Welcome to the world of RevOps After Dark, where we get straight to the revenue news you (hopefully, probably) wanna know, adding in just a hint of that Rattle-brand tint.
This week…
- Dreamforce is staying, but Slack's CEO is leaving;
- There's a new PLG in town, pardner; and
- SFDC's job market saturation may be peaking at an opportune time (if you speak Mandarin)
Let's talk ops!
Tools & Software News
🌉 ICYMI: SFDC staying in SF for DF
It was widely reported this week that Salesforce has confirmed its bacchanalia-with-free-custom-water-bottles conference, AKA Dreamforce, will remain in the City by the Bay for at least 2024, following negotiations between the company and the city to ensure adequate police presence and a very coded word, “cleanliness,” around the event venue. Despite earlier public comments by SFDC CEO and noted gadabout Marc Benioff to move the event due to the city's "social challenges," the 2023 conference saw a smaller but not-insignificant turnout of 40,000 attendees, substantially contributing — as it does — to both the local economy and for, of course, all the swag vendors.
🐝 Slack CEO sets status to “Peace I’m out”
This week, Slack CEO's departure after less than a year on the job raises some alarms, following the exits of Slack's main acquisition advocate in December 2022 and its founder in January 2023. Lidiane Jones, who has a strong background in tech and product management at companies like Microsoft, Sonos, and Salesforce, left Slack to take on the CEO role at Bumble this week (which itself has had some major soul-crushing challenges to overcome, like the fact that online dating sucks as an experience generally and nobody likes doing it anymore). Despite the initial excitement over Salesforce's $28B Slack purchase, the executive’s departure suggests a possible misalignment of vision. With Salesforce facing a significant challenge in leveraging Slack's potential (and Troops FWIW), it's critical to understand the next steps for Slack's integration and the strategy for Salesforce's return on investment. Where are they going? How will they pivot? We’ll see in who they bring in for the new role!
Strategy & Tactics
🤖 Is it time to re-position yourself with A.I.?
Positioning pundit and all-around GTM guru, April Dunford, posted some ideas this week all around integrating A.I. into your product's positioning. Turns out, it hinges on — get this — whether it genuinely enhances the product’s unique value AND if customers value A.I. enough to influence their purchasing decision. Don’t get too hyped, basically: the core of your positioning should remain on the product's value delivery, she says, rather than the technology used, cautioning against conflating market positioning with technological trends which, while they may make a product appear more current, do not define its market category. Her post at the link above is a really great example of trends (aka the Frosted Tips of the GTM world) vs. market context.
💁 A New PLG: Personality Led Growth
A new lesson in growth for all you good-looking, well-dressed, properly-groomed RevOps SMEs out there … There's a new lever to pull for next-leveling your business, and it actually starts with you: Personality Led Growth. This podcast episode focuses primarily on content, but it’s full of some hot tips on how to best use your entire company to promote your brand. (And as A.I. continues to muddy the waters on what is or is not human, it may be the perfect time to get your humans out there early).
🌊 Catchin' the Third Wave for GTM
Read as Sangram Vajre, a leader in GTM strategy (he ran marketing at Pardot, e.g.), outlines the evolution of GTM technology in three waves, from foundational tools like CRM and marketing automation, through innovations in HR tech and sales engagement, to the current wave focusing on RevOps and AI-driven sales intelligence. Where are you and the team surfin’, bruh? (Let's catch some Rattle? 🤙)
A Good Read
Is the Salesforce job market saturated?! Yes... in the West.
According to this exceptionally interesting and detailed post from the folks over at Salesforce Ben, the SFDC job market has had a 28% rise in supply versus a significant 46% drop in demand, creating Hunger-Game-like levels of competition, especially for entry-level roles.
To us, this highlights the importance of either:
- Volunteering oneself as RevOps tribute; or
- Differentiating oneself through specialized skills and/or strategic know-how.
Amidst a steaming backdrop of this economic poo heap — and perpetual recession fears that may or may not pulverize us all into a fine dust — and a market flooded with legit and certified candidates, there appears to be the serious need for continuous learning and adaptation to align with the evolving whims and caprices of Mark Benioff and his Merry Men.
There's some weirdly good news to add, though: that China's Alibaba finally decided to play nice with everybody's favorite CRM and on the other side of the world, demand... well, it went up.
Only question is now... if you're not willing to become a strategic powerhouse at-home, are ya gonna learn Mandarin?
More reads:
HBR 10 Ways to Prove You're a Strategic Thinker (link)
Best Way to Learn Mandarin By Yourself: 15 Essential Tips (here)
The Ad-hoc
🥲 New Yorker: There’s a big shift in productivity tech (and we were right)
These days, productivity software has shifted their focus away from creating technology that helps workers execute work — more surprisingly — and more towards helping them organize their workflow, arrange tasks or items on boards or cards to visualize and manage work processes more efficiently.
This shift, says the New Yorker, reflects a broader change in the business software industry, where the emphasis on enhancing individual tools has given way to structuring work processes more effectively, as historical productivity gains have stagnated despite advances in technology, leading to a new focus on improving how work is organized rather than just creating more powerful tools. All this to say: Nee-ner nee-ner nee-ner. We were right.
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And that's it for this week!
We'll be back next Thursday night with more news, tips, and Hunger Games references.
Thanks for reading — remember you can always reach out to us at hello@gorattle.com for any questions, comments, concerns, or ways to make my Bumble profile more appealing.
