Aligning Marketing and Sales to Maximize Growth
Play Video about Amahl Williams @Reveal Group- Aligning Marketing and Sales to Maximize Growth Video Transcript: [Music] welcome to founders friday this is a tell-all for everyone that is in a revenue producing role we invite experts who understand how to drive revenue for their business and we want them to come and share their experiences with us over here our goal is to educate and entertain so remember to share your secret sauce keep your responses punchy and let's Have some fun so my guest today is amal williams partner at reveal group based out of boston massachusetts amal brings over 20 years of experience in sales and marketing he specializes in design thinking go to market strategy data analytics and digital transformation the review group delivers innovative technology to deploy and scale intelligent process automation programs for operational management I met them all through rep genius which is one of the communities we like to hang out i'm all thank you for joining founders friday today so let me go ahead i was gonna say thrilled to be here this is great i'm in a great mood today so i'm looking forward to today's discussion this will be fun well so uh before we get started walk us through your journey to becoming a partner at reveal group What was your career path that that took you there you know what's funny let me try to do it succinctly because i'm still in the honeymoon phase so like i love it i mean honestly um when you you know humbly and respectfully when you make it to this level of business it is great to see an outpouring of support from your industry peers and folks around you professionally and personally um That was really touching that um that was really really touching for me i made a career change four years ago um it'll tie into some of our later discourse as well but four years ago i was doing traditional old school data warehousing campaigning uh reporting in analytics for fortune 500 companies and uh i saw a demonstration of a robot um execute a report utility so report utility not with end user computing but Just a report utility so here's a application i can extract data from it and then i heard about the volume metrics how many reports the robot could do in a certain amount of time so in 30 minutes i saw a robot do a thousand reports being extracted um i saw the horsepower i understood how long it would take the humans to do it i saw how long it took the robots to do it and then i said to myself i'm all you Probably should get a new job and so it was funny fast forward to when steve and bob yesterday wonderbots gave me a chance to become a rpa professional one of our best-selling um applications was a reporting utility that not only externalized the data sets but modified it for delivery for users specifically so my favorite trial by fire was seeing it being done by robots my hardest part of the process it was twofold and this is kind of as you mature through it You're modeling for people's jobs that's one for two you have a very intimate understanding of the processes and the tasks that companies have to complete not only to sustain their operations but to um improve their employee experience and their client experience so you start to look at industry differently um and the biggest change i think is from when i started to where i am today is That when i first joined the industry you were like hopefully i don't get exposed to a process that's not in my wheelhouse or my belly right and now um i have a level of comfort that if you understand the capabilities of the applications if you understand the capabilities of the digital workers and you understand the work that is being done by the humans you can have a very um secure sense of comfort around discovery Automation implementation and what have you until you bridge that gap let's see i'll tell you and again it's funny it's like um it's like when somebody tries to learn how to play lacrosse the lacrosse guys can't tell you how to cradle uh the ball in the stick they just kind of move their hands into like it's like this yeah and look what transformation is like until you get it you don't get it but then once you get it you understand it completely differently so Specifically um reveal group conducted a search across the ecosystem um for folks that might be able to lead within specific markets um and i got recommended by you know people who i didn't understand how much they were being advocates of mine but people that i respect and i work with they recommended me i went through the process um it's been great here the co-founders hire my teammates that i want to have come on board and we're Growing so awesome great example yeah yeah so uh look i think uh robotic process automation it's it's having its moment as we speak and it'd be great i mean obviously that's what uh you know at the reveal group that's what you you specialize in uh share a little bit with this audience on how rpa helps drive uh revenue and revenue generating processes for companies and maybe spend a minute on or half a minute on what is rpa like i'm not sure everybody would Have that context so that'd be a great place to start no that's great because when i say robotics people ask me questions about irobot so let's get a foundation let's get a let's get a a a rudimentary foundation in what robotics is so as simple as i can say it robotics at its core is data processing right so it's software that act interacts with other software similarly to how humans would interact with said Software but it doesn't have to be slavis to the user interface or the desktop or the keyboard right this explanation i've heard that's that's cool it's my new favorite once i try to use it um intelligent process automation which is one level above that is the collaboration of a cognitive technology so the eyes the robot reading something or extracting uh data and then incorporating that into a human process So if i'm going to do month-end clothes i have my core system that does a little bit of the clothes for me i have my robots that do some of the remainder of the clothes within the context of the business rules and then any exception that falls out of said context it's brought to me as the human user to remedy so in a recon state i'm a cpa in a payroll time card state i'm a payroll analyst et cetera et cetera et cetera does that make sense yep absolutely so Um when you i mean you work with a number of clients and i know that you're passionate about the sales and marketing uh processes and functions as well what are some of the common challenges that you see with clients when you work in the sales marketing functions like what are some of the uh process issues that you typically run across there you know so it's you know um the semantics right how we should be working together but I'll tell you this is my favorite stage for startup because your first 10 million generally in my experience right for my last 10 15 years that's going to be founder source right so the relationships that you brought with you your trusted advisors who said hey you're not crazy that might actually work let's just make sure that the commercial model is feasible and if it's feasible then is it scalable can i sell my vision can i get folks to buy into Near-term and then also long-term goals and so when you look at sales and marketing the nice part about it is that when i did it in 2008 people thought that marketing automation was just something that somebody said to to get a check yeah now what we have and this is refreshing we're past that stage from an understanding so we have platforms we have the new roles that have formed we have the tasks and the responsibilities and we have the Measurements now the real challenge is is that when you are founder source when you are relationship selling company you haven't had to do demand generation you haven't had to do a lot of direct marketing outside of maybe webinar trade show or other so the first thing you have to do when you understand it and this is my favorite part because this is my marketing degree right reminds me my favorite professor professor downs he's retired now but we Have to understand which marketing we're actually talking about right so that's one we have to have a common understanding of what the challenges of the cmo is and then how that interoperates with sales so for example why when i was trained cmo has four jobs again this is you know 2002 me graduating from nichols college you have awareness right that's why i'm the Weakest i'm not a brand guy right we have fill the funnel which is a byproduct of direct marketing and other right we have sales enablement make it easier for the sales people to generate more revenue more quickly right the last part is going to be um customer service and when i say customer service that is pr across all channels reddit twitter and what have you when we talk about marketing here for this stage of company we're really Talking about direct marketing activity that is attributable to the sales funnel and then also the content the dynamic the multimedia the multi-channel content that enables for additional revenue to be attributed to the marketing process if that makes sense got it got it now this is very helpful and particularly the four functions uh where the cmo and the sales organization kind of interact i think that that's uh very helpful now i know you've been part of uh setting up The rev-ops function at the reveal group and i'd love to hear a little bit more about uh whether you know from your own experience of the reveal group or working with other clients that are setting up rev-ops function what are some of the common challenges that rev-ops teams face in terms of driving revenue for their businesses what what comes up from their perspective as opposed to the sales and Marketing perspective oh great great question right so you need somebody who is a leader you need somebody who is not afraid to grow in public yeah somebody that is coachable right and you need somebody who is has the thickest skin possible yeah because what we're really talking about fundamentally different from marketing and sales because it's more about who should be doing what right who should be doing more of what revops is Coming in and saying we are going to do something that you think you've been doing previously differently and so it's changed management across all tiers of the business so for me personally the most important hire was rev ops and the most important part of the rev-ops higher was having somebody who fit the description that i just told to you but also right and this you know it's funny this ties into rpa you have To have the vision and you have to have the leader who has the long-haul mindset to walk that mile and though and so the first thing that you have to do is it was one of my quickest sales a scene i said we can't do this if we don't have this function within the business and let me give you three use cases of why it's valuable and i gave out those use cases and i said hey even better guess what here's a job description and here's a person who fits The profile can we have that discourse right that's when and you know this right you've built business if you have a business problem right you can complain about it or you can write a job description and so that's kind of how i go about it so one they have to be in the right part of the business they have to have the right dna you have to have the vision be sold not only by yourself but the executive leadership team to the Rest of the organization we are changing non-negotiable here is our leader please get in line we are going to be learning as we go in public right this is not the thing that's going to be surrounded by surround sound to diminish it we are going to support this and we're going to do this until we get good at it in a single market and then eventually on a global scale that's where we are here at reveal i love that part of it some of the other things that you have to get Right is you have to clone the resource you can't just have your dynamic leader um we have two channels that we can feed into here for talent let me try to say this as empathetically as possible not everybody is built for the rpa function at the company not everybody can be developer designer architect or what have you so we have folks with excellent academic pedigree right um business analytics skill sets some visualization skill sets some of Their rpa skill sets they fundamentally inherit the business we can now draw some of those people into the red box practice now they have to go through training i have to do the visioning right i have to let my practice lead talk about where we're lean but also i have to create a practice where people can actually still take vacation so we need to have all this go ahead this is super helpful um and so i think uh you know obviously like what Are the characteristics of the leadership to set up a devops function that certainly helps what role do you see data playing in this in this process and you mentioned this earlier in the rpa context but i'm curious like what role do you see data playing in this context right so i'm not going to use the data as the fuel data is the oil although yeah they've already said they've already said all this stuff um i think i Told you this last time i met you but i founded the center for intelligent process automation at nichols college its two charters are digital literacy and data literacy your rev-ops leader has to not only understand your business model at a statement of works level right or a price sheet level they have to be data literate and if you work here by product by proxy you will become digitally literate right because that is What we're actually providing so data literacy uh if it's not present it's a non-starter for me and when i think about data literacy it's not just the modeling it's not just having access to the data sets it's actually understanding which analytics are most applicable so what are we measuring we talked about this last time right what are we measuring right so we have to get our baseline that's when everybody gets uncomfortable at first and feels like They're being attacked and then after we get our baseline we have to measure best practice or best behavior because we'd like to repeat it across a broader audience and without data right you're not having an objective discussion yeah yeah makes sense now i know you've worked with uh companies of all sizes and scale and uh you know share a little bit of your perspective on what it looks like to scale up a business and what are Some of the challenges when you go from an early stage to a fortune 500 companies lots of stages in between now what do those early stages and the scale-up look like you know um when you have the right client it's a great time right and i can you know you and you know this you can see them coming it's their level of investment and engagement in the due diligence process bad customer i don't know anything tell me Everything yeah right that guy's not getting budget informed customer here's what i believe some of the challenges are that we have to face i also don't know what i don't know right i'm all i need some of your guidance but we need to do that in the context of key success factors in the first 90 days and then beyond because those two budgets are different like that person i know i know something good Is going to happen now they exist at both sides of the business but you can only have two initiatives when you get started there's only two right and only one can be a priority so either it is monetize and maximize value as quickly as possible right so that's a self-sustaining practice or become the best world-class center of excellence in the entire world blah blah blah that's called self-sufficiency right so Self-sufficient companies bank of new york mellon td bank north et cetera they're all public all the press releases are out there right self-sustaining organizations almost everybody else generally when you look at it so the customer company the advisory they have to pick a path and then i need to de-risk that path based upon who they are and who they want to be uh over time perfect perfect uh now amal you did Share with me that you're you volunteer your time as a trustee at nichols college um so tell us our audience a little bit about the organization what inspired you to volunteer your time there you know it's funny one of my mentors who who passed away now dick scheffler was like well he's like nice car why don't you give back and i was like what does that mean literally i wish i had a better version of the story to tell but one of The one of my trusted advisors and somebody who i was mentoring said the same thing and i'll tell you at the time i had no idea that you actually gave back to the college that you went to right i didn't have bad taste in my mouth or anything it's just i didn't know about it didn't know that it was the thing so i was hiring students from nickels um i was giving back i was just doing things and so what happens over time is that as you just do the things Um nichols calls it time talent and treasures right so give my time specifically i help source and evolve and matriculate talent and then obviously treasure is gifting in the multiple ways that you can give so like i have nickels in my in my trunk and my um will and there'll be a forever gift under my son's name that gives scholarship to black and brown uh men and women pursuing degrees at nichols right that's one of the things that i do So your first designation you become what's called the board of advisor and in the board of advisory you're doing time talent and treasure right to a certain level of commitment and it has a governing body and etc the trustee one is a selection process and they actually are looking at you over a two or more year period and you get nominated i actually went to my first board meeting and i saw another trustee get nominated and i now Understand the process i can't share it absolutely but that's how that's how it works and once you sit you still do time talent and treasure but now you sit on specific committees and subcommittees that are in charge of the school's future vision and here's the other fun part if all the other trustees disappear and the president disappears you sit as president somehow so like that's you know that's not that'll never happen but that was a big charter uh part of the Charter for me which i thought was pretty interesting got it well uh thank you all so much for your time today uh definitely an inspiring story always a pleasure to talk to you um you can i for our audience you can reach them all on linkedin and you can also find him on uh rev genius uh and of course as part of the reveal group you can find him on his contact information on their website and as always we'd love to hear your thoughts here at immersa on how data can Help you drive revenue for your business uh it's an active conversation for us and we'd love to hear from you thank you so much for your time today thank you [Music]
“At this stage of the company, we’re talking about direct marketing activity that is attributable to the sales funnel and also to the content, the dynamic multimedia, multichannel content that enables for the additional revenue to be attributed to the marketing process.”
Amahl Williams
About The Guest
Amahl Williams is a Partner at Reveal group; he is a classically trained marketing executive in monetizing new and adjacent technology.
Reveal Group specializes in deploying and scaling Intelligent Process Automation programs. They are revolutionizing Operational Management with innovative, powerful, and flexible software. Established in 2005 to deliver technology-driven, innovative consulting services that accelerate change, reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve our clients’ overall performance around the world. Reveal Group’s experts drive rapid, sustainable change across all service industries.
Amahl specializes in design thinking, end-to-end quality, return on change, time-to-value, go-to-market strategy, RPA+IPA technologies Blue Prism, UiPath, and AA.
What We Cover
In this episode, Amahl shares best practices and strategies on how Robotics Process Automation helps drive revenue. Amahl takes us on his journey to becoming a Partner at Reveal Group and how he built the foundation for the RevOps function at Reveal Group.
How do sales and marketing teams align and tackle growth challenges at various stages of evolution of a company from a startup to a fortune 500? At Reveal Group, the RevOps function is essential to the company’s growth and in equipping the sales team with customer data. Amahl speaks on data integration within the robotics process, data literacy, and product value.
Amahl is also a Trustee at Nichols College, and he shares his passion for giving back to the community through Time, Talent, and Treasure.
What You Will Learn
What is RPA? How does it drive revenue?
What are some challenges of aligning sales and marketing functions?
How do sales and marketing functions scale as companies grow?
How does RevOps influence growth at Reveal Group?
