It’s a separate team from central data, focusing specifically on solving problems for the GTM team. I had a similar (IC) role on a similar RevOps data at Smartsheet, which also reported up into the CRO org.

Analytics within the domain is really compelling, with tight alignment to leadership.

It’s been a bit since I posted but I have a career update!

I am now the Senior Manager of the RevOps Insights (Analytics) team at 1Password. I think I’ve found my niche. I’ve worked on GTM/RevOps teams for most of my career and am excited to step into a leadership role in GTM data 🤓

No, Facebook, I don’t want to know the “memories” of the cringey song lyrics I posted 15+ years ago

A tale as old as time…

Me: “hey data eng team i need some fields added to our Salesforce tables in the warehouse for some GTM analysis”

Them: …no

Me: what’s the process to submit for approval?

Them: (laughs)

No: "Don't worry GTM team, we'll build all the data models and dashboards for your team, just tell us your requirements!"

Yes: "Hey GTM team, your system data is loaded into Snowflake nightly, here's a dbt Github repo for transformations, go ahead and use it as you need."

The world if central data teams pivoted into building an internal data platform

Golf equipment manufacturers need to work on their data viz and storytelling …

T-25 minutes to this -- you're all registered, right?

When life tells you to compare column types on dozens of tables between their Redshift instance and their Snowflake instance...you make some version of lemonade in Hex

Great thread idea!

Same! It’s not good

Does anyone else yell at their phone “unsubscribe me” when they get an irrelevant ad?

Lofi Christmas music 👌

phenomenal metaphor

Ironically, if you repeatedly kick your customers on the shins and don’t see much change in churn … you get a great understanding of your market position

And the latter is the way to go! Iteration is crucial, and I also rarely see teams set up churn models with iteration in mind.

Right, NPS numbers correlate to churn, folks don’t stop and say “wow that’s great, we can predict churn accurately now!”

The immediate response is “what caused NPS to drop and how do we improve it?”

I agree they say they want to know predictors. I just haven’t met many GTM leaders that want to just stop at predictors.

They then want to know what levers are available such that they materially change the predictors. The model can’t tell you how to move NPS, the model only says NPS predicts churn

E.g. “active usage is correlated with churn” is correct in SaaS… but that doesn’t tell you anything useful around *how to move active usage*.

Which usually requires product intervention since active usage is largely driven by how good your PMF is.

When a GTM leader asks for a churn prediction model, they often don’t actually want a churn prediction model.

They want to understand levers available to reduce churn…and prediction models don’t tell them that.

So much wasted time rebuilding models that never say what the leader actually wants.

YAML is everywhere, even as the automod code on Reddit. What else did I expect.

Great read from Jacob on the benefits and current limitations of using an AI coding companion.

This was really intense when it came through 😱

All the excuses in the world to stay inside and fire up some rounds of rocket league

It exists when I’m given a data warehouse and CRM data!!

FWIW, I’ve unlocked various folks with SQL, but the key was always “I’ve built some trusted tables over here, you should use those instead of stumbling around the raw data wilderness”.

SQL + trusted tables = easier to empower curious people

Thanks for sharing, this is a great read and I have firsthand experience with multiple org designs described.

I agree that the hybrid model is ideal (I stumbled into doing it on my own after a few years for sales leaders), and unfortunately I don’t typically see data leaders recommending it.

This sort of command has to come down from on high, and I don’t see a lot of incentive for the head of central teams to dismantle their teams.

Unfortunately I’m more familiar with resources for the sales side of GTM 😕

Best I know of is RevOps Co-Op, which some marketing folks in it since it’s focused across GTM, but still slants to sales.