Rosalyn Santa Elena: Welcome to the revenue engine podcast. I'm your host, Rosalyn Santa Elena. And I am thrilled to bring you the most inspirational stories from revenue, generators, innovators, and disruptors revenue leaders in sales, in marketing. And of course, in operations together, we will unpack everything that optimizes and powers the revenue engine. Are you ready? Let's get to it.

Welcome to the revenue engine podcast. So who am I and why this podcast, what am I really hoping to accomplish? Well, I'm Rosalyn Santa Elena, and I started my career in technology more than 25 years. On a terminal. Yes. A terminal, you know, the kind you log into at a prompt with the green blocky font.

Well, yes, that was me. I started out in finance and moved up into a people manager role. Then moved over to the, go to market side of the house. Also known as the dark side in sales a little over 20 years ago. So my purview really started with end to end sales compensation, and then expanded to all of go to market operations or as more commonly called today, revenue operations throughout my career, I've owned different pieces of the revenue process.

There were times when I just had sales operations, I've owned what we called field operations, which was the makeup of marketing ops and sales ops. Okay. Later I owned sales and post-sales operations, which included account management, renewals services, and customer success. And I've also owned the entire end to end revenue process from top of funnel marketing, to sales, to renewals and expansions through customer success.

Or as we say, go to market operations or rev ops, I've even done some finance operations, some product operations. And even dabbled a little bit in engineering operations. And let me tell you, engineering is very different from sales, by the way, as part of revenue operations in most roles, I've owned enablement as well.

The basic foundational elements of operations are very much the same regardless of the company, the industry or the product. However, you know, all of the what, when, who. Why, and how are very different, depending on the company factors like size stage selling motion, how you go to market, who you sell to the value proposition, you know, the product, all of those things are going to have an impact.

I've been very fortunate to have worked several different, you know, mid-size to large public companies ranging from 2000 employees to almost 80,000 and I've also worked at four smaller private high. SAS startups ranging from, you know, a hundred people to 700 people, all in very different industries.

Although I've always been responsible in an operational capacity, I've supported teams in hardware, software services. And of course in SAS, I've been a team of one and I've managed teams as large as, you know, 20 plus. About a year ago, I decided to start really sharing my experience and knowledge with the hope of really helping others.

Right. I've been on my soap box promoting and really trying to elevate revenue, operations, revenue, operations, the function. But also the people, as part of my efforts, I've been creating and sharing content hosting and participating in different events, panels, webinars, and podcasts, really leading revenue ops in a few different communities.

And also speaking with many revenue professionals from CEOs. Two recent college graduates on all things, operations, which really leads us now to the revenue engine podcast. So when Luigi from sales IQ first approached me about hosting a podcast. I'll admit I was a little hesitant. My first thought was another podcast.

Boy, it seems like everyone is hosting a podcast these days. But as I thought about it more, I thought about how many of these podcasts were from the perspective of a woman leader. Yeah. Some how about from a rev ops executive? Well, yeah, there are some of those too, but how about from a minority woman?

Yeah. You know, maybe we'll be able to find a few of those too. And how about a working mom? I'm sure there's some of those too. But how about all of the above a female leader, a rev ops executive, some, a minority woman and a working mom of three kids. If you think about those, I thought, you know, maybe there might be some out there, but probably not that many.

So I decided to go for it. And I also decided that if I was going to do this, it had to be different, right? The stories had to be inspirational and really feature guests who were not just revenue generators, but innovators, folks who were creating a new market category, or truly disrupting one leaders who were not only accelerating the revenue engine, but were also making a difference in other areas, right?

Some of these areas might be. Diversity and inclusion, maybe women empowerment, supporting minorities, improving education, right. Building a better work-life harmony, maybe it's mentorship giving back, right. Or other areas, but in a nutshell, making things better. So I really wanted to share individuals, you know, Compelling stories and you know, many lessons learned to really teach and help others.

So what else am I hoping to accomplish with this podcast? Well, I've been using the hashtag ops therapy. I use this term in almost every conversation with a fellow revenue, operations professional, and I have literally had over 100 conversations in the last 10 months, not just with rev ops folks, but also with founders CEOs.

CRS CMOs, you know, leaders and individual contributors in sales, in marketing, in customer success in enablement, and even in finance, right? Folks who want to learn more about revenue operations, there's such an interest in rev ops, right? What it is, why do I need it? What's the value? How do I build it? How do I start a career in it?

You know, when should I hire for it? What qualifications should I be looking for? How do I, as a rev ops person, elevate myself, you know, what should be included or excluded in rev ops? And there's just so many other topics. Then there are all of the more specific topics within revenue operations, right?

Topics like how to create a winning forecast, cadence, how to design sales compensation plans, how to create an effective lead scoring model. Right? How do you set the go to market strategy? What are the metrics that matter? How do I create an onboarding plan that reduces ramp time? Right? You get it. The list is really endless.

So in addition to featuring stories of really amazing revenue leader, I also hope to be sharing ops therapy, hashtag ops therapy episodes, where you can hear about and hopefully learn something from my 20 year long journey through everything operations. The list of topics is truly endless and I'm really looking forward to diving in.

So please be sure to subscribe to the revenue engine podcast and follow hashtag the revenue engine and hashtag ops therapy. So thank you. And let's do that. Together.

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