Welcome to RevOps After Dark, where we cover all the revenue team news that you (hopefully, probably) care about, while adding just a dash of that special Rattle spice!
This week, we’ve got a ton of great After Dark stories — including tech consolidations, rep career frustrations, A.I. validations, and even some airplane pilot quasi-aggravations.
It all makes sense as you read.
Let's get this bread!
First: One of Only Two Shameless Self-Promotions, I Promise
Get out your tweed shorts, badge scanners, and branded Frisbees... Dreamforce — AKA "Burning Man, but for Revenue Teams" — is approaching fast.
This year, you may not have heard... Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff has mandated that all Dreamforce attendees must scribble the phrase “A.I.-powered” on their foreheads in Salesforce-blue Sharpie to get in the door.
We’ll be there, feeling fantastic, mainly because blue is our color.
Anyway, we’ll also be providing free acetone wipes in case you fell for weird Sharpie gag above, and demos of our awesome product!
You can — and should — join us here. It, like us, will sure to be a good time.
Tools & Software News
Editor's note: This section is not a paid-for-promotion area. We have no idea who in their right mind would pay us for this space and if you ask to pay us to be included here we'll happily take your money but not promote you. It's called "Editorial Standards," people! Now enjoy!
🤖 Need help choosing the right robot overlord? Finally, some direction!
You’re probably already feeling some heat on the A.I. side.
Leadership may want it, like the Lion King, everywhere the sun touches.
Reps may be asking you, “Hey, why do I have to do this thing when a robot could do it?”
You may have people internally going rogue and using the A.I. for sensitive business practices against your wishes. You may be getting sick of hearing "I'm sorry, but as a natural language processing model I can't..."
But at the heart of it all: Which A.I. works best for you? Startup Arthur.ai is putting the giants to the test in both this cool research initiative and a new product called Bench.
😢 Pour one out for Troops, an OG in the RevOps space
In sad-but-entirely-foreseeable news… Troops (full-disclosure: Rattle's main competitor) announced this week that they’re shutting down as a result of their recently adopted step-daddy, Salesforce, deciding to push folks to its new tool Slack Sales Elevate instead. We would be entirely remiss not to mention that Elevate doesn’t match up with poor ol' Troops’ capabilities, let alone ours. (Sorry to see you go, Troops team) (It’s been an honor and privilege to fight you and become your replacement) (Second self-promotion moment, anddddd we're done).
🕺 Clari shakes its Groove thang
As we know from the ancient scrolls, only one unicorn can become The Chosen One of All-in-One solutions.
As the entire B2B world moves toward consolidation (just look at Outreach, Salesloft, Gong, and so forth), another sales software startup has entered the chat. The I-don’t-care-what-you-say-it-still-sounds-like-the-name-of-a-contact-lens-company Clari, this week, acquired competitor, Groove, to the tune of ... a totally private but probably hefty sum of money. Their goal? Becoming the one true heir of Westeros.
Groove’s announcement can be read by those who have the time for that kind of thing here.
Strategy & Tactics
🗡️ They may take our leads, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!
As Gartner Sales recently put it: SDRs are feeling major levels of burnout lately. (Like just… can you give them a minute?) But as we know, these same reps play a pivotal role in shaping strategy, offering uniquely in-the-trenches insights, and driving important changes to the way things actually get done. So, for your RevOps out there, it might be a good idea to remind SDRs they are valuable. We think this post by Daniel Wiener, CEO of Autobound, was basically the SDR equivalent of the pep talk scene from Braveheart. At least it fired us up?
🌄 And if you're looking to do more than fire up your SDRs?
Say you're looking to keep them around? Have them... ya know... stay invested... and not just like... build constant resentment... and leave you for somebody else... Spiff had a great long-form post on the importance of giving your SDRS an attainable career path. All the whys and hows are there, and we gotta say: It’s pretty spiffy.
🧠 All signs point to this being
The following post by friend-of-the-brand Mallory Lee, RevOps at Nylas, has us thinking that we all may be overthinking leading indicators. We figured it was so good (and so short 👏) that we might as well share the whole damn thing:
😘 Reminder: You’re not actually a robot (nobody is)
Joe LaGrutta, an ops consultant at his own consultancy, JayOh, had just… a really nice LinkedIn post this week regarding the mental health side of ops. We won’t make any jokes on this. We’ll just share you the post... and his meme. (Your daily woo-sah)
A Great Watch
While not technically this past week, CRO and long-time business leader Wade Burgess made such a good point here about the importance of passion in revenue teams that we decided to break our own rules that don't exist.
Hear hear, Wade!
The Ad-hoc
🛫This is your captain PREACHIN’
Inc. did a fantastic (or maybe just fantastically tortured) write-up of a recent video of an American Airlines pilot humorously laying down the law to his passengers. Now, and as we know, the first natural thing you think of when a vid goes viral is: Were there any business lessons in this? But this time, maybe.... Yeah, actually, there were.
🥳 We only just begun to hype!
Gartner recently chatted with VentureBeat after some initial scrutiny that they had already put Generative A.I. at the Peak of Inflated Expectations on their infamous Hype Cycle chart (making Generative A.I. quite-possibly the fastest growing bubble in history?) “Every vendor is knocking on the door of an enterprise CIO or CTO and saying, ‘We’ve got generative AI baked into our product,” said one analyst. So now, I guess, we should all brace for the coming “Trough of Disillusionment,” which also feels like another way of saying “Middle School.” (The article)
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And that's it for this week!
We'll be back next Thursday night with more news, more tips, and uh... more!
Thanks for reading — and remember, you always can reach out to us at hello@gorattle.com for any questions, comments, concerns, or scientific inquiries into whether acetone actually removes permanent marker from your face.
