Burn The Playbook - B2B GTM Strategies with Marc Crosby

CRM Adoption Fails: Fix The Process w/ Michael Venman

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CRM adoption fails when teams treat it like data entry instead of a communication tool. In this episode of Burn The Playbook Podcast, Marc Crosby sits down with Michael Venman, founder of The Sales Nerd, to break down why the sales-marketing handoff keeps breaking, what “stage zero” really is, and how to build rev ops systems teams actually use.

What you'll learn

  • Why CRM adoption fails when departments optimize for their own goals
  • How to fix lead quality fights with ICP fit, persona fit, and lead scoring
  • The “stage zero” move that makes SDR to AE handoffs measurable
  • Why hope keeps deals stuck and how closing lost helps marketing re-engage
  • The CEO’s simplest move to improve data quality and CRM usage

Chapters
00:00 CRM is a communication tool
00:58 Intro: Michael Venman and The Sales Nerd
03:10 Where CRMs break: handoffs between teams
04:33 Execs see the CRM differently than reps
06:51 Common mistake: starting with stages, ignoring handoffs
08:13 Stage zero explained: tracking SDR meetings and qualification
10:11 Defining lead vs opportunity is cultural
12:55 Fix lead quality with ICP grade, persona grade, lead score
15:05 Before and after examples: routing and closing lost
19:18 Track win reasons, not just loss reasons
22:05 Why renewals and churn risk come later
23:12 Process beats tools, and AI reflects your system
27:12 Using call transcripts for account summaries
30:23 Low-hanging fruit: email sync and click-to-call
31:07 Burn it or build it: rapid fire rev ops takes
39:19 One CEO move: actually use the CRM
40:14 Where to find Michael and the book

Who this helps

  • CEOs and founders of PE-backed or scaling B2B companies
  • CROs, RevOps leaders, and sales leaders fixing CRM adoption
  • Marketing leaders tired of “lead quality” fights with sales

Guest
Michael Venman, Founder, The Sales Nerd
https://thesalesnerd.com
LinkedIn: Michael Venman https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelvenman/
Book: A Sales Funnel That Scales (Amazon)

Host
Marc Crosby, Digital Rebels Consulting
https://DigitalRebelsConsulting.com
Marc Crosby on LinkedIn

crm adoption; revenue operations; revops; go to market; b2b sales; sales and marketing alignment; lead qualification; mql sql; sdr handoff; sales funnel stages; hubspot; salesforce; data quality; pipeline management; closed lost reasons; win reasons; churn risk; customer success handoff; sales process

#Leadership #BurnThePlaybook #B2B #RevOps #Sales #Marketing

crm adoption starts at the top: CEOs need to use it #RevOps
stage zero fixes the SDR to AE handoff mess #Sales
stop the lead wars with ICP + persona + score #Marketing
hope is not a pipeline strategy: close lost faster #Sales
AI won’t fix bad process, it will expose it #B2B

CRM = Communication Tool
Stop The Lead Wars
Use The CRM

Views expressed are our own and do not represent any organizations

© 2025 Digital Rebels Consulting. All rights reserved.


Digital Rebels Consulting (00:01.443)
Welcome in I'm mark Crosby. This is burn the playbook My guest today is Michael Venman the founder of the sales nerd where he helps PE backed and scaling b2b companies fix the go-to-market systems that break it growth Especially the messy intersection of sales marketing and CRM. He's led rev ops and built revenue engines from early stage to scale He's the author of a sales funnel that scales available on Amazon

a practical playbook for building funnels teams actually use. Today we're getting into why CRM adoption fails and how to create real alignment and what good enough looks like when growth is the mandate. Welcome Michael.

Michael Venman (00:36.184)
Thank you very much Mark. Good to here.

Digital Rebels Consulting (00:39.233)
Good to have you here. You started out selling and then you ended up building the systems that salespeople use today. So how did going from a sales role to managing people effectively help you build Sales Nerd and help people build their CRMs today?

Michael Venman (00:44.439)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (00:53.518)
Yeah, so my sales history starts by knocking on doors when I was 17. And it wasn't until after college that I became a full-time telesalesperson and then eventually started leading a sales team like you mentioned. I probably took the most typical route, which is a salesperson becomes a sales manager and then realizes you don't got

a revenue operations person. So really you're just there trying to figure things out. And it was within that figuring things out phase of, maybe I can develop a smarter way to do this or a more process focused way to do this that'll increase revenue. That's when I sort of fell in love with operations. And yeah, well, I'm sure that we'll jump into it on this call, but.

really being a salesperson coming from a sales background in operations is very important to sort of my lens on good market.

Digital Rebels Consulting (01:48.054)
Yeah, it certainly helps to have that experience in the field. And as you mentioned, knocking on doors and doing it, uh, I don't know the kind of the grassroots way, far as just learning the hard way and learning how things fail. But as far as seeing things fail and problems that you've seen, at least in sales, as far as just CRMs, uh, what, what continual problems are the ones that, surface the most, uh, throughout your career and all the different roles that you've ever had and what's the consistency as far as, um, what you've seen.

Michael Venman (02:13.25)
Yeah. Well, I mean, what the CRM is really there for is to help teams communicate.

And that's what continuously breaks down is you have leaders from each of these different departments, whether it's marketing or sales or customer support or finance, and they all have their own individual objectives. And then they act from those objectives and those incentives. So it's communication breaking down. And that can show up in a couple of different ways, whether it's like how qualified a lead is before you pass it from marketing to sales or from SDRs to sales, or potentially it breaks with the sales funnel definitions.

what stage to stage to stage means or what a handoff to customer success, a good handoff looks like. Those are typically the transitions from team to team where systems break. If they're insular, if they stick within the sales team, usually those systems work. But if they go outside of those teams, that's when they break.

Digital Rebels Consulting (03:13.472)
Gotcha. I thought that was interesting that you said that it's a communication tool and I've actually never heard anybody say it's a communication tool, but it's actually the truth. And I imagine that at least in some of the clients and customers that you serve, do you have any issues as far as convincing executive leaders or people in sales and marketing that this is a communication tool and not just a data entry tool?

Michael Venman (03:36.044)
Well, that's what executives think it is, is it's a communication tool. You know, it's more salespeople or more the daily users who are in the grind of using a tool like a CRM if it's HubSpot or Salesforce, that think of it more as a data tool, where, I just tried this call, I need to put in these notes or else my boss is gonna kill me. You know, that's how most reps see it. But when I'm in the boardrooms or if I'm in an executive level meeting,

They know it's a communication tool. That's what they're expecting of their teams. But somewhere along the way, it breaks down.

Somewhere along the way, CRO needs to hold their sales leaders accountable who then need to their reps accountable. And the communication doesn't get all the way to the rep as to why it's so important, as to why it's going to be a handoff to the marketing team. Oh, if you take notes and it has a keyword about a specific product that we offer, OK, I'm going to, as a marketing leader, retarget them with that product-specific messaging.

That may not get from a C-level meeting all the way down to the rep. And I think that's an opportunity that a lot of companies have, is to take that sort of the reasoning that comes from those executive level meetings down to the reps so that they understand it's not just data entry, it's strategic targeting.

Digital Rebels Consulting (04:56.979)
Yeah, that makes sense. think,

you know, more organizations probably need to understand it is a communication tool. It should help align sales and marketing. I think in a lot of companies, they probably just perceive it as a sales tool. This is what sales needs to do their job. And that's kind of where the buck ends. And then the CEO or vice president of sales and marketing just wants a dashboard for all the sales activities. And it should be a holistic view, I think, of the company as far as just a handoffs alignment, when success rates and all the KPIs that should be driven from across the organization, not just sales.

but when you work with, when you work with clients and you're trying to, you know, develop a rev ops and do something that they haven't done before, what do you see as far as the common problem that companies, do wrong first? Like what do they think that they need or want? And where do you direct them as far as what they should be looking at in order to develop an effective CRM and rev ops tool.

Michael Venman (05:55.919)
So most companies, when they start using a CRM, focus on new business sales. That's the first place that they start. So they start looking at pipeline stages. Where am I getting these contacts? Which companies am I targeting? ICP, Personas start getting built, and then they focus on stages. The next phase is marketing. It ends up being marketing.

Digital Rebels Consulting (06:01.395)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (06:19.918)
So that's where, you know, looking at UTM values, looking at lead source structure, looking at, you know, sort marketing operational pieces, then that flowing through. So really the first step is getting your stages right, your opportunity stages right.

The second step is making sure that you're targeting the right people. The third is that you deal with that first transition that most companies face from marketing into sales that most companies just either get wrong or don't pay attention to or maybe the marketing leader, sales leader aren't speaking the same language. And 90 % of the issues that I see within companies is because sales and marketing aren't communicating.

around the specific things that they need to communicate about. Not only the quality of a lead or the volume of leads, but the quality. That's predominantly it.

Digital Rebels Consulting (07:14.184)
Gotcha. You talk about this, I think you called it stage zero, in order to address the sales and marketing, pointing fingers at each other. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Michael Venman (07:18.242)
Yeah.

Michael Venman (07:23.406)
So stage zero is something I came across maybe five or maybe around five years ago. Yeah, I'm certainly not the first person to talk about it because especially now as I walk into new projects, they already know about this idea. It's an architectural idea of especially those who use Salesforce are familiar with leads and contacts. If you use HubSpot, it's just contacts.

But it's very difficult to track the funnel across multiple objects. So if you have leads coming in, they're passed as a leader contact, then an SDR calls on it, and they move it to a certain stage, which then says, OK, now an account executive calls out on it. And.

The account executive takes the call and then qualifies it. That's when they create the deal. It's really hard to see this SDR handoff portion within the funnel metrics. So stage zero is when we create the opportunity or the deal, if you're in HubSpot, when the SDR hands the opportunity to.

to salesperson. That way you can track how many meetings were scheduled, as well as how many of those meetings were qualified, and then what ended up happening from those meetings that the SDR scheduled. For very high transactional systems, I've also seen as soon as an MQL comes in, you create an opportunity. I've also seen that. I would not recommend it if you are targeting mid-size or enterprise. But if you're doing SMB, that's one way to do it. Mark, I'm always surprised by

how many different ways there are to build these revenue systems. I don't think there's ever gonna be a shortage of different ways to construct a way to think about developing a lifecycle. But yeah, that's stage zero. Have you ever seen that, Mark?

Digital Rebels Consulting (09:16.53)
not really. I mean, as far as just, I mean, talk a lot about some of the definitions there. think, you kind of read a lot of, terms that you could probably spend days, if not weeks on as far as just, defining what elite is, what is an opportunity, when is the handoff? So aside from at least building the systems, how long does it take to get everybody in a room and agree on what the definition of a lead in an opportunity is and as simple as nature and how many arguments I guess come out of that.

Michael Venman (09:32.482)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (09:45.922)
So many, I mean it's such a cultural thing. It's a company culture thing. It's whether the marketing team's job is to send everyone who went to an event to the SDR team to follow up. Or if that's just the first step in the marketing journey of, know, the next step is down the funnel, they attended a webinar, now I need to send the case studies. And if they engage with that, that's when the SDR should reach out.

But it ends up being very cultural. I've seen a of companies just recognize, OK, this person came in and they expressed any level of interest, send them. That ends up not being a very good play because the marketing team can say, well, I handed so many leads. And it's the oldest thing in the book. Sales says, yeah, but they're not qualified. So man, that happens way too often.

The best way to get around that is to define what the quality of a lead is. Usually it's by two of the four band, budget authority need timeline. If you're able to access that they have the authority and they have a need, that's usually enough to pass a lead from an SDR to an account executive.

When it comes to what is an MQL, what is a lead that marketing's been working that can get handed off to the SDR or the AE, it's cultural. It's cultural more often than not. Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (11:20.111)
Yeah. And imagine that when you go from one client to the next, you're having those same discussions all over again because their culture and their definitions are completely different. is it aligning to, guess, what your beliefs are as far as what a good lead is or just aligning in general as far as what everybody can agree on?

Michael Venman (11:36.206)
I think when I work with customers, with my clients, there's not one size fit all situation. So you really have to address where they are starting, which is usually what I do, where are you starting? And then taking sequential steps to get to where they inevitably want to be. don't eat an elephant in one bite, you do it bite at a time. Who's eating elephants? I don't know, but I think that's the same.

Digital Rebels Consulting (11:59.332)
You

Michael Venman (12:01.93)
So the best in practice that I've seen is generally you'll have two different grades and one score to define whether or not someone is qualified. So you'll have an ICP fit. That's ideal client profile. Is the company a company that I want as a customer? And usually you'll have A, B, C, D there. Then you'll have a persona grade.

So is this a buying persona, a technical persona, an economic buyer, all those things, which then come with different sort of needs down the marketing strategy.

If they are not a good person at a good company, well then they have to be really interested, which is where it comes to the lead score. They have to be really interested. They almost had to fill out the demo form twice if they're not a good fit for me to reach out. But if they're a really good fit, ideal customer profile, grade A, they are the right type of buyer, they are the right type of persona, then I may only need to recognize a little bit of interest in order for them to qualify as an MQL.

So by having those three fields and those three automations, ICP fit, grade, persona fit, grade, and then a lead score, which is derived by how they're interacting with your company's website or emails or webinars, whatever it is. The combination of those and the discussions that come from that is how you really create alignment.

Digital Rebels Consulting (13:32.336)
So when you have this alignment, okay, let's just say you go into a client and everyone's, you know, we're all in sync as far as singing from the same sheet of music, sales and marketing. all, we all agree on what elite is. tell me what a good before and after looks like maybe just on your client history as, I, know, I always struggle because I hear all the problems, whether it's on LinkedIn or another podcast and you know, everyone, no one seems to be able to figure out CRM and what good looks like.

All I hear is just a war stories. I never actually heard of a company that does it right. So tell me maybe a client that you've worked with that, you know, you help them go from all the typical problems with CRM to what good looks like.

Michael Venman (14:13.038)
So, we'll start with leads, leads specifically. Worked with one customer, they had leads coming in, but weren't tracking what the next stage was after that. And we were able to recognize, okay, leads come in, and then a certain percentage of them immediately become disqualified.

immediately become disqualified because the account executives or the SDRs at this company were researching and immediately seeing that they weren't part of the ideal customer persona. They weren't a buyer. They worked at the right company, but they weren't a buyer. They were a user. So right there, we were able to eliminate 50 % of the leads that came in by recognizing the persona and then incorporating that into the routing.

What that means for SDRs is instead of getting 50 leads a day, they're getting 20, which means they can focus their time and their energy on 20 leads instead of spreading it across 50. So obviously a time saving there, they can do more outbound, whatever it is. Another is, I can think of another company. We had a lot of conversations around

when to close lost an opportunity, which I'm sure you have a lot of opinions on to mark. But these companies were never disqualifying these opportunities because they had hope. They had hope that, you know, this one will close. I swear, you know, even if it'll take three years, they're going to eventually buy. But what that was doing was it was handcuffing the marketing team.

Digital Rebels Consulting (15:37.827)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (15:53.706)
Responsibility it within a system is generally if it's in if it's in an account executive's name and they got an open opportunity marketing don't touch it. You know, what's that? Glen Gary Glen Ross quote. If you don't know the shot shut up something like that. I butchered it. So if you're if the salespeople are sort of maintaining control, then it doesn't allow other teams to take part.

Digital Rebels Consulting (16:09.122)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (16:22.636)
And what we did there was we convinced them to close loss those opportunities. We update the contacts so that marketing is able to recognize that Batan was actually handed back to them. And that marketing should be responsible for filling out the decision making unit and targeting them with specific messaging that was associated to the close loss reason of the opportunity. So it's about creating these feedback loops.

Digital Rebels Consulting (16:33.059)
Hmm?

Michael Venman (16:50.282)
which then allow teams to create automated processes that just, you know, like those nineties infomercials, you know, set it and forget it. Remember that one? Yeah. Very happy.

Digital Rebels Consulting (17:00.809)
Yeah, yeah. That was an oven or something,

Yeah, I remember it.

Yeah. And I think that's probably the problem with some of the CRMs and even the automation tools is that you, you hope that you can just set it and forget it. And I think that there's probably a lot of people that just rely on the dashboards in order to give them all this information. And, you know, we had a great discussion with Keem and Goughlin on one of the last, episodes about when loss and the reasons why we win and lose, and also the reasons why, you should probably do a little bit more post analysis and even through the, the buying process, just to make sure that, you're not, having deals that are essentially

stuck in the funnel and I think they get stuck in the funnel for that one reason that you already alluded to, is, which is hope and thinking like, man, if we just get a lower price or if we can just multi-thread a little bit better, or if we can come out with a better product or whatever the excuse is, like if it's been there for a certain period of time, have an agreement internally that that deal is dead and just kill it. And also when you do.

Align once again, going back to the terminology that we talked about in the beginning, what is the reason why and have a discussion about the reason why and make sure that between you, your sales manager and anybody else that touched that deal, that we're not just checking a box and moving on because if we're going to have data integrity, we actually need to have more specificity, specific reasons as to why that deal did die or even why we won. But, yeah, that's a whole nother episode.

Michael Venman (18:27.756)
No, and don't forget that. Don't forget that. Why we won. mean, many people are used to having a loss reason or a nurture reason or a remarket reason. Those are for context. Maybe it's not now. You put in a reason. Nobody's really used to having a win reason. It's like the dark space of the reporting.

Digital Rebels Consulting (18:35.746)
Mm-hmm.

Digital Rebels Consulting (18:39.213)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (18:50.19)
Making sure that after a closed one deal happens that you have a or a closed loss deal that there is a meeting once a week where people review, hey, I lost this deal. That's OK that you lost the deal. No one's going to punish you. It's not a bad thing to lose a deal. It's just another piece of data that we have then to use in our our iterations. But to have those conversations again, because it's a CRM really is a communication tool.

Digital Rebels Consulting (19:02.337)
Mm-hmm.

Digital Rebels Consulting (19:16.289)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (19:18.424)
to not avoid having that meeting, to not avoid those maybe tough discussions of maybe a team dropped the ball, or maybe your targeting wasn't right, or maybe the product didn't have this specific piece, or maybe the pricing's off, I don't know.

Digital Rebels Consulting (19:29.868)
Mm-hmm Yeah, you got to be honest with yourself. You also have to have that I think culture of psychological safety because I think that's also part of the reason why deals get stuck is because if I move this to a closed loss for whatever reason Maybe I'll lose my job and if I have too many of those Then maybe I'm gonna get you know

shown the door as far as just, reasons why deals get lost. But I think it's also just for, an organization, being honest of why you're losing and also why you're winning, doubling down on the reasons why you win and making sure you're refining at least maybe some processes or reasons why you lost, but at least keeping track of it at the end of the day, I think is important.

Michael Venman (20:08.396)
And that's all rev ops is. That's all rev ops is, is just recognizing patterns and creating new processes to, you know, automate what you can. Sorry.

Digital Rebels Consulting (20:18.752)
Gotcha.

No, no, you're good. one of the other things about that too, is, in my corporate career, I always saw that everyone put in opportunities and very few people put in risk. And I think it's just also going back to being honest about, could you possibly lose the business at some point in time? Like if you sign a three year deal with a customer at some point, especially even after you do that, it's potentially at risk. And I've seen these imbalanced and Salesforce as far as having all the opportunities and everyone painting a great picture as far as it being rosy, but not being honest about what business could be at risk.

or having those contract dates put in CRM as far as when we should be probably getting ahead of this. I can't tell you how many times, you know, we've gotten close to a contract date and then we're firefighting as far as how do we save this business or what should we do to, you know, sign another deal. But is that something that comes up at least in your discussions as far as just the, the opportunities for, for risk or for churn and making sure that that piece is well documented into CRM?

Michael Venman (21:16.088)
yeah, yeah. So remember when I said when a company really start to think about operational integrity or governance, they go in a specific order. It's new business sales, new business marketing, then renewals. And they start to think about customer success. And they start to think about, you know, what is the client risk? Or what is the churn risk? How am I measuring churn risk? What's working, what's not? What concessions do I need to make?

and how all of that's tracked. That absolutely comes up. And again, that's just, nobody wants a vitamin, they want a painkiller. So it's gonna, it's gonna become a topic of conversation when it's too late. And it's by building those processes and by creating that visibility. like you said, emotional safety, I need to be able to ask for help in my company. That you really start to see measurable impacts.

Digital Rebels Consulting (22:14.655)
Does it matter what like system you're using? know you support Salesforce and HubSpot. Does it really matter what the tool is or the platform or is it more about processes and making sure that the process are really good?

Michael Venman (22:28.622)
If I could only have one, the software or the process?

Michael Venman (22:38.168)
probably go with the process. think, you know, Salesforce is really good. When I started my career working with Salesforce, maybe 15 years ago, Salesforce was the big gorilla in the room and to some extent still is for enterprise. But UpSpot's done an amazing job getting closer and closer. And as AI builds out more software,

which is where we're gonna go, Salesforce or HubSpot won't be the only choices for very long. In a couple of years, you'll be able to create a software by doing a prompt. So the software is gonna matter less and less for smaller businesses. But I think Salesforce and HubSpot have the infrastructure now to maintain processes in a way that if you...

used maybe Zoho or Microsoft Dynamics or some of these other systems may not. So I think a system is important to create visibility and restrict actions so that you have to walk on this line, you cannot deviate. I think that's important, but without a process, what is opportunity pipeline? What is opportunity pipeline without a process? You know, if you don't have stage gating,

What does a pipeline tell you? It's sticking your finger up in the air. That's why you need a

Digital Rebels Consulting (24:00.586)
You

Digital Rebels Consulting (24:04.747)
Yeah, process is very important. mean, you could argue that if you have a solid process, you could probably run your CRM on an Excel spreadsheet, even though that I'd.

I not advocate that, but I mean, if you have a solid process as far as just communication, everyone's on the same page, you shouldn't need a fancy tool unless you have a solid foundation. And I think as we try to layer on AI, which is the hope that a lot of companies, think is that AI is going to solve a lot of these foundational problems. If you don't have clean data and if you don't have a process, then the outputs are probably going to be tremendously worse than what you probably already have. If the analysis is based on lies or lack of information too.

Thank

Michael Venman (24:45.494)
AI doesn't fix process. It reflects the system that you have. So, you know, I think...

Digital Rebels Consulting (24:49.598)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (24:53.13)
as teams start to use processes, they're going to get more tactical. What I'm seeing with AI right now in go-to-market systems is they're very tactical. I want to take my GONG recordings, I want to put them in the system and fill out my MEDIC, right? Fill out the pieces of information that my team is needing me to fill out. Or I want to create a marketing campaign infrastructure for this specific play, and there's AI that can do that. Or create this UTM infrastructure.

I want to email a bunch of people all with custom things. These are all very tactical pieces that you plug into different parts of the funnel. You plug into different, you know, as a way to automate activities that will help each stage. If those stages are not solid, then...

You'll build it. You'll build that AI thing. You'll build this tool. You'll integrate everything. And then six months later, the process will change. And all of that automation that you just built now turns into technical debt. Poof. The world has changed. Now you're struggling to breathe and you're underwater. And that's what I end up seeing all the time at companies is...

Digital Rebels Consulting (25:48.147)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Venman (26:05.9)
They had a smart idea, they built a company around it, they over invested in tooling and automation and tried to make everything one specific, it can only be done one way because this is our process. And the process changes just a little. And then there's just this mountain of tactical depth that they've overbuilt and over engineered their systems. So now even a small change topples the tower.

Digital Rebels Consulting (26:33.033)
Exactly. One of the things you mentioned there was Gong recordings. And for those that don't know, they're just basically it's recording a call transcripts and things like that. And there's other versions of that, like a Fathom or an Otter teams and zoom. They all have some sort of transcript availability, but there's some large organizations that don't enable that for their teams as far as recording calls, recording transcripts and things like that, just for security and privacy restrictions.

Michael Venman (26:58.146)
Mm-hmm.

Digital Rebels Consulting (26:58.513)
How do you, guess, I don't know, do you talk about that at all with clients as far as, or do you see that as far as not leveraging transcripts and calls and some of those other qualitative data points from customer insights to pull into rev ops?

Michael Venman (27:13.91)
Yeah, I mean, it is a treasure trove of data that few teams are utilizing. Whether it's for security reasons, and we can talk about that for days, AI presents a bunch of new security risks that the systems aren't necessarily designed for.

Digital Rebels Consulting (27:27.142)
You

Michael Venman (27:35.864)
But no, a lot of teams aren't using it. And when you think about call preparation or you think about developing an account strategy, especially when it's across a large decision-making unit, let's say you're selling enterprise and you have five people, 10 people that you're talking to, coordinating your notes between all 10, that's hard. That's hard, that takes brain energy. You can do that for maybe 15, 20 accounts, maybe 30, but like really hard.

That's where AI can step in and give an account summary based on the conversations that you've had with the team, when you had them, how they reference each other, give you ideas, iterate on those ideas, and help you prepare for calls. That saves hours and time, and really that's, what we do in RevOps, is save time.

Digital Rebels Consulting (28:28.808)
Well, that should be the idea. I think today, I'm managing the CRM entering calls for least for me, it's been easier than ever because, everything is kind of automated in the background as far as the transcript getting uploaded to HubSpot. And I don't have to type anything in, but I think, you know, if more companies at least have a strategy, have a, I don't know, a strategy for security and making sure that the information is gathered in a way that's appropriate. It should be easier than ever, but I don't know if that's a whole nother discussion.

Michael Venman (28:57.154)
You know where it's hard? A lot of companies are using Telegram, or some do. There are methods of communication that are outside of the historical Zoom calls or calls or emails, phone calls or emails. WhatsApp is also very hard to get into the system. there are specific methods of communication where the automation is not quite there yet.

Digital Rebels Consulting (28:59.932)
Yeah.

Michael Venman (29:22.958)
But leaps and bounds since I was cold-calling back in the day at a book so

Digital Rebels Consulting (29:28.411)
Yeah. Well, even the simple things, as far as just emailing through a CRM, those capabilities aren't available for every, business either, but that's, that's the low hanging fruit. I mean, as far as emailing through outlook, and then you have a separate CRM and they're not connected, you know, that that's, that's a treasure trove worth the.

Michael Venman (29:46.7)
That's a tragedy. That's a tragedy. That's a tragedy. That makes my heart hurt. That and click to call. If you don't have, if you're in a CRM and you don't have click to call yet, that's another way to help the sales team. That's low hanging fruit. Call transcripts get logged. Calls get logged so you have touch activity. Helps the sales team, saves them time. Gives you call dispositions.

Digital Rebels Consulting (29:52.369)
Yeah.

Michael Venman (30:10.636)
so that you're able to see this person made 10 calls, five of them he connected, three of them went to voicemail, two of them he was told to pound sound. You know?

Digital Rebels Consulting (30:21.084)
Yeah. Yeah. Opportunities abound, but I'm sure that those opportunities will keep you busy as far as finding new clients. But let's pivot over to our burn it or build it segment. I'm going to give you 10 rapid fire topics, mostly about rev ops. So we will start with number one, more data equals better decisions.

Michael Venman (30:42.286)
False, I'd say burn it. More data isn't always good data. You need a process. You need a way to put context behind your data. If you don't, then you're going to end up making the wrong decision.

Digital Rebels Consulting (30:57.071)
Agreed. Bad data doesn't necessarily mean better decisions. Number two.

Michael Venman (31:00.866)
More good data, better decisions. More good data, better decisions. For sure.

Digital Rebels Consulting (31:04.423)
Well, that's, I guess another debate for back to the beginning of this, as far as, uh, you know, making those clear definitions as far as labels and what is a lead, what is an opportunity close, win, loss and yada, yada, yada. Number two, slow down great salespeople.

Michael Venman (31:22.584)
I'd say burn it. I think there are some salespeople that just run, that can work by themselves, But any salesperson needs to be part of a team. And again, you know, a team works with certain agreements and there need to be rules. There need to be rules of engagement for what you're gonna throw over the fence. I think it may slow great reps, but inevitably the value that you're gonna create is lower. So you don't get what you want.

Digital Rebels Consulting (31:52.824)
Agreed. Number three, common problem for businesses when revenue is stuck, just hire more salespeople.

Michael Venman (32:00.0)
Hey, I've tried that. Have you tried that? Doesn't work so good.

Digital Rebels Consulting (32:02.438)
Well, it's kind of goes back to more data or equals better decisions, you know, if it's a bad data or maybe even bad reps, they're just going to compound the problems. But give me your thoughts.

Michael Venman (32:14.348)
Yeah, hiring salespeople may increase revenue, but it won't make you profitable necessarily. There's generally, if you're not making enough revenue, it's because the conversions from funnel stage to funnel stage are not optimized. And until you start looking at it like that, hiring more salespeople is like throwing money into an ads account that isn't producing any leads.

Digital Rebels Consulting (32:37.774)
Agreed. Number four, we did talk a little bit about this as far as the right tools, but the tech stack is the strategy.

Michael Venman (32:46.574)
I think the strategy is the strategy. The tech stack is how you get there. Saying the destination is Disney World. then there are many different ways to get to Disney World. You can fly, you can drive, you can walk, it'll take longer. But the destination is the same. I think the tech stack is an easy excuse for leaders who will...

need an excuse, but it is not a strategy make.

Digital Rebels Consulting (33:18.488)
Agreed. Got to have a good foundation. number five sales and marketing are just never going to agree.

Michael Venman (33:24.706)
that, you know, I've seen it work. I've seen it work. I've seen sales and marketing teams work together and it is possible. It is hard because it takes an agreement between, you know, the quality of leads, which it takes marketing agreeing to a certain level of quality of leads, whether that's a certain percentage get to SA or SQL from MQL or a certain percentage of them get to what I call a hero pipeline. I took that from another

leader in the space, basically pipeline generated by marketing only counts if it hits a stage where there's an expected 25 % close rate. That's the only time it works. So they don't get to count the pipeline that is just junk pipeline. So that creates the alignment and that's when sales and marketing do function together. So I'd say, yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (34:17.743)
Gotcha. Good take there. You probably develop a lot of dashboards. So if everyone can see the scoreboard, people step up, burn it or build it.

Michael Venman (34:27.886)
I think if the CEO sees the dashboard and uses it, if the leader uses it, then the rest of the team will follow. There's no starting at a rep and starting at a manager and having it go up the food chain needs to start at the top. And accountability needs to come from whatever visibility is there. So if that's there, then, you know.

Digital Rebels Consulting (34:44.858)
Mm-hmm.

Digital Rebels Consulting (34:50.095)
Gotcha.

Michael Venman (34:53.004)
Just making something visible doesn't change anything. You actually need the force of will to make that change.

Digital Rebels Consulting (35:01.285)
Number seven, a great team will beat a great process every single time.

Michael Venman (35:07.586)
What a great team will build a great process. No, I mean, some people are not processed people and they can build a great team and each of them can function together. But once it starts to scale, that's when you need the process. So I think maybe a team of a certain size can live without a process. But once you get to a larger size, you need that process.

Digital Rebels Consulting (35:32.549)
Yeah, I think you see this in sports. I mean, you see a lot of great teams that have the good on paper and they just can't get to the championship. And there's other teams that don't have those great players that they follow a process, you know, and they're all just there to give their best every single day and they can win championships. But I don't know. That's another debate to number eight. One leader should own sales, marketing and customer success.

Michael Venman (35:51.726)
you

Michael Venman (36:00.078)
I think that's a big job. I think that's a very big job. think at some point when the company gets large enough, the teams get large enough, you should have that specialty around the chief customer officer that's the person in charge of, you know.

once they're a customer, how they're treated, chief revenue officer, how we're bringing people into the door and all those, anything that produces revenue. And then the chief marketing officer, that role is a very, can be a very technical role too. So the stratification is really there. That one leader would be the CEO in that case. You know, so.

I have seen a CRO handling both the customer and the revenue piece, but I think marketing deserves a seat at that executive table because using them as a person to position the company is invaluable.

Digital Rebels Consulting (36:57.636)
Yeah, I think the idea there is to eliminate finger pointing. So if you just roll them up under one person, then somehow that eliminates, uh, know, sales and marketing, you know, fingers at each other and you have one person at least that can, uh, wrangle it to him. But, um, I don't know, it's debatable. Who knows? And it probably depends on the size of the business. And it also probably depends on your processes and those are broken. Then it doesn't matter who's who's leading anything.

Michael Venman (37:19.584)
And if two people on your executive team are fighting, well, that's a different problem. They shouldn't be fighting. That's a person selection problem. It's not inevitable that marketing and sales are going to butt heads. It's, a consequence of the culture.

Digital Rebels Consulting (37:35.746)
Yeah, and there's alignment issues. That's a whole nother, I think, episode that we'll probably put together at some point as far as just what problems are we solving because it's typically you think you have a problem and you think you know the solution, but it could be something that's indirectly affecting your systems and your processes and your people and all the above. Yeah. Number nine.

The simpler the operation, the faster the growth. just fewer tools, simplicity, fewer meetings, fewer stage wins, really just keeping it simple, burning or building.

Michael Venman (38:08.286)
I'd say build it. think the fewer processes that are necessary, the better. And you should really pick the ones that you want to focus on and not stage gate everything and not create a really in-depth process for everything that doesn't need one. Simpler is better, always. It's just that at a certain scale, you can't do something consistently without those processes, without those operations.

Digital Rebels Consulting (38:38.999)
Gotcha. It makes sense. Today you get the final word. If you had to give a CEO one move that they can make today to improve CRM adoption and data quality, what would it be?

Michael Venman (38:50.318)
actually use the CRM. Don't just use it. If you're focused on dashboards and you have for each leader that you talk to, you're talking about a different set of KPIs and a different dashboard, that's the problem.

Digital Rebels Consulting (38:53.869)
Just use it.

Michael Venman (39:06.658)
You know, focus on fewer KPIs, focus on fewer key dashboards, and make sure you look at them and are actioning off of what you see. If you never action, then even though you have the visibility there, no one's going to feel the threat of that action. No one's going to feel the impact of a potential thing. So they're not going to make any changes. So my advice here is just use the CRM. really focus on what you're going to focus on. Really get those blinders on.

then use it. Only once you use it can you expand the scope of what you're looking at.

Digital Rebels Consulting (39:42.989)
Gotcha. It makes sense. Just use it. Final words from Michael. Where can they find more about your work and kind of in your book?

Michael Venman (39:47.064)
you

Michael Venman (39:51.65)
Yeah. So you can go to the salesnerd.com. I write quite often. I enjoy writing and geeking out about everything. Sales ops, rev ops, sales strategy, that sort of thing. And also love to connect. if you have any questions or if something I've written has inspired a thought, just reach out. Would love to talk and geek out.

Digital Rebels Consulting (40:11.234)
All right, appreciate it. Thank you for joining Burn the Playbook.


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Marc Crosby - Digital Rebels

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