Latané Conant, CRO at 6sense, discusses strategies for driving predictable growth, the importance of alignment across sales, marketing, and customer success, and the role of generative AI in optimizing prospecting efforts.
This episode features an interview with Latané Conant, CRO at 6sense.
Latané shares her unconventional career journey from software sales to marketing, and eventually to the CRO role. She discusses strategies for driving predictable growth, the importance of alignment across sales, marketing, and customer success, and the role of generative AI in optimizing prospecting efforts.
About Latané:
Latané Conant, Chief Revenue Officer of 6sense, is a trailblazing leader in revenue technology known for her innovative vision and strategic expertise. With a wealth of experience across all revenue functions, she propels business growth through operational excellence and oversees marketing, sales, customer success, partnerships, and professional services. Her pioneering go-to-market approach has driven remarkable success for 6sense, contributing to its exponential growth, industry-leading net revenue retention, and impressive valuation. As the author of the best-selling book, No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls., Latané has provided a comprehensive guide for building a modern sales and marketing engine. She is a passionate advocate for empowering revenue leaders and has founded vibrant communities like CMO Coffee Talk and the Empowered CMO Network, fostering connections, collaboration, and leadership development for B2B marketing professionals.
About 6sense:
6sense is on a mission to revolutionize the way B2B organizations create revenue by predicting customers most likely to buy and recommending the best course of action to engage anonymous buying teams. 6sense Revenue AI is the only sales and marketing platform to unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high-quality pipeline to revenue. Customers report 2X increases in average contract value, 4X increases in win rate and 20-40% reduction in time to close deals. Know everything, do anything, with 6sense.
Guest Quote:
“The thing with the CRO role is that there's really no one who is great at all. That's the reality, right? Someone who's great at Sales might not be great at Customer Success... Leading teams and galvanizing around the customer—I think that will become more what a CRO does versus ‘I know this function really, really well’. But you do need specialists in those functions too. So it's also about building great leaders in those pillars that can run their stuff.”
Episode Timestamps:
*(03:20) - Challenges and Strategies in Revenue Leadership
*(07:20) - Aligning Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success
*(17:15) - Leveraging Predictive Analytics and AI
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Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent and innovation led company with 738,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. We are uniquely able to deliver tangible outcomes because of our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Accenture Song. These capabilities, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients succeed and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.
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[00:00:00] Phil: Welcome to Revenue Reinvention, the podcast where we get real about transforming business for predictable success. Today, we have a fantastic guest, Latane Conant. Now she's the Chief Revenue Officer of 6sense. Lottne is a trailblazing leader in revenue technology with a wealth of experience in marketing and revenue. We'll dive into her journey from CMO to CRO, explore strategies that drive predictable growth, and uncover lessons for revenue leadership. Let's dive in.
Welcome, everybody, to Revenue Reinvention. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, here today with Latane Conant. Thanks so much for joining us today, Latane. How are you?
Latane: I'm great, Phil. I'm really excited to be here. To come on the podcast and talk about some of the things that we're doing at 6sense and hopefully learn. You can't do it. You can't do something like this without also learning. [00:01:00] So, um, excited to be a part of your community.
Phil: I'm glad to have you and very interested to learning more about you and What brought you here? So, I mean, let's just jump right into it. So you described yourself as a recovering software salesperson, and you have had, you have a background in sales and then in marketing and now as a CRO. Can you talk a little bit about your background and how you actually got into this revenue, revenue, uh, officer role?
Latane: Forever I have been, you know, a marketer the past really decade, uh, a CMO, but the path to getting to CMO for me was not a standard path. I, I was running a sales team and I had just gotten promoted to being an AVP and I thought that was the biggest deal ever. I was so excited. Um, but our CEO at the time at, at Appirio said, you know, I think you've got a knack for this. And we have a need, and this is what I'd like you to do. And [00:02:00] I said, why would I do that? I don't want to do that. But in my career, I've always said yes, even if it seemed strange or not a linear path.
I have a lot of curiosity. I get bored easily. I love learning. I ended up saying yes, and it was a, it was a great result. I eventually became the CMO of Appirio and then started at 6sense. As the CMO here, um, and we were chugging along doing amazing. Uh, but what we saw, and I think a lot of companies see this is when you grow very, very quickly, all of a sudden it's easy for people to get sideload. It's easy to get what I call sand in the gears, like just too hard to get stuff done. Um, it's easy to have inefficiencies. And, and we just sort of looked around and said, Hey, we probably need a more aligned structure. So what we [00:03:00] decided to do was bring sales, marketing, customer success, professional services, and partnership together under one leader.
And, um, I guess I drew the short straw, uh, because that's now me. Um, but it's, it's been, um, I'm about nine months into it and I think we've A lot of progress still, still tons to do, but, um, it's a pretty big surface area to cover.
Phil: So how old is 6sense?
Latane: Yeah. So we are about 10 years old and, um, we've had a tremendous growth story. Um, and you know, we've, we've, we were one of the companies that became a unicorn and then got five horns and this and that. Um, and we're just, you know, continuing on that, on that growth trajectory. Even despite kind of the, the macro economy we're in.
Phil: Sure. So why do you think it took, why do you think 6sense is doing this [00:04:00] now? Some might say, why did it take 10 years to do it? Is it the evolution of the marketplace? The evolution of a company that went from a traditional sales, marketing, success, sort of siloed organizations to moving them together, federated under one great leader.
Latane: When I first started was 40 people and that's, that was sales, marketing, custom, like everybody, right? And we could all get together in person and, uh, you know, it was easy, right? It's easy to align smaller groups and, and there was also less geographical disparity, uh, between us. What happened for us is you become multi product, your teams get significantly larger. You become multi geo and we have different segments.
So we've got a velocity segment all the way through a strat segment. And so, you know, cause growth is about like continuing to conquer new territory. Right. And that complexity starts to, I think, build up like a plaque, [00:05:00] which, which it was when you require a lot more, uh, alignment and, and, or, and maybe a different organizational design. That is what we found.
Phil: So part of it is because you're growing in different directions. I visualize like a, you know, like a blob that just goes this way and that way because of the initial success it drives in different directions and causes some friction. Right? Because there's a conflict of incentives or there's a conflict of just structures of different product products. Um, is there anything external that drives it? Will it, like, are there any expectations of customers? Do you find that you're seeing the same customer with different needs and you had to find a way to harmonize growth at the customer level, or is it really, um, a product driven sort of thing?
Latane: I mean, I'm very passionate about our customers as being a customer. And I think for us, what we wanted was the ability for [00:06:00] go to market to align on the customer needs in a more cohesive way. So, because what would happen is if you think about, like, our product is, is, and product team is working their, you know, butts off to release product. And the roadmap is, you know, they're interviewing, they're looking at the market, but then they would hear.
Me as the head of marketing say, I think we should do this. And then they would go to somebody else who would say, well, I just heard from this customer and that's what they should do. And the velocity segment thinks this and da, da, da, da, da, da. And it just became like a lot of white noise. So part of it is how we operate, but part of it is also like being able to collate and then give the product team what really matters.
Like, like we're, you know, if, if the velocity segment is. Small now, but our future. And when I look at the growth plans, then that might have a bigger weight than another segment, [00:07:00] as an example, or if strat is, you know, these are really hard features to build, but when we look at our growth. You know, we see that this is where we're going to be adding the most territories, etc. So it's that, it's, it's being able to help work with product on today's needs as well as, you know, tomorrow's when we think about our customers.
Phil: Sure. That makes a lot of sense. So just pulling that thread a little bit, do you think that, or I should say, what could you share from your background that you think gives you a unique perspective to be able to be successful in this role? Sure.
Latane: I think the most important job that I had was being a consultant, actually, being a management consultant, because it really trains you to conduct a good interview. You also then have to be able to gather a quantitative perspective. So look at data, inform some point of some sort of point of view, and you're getting paid a lot of money to do that. So you need to be decent at it. Then you've got to go to a company that [00:08:00] doesn't really want to make a change. And you got to get people excited about it. a plan that they didn't come up with, uh, and you have to be able to influence and motivate. And then you have to be good at like holding people accountable to, to getting this work done.
And a lot of times they don't want to do it. They don't want to change. They think they're doing fine. And so I think that that, that experience and doing that over and over again is a great leadership foundation.
Phil: Yeah, I can understand that. I've, I've been there when you have to influence people who don't. You have to work with you when you have no, um, compelling reason to drive them to do what you want them to do. You have to be a little bit creative and it builds a certain resilience, I guess, that you have that you can bring into it, bring into this role. And then now you're integrating a perspective of a salesperson and a marketing person.
When I first entered into the conversation about sales and marketing, I said, well, you know, people say sales and marketing [00:09:00] in the same breath. Why are they not integrated? Why are the, why is there a gap between them? Can you talk a little bit about how you pull that together using the, the skill base that you've developed?
Latane: The typical challenge that I see play out with sales and marketing is their perspectives are wildly different. Marketing, the work that marketing is doing is for six months, nine months, a year out. And so they can be crushing it, developing something that's going to hit and Nine months or 12 months. And that's very tough for a commercial leader. Who's like, I have to close the month out. What have you done this month to, to comprehend? And so I think it's like, like, there's this book, the five love languages. So it's like, like, there's like, you need to understand each other's love language. And, and typically it's on the marketer to be [00:10:00] more commercially oriented and be able to, I think, break down.
Hey. I'm really excited about this. I know you think it probably don't feel it's exciting right now. That's okay. Let me tell you about what is working that we did put in market that is happening this month and hitting this month. So it's just like helping, helping, uh, better communicate. And then I think that like, there is There's a need for alignment around pipeline. You know, one of the things that I've always done as a, as a CMO is carried a quota. I have a pipeline quota, you know, and Saima who runs marketing for us now has a pipeline quota. And so, you know, I'm doing our summary on the quarter right now and she either attained at a certain percent or didn't. It's very clear and measurable, um, the same way the sales team either hits an attainment goal or, or doesn't, or the renewals team hits [00:11:00] or doesn't.
And so just like getting that level of clarity, I think, um, is really important. And I think it also helps the marketing team. Make better decisions while their outlook is longer term. If they have that pipeline goal, they need to be thinking, well, do I really, is this going to help pipeline in nine months or not? Otherwise why do it?
Phil: You know, does that translate as well to the folks who are in success? Um, and I guess our success and renewals combined, or is it just about, um, engagement?
Latane: So we, our customer success team is ultimately held accountable for the renewal because that is sort of where the rubber meets the road on success. Soft metrics that are great leading indicators and there's hard metrics, right? So we just talked about marketing. A soft metric might be website visits, engagement, things like that. A hard metric is stage one and pipe and two pipeline, right? Similar for CS, a soft metric is, you know, do we have the renewal buying team [00:12:00] engaged? Uh, what does our product usage look like? Are they using the more sticky use cases? What's our MPS in this account? Soft metrics, but the hard metric, the rubber meets the road when they actually sign the renewal. And then the way they work with an account manager is, Um, the CSMs comp is 70 percent renewal, 30 percent upsell, and the account manager is 70 percent upsell, 30 percent retention.
So it's sort of like the inverse of that triangle. And then we try our best to have, for them to have similar books. So it's like a pod structure essentially, um, that, that, that they work in. What's really interesting is. We, we're a predictive analytics company, like that, that's what we sell. And so our pipeline and our sales are all geared towards these predictive models, incredibly sophisticated, you [00:13:00] know, being able to look at intent data and, and website data and competitive research and say, this account is ready and this account is a great account for you to sell to.
And so our whole model is like designed off this highly data driven like orchestrated approach. Then we get to CS and I started doing a ton of research on predictive models and because I'm like, okay, we need the same, that same level of sophistication on the CS side. You're going to die. After all of this research, I found that the number one indicator that someone is going to renew or not renew is they tell you. So I said, well, this is interesting. Maybe we just need to ask everybody.
Phil: And what does that do? I guess it seems to cut a lot of, um, a lot of effort out of the process or you're, you're optimizing how to do the ask. What did, what'd you learn?
Latane: Yeah, so we, we rolled out something called Just Ask and we trained every CSM on how to ask. Um, so, you know, think, go, go on your way back machine and think [00:14:00] about Sandler, I'll take a yes, I'll take a no, I won't take it, I'll think it over, if it's a yes, what's the decision making process, blah, blah, blah, if it's a no, why, what's the root cause. So we basically like trained them and role played on how to ask.
We had a call blitz, and in a span of three days, every single customer had to get called and we had to get to a yes or a no. And we trained the team that a no is okay. Because I think they weren't asking cause they were afraid of getting a no. And my whole thing is great. Now we know where we stand and we've got time and here's, and we implemented mutual success plans where we said, okay, no, great. Why? Well, I have a new boss and he doesn't really know what this is. Okay. What's the plan to talk to your new boss about this? Let you, right. So we were able to like really flush out the issues and just like you have, you know, a win plan. We have a mutual [00:15:00] success plan for every single account and, and we've made this like a repeatable part of our process where we're always checking in and just asking. But the reason I bring that up is sometimes the, the answer is much more simple than we make it sound.
Phil: You know, the thing that I was thinking about as you were talking was how do you share the insights amongst the different groups, right? If success is having that conversation and they get the yes or the no, how do I bring that back to marketing or to sales and to deliver additional insights that they can use in their, in their roles? Do you find that there's more cross pollination of ideas and information and iteration of process because of You're doing this as a team?
Latane: Yeah. So what was the, when we first rolled it out, it was, we made it really interactive and they would actually put their, we were talking earlier about Slack and hating Slack. On the one hand, I hate it. On the other hand, I love it because it's very transparent. And so [00:16:00] basically in our CSM channel, once they got a response, they would post it in Slack. And so the whole company could literally see. All of these responses coming in and why it was a yes and why it was a no. And that was just really eyeopening.
Um, and then we also do think, I mean, you know, we do more than just that because the other thing is the mutual success plan stores, you know, what's going on with that account. Um, you know, we use things like usage data to be able to detect if there's like changes in usage. So it's not just the just ask that gives us a lot of insights into customers. Um, But that's certainly one of them and as well as those mutual success plans, we actually do a lot of interviewing too. So I have a team that just does when we win a deal, when we lose a deal, you know, when a customer renews, when they decide not to renew, we, we, and every month we have this like dossier of, [00:17:00] um, interview data that we use as well.
Phil: That sounds about right. It sounds like, uh, you know, taking a page out of Lean Startup and doing customer development interviews and testing hypotheses and assumptions and always talking to customers. Um, so now that we have that context of how you guys are really doing that, maybe I'd like to shift directions a little bit to talk about, um, predictive pathways.
Um, how do we dive into strategies about, um, Driving predictable, uh, and profitable growth and maybe the resources that you're using to get there. So can we just start a little bit and we extend and say, how do you anticipate market trends and, and customer, customer needs? You're a data analytics company, you're always talking with customers, but when you're trying to look forward, how do you do that forward looking component?
Latane: One of the things that I, I do, or, and actually our, our CMO does now, or our head of marketing does is we bring every deal [00:18:00] that we won back into 6sense because 6sense gives you their full journey. It's not just the meetings that you had with them or the exchanges that you had. It shows like all their anonymous research. It shows what other websites they went to. It shows their top keywords and it's looking at the entire buying team. Okay. So we bring all of the deals that we won by segment back in. And that allows us to see what is the pattern? What does winning look like? You know, is it 23 people and 89 website visits? And these are the top pages that they visit. That's really interesting. And what that helps us do is it helps us then go and choreograph winning.
And what we're seeing in that data is I call it B2B inflation. Just like there's was inflation at the grocery store and milk was really expensive. What we're seeing is to win a deal is a lot harder now. You need a lot more people involved. There's a lot more anonymous activity that we're seeing. So more [00:19:00] website visits, you know, more content consumed, more competitive research, we're seeing it takes a lot more meetings. It takes a lot more outreach to actually get someone to accept a meeting. How do we adjust to that?
Cause no one's getting more head count, which is where the next Big bet that we made as a company and with our product, but also as consumers of our product, uh, we made a big bet on generative AI and actually creating like AI agents that are able to do a lot of the prospecting work now. So 20 percent of my pipeline now comes autonomously. It's through an agent. So the agent, you know, is able to look at the six cents prediction and say, this account is ready to buy. The agent can then go and get the right contact information, the agent can look at their historical activity, um, is trained on 6sense's value prop, our case studies, [00:20:00] can craft a great email, can reply to emails, and can actually, like, bant if, you know, for some of our inbound, and set a meeting up. And so, it's pretty remarkable.
Phil: That does sound pretty remarkable. It sounds like not only are you solving the problem about trying to figure out which part of the marketing budget is working, right? You know, that old marketing joke that says, well, 50 percent of my marketing is working. I just don't know which, which, which is 50%, right? So that you're actually finding those deals that are ready, the highest quality, the highest fit of success, but you're also eliminating some of the repetitive work to get people through that. The sticky parts of the funnel to the point where it's really worthwhile to talk to your team and the team is so much more, uh, more engaged.
Do you find that this is already leading towards better outcomes, like a better awareness of lifetime value or an easier renewal process or other things because of the [00:21:00] automation of the, of the process?
Latane: We have a premium brand. We want to provide a premium experience. And so, the more that I can allow my 6th Sense precious team members time to be spent preparing for a meeting, on the phone, you know, developing a highly custom demo. Doing those types of things versus just responding to inbound and booking meetings, like to me, that's, that's a huge win. Uh, so, so for us, it's all about how do we, again, optimize our team's time? Cause at the end of the day, like that's all, that's the only asset I really have is my team's time. And so how do I better optimize that?
And then on the CS side, it's more, I love this product because when you think about, you know, we sell account, you know, our category is account based marketing. That was our original category. And account based marketing was phenomenal [00:22:00] for things like intent, being able to see the dark funnel, being able to understand, you know, have more signals. And then it was all about reaching accounts through primarily an advertising channel. Again, great, but advertising, Phil, is the hardest in B2B to show direct correlation to ROI. And so what can happen is marketers can be reaching all these accounts and maybe even getting them to engage in, in content, but no one's reaching out to actually book a meeting.
And so there was all this waste, this like leakage, right? And so what the AI assistant does is it comes in and says, okay, great. So you've gotten these people to the website. They've done all this stuff. I'm going to actually go come in and book them. Um, because that's often where sales and marketing have the most friction is I call it the capture demand. That's like the dead zone, which is like sales wants to work opportunities. Marketing is creating demand, but who's like going and like [00:23:00] actually capturing that demand. Um, and that's where you can have, I think the most issues.
Phil: That makes a lot of sense. If you think about The product side and the marketing side, because I mean, marketing and product have to be looking at what am I, you said, get six, nine months out and drawing people in or understanding where product is going. So I know competitively what I should be building. How does it provide information, um, from that perspective?
Latane: And essentially what we're doing is we're tracking all these keywords. So we're saying these, these accounts are ideal for us. Like we've developed a predictive model that says, these are our ideal customers that we want to sell to. And then we can go and see, like, what keywords are they interested in? We have a tech, we have like technographic data too. We can see like, what other technology are they buying? And so then this allows us to see like the view of the market, right? What does the market say? And where is the market going? So then we can think about not just our message, but of [00:24:00] course our product too.
Phil: So if I'm hearing you right, from paying attention to, to digitally, what's going on in the marketplace, Who's buying what in a macro sense? What is this customer buying? You have a much better picture about them so you can anticipate they're going. If I chose this stack versus the other, this philosophy versus the other, then I know the sort of product I need to make that's compatible with this one versus that one. And it basically speed.
Latane: Correct.
Phil: Interesting. From predictable growth to the CRO role. Um, what does that, what does that mean for the CRO? It seems to me that you have to be pretty agile into shifting from these different, these different hats you're wearing, right? Shifting your brain to be understanding what the different people are thinking about and what their needs are and somehow being ahead of them and guiding them towards optimizing the process, which seems like a bit of a [00:25:00] mind boggling task, right? How do you, how do you digest that? How do you, how do you bucket that? I mean, is it?
Latane: Oh, you know, you're just kind of crazy all the time. I mean, I don't know. You want something done. You give it to a busy person is what I've always said. Like I, I, I do have a lot of energy, I suppose. And so that's. That's, that's part of it is just being energized and excited and not wanting to have one. You have to prioritize what you give a F about right now. And so there's like a constant, like prioritization in my mind of like, when am I going to go and drive and work on and the other people, they're fine. You know? Um, and so, and I think just being really clear with the team on like the, you know, these are the, these are the things that I'm. I'm driving and I'm our most important right now.
Phil: They sound like they're pretty essential for, for your success. It also sounds like this is a [00:26:00] bit more art than science at this point. As, as the, the role of the CRO or like proven practices in how to make this work just haven't been kind of distilled to something that we can, we can optimize yet. And I, and I often go back to different theories of leadership on this when I ask people, how do they think about moving forward? Like, I remember in the Navy, it was, there was an instruction for everything it seemed like.
Right? There were step by step process for all these different things, except where there weren't. And where there weren't, there was culture. It was use good judgment or lead by example, or do certain things that you just knew how to, how to operate in those areas where you didn't know exactly how to, how to operate. How do you tackle that? Or what sort of tips do you have for somebody who's entering into this space? So they might think about that balance between the, the control and the, and the culture, the art and the science of bringing this role to life. [00:27:00]
Latane: I mean, I think you need to be clear on like, this is, this is our plan, right? This is where we're going to grow. These are the most important numbers. I call them boom stats. Like these are our boom stats. Like this is what we're trying to hit guys and just be able to reinforce like over and over and over again. We have a very skilled workforce at 6sense, so it's giving people the autonomy to go and do the things that they think are the right things to do.
Um, I read a really good book called Team of Teams. And he, he talks about in that, that, um, book, A Shared Consciousness. And so for me, you know, I really try to say, guys, this is where we're at. Like, everybody share, like, let's get the point. Like, what's going on? Because I think a lot of times too, where you have friction and people over reacting as they don't have the shared consciousness and they're like, what are you doing over there?
It's like, well, let's share what happened. Would you have done the exact same thing? Yeah. Would have done the exact same thing. So [00:28:00] it's like the shared consciousness to me in a lot of ways is about like being, building trust between the teams and, and, and their judgment. So I try to do that like a bunch.
Phil: Yeah, I'm a big fan of Team of Teams. I've not met Stanley McChrystal, but, um, I've read the book and have kind of taught from it a little bit. And for those who aren't familiar, the concept is, there were all these elite teams that were operating in, in the, uh, during the Iraq war. And in certain environments, you had the Navy SEALs and the Rangers and the Delta Force and the, and PJs. All these different groups who were elite at what they did. But they were failing in their collective mission because they weren't communicating and they were just tripping over each other in a lot of ways on the battlefield. And you can see that in organizations when there are two or three parts of the organization trying to serve one client and the client, the customer, Has, has a view of you're one big entity.
Why are you touching me all these different ways? You're a little bit confused. So that art [00:29:00] of coordination, that art of communication is probably, probably critically essential in being able to have a big organization be as nimble and as focused and, and to digest the insights as a small one. Are there any other, um, Any other tools or practices that you use, and you mentioned Slack, for example, after your Blitz call. Um, any other tools that you guys like to use or practices to try and keep people on that same page where they really feel like they're part of a small company, even though you're dealing with this rapid growth?
Latane: Yeah, and remote, right? I mean, that's just kind of the nature of, even though we have hubs a lot, you know, you could work with someone all day every day and not ever see them for years. So this is another Slack thing for us is every customer has a Slack channel. That you can access anytime. But that is like the working group. Right? [00:30:00] So if I have a call with, you know, the CMO at one of our customers, then I go into the Slack channel. I say, Hey, this was the call. This is what happened. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Great. Um, and I can see everything that's gone on with that customer or if we're trying to. You know, close the renewal. It's like, here's where the renewal is. Here's what, and so it's just like, it avoids a lot of like one offs and checking in with people and who's done what it's like so easy to go in and just see, you know, and it's also really easy to see like the people really leading and, and doing extra and going the extra mile for the customer and those that aren't.
Phil: You bring up the S word, and before we transition to takeaways, I want to ask that question. Um, Slack sometimes can be, uh, it's a blessing and a curse, right? Slack used well can be exactly how you describe it, right? A great place for someone to get up to speed. on what's going on and, and operate with context with another company. Um, how, can you share [00:31:00] briefly how you got to that being, uh, effective? Because sometimes people are working between multiple platforms or people have preferences on ways to communicate or it's, you know, you have certain integration with your CRM, but certain things that not everybody needs to see. How, how did you come to the approach of using Slack in a way that allowed you guys to, you know, To bring that, that, um, transparency that you were seeking.
Latane: You know, what's interesting is I didn't like, we already had this huge Slack culture, so what was interesting is, I don't know, our preference would probably be log it in the CRM or in gong or whatever. And what I found was that like, that's having them go and do something else. And we still do like our forecasting and gong and next steps and medpick and And, and, you know, there's that, but the day to day quick, fast, like where it's all happening, the room where it's all [00:32:00] happening, so to speak is the Slack channel. And you're not going to put every single one of those bits and bobs, you know, into those other things. But like, we just had our end of quarter and I mean, updates are happening on deals every five minutes. Right. And, and you're not going to go and like, put that in the CRM, right. But it's easy to be like, Hey, okay, this is where it's at. Right. So, It just sort of happened naturally and then we said, okay, from now on, let's, let's do this for everything. Um, and it's been, you know, it's just makes it very efficient.
Phil: Sure, I can understand that and it seems like, um, the people buying into it and, um, formalizing something that was being successful is kind of a good takeaway for that. So I know we're, we could probably continue this conversation for some time, but we're running out of time. So before we let you go, two last questions for you. How do you think the CRO role and the revenue model will continue changing [00:33:00] business?
Latane: You know, I think that the right, if the right kind of people can like galvanize the team and pick up the, the thing with the CRO role is there's really no one who is great at all. That's just the reality. You know, someone who's great at sales might not be great at customer success. So again, I think the more you have that back to like the consulting type mindset and ability to like pick things up quickly and, and, and lead teams and, and galvanize around the customer. I think that will become more.
What it is versus I know this function really, really well, but you do need specialists in those functions too. So it's also like building great leaders in those pillars that can run their stuff. Right? I mean, you can't be a CRO and not have a super robust sales background without an amazing [00:34:00] head of sales, or you're going to be totally screwed. Same with marketing. If you don't have a marketing background, you best have a super strong head of marketing. Um, so I think it's also like, you know, just filling out your own strengths.
Phil: That makes a lot of sense. It's like, um, in putting together, we were talking about the Olympics before, and it sounds like, you know, if you're putting together a great swim team, or a great track team, or a great basketball team, you want to think about the competition you're going to meet. Right? The strengths of your team and your, and as well as your coaching staff, and the ability to kind of optimize your, your strengths with certain types of players who fill out the, the, the strategy or fill out the, how you're gonna meet with the competitive Um, and I'm very curious to see how the evolution of the CRO comes out because it seems like you have to be almost like a decathlete in some ways, really good at some things and good enough at the [00:35:00] others such that, you know, um, you can, you could finish the competition and maybe win as a, as a team.
So, um, thanks for sharing that. Um, last thing, just a, a simple, uh, simple pitch. Can you tell us where can people find you, or is there anything we should plug before you go? I, I know you have a, a book, um, that I'm curious to get my hands on. Um, anything else you want to talk about in terms of, uh, Uh, projects or resources that you think would be helpful or for people who want to connect with you and more personally?
Latane: Yeah. Um, connect with me on LinkedIn for sure. Uh, my book or the book that we, we wrote was, is no forms, no spam, no cold calls. And it's all about using data and insights to, to efficiently and effectively grow revenue, but do it in a really customer friendly way. Uh, which is really passionate for me. So, um, check it out. All the money goes to charity. So love to connect with you that way. We also have a B2B [00:36:00] CMO community. So if you are a CMO and you're listening to this, which I know is not the audience, but maybe if you're a CRO and your head of marketing needs a community of like amazing CMOs and suggest that we'd love to have, it's about 2,000 B2B CMOs, and we cover the most relevant topics every week. Um, and then love for you to check out 6sense. It's, it's been the foundation to our own growth story, and we've helped a ton of customers with things like, you know, the insights that I talked about, predictive analytics, account based marketing, and now this, you know, gen, these, these sales agents, which are really, uh, pretty, uh, Pretty amazing. So love for people to check those out too.
Phil: Well, thanks for sharing those resources. It's an interesting time to be in, in marketing and in CRO, the CRO space. So really appreciate you, um, sharing your insights at a time where. There's a lot of, a lot of amazing stuff going on. So, um, and thank you so much for [00:37:00] joining us today. And thank you listeners for tuning in to another episode of Revenue Reinvention. You can watch these episodes on YouTube, find us on at Revenue Reinvention, where you find your podcasts and subscribing to your favorite platform. We'll see you next time. Thanks so much and have a great day.
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