Michele Shepard, Chief Revenue Officer at Emburse, shares her approach to 'failing fast,' advice for predicting future revenue streams, the importance of employee experience in revenue lifecycle management, and harnessing AI in business processes.
Michele Shepard, Chief Revenue Officer at Emburse, brings over 25 years of experience driving record-setting growth and scale, and shares her journey from strategic advisor and founder to current CRO.
This episode covers Michele's approach to 'failing fast,' predicting future revenue streams, the importance of employee experience in revenue lifecycle management, and harnessing AI in business processes.
About the Guest:
With over 25 years of experience, Michele Shepard, Chief Revenue Officer at Emburse, has led companies to record-setting revenue growth and scale with a passion for developing forward-thinking customer and employee engagement strategies across sales, marketing, and customer success. Michele previously served as the Chief Commercial Officer at Paya (now Nuvei Corporation), a prominent integrated payment solutions provider. Before Paya, she was the Chief Revenue Officer at Insurity and Vertafore, where she played a pivotal role in implementing go-to-market plans that accelerated market expansion, achieved operational improvement, and drove profitable growth. In addition to her corporate leadership roles, Michele has held several board and strategic advisory positions in the payments, fintech, and non-profit education and healthcare sectors, where she contributed to strategic planning and achieved notable results.
Guest Highlights:
“Building relationships matter—understanding not only the goals but the pain points of a particular company and going deeper into the persona, our ideal customer profile, and what's important to them.”
“ Failing fast means that when we've got it wrong, we're not going to continue down the path just to continue down the path… Maybe even stop some of the things that we are doing so that we can prioritize the things that are actually going to make us successful.”
“Where we've been super successful is focused on key verticals, whether it's legal, healthcare, professional services, or manufacturing—but we are finding if we go more broadly in our marketing and in our segmentation, we get less results.”
Episode Timestamps:
*(02:00) - Innovative Strategies and Partnership
*(06:20) - Fail Fast: Lessons in Innovation
*(11:05) - Predictive Pathways and Revenue Strategies
*(16:05) - Employee Experience and Revenue Lifecycle Management
*(24:50) - AI and Technology in Revenue Management
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About Accenture
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.
About Conga
Conga crushes complexity in an increasingly complex world. With our Revenue Lifecycle Management solution, we transform each company’s unique complexities for order configuration, execution, fulfillment, and contract renewal processes with a unified data model that adapts to ever-changing business requirements and aligns the understanding and efforts of every team. Our approach is grounded in the Conga Way, a framework of entrepreneurial spirit and achieving together to champion our 11,000+ customers. We’re committed to our customers and to removing complexity in an increasingly complex world. Our solutions quickly adapt to changing business models so you can normalize your revenue management processes.
Conga has global operations across North America, Europe, and Asia. Learn more at conga.com or follow Conga on Twitter: @congahq.
Phil: [00:00:00] Welcome to Revenue Reinvention, the podcast where we get real about transforming business for predictable success. On today's episode, we talk with Michele Shepard, the Chief Revenue Officer at Emburse. With 25 years of experience driving record setting growth and scale, including founding a company, Michelle brings invaluable insights to her role as CRO. In this episode, we discuss what it means to fail fast as CRO, how Michelle predicts future revenue streams, the role of employee experience in revenue lifecycle management, and much, much more. Let's dive in. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to Revenue Reinvention. Thanks for being here. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, founder of ThruLine Networks. I'm here with Michele Shepard, Chief Revenue Officer at Embers. Thanks for joining us today, Michele. How are you?
Michele: Very well, thanks for having me, Phil.
Phil: Glad to have you and glad to learn a lot from your experience. Let me tell you, looking forward to this [00:01:00] one. So can you tell us a bit about Imbers and what you oversee as Chief Revenue Officer there?
Michele: Sure. Imbers is a leading provider of expense and travel. management, including accounts payable and automation solutions. We are a leading provider in global perspective, over 120 countries, 170 different currencies and process over 90 billion of spend globally. My role as CRO, I'm responsible for sales, for marketing, for solution consulting, for revenue operations, and our strategic partnerships.
Phil: Sounds like a great space and a great role. Now, I know a couple companies that operate in this space, and it seems like it might be something that's a little bit crowded, a little bit competitive, because there are a lot of organizations that have these challenges and are looking for these solutions to get out there.Can you talk a little bit about what Burris does and how they differ a little bit [00:02:00] from the competition?
Michele: So we went on a journey to invest in best in class solutions for all segments of the market, both from a size perspective, a geographical perspective, and a vertical perspective. And bringing all of those pieces together to do really three things: to innovate in a market that is stagnant. Where there hasn't been much innovation. So we were the first to actually bring mobile app capabilities for travel and expense. The first to bring AI and reporting capabilities, as an example. Focused on partnerships, an open ecosystem of partnerships — partnerships with our customers, through customer advisory boards, through communities, through strategic advisory executive boards as well. In addition to that, partnerships with our partners. Integration partners such as ERP partners, HRIS system partners, partners that are tangential and really critical to [00:03:00] integrate with, to have that end to end experience both for the end user, for the company, and for the finance teams.
Other examples are product partners where we'll start to integrate capabilities that are emerging, capabilities like AI, capabilities that are in, you know, travel management consulting. Capabilities that, you know, are third party data providers, as examples. And then last but not least, we say future proof. And what we really mean is delivery. Because we've established a more modern platform that's configurable, that's scalable, we can deliver on that promise. We're innovating, we're delivering those innovations, we're delivering on the promise.
Phil: Well, thank you for that context. I want to ask one more question about the company and like the sweet spot of the company before we dig into a little bit more about you. Like, we definitely want to, I think, explore Partnerships and partnership strategy because a lot of our conversations have been very internally focused. And if there's [00:04:00] a, if there's ability to tie your internal operations execution to some of the key partnerships and innovations you're doing, I'd love to get there. But just before we wrap up this section, can you talk a little about what's the sweet spot? For your company, what is a perfect like size of company or target company?
Michele: Yeah, so we serve, you know, small companies, you know, companies anywhere from, you know, zero to 200 employees to companies that are 20, 000 employees or more. So we do have capabilities that serve those markets for small, mid sized companies. and large global multinational enterprises.
Phil: Okay. So you're serving a breadth of needs for companies in a specific function and building all this to fit. And that's really important for us to understand to put it in context for our listeners. So let's dip, dig in a little bit more about your background. In your career, you've been a CRO, then a strategic advisor, and even a founder of an [00:05:00] interesting startup. And now you're back in the seat as a CRO. Can you tell me a little bit about how the advising experience and the founder experience changed your approach from the first CRO opportunity to the current one?
Michele: My experience as a strategic advisor and founder definitely deepened my approach to the CRO role, bringing a more strategic, customer focused, data driven mindset to the position. I'm really intentional about aligning teams cross functionally, scaling systems, maintaining resilience through the inevitable, you know, ups and downs of a small business and a growing business, a scaling business. In my current role, you know, I'm putting those capabilities, those strategies to action with the team. But being that, you know, outside person looking in really gave me a different perspective that I think made me a stronger CRO. Making decisions faster, failing fast. In my current [00:06:00] role, I'm more deliberate about aligning revenue generation efforts with the company's broader vision as a result, ensuring that sales, marketing, customer success product. Uh, our partnerships are focused not only on hitting the quarterly numbers, but working towards sustainable company growth.
Phil: So let's dive down that into that a little bit. A lot of times when we talk about failing fast, people are talking about products in particular, right? They're talking about experimenting with products and things like that. As a CRO, what does it mean to you to fail fast?
Michele: CRO for me to fail fast means that we've done our hypothesis, right? We've got it 75 percent there. We've done the research. We've done the analysis. Whether it's, you know, bringing a new product to market where we've encouraged input from customers, from the marketplace, potentially, sometimes even our own internal collaboration where we have domain experts. We'll get 75 percent there, but until we bring it to market, we [00:07:00] really don't have the feedback to perfect that. So perfecting that over time is what really creates the innovation in a marketplace. Failing fast, you know, means that when we've got it wrong, right, we're not going to continue down the path just to continue down the path.
We're going to iterate. We're going to make adjustments, make improvements, and maybe even stop some of the things that we are doing so that we can prioritize the things that are actually going to make us successful.
Phil: People love to hear the The strategy and the thought behind it, the analytics are super, but stories often really help cement it. Do you have any examples that you can share of a story of failing fast that's helped you to succeed in a different direction or confirm a hypothesis for the business that really made a difference for you?
Michele: I was bringing a new capability to market. The idea came from an acquisition that we made at another company that I was at. And we decided that capability could be applied to a [00:08:00] different market. And in doing that, we seem to have all the answers, right? It wasn't, you know, invention, it was innovation. And we were re architecting the system to kind of meet the requirements technically of what we were doing in a different market.
And as we did that, we got a lot of great feedback from customers. We had some early adopters, and we thought we're ready to forecast, we're ready to go to market, we're ready to brand, we're ready to, you know, bring in all those leads. And in our first initial, uh, implementations, what we realized was that our implementation and delivery teams hadn't really been trained on the new market. They were following the old pattern of the previous market, So we had, you know, some trouble in the beginning. So we did a timeout, we went back, we trained, you know, the entire delivery team, we brought all the teams together cross functionally, and we restarted. And we restarted, you know, [00:09:00] going from zero to in the first three years, adding an additional hundred million in a revenue stream.
Phil: Wow, that's a significant start from zero to a hundred million.
Michele: And a little failure in between.
Phil: And a little failure in between. A lot of times people are afraid of putting things out there at 75, 80, 85 percent. They're afraid of going into new markets and they're afraid of making the adjustments because they say everybody's gonna crucify me for this. Were there any surprises that you gained from that experience Confirm or deny that fear that people have?
Michele: Oh, I definitely had fear. Little fears good. I'm not a little nervous. Are you really that serious? Right? I'd say the fear was more of, wow, this isn't working. I didn't make the customer happy. What am I going to do? But my mind, you know, quickly turns to, you know, what do we have to do to come together to fix it? How are we going to solve the problem? And how are we going to get to a better place? So in the end, a little bit of nerves kind of [00:10:00] gets you motivated and energized to To make it work.
Phil: And that seems like a way to rally your team a little bit together to say, Hey, we're going to do this for the customer. What about on the customer side? Did you find that the customers that you had poor experiences with early, was it, was it a bit of a learning experience or could you actually go back to them and reclaim their business after you had fixed some things? We
Michele: reclaimed. We reclaimed. I mean, we went as far as to, you know, stand behind people and really understand their processes with our delivery team. Uh, engaging with them in a more intimate way where we really understood their business. And I think making that investment in them gave us the opportunity to have that second chance.
Phil: That sounds amazing. So it sounds like the failure is not only an opportunity to rally your internal organization, but also to go back out to, to clients and renew the promise and show the integrity of the organization and really go back and serve their needs. That's cool. I'm so curious about if, how sticky those [00:11:00] clients become or whichever, but maybe we can circle back because right now this is a really good segment, segue into our predictive pathway segment. We want to talk about. how you need multifaceted business and growth strategies, and how not only do you experiment with them, but how do you actually get into more predictive pathways.
In the example you shared, there was an expectation of similarities, but there were some things that were maybe a little bit overlooked or that were just, you don't know until you actually deal with them to figure out how people operate differently. So for you, if you're In a fast moving industry, what sort of methodologies are you using to stay ahead of the curve and predict future revenue streams?
Michele: So I think, you know, it all starts with really understanding your target market, not just your addressable market. Right, really understanding what are the opportunities, needs, pain in the industry for your customers and for your prospective customers. So the first step really is to develop a [00:12:00] heat map, a white space analysis, and a green field analysis to understand what you're going to go after, what you're going to target, and then to make sure that Once you've established that, that you put some tools in place to continue to perfect your understanding and to understand what, you know, their intent is, understand what their interests are, understand how they react to things they may not know about.
So that's step one. I think step two is then putting the infrastructure around that. How do you organize around that? How do you segment? How do you create territories? How do you bring the right people with the right skills in the right seats? To capitalize on that opportunity. So that's second. The third is, you know, process and tools. Making sure that we have the internal processes across the entire, you know, customer life cycle, which I refer to as I love referring to it this way It's really the employee experience in addition to the customer [00:13:00] experience. And I'd love to draw this circle for everybody as we go through the year.
Establishing awareness, engaging the customer in discovery, selling to the customer, right? Implementing the customer, maintaining the customer, supporting the customer, and then finding new opportunities to engage with them again. We're also handshaking along the way through different functions and different departments in the same life cycle, right? So those processes are so important as much internally as they are Externally. Externally, you know, we use a lot of different tools that really help us understand where we are in the sales process or the customer life cycle. And that gives us some good intelligence to move more effectively. Not only faster, I think it's more effectively that really matters.
And then last but not least, measure. Let's keep measuring, let's look at, you know, where we're successful and keep doing more. Let's look at, you know, where we might not be so successful and really understand, you [00:14:00] know, what are the things that we need to do to improve.
Phil: That sounds awesome. I love those four steps and I think they're going to be really helpful. A couple clarifying questions. When you talk about target market, I know some people speak, especially early stage companies will speak in terms of TAM, SAM, SOM, right? So I'm thinking that the target market is that, like. service attainable market, the really, the smaller focus one that you might grow out as you grow more, more mature. Is that fair?
Michele: Yeah, I would say we've, we have maturity in a number of key verticals. The foundation of the company was really in the legal space, which is probably the most complex, really, when you think about how expenses managed, billables managed, is similar to like professional services or, you know, management consulting firms. So that was our origin. And if you can do the hard stuff first, right, the rest comes a little bit easier. So, I would say like where we've been super successful is actually focused on key verticals, whether [00:15:00] it's legal, healthcare, professional services, manufacturing, we've done a lot of work in finance and sure tech is another great vertical for us, but we are finding if we go, go more broadly in our marketing and in our segmentation.
We get less results. So as we get better and better at the vertical marketing, we're getting better at organizing that way. We're establishing a lot of domain expertise, expertise, and we're improving our results. And then we can add the next one and the next one and the next one, because really our capability can be, Bought by any vertical.
Phil: Sure, of course. It's just are you able to speak their language? Are you able to operate the way that they operate inside of their their business? Are you able to adjust the platform so that it seems natural and comfortable for them to get on it? And this works if we're talking about the revenue lifecycle management. Again, this works on two parts. I mean, that first part is that great employee [00:16:00] experiments experience. And the second part is that expressing it across the key verticals. So if we start. On the employee experience side, can you describe a little bit about what a great employee experience unlocks as you're entering into such a complex environment?
Michele: It unlocks like one plus one to equal five and it enables everyone to work together toward a common goal to really understand how their roles, their responsibilities contribute to, you know, the greater mission, the greater vision, but at the same time makes their jobs easier and makes it a fun place to work. If there's not constant friction and conflict because there's lack of clarity, understanding, collaboration, um, if you have all those things in place, even when things get tough, uh, you're more unable to, you know, to adjust.
Phil: Sure. And then as, as you extend [00:17:00] that to where you're thinking about the revenue life cycle management, I'm thinking, okay, the revenue life cycle of a law firm is probably very different than the revenue life cycle of a manufacturing firm, right? Spaces I know a little bit about, right? But you may not necessarily want to put different teams across different verticals or have too much capacity in terms of people or processes and such that are duplicated, they should be somewhat seamless between them. So can you talk a little bit about how you manage the people across the different verticals so that you can have a good picture of how to execute and how to balance the life cycle into itself?
Michele: Yeah, that's a really good question. And so in addition to the, to people, we're also creating these kind of You know, small centers of excellence, I'll call them where we're not only establishing domain expertise [00:18:00] and the front office, but the back office, right? Our delivery teams are learning an industry. They're learning the language. We're partnering with not only your kind of horizontal ERPs, but even many of them have vertical teams, right? If you're dealing with Sage or NetSuite, as an example, we're But we also work with vertical ERPs and vertical HRIS systems.
Elite, as an example, in the legal space, Ellucian in the higher education space, Omnia, HRIS, Workday, Workforce, I mean, Dayforce, etc. So these little like centers of excellence or ecosystems in these specific verticals. You know, internal for us, but they're also external, right? We're also leveraging partnerships to continue to develop that expertise and build those relationships in those specific industries.
Phil: How does that impact the revenue or the balancing of, uh, of [00:19:00] your, of your revenue? Um, so lifecycle management, I think. Legal, legal teams are probably going to be busy in the cycles of their industry. They're probably going to, I know that they're going to do their billing in a certain way, but I don't know how that's going to tie to revenue for something like the services that you guys are providing. Right. But if I'm thinking about a CPG business, for example, that might be much more cyclical in times of when people purchase in bigger amounts. So does it matter, like, how does it matter to manage the life cycle? The revenue life cycle for your business by leveraging the centers of excellence to, to drive that. Are they the drivers of it or are they just influencers of it?
Michele: Yeah. So I think, you know, there's always some, you know, geographical dynamic in addition to the vertical dynamic, sometimes, you know, it could be economic, right. Climate, et cetera, depending on, you know, the size of the company, financial situation.[00:20:00] So it's really important that, you know, we are aware of those things and we use a lot of different tools and ask a lot of the questions to make sure that, you know, what we are researching and the data that we are getting, we're validating that, we're constantly validating that, but we're not just starting from scratch, right?
We're using the tools that will tell us, you know, what is the intent? Um, What are, you know, the dynamics for this particular customer prospect or industry? And then how do we build that playbook? How do we build that playbook to help, you know, unleash the capability that we can provide to them? And at the end of the day, you know, as a revenue leader, I probably carry the biggest T and E budget in the company, in every company I've been in.
So when I think about how I want to be more predictable, I want it to be easier for my people when they're in the field to, you know, do their [00:21:00] expenses or plan their travel or Be with their customers. I don't want them spending three or four hours to do it I don't want them waiting some of them to the end of the year because it's just a big pain in the you know What so, you know, I we're kind of like drinking our own champagne here making it easier They snap a picture it populates, you know the application They're not waiting to go home and spend three hours on an expense report because they took a trip.
So, you know, that's just one, you know, example of, you know, drinking our own champagne, but it's data and insights that helps me manage our forecast, our budget, our predictability, the cost of sale. All of that data that I get from my own system can tell me, am I spending the right amount of time, the right investment in the right segments, right verticals, right areas?
Do some segments cost more than others? Why? So there's a lot of [00:22:00] analytics in addition to the traditional things that we leverage for marketing and for sales that our own systems can provide us.
Phil: Sure, I mean, I would expect the more recent the data, the more helpful it is, right? I mean, I've lived, lived that experience in running a field service team for a manufacturing company when we had 30 people out in the field and waiting for expense reports and the stacks come in. It's a, it's, it's a nightmare. And the delay in getting information about what's going on. Gives you limited ability to, um, to make decisions in real time or close as possible to a problem as you might identify, right? Now the manager might see it, but the user is the challenge. I'm curious how it ripples back, or if it does at all, into the revenue for the company.
Mind by that, I mean, if like, if I give it to the attorneys, they're like, great, I'm going to get more time for billable hours. I'm going to see the value in that. I'm jumping right on it, right? If I see that in, in a manufacturing environment, the field service environment, there is a potential [00:23:00] conflict, right? The field service rep might want to, stay out longer. They might say, Hey, you know what? I do this all the time. I'm so used to this. They have, they don't necessarily tithe, see the benefit of using the solution to improve the metrics back to the company. And I don't know if you're billing Um, seat based or if you're billing by some other means, but with the changes that are coming and also some of them that are driven by AI, that friction between the user and the manager could be a significant impediment to closing sales, to extracting value, and ultimately to revenue for your company.
Michele: Field services illustration and the potential what you would call maybe friction, but at the end of the day, It's something they have to do. And if we can make it easier, more user friendly, to plan the trip, to manage the trip, to expense the trip, and most importantly, get reimbursed for the trip, [00:24:00] that's incentive.
Phil: Right. I want to give them carrots, not sticks, though. Right.
Michele: Yes. Yes. Now, the sticks come with all the auditing capabilities that we have, right, that guide the user to follow policy, compliance, compliance. You know, to make sure that we're capturing the data from those receipts and populating the forms automatically so that we minimize human error or we minimize, you know, you know, compromising, right? Sure. The system. So I think that there are a lot of ways that technology can incentivize regardless of the potential friction, incentivize employees to do the right thing and in return, get You know, better results for them, too.
Phil: Absolutely. So, you've talked a little bit about tools, and we've danced a little bit around AI, but I want to jump into it a little bit. There's been a [00:25:00] decent amount of automation that's been helping with these solutions in the past, but the recent AI boom is probably poised to change a lot of that. Can you talk a little bit about how you've seen AI impact the process and how you anticipate it impacting the process, both in what it can do and what it can't do?
Michele: You know, I think, you know, many companies are using a lot of the, you know, tried and true tools in the marketplace, everything from Salesforce, Marketo, demand based. But now that, you know, AI has become more prominent, more reliable, the capabilities are just amazing. I mean, Pipeline predicts scores with demand based, with machine learning. We actually use that to develop our Greenfield analysis. So in 2025, we're ready to go. We're able to see not only, you know, where our vertical opportunities are, but what the intent score is by looking at, you know, [00:26:00] dozens and dozens of data points. We also instituted a new one. It's a demo capability. And it essentially allows us to customize a demo for a specific customers, a specific prospect.
And through this pre recorded talk tracks, they go back and we can see where they clicked, what they were interested in, where they spent the most time. Things like that become super helpful. But at the end of the day, the tools are really a way for us to get smarter, faster, more prepared, more productive for our customers.
Microsoft Mechanics www. microsoft. com Because our customers and prospects are using AI and they're using, you know, all of the research and search that they have access to as well. So applying that kind of human, I call it like you're opening up new capacity in your brain because you don't have to do all this busy work.
So like you only use 30 percent of our brain, maybe we'll get to 40 percent now, right? We can [00:27:00] spend time on the things that are really going to make a difference because relationships do matter. Building relationships matter, understanding not only, you know, the goals, the pain points of a particular company, but going deeper into the persona, you know, our ideal customer profile, what's important to them, how are we going to make them successful, or how are Are some examples, you know, so building relationships is something that is going to require, you know, human intervention, seeing how people emotionally react to an interface isn't something that, you know, AI is capable of doing yet.
So there's a lot of things that we can now spend more time on with our customers and prospects, because we've got all these great tools, information and research at our fingertips.
Phil: So that makes a whole lot of sense and I'm tempted to kind of double click into that a little bit. I understand how it helps your team at a high level and love hearing the Open up unused capacity piece. What level does this go [00:28:00] into your team? And how does it change your team? Like, is this something that's used by your centers of excellence to get another layer of expertise and insight that they can work from? Or is it something that's used in teams that already existed? to, to spend more time or get deeper into identifying client relationships.
Like, how has it changed the operations and maybe even some of the roles of the people on the team because of this new capability, because of this new ability to really focus on people?
Michele: The way that I find it most effective is you put the right tools, the right phases of the life cycle. So, you know, it starts with creating awareness. And all the, you know, marketing tools and AI capability out there to better understand where our strongest opportunities are. And how do we cultivate those opportunities in a way that gets them interested. The tools that help us better [00:29:00] engage, you know, with our customers, with our prospects, because we have deeper knowledge of their company's pain, their company's opportunities, their company's goals, and the people that are managing all of that, right?
We get deeper into understanding what's important to them, you know, and, and even when we're supporting and maintaining our customers, we have tools that help us understand usability, adoption, interests, what are they using most. What aren't they using? Why? Does it require education? Do we need to do more enablement?
Do we need to do more training? You know, so applying the right tools at the right time, I think is critical. I think that's an important piece to taking an inventory, a fresh inventory every year. We just did that this month, looking into 2025. What tools aren't we using? What tools are getting, delivering the most return on investment for us?
I'm really measuring that return on investment. What tools should we be using [00:30:00] that, you know, require more enablement? Or what tools are out there, capabilities are out there that we just haven't yet, you know, looked at and that we should take a look at?
Phil: So don't analyze. But do build a plan, identify tools, learn and iterate as you go, but always kind of keep ahead on a swivel for opportunities to create value both internally for your teams and externally for your, for your customers. Which, that makes a lot of sense. It also seems to imply that you, as the revenue leader, need to be pretty agile. In terms of innovating, launching new models, and adjusting with your teams. Can you talk a little bit about the required flexibility of the revenue leader in this context?
Michele: Yeah, I mean for sure. I'm wearing a lot of hats and it's probably why I love the job because I can see the full picture and when you see the full picture and you have the deeper understanding of what [00:31:00] it takes internally and externally. How the marketplace reacts externally. You can put the data points together. You can figure out the patterns.
You can make a difference not only for the teams that you're responsible for, but the teams that you partner with on a day to day basis. And I think at the end of the day, you know, making sure that you have a deeper understanding of all that it encompasses to deliver on this client lifecycle management or to deliver on your employee lifetime value. I call it client lifetime value, employee lifetime value is a critical part of the job.
Phil: We hear that consistently, right? CROs need to see everything, need to touch everything, need to influence everything. In your experience, can you talk a little bit about some of the strengths or some of the weaknesses that you've had? Is there anything like that, those challenges you see people struggle with that you'd like to share?
Michele: I think, you know, challenges when you have, [00:32:00] uh, like you're highly driven and your expectations are high and you're, you're moving fast, you're agile, and you see this big picture. It's so important to stop and look at, you know, each step in the process.
And when I say step in the process, I mean, sometimes I even mean people and functions and to have some empathy for that particular area and understand that maybe they can't move as fast. Or maybe there are certain challenges that. You're not aware of because you're not in their function every single day or in their seat every single day.
So asking questions to your people. You know, I do these eight by eights across the company where I bring eight people together across eight different areas. And sometimes they're meeting each other for the first time, which is pretty fun and interesting. And I get to know them, I ask them about their hobbies, I've had hip hop singers, I've had guitar players, artists, you name it, athletes, [00:33:00] but I also ask them what's working and where are there opportunities to improve.
And that helps me keep kind of my finger on the pulse and makes me better because I think I realized is that, you know, as you're First put into a leadership role or a manager role. It's usually because you were great at something, right? You get promoted, but then you don't always, sometimes you overlook what might be to your point, a weakness.
So for me, you know, reflecting. Almost every day, you know, how could I have done something different? How could I have said it differently? And how can I be, you know, more open to asking all these questions along the way so that I really understand, not just the life cycle or the lifetime value, but to understand what that means for, you know, each of the individuals and groups that contribute to success, because it's never one person, right?
It takes a team to be successful. [00:34:00] So I would say, you know, that's an area that I've worked on and developed and continue to try to get better. Strengths, I think, you know, at a, I guess an early stage, I always saw patterns and I had, you know, a great interest in and curiosity in technology and the creativity of technology.
So my first job, actually, I was a network engineer. I took a test. And the company, with this company, and they said, I was an early stage professional. You're going into the engineering department. I was, I wanted to go to marketing. I was like, no, you got it wrong. This is somebody else's test. But off I went, they said, Oh no, we got it right.
It was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It fine tuned some way that my brain processes and I got better at it. And what it [00:35:00] did also is it actually introduced me to sales because I was I may not have been the best engineer, but I was very good with customers and I was very good at solving problems.
And as a result, it was the sales people would always ask for me on their deals, right? And eventually that led me to sales leadership and my journey to be, you know, a CRO. So I think seeing those patterns, partnering with technology, whether it's dev, I will get in with the developers. I will sit down with the, you know, product management leaders, product marketing.
And I will make sure that my people are collaborating, right? And that collaboration I think makes a big difference. And that's probably one of my biggest strengths.
Phil: Super. That's really great to hear. So, I mean, for people who might have started in what they think was a suboptimal job or suboptimal role, what I heard here is your, you know, the key point, the key takeaway, experiences that can evolve your strengths can come in unexpected ways and lead to unexpected positive [00:36:00] outcomes, right?
And then if I go back to what you're talking about in terms of talking with people, I love this concept of the eight by eight because it gives you that. 360 degree view and the ability of people to understand how they work together and how they impact the outcome of the business as a whole, which a lot of people don't see.
Now we only have a few minutes left, but I want to get to like two other questions because one extends directly from that in terms of taking the lesson from the eight by eight, for example, and extending it or from your pattern recognition and extending it, particularly to something that I think is challenging, pricing, packaging, cross selling, and I bet you could spend a lot of time on this, but just kind of briefly, can you talk about some things that you're seeing on the cutting edge of those areas that help you unlock some of the value that you want to deliver to customers?
Michele: Yeah. I mean, from a very early stage, I've always looked at pricing and, you [00:37:00] know, cost benefit. How do you derive the return on investment? I You know, for what your customer or prospect or I'm investing in, right? I invest in tons of technology. So I think, you know, establishing an ROI methodology is super important for buyer clarity and the impact that, you know, that tool or that project or that capability can have on the company, the company's bottom line, right?
Whether it's capacity or it's just true hard dollar savings in terms of models. You know, I've seen so many different pricing models over the years. You know, I've seen all the transactional models implemented, tiered pricing models, which can create, you know, predictability as companies grow, or maybe they carve out or shrink.
You know, subscription models are super important, even role based [00:38:00] models, right? I found a lot of value in that. Because then you can really get into the core of, you know, What that user needs, what that user's thinking, how that user adopts and learns. So subscription models, and we call it an, you know, an active user model here at Imbers, makes a big difference because it's more predictable if you have a good understanding of your employee population and, you know, how many expense reports they're doing.
You want to encourage them to do it faster, quicker, smarter. They want to get reimbursed and you want. visibility right into your budget. And, you know, we regularly in all my roles in all the companies that I've worked for regularly, you know, try to understand the pricing elasticity, right? Test different pricing strategies to identify the right balance, the balance between value and volume, and using that data for different customer segments, right? [00:39:00] To engage in, you know, different. Uh, packaging or pricing strategies.
Phil: There's a lot to consider in these models, and there's a lot to consider on the levers to pull, and I can only imagine that they're going to get a little more confusing as AI and different tools give people a lot more information than they wanted, and a lot more data than they wanted, but I'm sure they'll appreciate it. Anything that makes their lives a little bit easier, like your solutions. So, I know we're just about out of time, so before you go, is there anything you'd like to plug or talk about that you guys are working on and can you tell people where to find you if they wanted to reach out for more information?
Michele: Sure. So please connect with me on LinkedIn. It's Michelle with 1L, Shepard with 1P and no H. Um, uh, call out. We are growing. We are growing. We are hiring across all GTM functions. So check out our job postings. Um, and then last but not least, if you're [00:40:00] using an inflexible legacy travel and expense system, it's time to check out Embers.
Phil: There you go. Yeah, I couldn't imagine people building something in house these days or dealing with something that was big and cumbersome, but so I hope more people do check you out. And thank you so much, Michelle, for joining us today. And thank you listeners for tuning in to another episode of Revenue Reinvention. You can also watch these episodes on YouTube. Find us at Revenue Reinvention there, and you can also subscribe on your favorite platform. Until then, we'll see you next time. Thanks so much.
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