing ops. Great, here's what I need, please go do it. And because things get boiled down so much into that ask, it's very easy, especially when things are coming from the top. I think for professionals to go, yes, ma'am, yes, sir, like here I go. Uh, here's what you asked for, right? And we we want to provide it quickly, we want to provide, you know, the win. And um, and then we start getting stuck in that cycle. And so then it does become a ticket taking machine um because somebody has to break that pattern. And I don't know that uh for most companies, you're you're as an ops person are ever gonna get to step in the door and be like, oh, this is great. We're involved in so much strategy. Like we're not there yet, I don't think, as a professional group um known for strategy yet, for that to be the norm. So instead, it's up to us to break out of that. And it's up to executives and companies that want everything that ops can offer to be mindful of this as well, which is to make sure that your ops team has exposure to different departments, to make sure that they are included in discussions about how are we setting our annual KPIs and what do those look like for the company priorities? Um, so that that can stay top of mind within all of the tickets. Um, but then from an ops professional standpoint, I think it's also on us to sometimes slow things down. And so when we receive that ask, again, being bold enough to ask for 30 minutes. Say, listen, I really want to understand the background of this ask so that I can answer this the right way. And we don't have to ever redo it. Yeah. And I think when you start talking about longevity of your work, executives tend to listen because they're like, oh, thank God. So who cares about repeatability? Yeah. Right. Right. All of those things, right? And so when you can phrase it in that way, they're gonna take the time or or you can say, you know, I need to talk to somebody who who's the right person. It may not be the person who put in the ask. Um, but then you can start to unpack that a little bit more, figure out what it's tied to, take it offline, understand the problem. What's the problem we're actually trying to solve? Not the technical ask, but the problem. Then we can come back with the solution. And it'll probably come in multiple phases, um, especially when you're starting to build that new rapport, is okay, here's how I answered your immediate need that you that you know you have. And then on top of it, I answered it in a way that lets me build X, Y, and Z next to answer the bigger company problem that was behind the problem that you noticed. And that then starts to shed light on, okay, this is a strategic resource. They're not just thinking one layer deep, they're thinking three layers deep every time we have a conversation. Um, they're doing things in an efficient way so that we're still getting stuff out the door and we're still able to adopt it quickly, but we're also planning for tomorrow. Um, and so I think that's that's the biggest thing is like taking that ownership to slow it down a little bit, think through more layers while still executing really efficiently.

SPEAKER_02: 27:56

I mean, I think it's sometimes it's as simple as saying, like, yes, I can do this. Um, here's the here's the other things that are going to be affected. So just so they just so you know that this is a priority. But also on if you go like this is something I can do, I can do it relatively quickly, but it's not something I'll be able to do repeatedly if I do it quickly. Right. It's to do it to make it so that it's scalable and repeatable, I'll take it'll take more time. Asking, like, is that good enough for you for that? Right.

SPEAKER_01: 28:24

Um I mean, I think one of the one of the things that I've seen time and time again um with companies is uh failure around kind of their MQL process and and the ask that come in that comes into me could be as simple as, hey, we think our form routing might be broken. Uh we want every submission on a form to get routed to a sales exec, right? I could take that at face value and run with it, right? Give me 30 minutes, I'm gonna go audit the forms, make sure they all flow into a workflow that round robins to sales execs. Done. I win in 30 minutes, everybody moves on, nobody thinks about it again. Instead, though, pausing and saying, okay, you say all, but we don't want to route junk. So I'm gonna make sure that that gets filtered out. Uh also, we actually do have an ICP, so I'm gonna put some qualification criteria checks in here and see who meets it and who doesn't. That's gonna be another layer of this process. Okay, we're saying that everybody that comes through a form is an MQL, but what about all the other ways that we're warming up leads? And why are none of those getting actually flagged to handoff to sales? Um, okay, let's talk about how to do that, right? And so now you take one tiny little 30-minute task and you've turned it into an analysis of the actual solution for the company of what should an MQL be? How do we define it? How do we actually qualify so that marketing metrics are of value and sales receives the highest quality leads from us? Right. And so that kind of change from this is what is asked, this is what I give, to hold on, there's a lot more layers here that we're not addressing. Um, that's that's when that change has started to occur, where you've gone from just a tactile um doer to to a strategic leader.

SPEAKER_02: 30:34

Yeah, I think another example that I see a lot of especially early stage people um struggle with is they're asked to generate a report. You generate a report, maybe there's a chart, right? Maybe there's a table of of data, it doesn't really matter what it is. And um they just generate the report they were asked for, they turn it over, no analysis, no, and on that report, there's something that if you like anybody looking at it who's not familiar with it in detail will go like, why is this number off, right? Something's not right, right? Or it's doesn't follow the pattern. And I tell people all the time, like before, like generate the report you think is the right one, but then you spend some time looking at it and trying to anticipate what kind of questions are people gonna have just based on like patterns. It's not even that hard, right? You got a line of data, all of a sudden there's a spike or a dip, right? Or spike and then a dip, and people are gonna naturally go like what happened there. Like and you should have done some of that already. Don't like don't expect them to go look at and then ask you again. Like, do that ahead of time. Right. And and try to explain it. And if we what the explanation is, oh, we found out that uh uh there was a change made in Salesforce to opportunity stages or like whatever it is, right? You can explain what it is, or you can explain. We saw this too. I've already begun investigating it. I'm not quite sure what it is, but this is what I'm doing, like this is what I've uncovered already or limited. That kind of thing will change the perception of you as well. This is especially true, I think, in our space, because the quality of data in marketing and sales, especially in the P2B world, is just not good. I mean, like if there's just no two ways around it. And so it's easy to for people when they see reports like that to discount the report because the data looks quote wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 32:30

Yeah. Well, and as soon as something is misinterpreted um and seen then as wrong, no report is ever trusted again.

SPEAKER_00: 32:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:39

And um, I've definitely seen that where you can lose all credibility in an instant, and it is hell to try to get any of that back. Um, and so definitely being able to speak to um, you know, having done some analysis, I think before reporting things up is definitely an important thing, especially for our more junior level people. It's a good skill to learn. Um, the other piece that I would say is um anytime that you're working with dates, with reporting um, date ranges and relative dates, um, you not only need to be able to speak to what is showing on the report, but the back-end data caveats of what's going on and how to interpret it and how to use it and what it means in regular human language. Um, and so a lot of times in reports now for things that are more advanced like that, um, I'll put on the dashboard explainer text beside it that says this is to be read in the following way and like put it in sentence form um and you know, highlight an asterisk and bold and underline the things that are odd that somebody wouldn't necessarily think it means, right? Um and you especially want to do that if something's going up the chain to be used in a board deck because oh man, I have definitely had people look over a report and go, oh my gosh, we're up 220%, you know, with it, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, that is not what this says.

unknown: 34:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 34:18

Please don't say that to our board. So, you know, being very clear about what things actually mean is important because you at the end of the day, a chart's just a chart. You you know, you can interpret it a lot of different ways. So yeah, I think that's important.

SPEAKER_02: 34:33

People are more and more removed from that won't understand the nuance in the context of what a particular report or a data point means. And so yeah, you it you should be providing that as much as you can as early as possible. Yeah, it's funny because I I have had many times where I've had someone come to me like uh this thing is broken, this thing is wrong, right? Lead flow is broken. Like, okay, this is like that catches my attention, but like don't go around saying that, please. I'm not saying there's not something that needs to be addressed or fixed or whatever, but let's talk about specific like what do you mean? When you say lead flow is broken, what do you mean? Right, talk me for kind of to your point, right? Um send me all the like the response was send me all those, send me all the leads or send all the leads to the sales execs. Yeah, could there be something wrong? Yeah. Uh could it be fixed? Yeah, yeah. And maybe it's a temporary, like it's so I like I always like I truly try to avoid saying something's something's wrong, something's right, something's broken. Because it's just it's too broad. And if it gets I've had many multiple times with other execs and other departments, sales in particular, who've I've heard through the grave find, have been saying things about that, and I will go and talk to them directly. They're like, first off, stop, right? If they if you think there's a problem, come talk to me. I again kind of go back to this, like I want your feedback, right? I'm not I am comfortable enough to be able to be told like so like hey, your team's not doing what they need to be doing, or this thing is broke. Yeah, I perceive it as being broken or whatever, but come tell me. Don't start saying that broadly because um it's not helping, right? And that's that's the kind of thing that I it actually gets under my skin a little bit. Um, and I but I won't like I've gotten to a point where I just won't tolerate it. I just like you know, come talk to me and we'll go figure it out.

SPEAKER_01: 36:32

Yeah, the figuring it out as a team, I think is is always key, um, especially when we want to move into that strategic realm, right? We want to stay ahead of things, there's always gonna be things so that pop up. And um sure. So typically when I'm working across teams that also, if especially if it's introducing a new process, um, that's usually one of the first things that I'll say is like, here's the due process, here's what it's meant to do. So if you see X, Y, or Z happen, it's not meant to do that. Please tell me when those things happen because you're on the front lines, you're the one that's going to see that, you're the one that has the context for it. Um, and I'm here to then support continually making this better. And that tends to give people kind of the open door just to ping me and say, hey, was this supposed to come through? Hey, was this supposed to be categorized this way? Um, and sometimes it isn't because it's a weird exception to a rule. Um, and sometimes it is, and it lets me have the opportunity then to further their training and say, Yep, this is a weird one, but here's why that got bucketed in this way. Here's what I would do with it, you know, here's the next steps I would take. Um, and so then you're also enabling them to succeed where they got stuck, right? Um, and so always the helper is is kind of my my personal way of of tackling a lot of those things.

SPEAKER_02: 38:04

Yeah. I mean my mantra is I want to be confident but humble. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So um, okay, so we've talked a lot about kind of what that looks like and why there might be what do you like, what would you recommend for people who are listening? Okay, that's great. Uh I still feel like I'm an order taker. Like, how do I get how do I get myself out of that mode?

SPEAKER_01: 38:26

Yeah. Um, so I used to earlier in my career volunteer to be a liaison to different teams or sub teams. Um and what that would mean was if they ever had questions um for marketing or marketing apps, they knew me my name, they could come and chat with me. Um, and then I would sit in on all of their stand-ups. And that way I knew what was going on with that team. And if anything was pertinent uh to marketing, I'd, you know, bring that information back. Um, that was really helpful uh because again, a lot of what we're talking about here is just professional currency. And so, like by being visible, by being connected to people, by listening and understanding how things connect, um, you're gonna be able to have more insightful things to say. You're gonna be able to build reports in a way that actually are usable by the team members and not just great for monthly slide decks, right? Um, and so like all of those things really add up to make a difference. And hopefully uh you have good management who are going to see your potential. And as you start expressing interest and saying, hey, I fixed level one, here's level two and three that I think we should work on next for this that could help in these ways, they're gonna hopefully, you know, latch on to that and start start utilizing that energy. Um, but I do think it comes from us. I I don't think that it's I mean, really ever in anyone's career path um good to to wait for the invitation. Like I think you just kind of have to put yourself out there and um and try to continue to be humble and helpful and look for opportunities to to do more and learn more. Um, and that curiosity will will take a long, take a long path. But um yeah, the the practical ways that we talked about so far of like turning a ticket into a conversation, yeah, getting things done still efficiently, don't put the brakes on just so that you can have your conversation, um, still be efficient, but adding those layers then of okay, this is how things are connecting. And I think also a lot of it, um, another tangible thing is like get outside of whatever the workspace is that you work within. So like if you're on a team that does work off of tickets, it's gonna be very easy for your mindset to continually stay in tickets because that's what you're looking at all day. So get yourself a notebook or start yourself a document somewhere where you're just keeping your own record of notes of things that you were curious about, of things that you see potential connections of later on, or um, where you've seen that like uh sales and product use similar data points, but that are stored in a different way. Like jot it down because you're gonna find opportunities later that pop up that you go, oh, that connects to this wish list item that I had in the back of my mind for wouldn't it be cool if we could do this thing.

SPEAKER_03: 41:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 41:44

And now six months later, there's an opportunity to bring it up. Um, so that would be my other encouragement is don't lose your own good thoughts.

SPEAKER_02: 41:54

Well, and I think um I've seen more lately, and I know because of a connection to the people who've worked in brain research that actually you mentioned writing it down in a notebook, like literally writing pen to paper, pencil to paper, whatever is your like that actually triggers different pathways in your brain that um reinforce learning. So I think actually that's like a really good one. Not only just get out of your ticketing system and into a different digital thing, like if you can actually write it down, right? You can always translate it to digital easily. Um actually there's a place for that as well. Yeah. So it's it's this is gonna sound really stupid. There's a movie, I don't remember what it was. Uh I saw years and years ago where there's somebody said advising a child, right? Um, who's struggling with in college or whatever? And you know, interested is interesting. Um and I it's like for whatever that's that line stuck with me. But the point was, right, if you show it to your point, like don't wait for the invitation, like if you show interest, right, um people are gonna reciprocate and they're like they're actually I've very rarely uh seen where people go like, hey, I'll if you ask for some of their time to learn more about what they're doing, what they care about, like to for them to say no. They may say, I'm busy now, can we schedule some time? Um but they're more than willing to share, especially if they see that you're sincere and that your goal is to try to make things better, more efficient, whatever for them for them. Yes. Um, okay, so let's uh switch gears a little bit. Um so one of the things we talked about is um where marketing options sit in an org chart and kind of why there's such differences of opinion there. And then and maybe maybe this is tied to it as well, but this idea, I think you said like building for building marketing ops for reporting versus building it for enablement, right? So maybe tie those two together a little bit.

SPEAKER_01: 43:59

Yeah. Um, so when you're building for a report, um, we're often thinking again, just in terms of the data and the numbers, um, and trying to just summarize things and get it to look pretty and and you know, whereas when we're actually building for enablement, we're thinking again about that human-centric um process and how it's gonna impact the day-to-day and what's the cost in time uh and energy and frustration um that is being asked instead of just number of clicks, right? And so these are the types of things that I think are really important um in order to branch into strategy is that we're not just answering the need and the root cause, but we're also thinking about how it's gonna influence others. Because at the end of the day, the point you made earlier, you could build the best process in the world if it doesn't get adopted because it's too frustrating for someone, then it doesn't matter um that it was going to be more efficient because it's not anymore. Um, and so it's really important that that adoption becomes kind of our priority. Um, and you can either get adoption by forcing it and being like a stickler for the rules, or you can get adoption by being really caring about what people need and what makes their life easier in the day-to-day. Um, and somewhere in between those two is usually a good balance. Um, people are gonna have to do some things they don't like to do. It's life. And at the same time, we don't have to make each other's lives miserable for no reason. And so we can try to be a little more caring in how we articulate our builds. Um, but yeah, I I think it does um connect some to the to the debate from the last year of where where does marketing op sit? What should we be called, like all of these conversations that we have um kind of within our own community. Um, and I think that one of the reasons why it's so difficult to answer is that there is this gold mine of information to be had in operations. Um, and I don't just say marketing ops because it could be sales ops, drive ops, go to market ops, whatever, whatever brand of ops you want to be in. Um, but it's there's so much data that um is cross-functional that goes across these different teams and departments that everyone's using, that everyone could be using. Um, and the processes go across those departments and those tool sets as well. And so because of that, um, it it's hard to place us. But that also I think should be kind of a green flag for um companies and leaders thinking about operations that like, oh, if we can't easily say you sit here because this is what you have access to and this is who you serve, yeah, then it should say, wow, this is a hub of information. They will be able to see intersections of things that nobody else has insight into. And so when we're trying to problem solve at a company level, um these are the people that we need to be tapping as our problem solvers because that's what they do every day. Um, and yes, we might put the blinders on and kind of stay in our lane sometimes, but we have the potential um to be able to answer a lot of those intersectional needs for a company. Um, and so I don't have the answer for where we should sit, but I think that um we should be working really closely. Like if a company has chief of staff roles, like I think ops should be working hand in hand with chief of staff roles because they are again tasked with the impossible problems for the company that are most important. And that is what we have insight into is here's all of the potential web of ways that things are connected that we can pull from to solve those problems.

SPEAKER_02: 48:18

Yeah, I think it's interesting that you bring up chief of staff because I think of them as um sort of the classic generalists, right? Um and I think that's true of a lot of ops roles, not just marketing and revenue ops and sales, like there's there's a lot of that, and it's kind of counter to the way that many organizations are built around specialization. And so um it's it's that's I think that's part of why it's hard to sort of slot in. Where the where do these generalists that seem to have a little bit of a bent towards one functional area or another fit in to the organization, right? Um yeah, I've I've we actually have talked to people who are chiefs of staff, and I I've often wondered if that would be a good like one of potential um career paths for people in in ops roles. Um I think it's it's hard because in many companies chief of staff is it's not a um there are times when it's seen as a really important critical role and is compensated in in such a way, and then there's lots where it's not. And I think that's like that's the it can sometimes be like and the perception is is it a is it a goal of a career path or is it a pot pat part of a path and a career path? I think there's a lot of questions about that. So well, um we're getting short on time, but we do like we end here a little bit. So one of the things that you and I talked about, and I have sort of strong opinions about too, and you you kind of touched on it at one point when you said like when you're in demand gen, like there are things that are not measurable, right? So it implies that there's a little bit of a gut kind of instinct on stuff. Like so I know there's a lot of push in business in general and marketing, like to do data and data-driven, you know, decision making or that. Um but I think that I still think there's a place for gut, whatever you want to call it, right? Like, how do you think about those two? And you know, how do you like how would you balance that?

SPEAKER_01: 50:24

Yeah, so I feel like I have to preface this by saying that like my education is as a mathematician, I'm an extremely analytical person. I want a yes or no answer to everything. Um, you know, that's that's how my brain works. Um, at the same time, what I've really learned um over probably the past decade, and I I wish I knew the source um where I first heard this, where they said that your gut um is data too. And it was coming from this idea of your intuition um is founded off of patterns that you have stored sometimes subconsciously from exposure to things. And so the longer that you're in your career, the longer you're gonna have exposed to seeing things over and over and over again happen to the point that somebody is gonna say, Hey, I really think we need to automate our entire um prospecting sequence. And your gut is just gonna go, no, I don't think we should. Um, and it's not that you necessarily even have the data for that. Um, but you've seen it so many times that something in you knows that that's not that's not the right decision. Um, and so then again, you advise off of actually, I think this would be better, this would be more holistic. We need to pair automation with personalization, with individual outreach and research, right? And um, and again, that that recommendation is is coming from your knowledge that you have. And so you are a data source. Um, but I think a lot of us uh who are very analytical and are used to people asking us to, you know, pull reports within the next two hours that you know tell certain narrative, um, it gets really easy to kind of have that like trigger to to jump to prove something.

SPEAKER_03: 52:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 52:30

And that's not always the right answer. Sometimes we need to kind of just like sit in our intuition and trust our gut and be able to say, you know, here's what I'm thinking. Um and especially if something isn't measurable, um, then it's really important to trust that intuition and that past experience that you've had. Um and then you might measure forward, right? You might start monitoring um the changes from then on to be able to see if if you made the right call. Um but yeah, that I thought that was like really brilliant when I first heard it. That just that idea that like your experience is data. Like, do you, you know, that that counts as a credible source.

SPEAKER_02: 53:13

I'm stealing that totally. So yeah. Um yeah, it so it's funny because I also have I didn't do math as I have an applied math minor, but by I'm an engineer by training in a particular operations research, which is all about optimization and complex problems. And um so like I really want to go there because it feels natural at the same time. It's funny because like I think about um I'm a big fan of the free economics franchise, right? Yeah, and I think I think what it opened up to me is like this whole my my one of my one of my older my oldest son is in a business school now, and it we talked about economics, and I said like the there's problems with the fundamentals of economics theory because it's based on people acting rationally and which is just not the case. And it's like what's what's fun behavioral economics is because there's obviously there's other things other than people acting in a rational way, like and so um I think uh like your point, like over the years, this is sort of like I've evolved and gone like um, like what do I think is important to the point where last year, when I wrote a white paper for the market apps community about uh measuring effectiveness of B2B marketing, uh one of the perspectives I talked about is narrative, right? There's a storytelling component that is not really data at all, right? But it's looking at like when we win deals, you know, what are the characteristics of example ones that we have that we can tell, like point to? Like we won this deal with logo X. Here are all the things that happen across sales marketing, customer experience, whatever that led to that, and how can we take that and feed it back into what we do when we go to market? And um, it's it's often, I think, many, many marketers who should be really good at the storytelling don't do it very well internally.

unknown: 55:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 55:06

And it's a missed opportunity in my book. For sure. Well, hey, Sarah, thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. If if folks want to keep up with what you're talking about, continue the conversation with you or whatever, what's the best way for them to do that?

SPEAKER_01: 55:19

Yeah, um, so I always direct people to LinkedIn just because it's where I'm most active. So you can always find me there. Sarah Lanehan, uh Lanehan Consulting is my my company. Um, I also go by the hashtag MopsFerry. Um, so I am very much whimsical. Um, and that ended up kind of coming into my personal brand, which has been really fun this last year. Um, but yeah, LinkedIn is is honestly the best. I mean, I I have a website and I'm on the HubSpot um providers uh pages, but I don't have conversations those places. And I'd much rather have a human conversation. Um so LinkedIn um is the place to find me.

SPEAKER_02: 56:02

Fantastic. Again, Sarah, thank you so much. I'm so glad we got to do this. Um so appreciate that. Thanks always to our uh our audience out there. As always, if you have suggestions for topics or guests, or you want to be a guest, please reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me. We'd be happy to do that. Till next time. Bye, everybody.