What’s next in B2B with: Lauren Goldstein

In the Spotlight with: Lauren Goldstein

‘In the Spotlight’ sees leading B2B personalities delve into the latest trends, examine the changing marketing landscape, and put forward their visions for the future.  

Lauren Goldstein, Interim Executive Director at Women in Revenue… 

The history behind Women in Revenue: How it started and why. 

I love talking about Women in Revenue! It all started in 2018, when Shari Johnston (Winning by Design) reached out to me (and 10 other women that would become co-founders) with this wild idea: as we’ve all experienced a variety of challenges in our working lives, how about we create an organisation specifically to help women thrive in the workplace.  

Two and a half years later, Women in Revenue has over 5,000 members. Our mission is to empower women in sales, marketing and customer success, through networking opportunities, mentorship, and education. Conversations range from how to find your superpower, to the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. 

Membership is free. So for any women in sales, marketing or customer success roles, go to womeninrevenue.org to sign up! 

The opportunities for women in different revenue roles. 

They’re extensive. Being a successful revenue leader today is a blend of art and science. You have to realise that great marketing is still about great connections between a brand and its buyers. But there’s a deeply analytical component, with KPIs and alignment. And that’s something that I think women are poised to drive forward.  

How the RevOps model is changing marketing departments.  

One of the classic challenges of today is the disconnect between sales and marketing. While the marketing function is looking to surprise, delight and engage at the top of the funnel, sales is all about driving meetings, opportunities and closes. As each department pulls in a different direction, the customer experience (CX) can suffer along with pipeline visibility. 

Revenue operations is a foreseen and forming function that integrates technology and KPIs across the entire stack. It aligns people, process, content and technology to create a single source of truth for the customer journey.  

Not every organisation will have a revenue operations team as a formal function, but when adopting a shared success model—whether that’s between Chief Revenue Officer and a CMO, or between SalesOps and MarketingOps—there needs to be true alignment and integration.  

The impact of RevOps on marketers’ creativity. 

Gone are the days of the big creative idea. The holy grail today is using data to understand the critical path, how a customer moves in the most frictionless way through the funnel. Creating a single source of truth supports this process, helping us deliver a better CX and stronger results for the business.  

Even so, there’s still lots of room for creativity, both in terms of the content we produce and the provocative conversations we conduct with customers and prospects. It’s just that now, we have the data available to validate our creative actions.  

The correlation between great CX and great RevOps.  

At the end of the day, companies that consider CX as the key driver will win. Customers are looking for answers to their challenges. If a brand can move them along a deliberate path, then customers are more likely to engage.  

In return, the brand creates for itself a more predictable pipeline, and will have a better sense of how to close the deal as they’re measuring every step of the journey while optimising engagements.  

Ultimately, those that offer the best CX have exceptional analytics. That’s the winning equation for companies today and in the future.  

Why CX is the unifier of sales and marketing. 

CX is the unifying component of sales and marketing, without doubt, as it demands a clear conversation between the brand and the buyer. The same rule applies when the buyer becomes a customer. Great CX also means creating a shared view of success, aligning the two departments in terms of KPIs. 

Truly aligned organisations don’t just get leads into the top of the funnel or have great sales. These are both important measurements, but a healthy sales funnel does not look like a martini glass, it looks like a pint glass. If your funnel’s a martini glass, your sales and marketing aren’t well aligned. But if they’re working together successfully, you have great throughput from top of funnel to bottom.  

Example organisations to learn from. 

I’d love to shout out NWEA, a not-for-profit education technology company who recently won an Adobe Experience Maker award. 

Like a lot of organisations, NWEA previously struggled to understand how they’re marketing investments paid off. They lacked a holistic view of the critical path, showing a lack of sales and marketing alignment. 

However, by adopting a deliberate go-to-market approach that aligned people, process, content and technology, NWEA created a shared view of success, enabling the mapping of customer conversations across the entire lifecycle. Over the course of 9-12 months, lead conversion improved 200%, along with average deal size by 3X. 

Best campaign you’ve worked on in your career. 

I’ve worked on hundreds of campaigns throughout my career that for different reasons have been exceptional. That being said, I believe organisations that are shifting from a campaign mindset to an always-on model are poised for success, by delivering a better CX and reshaping their funnel. 

I’ve already mentioned how NWEA made the shift. Over the last few years Secureworks also moved to always-on, along with Tricentis, who are now entering a heavy growth stage.  

Really there are dozens, if not hundreds, of companies that are better connecting with customers and prospects. But those that are shifting to always-on are doing it best.  

Advice to young women entering B2B marketing. 

The biggest piece of advice I wish I had as a young woman is don’t be afraid to ask for help. Early on in my career I had a lot of pride in trying to figure things out for myself. And I admire women who do the same. 

But a network like Women in Revenue gives women an opportunity to find others doing their job in different organisations, to collaborate with and learn from. So don’t be afraid to ask and know that there’s great resources available to support you. 

What’s coming next could feature you. Get your story heard by reaching out to B2BNXT.