Paul M. Caffrey (00:01.062)
I'm delighted to be joined by Shantanu Shekhar, the Senior Director of Go -To -Market at GONG and also a decade of experience in revenue operations. Shantanu, how are you? How's it going?
Shantanu Shekhar (00:14.19)
Delighted to be here, Paul. Thank you so much. Loving the summer weather in Dublin today, so.
Paul M. Caffrey (00:16.646)
I am.
Yeah, it's nice when we get a bit of good weather, although it was a little overcast this afternoon, but still hot nonetheless. So how are you getting on in the world of Gong? Every time we hear about Gong, it has grown nearly exponentially. And as somebody who's been at the core of that for a considerable amount of time, it must be a super, super exciting environment to be in.
Shantanu Shekhar (00:26.189)
That's it.
Shantanu Shekhar (00:45.71)
It's a very exciting time for in fact, just today we just announced even our AI specific playbook and a few other pieces there. So it's been a very exciting time. I've now been here two and a half years. I was a customer twice of Gong before I joined in. And I think the part which I loved even as a customer is just how unique the company is in terms of thinking about the problems that customers are trying to solve, but then really putting all its power behind making sure that
you actually drive outcomes for the customers. And I think that's why customers are what we call, some of them are raving fans, but really we try as a product to make sure that we never leave our customer hanging.
Paul M. Caffrey (01:28.614)
Yeah. And it's, it's nearly become a ubiquitous piece of tech. I've used it so many times, so many different businesses and it's, it's hard to understand why a lot of businesses don't have it when, when they don't. But I think more have than don't at this stage in this, in this world. What jumps out at me, if we take a step back, you've, you've obviously worked at LinkedIn and you took their European operations from 250 million to 2 billion. I mean, that is.
such a seismic jump in revenue. What was behind the growth at that point in time, Shantanu?
Shantanu Shekhar (02:09.55)
I think we were also in a very interesting time in space. If I go back to that, almost 10 years ago now, Paul, and I think there were three really big pieces of children. I think there's probably some elements that I'm going to miss out on, but I think it starts at its core with the people that we had. And I think LinkedIn as a company is probably unique where they talk about
people being their number one or talent being the number one operating priority as a company. So, usually everything from a small team meeting to the CEO presenting at the all hands, to even maybe do big conferences, people and talent are the core of what LinkedIn does and I think they got that really right. Second from a, and I think if you've heard about the flywheel effect, the impact of so many different things working in cohesion together, I think the part which LinkedIn got
really right was thinking about how does the two core circles, if you think about it in a SaaS or tech world even, because obviously, Lincoln has both SaaS products and non SaaS products, but literally how does the go to market and the engineering side work really close together, which is once you are building a product and moving to a certain direction, you have to make sure it's all in concert with how your go to market teams motions are working. And I think we got some of those pieces really right in just having one
one motion. And the third, I think, which had linked in a lot and I'm almost going deep into Europe in this case, was being very laser focused on core initiatives that will move the needle. What some people might call big rocks that can move and really, and I'll give you an example when we were there. I think about a year after I joined LinkedIn, we got acquired by Microsoft even. And that actually helped us almost
propel forward in terms of having some of the deeper pockets to invest strategically. Now, if somebody gets $100, you have a choice of where you're going to put those $100. But if you know that these are the five things that are going to really matter, you put 20 in each of those versus putting $5 in 20 different things. So that's, that I think made a big difference focus.
Paul M. Caffrey (04:24.614)
Okay, so focus and I remember that and it was a bit of a surprise when it was Microsoft at the time. I think it was maybe odds on the felt like it was going to be a Salesforce acquisition. It certainly felt like the rumors at the time. How from from the European perspective, how did you decide what those what those five things were to focus on?
Shantanu Shekhar (04:42.51)
Right. I think, and I would almost, and this is probably where me also taking forward the rev ops flag, any soapbox I get, I get me like talk about revenue operations. But one thing which LinkedIn has done really well is almost get the foundational elements of both strategy and operations. And to me, they both have to work hand in hand because until you have a very clean view of the 30 ,000 feet of where you're headed in a strategy format.
you don't really get to deliver on the nitty -gritty of the three feet deep of execution. I think that LinkedIn got really right. And I think, especially if I go into Europe, right, if I go back to when we were sub 250 million, we were literally making a plan on how to grow to a billion dollars within Europe. And that, let's say, even a billion was probably a longer milestone. We had a smaller milestone, 500 million. And how do we get there?
And to do that, what we did was use a framework which I think is quite popular, but literally from what's your point of departure to your point of arrival if you know where you are, where you want to be. What are some of the core choices you'll make? And this goes back to the focus piece where we were like, what are some of the where to play choices, which is where do you want to invest, which markets, which segments, which kind of ICP profiles. And then once we have that idea, literally how to win and that's.
choices on capabilities you need to build, assets you need to build. If you're deploying, for example, in the SaaS space, that if you're looking at acquisition versus existing customers, how do you build that together? You're thinking about your operating model. One big question most of the tech industry is thinking about is how does customer success work with a Hunter -Pharma model versus a hybrid sales model? So all of those pieces that you bring together. And then from a pure revenue operations standpoint, how do you drive operational excellence across all of that?
and program manage that so you've been headed towards your point of arrival or target. And I think that LinkedIn did really well and we were able to bring that together with some of the great people we had.
Paul M. Caffrey (06:50.182)
And it's interesting to speak about the allocation of resources, because I'm sure a lot of people listening, LinkedIn, all these big companies, they've got more resource than anybody. But still, it's coming through that. You still need to make those decisions if you're at that upper echelon or that bigger behemoth, as you do when if you're an account executive running a territory or if you're a founder seller, we can only focus on so many things. I see that you're big into data.
What data points are or how do you leverage data to make decisions?
Shantanu Shekhar (07:23.342)
Great, great question. So I think, and I'll hit the data point along with what you just said there, Paul, on the different size and scale, because no matter what size, you mentioned founders who are operating in the zero to one space versus a much larger company. No matter what scale you are growing to, you really have to ask a few specific questions. The answers are going to be very different. Again, the answer for a LinkedIn going towards a billion dollars and beyond was different. The answer for a Gong at our time would be different.
the answer for somebody going from zero to one is different. But the questions you're asking, again, that framework I outlined, and the different pieces you can think about, are going to be very similar, which is what's working, what's not working, how do you get there? And I think from a data perspective, this to me is probably one of the biggest assets. And you talk about how do you allocate different investments. There's resources you get, there's people you get, but data itself is an asset in which you have.
quite often, unfortunately, there is so much data that you only get noise. So how do you, how do you identify signal within that data to make decisions? I think it's, it's crucial to almost drive with a very clear rhythm where you're starting with, why do you need data in the first place? Right? So it's almost like purpose. So, and what I mean by that is I talked about the different scenarios in terms of company sizes. It could be different scenarios in terms of the functions. We're thinking about like sales versus marketing with somebody else.
but also the actual level at which you're taking a decision at a company level, at a segment level, at a team level, at an individual, the data, the purpose of using data is going to be different. So almost like why do you need data? And then figuring out what data is relevant. And then you try and figure out how you get that data. I think just tying that string together is very helpful because otherwise a lot of people think about using data for data's sake, but it's not really signal or insight. It's more.
It's more noise.
Paul M. Caffrey (09:23.494)
Yeah, and I guess we try to think about what could be tangible examples. I mean, hitting quota or meeting target, it's an important metric. But if we go a layer below that, what's the win rate? Is your win rate 20, 30 percent or is it five percent? In which case, there's going to be a vast, dramatic difference in time and effort spent in getting that business through to the end or not. What other examples of metrics come to mind do you think people should look out for at that lower level?
Shantanu Shekhar (09:35.982)
Yes.
Shantanu Shekhar (09:53.486)
I would even start with, to me, I think WinRate was a great example. Let's even, if you look at WinRate, you could have WinRate at a large scale across all your accounts, or you can start creating what I'd call cohorts. And I think any engineering friends listening will obviously be thinking about cohort analysis that they do, but if I just bring that down a level to, you have, as a company, you have potentially hundreds of thousands of...
prospects in your CRM that you can go after. How do you start segmenting them into buckets or cohorts where you have a similar profile in terms of win rates? Average deal size is very important because again, you're thinking about how much money you can get from them, whether it's a SaaS model or a consumption based model, what's the potential size of price from that? And then if I put that together, you can start potentially adding in a layer of complexity because not only are there cohorts in terms of
segments, company size, industries, depending on your company, you could be selling in different markets. Once you bring that information down, it's very important to identify the other three things I care about from a new business perspective, the three things I care about from existing customers. So from a new business side, I know people talk about the funnel being dead, but the specific metrics in the top of the funnel in that metric, which is everything from how you're generating leads, the volume of it.
Converting leads, you talk about win rate eventually, and average deal size. So the moment you start looking at that from a forward basis, it's huge. But then how do you tie that to what's happening in our existing business? Because you don't want to acquire leads which are just going to leak in the end. So you're literally then filling up a leaky bucket. So you want to have really high potential, but also potentially long -term customers that you're acquiring. So that's the other piece I'd add.
Paul M. Caffrey (11:47.398)
Yeah, there's so much variance there. And I guess a really simple way of looking at it from, you know, from a deal size is, you know, if you're prospecting, are you prospecting enough for your run rate business, for your key deal business and for your large business? And again, focus on that and then, you know, drilling into metrics when you're I know you're speaking and you advise a number of companies starting out.
What nuggets of advice do you give people who are going for that first one million ARR? Or is it to just go after one segment, one product, one ICP, or is there a couple of different things that you might suggest?
Shantanu Shekhar (12:25.71)
I think the best answer probably is it depends. But again, I think focus and prioritization is still key, right? And I think the moment you try to do multiple things at the same time, you'll probably not get any of them to a level of sophistication that you will succeed. So I think what I almost advise some of these companies, and I think some of them have been fantastic and even gone beyond that faster than I thought imaginable, is
Having a very clear picture of what is it that you are providing value to the customer. And I think I almost think about it all starts with the customer at the center. What is that you can provide as value to the customer? Once you know that, identify and prioritize what is that match between the value you provide and what the customers need. And this is where it's meeting an unmet demand or optimizing an already existing demand where some people have gone ahead and done it, but
Maybe you're adding that little bit of tweak of efficiency or effectiveness which competition in this space doesn't have. So that's how I would advise people to do it. And again, to your point, ideally the answer is one segment or one persona profile that you're going after, but sometimes it could be a little bit broader.
Paul M. Caffrey (13:41.158)
OK. And again, yeah, there are so much nuance there that people can take away and work on. And if we fast forward and we have a look at things are going with Gong, obviously the success you've had in EMEA has been incredible and you've launched APAC as well. What lessons were learned from that over the last few years?
Shantanu Shekhar (14:04.974)
I think lots of good learning and again, for me it was a great experience of being in the almost engine room of a company early on as we were setting up. I was, I think within the first 20 hires of our Dublin office at the point that we were setting up and my boss who was the SVP of International at that time and she and I worked a lot on almost our plan across how do we think about not where we are today but if we had to scale 10x.
in the next five years, how do we get there? And going back to the same piece. But the three big lessons that I got, and I think they're not very different from what helped LinkedIn succeed or helped some other companies succeed is number one, getting people right. I think getting, making sure you have the right people in the right roles. I'll give you an example. Let's say you're setting up a company and again, we were coming in as an unknown brand within Europe. Gong was a household name in
Tech in the US but within Europe, especially if you think about the non English -speaking markets people in North So one of the really important people is getting the right marketing higher in place. So we got and again Amazing marketing leader now in in in gong Dublin That was the first let's say big move. So similar similar to that other rules getting the right people in place making sure there's a very strong selection, but then also very strong cohesion between and I keep using the term because
The moment you're aligned and working towards the same goal, you will move forward faster. So just building a very strong team. The second big lesson I think which we had was being very specific about what works in certain markets and what needs to, again, it's the question of what you have as a value proposition versus what the markets demand. And again, different markets as you start localizing would require a different value proposition.
And the third piece, which was very helpful, and this is almost what I call keeping the lights on, creating almost an operating rhythm. And creating an operating rhythm, especially Paul, you do so much work on helping people from sales especially think about how to be prepared and work in a certain rhythm towards their goals. We focused a lot on just building an operating cadence of what a week should look like, what a month should look like, what a quarter should look like, what a year should look like.
Shantanu Shekhar (16:29.422)
and across different roles, if you're an AE versus a CSM versus an SDR versus let's say someone in the operations team as well. So that really helped. And bringing all of that together, I think was almost a very strong and organized program management across these pieces, which brought us together.
Paul M. Caffrey (16:47.59)
Yeah, and there's there's so much there to unpack the people, the value prop for the for the market, that rhythm of business, which you speak of, which is so fundamental. And again, you know, operations and revenue, you know, both run in tandem. Some people like to focus on one or the other, but it really is getting the two running in sync that produces those results for sure. When you're looking at. Let's say the technology to underpin.
a rhythm of business. What tech do you think is essential to get right and what tech do you think people should be maybe looking to use in their tech stack?
Shantanu Shekhar (17:27.022)
Great. I think, and I'll start that answer again with something very similar to a previous question, which is it has to start with the customer at the heart of it. I think one risk we have with the number of shiny tech systems we have, I mean, at last count, there are more than 10 ,000 systems, more than 10 ,000 vendors in the marketing and sales landscape. That's a huge number of choices people are often confused between. What is
system A do versus system B, aren't they the same? Do they overlap? So I would almost encourage anyone who's thinking about their tech stack or sales and revenue tech stack even, is start with the customer. And what I mean by that is if you could map out your entire customer life cycle, right? Right from say the beginning of prospecting to qualifying, closing, getting all of the, let's say, AEN marketing and SDR world, initial pre -sales world set up as well. From there,
the customer lifecycle, continuing on to acquiring a customer, hopefully having an engaged and happy customer. If you're in SaaS, you have a renewal. If you're not in SaaS, just making sure you get more consumption. And then actually having a world where you're able to hopefully have a delighted customer who's seeing value. So if you think about an entire value chain, to me, there are multiple layers below that, right? From what's your strategy for that? Who are the people and place you need to have? What is the process and workflows? And I think workflows are so important.
Because once you have all of this, once you have the strategy for each stage of the life cycle, and you have the process or the strategy and people in place, your process and workflows then flow to really enable that strategy to come alive and get the outcomes you want the customers to have. Once you have mapped that, then you define your systems. That's the next layer. So unfortunately, people quite often start with the systems layer and then try and answer the top, which doesn't work. So that's what I would think. And within that, to me, probably the most important systems to have right
upfront is which companies are reaching out to, who are those companies are reaching out to and how are you reaching out to them? I mean, that's the first important piece, really in the initial part. The second important part, which I think is, and again, Gong has done a lot of that with Conversation Intelligence and now there are a few other players that are over there with Revenue Intelligence as well, is how do you drive a very clear insight of what customers are feeding back to you and then how do you drive...
Shantanu Shekhar (19:51.022)
really your internal processes as well as overall reporting actions from it. So, and again, it goes back to initial question, how do you make data drive decisions, but data drive insights for you? So I think that's the two core ones. And then everything else just goes around it.
Paul M. Caffrey (20:06.502)
It's really systematic, that approach, which makes it great to follow. It's deciding your market, your customers, how are you going to contact them? And then developing it out further, going deeper, connecting everything. So from that perspective, I think there's a lot of people can take from that, depending on where they're at. One question which seems to be coming up again and again, I see founder sellers struggle with this. I see debates on LinkedIn and I see bigger companies start to also ponder this is
What's going to happen with the SDR or BDR or MDR or business model? Should it be all the one person? Should it be a mix? Where do you see that going over the next number of years? Shantanu.
Shantanu Shekhar (20:51.758)
I think that's an again, this is a very interesting question to me that entire, if I, if I combine SDR, BDR, MDR, that entire piece, they actually have two core components, sorry, two main objectives from that function. And one is everybody talks about their, they are the revenue pipeline generators, right? They're your source of pipeline, the elements of that, which with AI, especially people are talking about how you can automate change, enable, and really there are a lot of efficiencies you can get there.
But they also play a secondary role. They're also the talent pipeline of any organization. So from a revenue pipeline standpoint, yes, there are pieces that we should offer. We will see optimization even in the maybe in the next six months, let alone in the next 12 and beyond. But from a talent perspective, I think some of the best sales leaders today were SDRs maybe a few, a decade or so ago. So how do you build that talent pipeline is the question which needs answering.
So in my humble opinion, I think there will be a world where you will see these SDRs rely a lot more on tools, probably be a lot more efficient, a lot more productive, but they will still be a very important part of getting sales talent into organizations.
Paul M. Caffrey (22:03.942)
Yeah, and I think one of the points you raised there is a talent pool. That's a way to get someone in to develop them to move on. And there is a little bit of a backlog in sales. If we look at across the board, I think that maybe it's going to be a case of.
people being earmarked for other parts of the organisation. Before it was kind of up to an individual, they may be more attracted to marketing or customer success and they don't see themselves in sales, but they got into the organisation. Whereas I'm thinking it's going to become a little bit more structured in years to come. AI is super topical. It's only going in one direction. What predictions have you got when it comes to AI over the next couple of years and revenue operations?
Shantanu Shekhar (22:35.694)
That's fair.
Shantanu Shekhar (22:46.926)
So I think it's, I'm a huge, huge proponent of what AI can do to help jobs like mine become easier, especially for the revenue operations. So I think there are two, there are going to be two big parts of it. One is how does my life as an operator become simpler? So in revenue operations today, and I'll give you simple examples. Let's say today we are building books. I call solving for data quality.
It's literally the unsolvable revops problem. Just like you have an unsolvable maths problem. This is the revops version of it. And I think with AI, you will soon see a world where we are able to really get much cleaner data, much quicker, enable better territories and so on. So I think that's going to be one big piece of it. But then on the second side, and I think this is where from a revops lens, one of our core goals in revops is to drive efficiency and effectiveness of
of the team we are working with, right? So everyone on the go -to -market side, not just the sellers, the marketers, everybody customer success. So I think the part on AI which will be very, very quickly moving forward, because I think, again, on the part of making us have more data at our fingertips, we're already using LLM data, or even we're using top -down models to help us drive better forecasts, and that's all going to happen. But the part that I'm more excited about is how will we...
How will we help our reps become more productive? How will AI start helping us, for example, drive the adoption of playbooks, sales methodologies like MEDIC and so on? You've probably seen, even Gong has launched a version where we're using AI to help MEDIC get embedded into organizations. That stuff, which is going to be very helpful. And from a rev ops sense, I'm very excited to see how we can use AI. And I think we'll continue to learn that.
to drive forward. The key there will be to ensure that we have the right volume of data coming in to feed into the AI model so that you're actually getting relevant and reliable information. And the second part, given the nature of the data we are working with, there needs to be very high safety and security standards that are being followed.
Paul M. Caffrey (25:05.126)
What I like about that is we had Todd Caponi on this show, actually back in episode one, so a long, long time ago now. And he spoke about the fact that in the 1900s and a hundred plus years ago, territories and reps all had different targets based on companies that were there. And it was negotiated specifically. And it feels like from your prediction that we're maybe going to come back to that where
Shantanu Shekhar (25:21.39)
you
Paul M. Caffrey (25:29.958)
If you're working a FinTech patch in London versus one in the north of England, that maybe you'll end up with a dynamic target based on what is there. So there may be more fairness coming our way. And also the way to be able to optimise how we work these different territories and different patches, because at the moment that's a step beyond most companies. Typically it's across the board. Maybe there's some verticals that have different targets. We know that different segments do, but
Shantanu Shekhar (25:51.406)
Yes.
Paul M. Caffrey (25:59.43)
get into the level that you're speaking about. Yeah, I do wonder how much more efficiency and revenue can be driven from getting to that level. My gut feeling is that's probably quite a lot, but I guess the data will come along in due course and let us know.
Shantanu Shekhar (26:01.518)
individual.
Shantanu Shekhar (26:13.71)
Absolutely. And I think this is a great example you brought up because again, if I think about the different scales of companies and where it would play in, again, when I was at LinkedIn, we actually did a version of what you just said, which is especially an existing customer site, every rep had an individual target based on the patch they were in or the territory they had. But the advantage that LinkedIn had at the company that scale is that they could throw people at problems. Now,
What smaller companies don't have the advantage of is having that resource from a people perspective. And this is where AI will come in very handy to really augment and amplify the bandwidth of one individual. So that's what's going to be very exciting.
Paul M. Caffrey (26:58.662)
Yeah, I really like that. And it also reminds me of Frank Slootman's great book, Amp It Up. And so much success with Snowflake and all of these went on to do. But this is something I think A's and founder sellers can start to focus on is they would look at, well, what is the 20 % of our customers who are broadly using the same use case? Yeah, 80 % plus are using it for different various ways. But what is that? And how can we drill down and get more of that as it's more repeatable, more scalable?
Shantanu Shekhar (27:07.246)
Mm -hmm.
Paul M. Caffrey (27:26.406)
versus just trying to sell the next leader, the next person that comes along and then spreading our resource a little bit thin and not operating quite as efficiently. So it is something that you can pull into your world and not just feel like you've got to wait for the organisation to bring it to you. So, you know, something that you can maybe take ownership of. And if people want to find out a bit more about what you're up to, how can they reach out to you? How can they find you, Shantanu?
Shantanu Shekhar (27:52.334)
I think as an ex -LinkedIn employee, I'm quite active on LinkedIn. I would say the best place and probably the most prompt response you'll get from me is on LinkedIn. But other than that, yeah, that's probably the best place to get.
Paul M. Caffrey (28:05.99)
Great, so the first link in the show notes, wherever you're listening to this, is a link to Shantanu's profile. So click it, connect, and say hello. Shantanu, thanks so much for coming on. It's been an absolute blast.
Shantanu Shekhar (28:20.046)
My pleasure, thank you for having me on Paul. I really enjoyed it.
