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#121 How to Run a Global RevOps Org – with Dan Jiao, VP RevOps at Aircall

36m 17s

#121 How to Run a Global RevOps Org – with Dan Jiao, VP RevOps at Aircall

This episode of the RevOps Lab podcast features Dan Jiao, VP of Revenue Operations at Aircall, discussing the shift from a global functional go-to-market model to a regional GM model. Dan explains that this transition typically makes sense around $150–200M ARR when distinct regional business units each generate $20–30M and warrant localized ownership of the full P&L. He describes how Aircall organized around a global small business unit plus Americas, EMEA, and APAC regional GMs, each owning the complete funnel from BDRs through account management and renewals. A central theme is RevOps as a global center of excellence that defines standards for segmentation, territory design, account prioritization, capacity modeling, and forecasting, while embedding regional business partners with GMs to diagnose gaps and drive adoption of global standards. Dan emphasizes co-designing territory and scoring models with GMs and frontline leaders, calibrating thresholds regionally, and using a feedback loop to refine models. He discusses capacity planning as a collaborative effort with finance, HR, and GMs, where RevOps acts as a neutral referee. The conversation also covers global sales process standards versus regional nuances in deal inspection, the importance of buyer-verified exit criteria, and best practice sharing across regions. Dan recommends the book "Switch" for managing the people side of change.

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Speaker 1Welcome to the RedOps Lab, a podcast exploring the art and science of revenue operations. To find more episodes and resources on scaling your revenue engine, visit getweflow.com slash RedOps. We know, we know, there are plenty of AI note-takers out there. But there's only one purposely built for Salesforce, and that is WeFlow. WeFlow doesn't just record, transcribe, and summarize your meetings. It also suggests Salesforce field updates for Metics, Spice, Next Steps, or any other custom framework that you want to implement. This works across any of your standard or custom objects and across all field types like multi-pick list, text, number, and currency fields. WeFlow also writes AI-based follow-up emails, saving your reps even more time. And the AI coach analyzes recordings to help your reps run better sales meetings. And the best part? WeFlow's real-time two-way Salesforce integration works out of the box. No manual field mapping, no complex setup. You'll be up and running in 30 minutes, and you benefit from our great support that helps you customize the prompts based on your business requirements. If you want to see why hundreds of your RevOps peers use WeFlow to get better Salesforce data and rep productivity, just go to getweflow.com to get your free trial today.
Speaker 2Hello, and welcome to another episode of the RevOps Lab podcast. I'm Janis, and Philipp, unfortunately, is out today. But we have an awesome guest, Dan Jiao, I hope I pronounced this correctly, the VP of RevOps at Aircall. And a great topic. Hey, Dan, how are you? Yes, doing great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we had a prep call. I really enjoyed it. It's a topic I actually enjoyed talking about a lot. So today we're going to dive into, you know, regional versus global and, you know, how to basically, you know, create these type of decisions around it and what it means for RevOps. So I think it's a very relevant topic for all scaled setups. But before we jump in, I mean, maybe you can give a bit of background. Who are you? What do you do? A bit more about your career, and then we can, you know, dive into the topic.
Speaker 3Yeah, no, for sure. So appreciate you having me on the podcast episode today. As you mentioned, I'm Dan. I'm the VP of Revenue Operations here at Aircall. Finishing right now as we record this episode, my second month on the job. So very new. But for some background, before I moved into revenue operations, I started my tech career path in sales. So I spent five years at an identity verification company called Akata, carrying the bag, everything from mid-market and enterprise sales to being a sales director that opened up the APAC region in Singapore before the company was acquired by Mastercard. And what I really learned kind of being in the field was you can have the best reps in the world, you can train them, you can onboard them, you can coach them, but they oftentimes hit a ceiling with the systems that they operate within, which creates a friction in how they can acquire, sell, and expand their customers. So I kind of realized at one point, I didn't want to just run in a system, but I wanted to help build those systems. So I kind of realized at one point, I didn't want to just run in a system, but I wanted to help build those systems. So I kind of realized at one point, I didn't want to just run in a system, but I wanted to help build those systems. which is really what brought me out into the path of operations. Started off as a chief of staff to Akata's global SVP of sales and partnerships, before moving on to a company called Signified, which is an e-commerce fraud prevention company to stand up and build their RevOps org from the ground up as the VP of RevOps there. Most recently, before Aircall, I spent some time at Wiz, which is a cloud and AI security company acquired by Google, already at 1 billion plus AR scale. And here I am at Aircall now. Excited for this topic, mainly because it kind of has been one that I've lived on both sides, both as a regional leader who's experienced the friction that comes with these operating models, global functional, and even what GM models look like. And then as ops leader who has to design a way, you know, some of the pain for those folks. And I've happened to do this twice now too. So global to regional GM shifts has happened for me at Signified, and then this happened here at Aircall as well.
Speaker 2Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I mean, I actually lived through this with my previous, previous company, Fiber. We had similar conversations, so I'm excited to dive in. I mean, maybe, you know, like, you know, explain what does this even mean, right? Like global versus regional and, you know, the way you think about it just for some context and then we can go deeper. Yeah, definitely the level set.
Speaker 3When we say global functional model here, we typically mean the traditional SaaS go to market model of having like VP of sales, a VP of CS, a VP of partnerships, VP of BDRs, and so forth. But when you move to a regional GM model, oftentimes you do it because you want to be closer to the market. For us here at Aircall, we did it because we saw an inflection point as we moved from being a cloud telephony platform to more of an AI customer communications platform. So that came with a lot of things like how the motion looks, the channel mix, how we thought about regulations in this market, since we're in telephony is very regulated market by market. And when you move to a regional GM model, really what that means is you bring a lot of those functions and you actually localize them. So for us here at Aircall, that means we have regional GMs, one for the global small business, one for what we call America Core, EMEA Core, and APAC Core. And they essentially own the P&L end to end, right? So instead of just owning a slice of the function, they own the full funnel from BDRs, account executives, the partner account managers, as well as a... account managers or CSMs that do the expansions and renewals. So owning that, and actually here more recently, we just moved field marketing over with them as well to give them a little bit more control of the pipeline generation strategy there. That really allows them to own the P&L on top line revenue, on kind of how they're operating their business from a loss standpoint and how profitable it is, and just allows them some control in terms of like how they go to market.
Speaker 2Yeah, so I understand the regional GM model is... Particularly for the go-to-market organization, I assume there's product that is centralized, right? That is probably not run regional. And then you mentioned that you also have the SMB business global. Is that how I understood it?
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. The small business is a global unit, mainly just because we have like more of a self-serve PLG motion with how we allow customers to sign up. Think about that as like the three to 10 person startup that comes on, needs to get set up, right away. And one of Eric Hall's advantages is we're really easy to get started for an SMB or a mid-market company, right? Like you don't really need as much IT resources. We have integrations to over 200 business tools, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, and so forth. So that's kind of its own motion, if you will, right? Like it's almost looks more like an e-commerce business. Somebody just comes on our website, they buy, they're ready to get set up. All the rest is like more B2B, like mid-market. You need to go after like all the different buying centers from sales support and IT teams. So you're right, as you kind of mentioned, like product is still globally centralized, same with engineering. But yeah, the regional jam model here is a little bit more focused on the go-to-market side of the house.
Speaker 2And then marketing is global and local, it sounds, or how's that set up?
Speaker 3Yeah, good call up there. Yeah, we've kind of been in like this transition period, but the parts of marketing that are global are more of like performance and growth marketing. So kind of like paid search and ads, as well as affiliate marketing. Which is something we've been dabbling with more recently, as well as, you know, product marketing, customer marketing, partner marketing, more globally centralized around ahead of marketing or, well, it's more of the regional slash field marketers that are embedded into the GMs. And that's more of a recent change here since I joined.
Speaker 2Yeah. And maybe last question before I dive into more referral specific questions. But I mean, obviously, right, like this probably doesn't make sense if you're 10 people or 20 people, right? Because it creates a lot of overhead, you almost have to like replicate a lot of the functions for the different regions. So what would you say are like, you know, like, at what size do you would you consider this making sense? And yeah, yeah, what are maybe some other considerations and size that you should you would look at when when making that kind of, you know, a decision? Should we go there? Or like, should we go for like a regional or like a global model?
Speaker 3Yeah, no, that's a good question. I was reflecting on it. And, you know, I was signified the first time I did it, that company was around like the 150 million MR, ARR mark when I was there. And we kind of did a flagship point around getting closer to 200 million plus. Joining Aircall now, this is a company that started the year around 200 million ARR and it's been growing 25% year over year. So that was probably the flagship point. And the reason that happened was, we have like, let's call it four very distinctive business units, right? We have a global SV, our small business, we have Americas, EMEA, and APAC. And each of those businesses kind of holds its own as its own. Like many business, and that's around like the 20 to 30 million mark for each of those. And not just for each reason, actually, it's bigger for like EMEA, because we have like separate areas, right? Like we've demarcated like France, Italy, Middle East is kind of one area. We have the UK and Ireland, we have DOC, and then we have Iberia, kind of Spain, Portugal. So each of those businesses can do 20 to 30 million on its own. And that's kind of a point in time where you sum those up. You know, EMEA itself does like at least 50% of our revenue. That's a good time to realize that plus America's are standalone businesses. that could warrant almost being its own company, if you will, right? So that's one of the times that you know you could do this regional model. But yeah, I'm sure we're going to talk about it. There's some challenges, right? Because you don't want it to be like one company that like bifurcates itself into like four or five different companies because you have all these separate GMs.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, I love it. Yeah, I mean, I think exactly right. Like I think how do you keep that kind of functional excellence, right? That often happens when you have like a global team and everybody does it the same way versus, you know, suddenly it's regional. And I think the challenge with this global model is like, you know, I mean, the best example maybe is like my previous company where the way we sell in Germany or in France, I mean, it's very different than in the US and the way you go to market is very different. So it didn't really make sense to have like a global, like a local model long term, like a global model, sorry, global model long term because the differences were so different in that regard and that's, I'm curious, like, I mean, maybe let's go through a bunch of questions on, you know, like on those aspects. So first one is like, who owns the segmentation and territory design? Is that something that the kind of GMs do or is that RevOps? Yeah, how do you approach that?
Speaker 3Yeah, no, for sure. With the GM model, our CRO would say RevOps become increasingly more important because we become the global center of excellence. And, you know, when I first came in, I told the team that we're like a product management organization. Our product is the global go-to-market operating system that includes all the features of a product like annual planning, capacity modeling, territory segmentation, sales process, onboarding and renewal and expansion process, all those things, right? And because of that, you know, we have to be the glue that is not just a glue between, you know, marketing, sales and CS anymore, but actually the glue between the regional GMs, what America's doing versus EMEA versus APAC, versus all the, you know, the small business unit. So here at Aircall, we still have RevOps kind of centralize the model for how we think about segmentation, what the map is that goes into that segmentation model output, like what are the input variables? What's the weighting? We partner really closely with our colleagues here on our data and system team to help operationalize that and make it a reality. So that's a very important interface for us here. But the GMs are consulted, right? Like, because, you know, we can't essentially build the right model without still being close to the market and understanding it in real time. Like, what are the real things that help us understand the coverage model? Like, are there little nuances in Germany that we need to factor in so the model can, you know, hit the right segmentation threshold for what maybe small business versus enterprise might look like in their market? That said, like, you know, we don't want to conflate two things, right? Like segmentation is all about how we think about what's the difference between a small business versus mid-market versus, you know, a large enterprise. That's kind of factoring in, like, what is the ICP fit score, as well as, like, what we call, like, buying power proxies. At the moment, we look at things like employee size and kind of, like, their potential call volumes because we kind of commercialize the call, whether it's a human agent or an AI agent doing it. So, you know, the idea there is RevOps is the gold standard. That's non-negotiable. But the territory card is co-designed, right? And I think that only works if you do it in tandem with the GMs and some of their frontline leaders. So, you know, yeah, my rule there is the RevOps team centralizes segmentation and territory design, but then the territory design part, we have to co-design with them, especially with the first line sales leaders. So that way, they're spying when we do those role-offs and it doesn't feel like a back-off that's just trying to, like, do spreadsheet math.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'd love to comment on RevOps being the glue and the center of excellence to basically ensure everything, you know, is, you know, scaling globally. So your team is global, right? Like, you're global, and then you have embeds into the local structures. Is that fair, or how is it set up?
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, we're in this transition here. It used to just be all global functional, but I'm really fortunate to be a company that really values RevOps. Everyone from our CEO, CFO, and our CRO really understand the value of operations. So, you know, for us, I would call it a hybrid model. We have a global center of excellence that includes, like, plain end insights. That arm is responsible for, you know, planning, capacity modeling, the operating cadence, analytics, and insights, as well as our PMO plus commissions. So it's almost like the foundation layer for everything we do with go-to-market. And then we also have, like, acquisition ops, which is, like, more like sales and partner ops. Marketing ops is also kind of there, as well as by the side. So kind of campaign optimization, ROI, and attribution. We have a customer ops function as well. So that's kind of including post-sales CS, as well as, like, our technical customer solutions. Our solutions organization is supporting them. Everything from, like, solutions engineers, customer engineers, and forward-deployed engineers we have here at Arupal. But, you know, that team's job is essentially create the global standards and design and govern. But more recently, and this is very new, so, like, we haven't operationalized this yet, but we are actually embedding regional rev ops business partners to each of the GMs. So that means they will have, like, a de facto chief of staff that they can go to to help them with, you know, running their operating rhythm. Everything from pipeline inspection and hygiene all the way down to, like, your weekly forecast and business reviews and the QBRs. And then ultimately, the BP's job is to help them diagnose and adopt, right? Diagnosis really is, like, identifying, like, why might there be a gap and how do we kind of bridge the gap in the region? And then adoption is, like, hey, how do I make sure that the global standard for deal inspection methodology, here we use Spice, as well as the forecasting methodology? Like, what is a commit deal versus the best case deal? How does that get embedded into the actual daily rhythm and workflows of the GMs and their sales and CS leaders?
Speaker 2Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think that's so important that, like, you almost need to adhere to, like, both, right? You have your global standards and then you have your, you know, regional, like, yeah, almost like a chief of staff role that, you know, that enables the GMs to, you know, run their business. And probably they also help, right? Like, they then have special projects, I assume, where they go out and say, well, look, there's a certain gap, you know, let me talk to, you know, the global team and see what other regions are seeing and how do we transfer the different learnings on a global scale, but then you adhere to the regional model. So that's awesome, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. In terms of, like, you know, account prioritization, like, and tiering, right? Like, is that something that, you know, I assume you work closely with the GMs. Like, how is that done?
Speaker 1Hey, Philipp here. Are you enjoying this episode? Well, good news, because you can find more free RevOps and go-to-market resources on getweflow.com slash RevOps. Access over 20 cheat sheets, reports, and guides that will help you become a better revenue operator. Or join over 2,000 subscribers who already get the latest resources right into the inboxes with our free newsletter. Just go to getweflow.com slash RevOps.
Speaker 3Yeah, no, we have an active project right now. We have a BDR team here that is very much tasked with outbound and, like, figuring out account selection. Aircall, because we're more S&D and mid-market focused, doesn't have as much of, like, the, let's call it, account strategy because there's just so much volume. We do, like, 700 or 800 transactions per month just to give you a sense of, like, the scale. So in terms of just account prioritization, it's incredibly important because we have so many different types of accounts from vertical and industry to company size that we can go after. So in a lot of ways, similar to the question of segmentation and territories. So it goes back to the first principle that this global RevOps center of excellence is the place that determines the global scoring engine, right? Or was the high-finance, the fit account based off of, like, our customers with, you know, lowest CAC to LTV? Our lowest CAC, highest LTV. What's kind of the propensity to buy model, like, intent? And then what's the white space look like, at least for existing customer accounts? So that's kind of how I think about how prioritization is, like, those three dimensions. We currently run that through, like, Planning Insights R that really controls that in partnership with the data and systems team, right? Systems team job is to go kind of work with enriched providers, whether it be, like, Play, ZoomInfo, Cognizant, and Lucia. And the data team helps us with modeling that out based off of kind of our true set, right? That being said, to do, like, a top prioritization, well, like I said, you have to co-design this. We kind of need to create a feedback loop with the GMs and their AE and AM leaders to know, like, is this actually working so we can fine-tune the model? Maybe intent looks differently in different regions. Like, we might just not be able to get as much, let's call it, like, dark funnel signals. In EMEA, because of, like, privacy laws and kind of controls there versus the data that's available for American buyers. So how I think about it is they're so global standard, I think you can maybe regionally calibrate with the GMs. And this is why I love the business partner model to help do that analysis and diagnosis of, like, where that needs to happen and where the cut points are. So, like, let's say the scoring model has an output between 0 to 100 for account prioritization, like, where the BDRs and AEs and AMs should spend their time in their books of business. business. And then you might say, that based off our model we know that 70 and above is really predictive in the Americas but you might realize that in EMEA because of how the model has been trained globally on the standards you need to only go after 80 and above and that kind of gets you the right threshold for the different regions based off what volume that the BDRs and AEs can work and then it's like what's actually predictive so that's why I still think it's a co-design partnership like any good RevOps process I think you need a good way to systematically allow reps to give you feedback on it not just anecdotally but if there's a quantitative way to see like hey here's an account that was picked up and did it convert into pipeline or not and that pipeline get closed one so I think that's really important so kind of this sum this one up it's like you still have one global model and standard but you might have multiple calibrations by the regions. Yeah I mean I would assume that kind of
Speaker 2the scoring model and the territory design of obviously has a big impact on capacity and the capacity probably lives in the GM right because the GM have their kind of P&L management so they decide how many headcount would they hire right like but obviously that's dictated by the opportunity in the different regions right and the regions might look very different in terms of the overall sales strategy how do you how do you like how do you make these like kind of capacity hiring decisions is that again RevOps having you know kind of the quantitative view and then going into the conversation with the GMs or yeah how do you how do you define capacity I assume that's like extremely hard to do and you know what you're describing but like yeah just curious yeah that's like done more recent
Speaker 3example that hits close to home here at Eric Hall is just how we think about AM or CSM capacity right like how many accounts can we handle that's going to vary based off of like regional and cultural nuances as well as like if a certain market buys is more SMB versus mid-market versus enterprise so like we even see like the ratios that our GMs might expect based off the book of business they have and the type of talent they're hiring in the U.S. versus maybe France it'd be very different like maybe one region is like one AM to 100 accounts and maybe another is one to 50 based off just the demands of those accounts the size of those accounts so then that kind of makes it a different capacity question because when you're working with HR and FP&A and they're trying to figure out like hey here's how much we're you know how many people we have to hire how many how much does that person cost fully loaded so yeah the capacity equation becomes a lot more interesting especially when you add in like how fully loaded costs are higher in AMEA based off like you know health care and all the benefits there versus how it looks when you model out in the U.S. but you know the first two my salaries but yeah going back to your question with capacity you know we we typically send up a capacity model at the beginning of the year we base it off of productivity we try to base territories based off of you know like what we think the potential is that's always kind of a hard thing but that's also why quotas get set off too by the way I think quotas get set off for like territories not just like everyone has like the same quota so that's an important thing and I think that factors into the whole master problem with how you do capacity and figure out like where you kind of change things around the other thing too is here at Aircall we track things based off of some type of attribution for both qualified pipeline creation as well as net new sales booking so that gives us a little bit of an idea of you know what the channel mix might be there might like I I know for a fact that one of our regions are now is doing a lot better when it comes to outbound DDR so we might invest more capacity there because we know it's more productive capacity but then in another region we might divest from that and push more to the channel partnerships or field marketing side because that's driving a lot more of the pipeline and higher win rate so I think that's kind of the interesting math problem there and this is actually why I'm so bullish right now I'm building out our business partner practice within Rambalos because I think that's kind of the interesting math problem there and this is you can all really diagnose that in real time and react quickly enough to it if you have that person in market embedded with the GM and kind of living the rhythm day by day right yeah yeah I think
Speaker 2especially when you think about the like you know what drives pipeline right like as a specific example the question then also becomes right like is is the one region so much better because that's just how the region works or is it because maybe the quality of the system in the region isn't working as well and so if you don't have anyone embedded into this right like it's very hard to actually know why why it's not working right like is is is do you feel like is your approach there just and this is more like a general question but is your approach there like if something is working just do more of that and divest from the other so you push more towards that or do you basically say okay well outbound is working so much better in region a we should get we should have other benchmarks in region b or both like how do you how do you look at that now
Speaker 3yeah I'm a big fan of uh finding the bright spots when you invest and kind of are doing change management like find the places that are like really working not just from a quantitative standpoint but from like a culture and morale perspective as well so yeah when something's working you gotta just pour fuel on it so especially kind of in this like AI native go-to-market motion it's like when you when you find something you just got to let it like kind of break open so yeah that's how typically how I see it I don't like to think about it like divesting per se from a certain function because that's not going to make it any better in terms of performance but you do have to figure out ways to further invest right so it doesn't necessarily have to be a zero-sum game when you know as the VP of RevOps or even our GMs and CRO are going to to our CFO and kind of talking about what the the financial investment might look like and the ROI on that investment so I wouldn't use a term like divest but I would say like continue
Speaker 2to invest in the bright spots of the business yeah yeah yeah and is RevOps always part of those budget discussions like and do you feel like that's a that's a crucial piece to have context or how embedded are you in those you know GM budget P&L discussions between finance probably the global like CRO if there's something like that or CRO like is that is that like do you have a seat
Speaker 3on that that table or yeah yeah I'm fortunate to have a seat at the table it's one of the reasons I was excited to join Aircall like I mentioned earlier in our podcast episode CEO CFO CRO everyone's team really value revenue operations as a function and it's kind of a partnership between four pillars here at Aircall it's a CFO kind of FP&A and budget and like where we need to go top line and EBITDA wise there's CHRO and kind of the people TA team to understand like what's the hiring plan look like do we have enough folks helped recruit and onboard these employees effectively at the right time there is of course the CRO and the the GMs who feel like the the need for resourcing and capacity and when it makes sense they're visiting the CRO and they're working on the business goals and there's RevOps that's almost a neutral referee between all those right that's actually why I think it's really great because RevOps sees the capacity model we see like all the data so we bring all the insights to that conversation and we can be a neutral referee between the CRO and GMs always wanting more headcount versus CFO who says let's not hire let's you know have a higher EBITDA and gross margin yeah I love it love it I mean I think it's as you
Speaker 2know it's it's one of the the key challenges for many RevOps leaders like how do you you know have to be able to you know be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able as vested as they seem to be at our call which I think is is really awesome because obviously also with a SMB and mid-market business right you have so many transactions so much velocity so operational excellence actually matters so much and the complexity is is fairly high if you spend that across essentially four business units right like one global three regional it's just uh it's just really really it's just not really easy to do one other question on kind of the the operating model right so I mean I assume you have like gold standards in terms of like you know how kind of your you know deal hygiene inspection and forecast process should look like but then you know there's probably nuances like how do you how do you do that is that something again that you do globally and everybody does it same or is it adjusted and yeah yeah for sure yeah I really kind of hear his
Speaker 3team with me that I still think RevOps goals the global standard there although this one's a little bit more of a global standard I think it's a little bit more of a global standard I think it's more nuanced versus maybe segmentation and account prioritization where so I believe RevOps with our CRO owns the global standard for our qualification process our sales process and with that kind of the frameworks and methodologies that get used and feed into forecasting because ultimately what you want to make sure of is RevOps can be the glue where you're not running four or five different businesses because you've shifted from global functional to the regional GM model but rather you can still kind of resolve everything to a single set of KPIs and one number that you can report to the C-suite as well as to the board and you can't do that if like one business is defining commit and like a stage four deal differently from another region or business unit so I still think that's really important but there's kind of nuances in terms of like you know the GMs should still be able to run their same sorry their own weekly you know deal inspection and forecasting rhythms there might be nuances to how they fill out spiced because a critical event in Germany might look very differently from Australia based off of like the time of year the buying committees the procurement processes the cultural norms for how you like do contracting so I think that part should be made its own and you can only really do that when you have the GM who understands how buying processes critical events and timelines a global standard for like what we say is a commit deal and what we believe should happen for a late stage deal like who do you need to multi-thread with, what's the executive sponsorship and economic buyer engagement look like? So there's still like the requirements of like, I'd call them buyer verified exit criteria. So like, what does the buyer actually have to show and prove as evidence that you're actually in a late stage deal? So I think that sales process and the forecast and authority tied to that have to still be held to the standard. That's why the BPs, we'll go back to that, have to kind of help reinforce that standard. And it's why we have them directly report to RevOps, but dot a line over to the GMs.
Speaker 2Interesting, yeah, yeah. Is, I mean, your exit criteria sound like their buyer signaled exit criteria. So you basically put more emphasis on what the buyers do rather than what the reps kind of say they happen. Is that something you automate or is that something that is still like very manual process? How do you think about that?
Speaker 3Yeah, transparently we have to be better about it. So I'd love to say that we've got it all figured out. You're here to air calls. So it's one of my priorities to get us better with the sales process and deal inspection rigor. And then ultimately how that feeds into forecast accuracy. But in previous organizations, I would say the way you verify that is there's sometimes a type of evidence. Luckily now we have like conversation intelligence and AI on top of that, that can help you kind of prove out if something has happened in the process. I'm sure you all at WeFlow have something similar to help your customers with verifying, like did the buyer say this or is it just a sales rep filling out a custom field in Salesforce? But no, I think that's incredibly important, especially now when you think about a sales rep's job, like when I used to be a seller, buyers just had a lot less information, even though they were super educated back then too. You could Google things. But now that you have Claude and ChatsGDT, getting information is so much easier when the buyer comes in a lot more educated and your job isn't to sell as much as to guide the buyer through the evaluation process and the purchase process now. So it's on the buyer's terms, right? Like the sales stages are there, you ask for the seller to understand not just what they're supposed to do, but ultimately where's the buyer truly at before they're ready to commit to a partnership with your company.
Speaker 2Yeah, I fully agree. I think it's so, so important that like in the end, if you record every call, if you catch every email, if you properly map that to your CRM data structure, you know, the AI is quite capable of, you know, kind of filling in your, you know, qualification criteria and also like scoring each qualification criteria to get a better understanding of where you sit in the sales process and what are some of the gaps and risks. And then how do you take that to orchestrate specific actions, right? I think that's basically where everything's going. But yeah, I think it makes a ton of sense. Maybe one last question, like that just came up is like the, like the, I mean, do you have, do you have like a customer success or like sales excellence? And like people that are basically running, right? Like almost like a functional leader that is not ref ops that has like global enablement roles or roles and responsibilities. Is that something that, that also happens? Like how do you, how does the VP of sales share their learnings with maybe other regions? Is there a process for that or? Yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah. The CRO and myself are probably that along with our SPP of customer solutions. And applied AI where enablement rolls up to today. We're currently trying to get into like an operating rhythm where we have like best practice sharing on a bi-weekly or monthly basis between all the regional leads. So it's kind of a good way to get like the sales leader across North America, as well as all the different area leaders we have in EMEA and also APAC to come together and share their best practices, what's working for our sales process, what's kind of breaking, what are we seeing in competitive pressures. So that's kind of one of the ways that we've centralized a global center of excellence around like a tiger team, if you will, and then trying to create the intentional meeting cadence around bringing folks together that now without a global functional leader, there's no global head of sales here at Aircall. Figuring out ways to still bring them together to share those best practices that a global head of sales would have facilitated in that previous operating model.
Speaker 2Awesome. I think I might actually have a problem with my hardware here at least it tells me that but look, I think we could probably continue speaking about this. And first and foremost, thank you for sharing all these different insights. I think they were absolutely awesome. I think Aircall can be very lucky to have you and you clearly know your stuff. So that's absolutely fantastic talking to you. Maybe before we dash off any book recommendation you would share with you with our audience.
Speaker 3Yeah, I know for sure. When I was at Wiz, I was leading go-to-market excellence operations. So I wanted that tenure to be more focused on understanding like the hard part of like what's called like go-to-market or revenue operations, which is like the people side of change. Like I was very strong in the data process and tool and system piece. But a book I read as I kind of was getting closer to enablement and that's it was switch. How to change things when change is hard. It's a book written by Chip Heath and Dan Heath and they're kind of you know, experts in terms of like how do you change people and motivate them. So I think that's a really important book. That's actually I mentioned earlier in our podcast like finding the bright spots and really amplifying and investing in those bright spots that cost it really came from that book. And it's really great read for those who view who are like RevOps or enabling professionals because that will be the hard thing in this new AI era. Like we can build all the best tools and systems and processes, but the hard part will be helping people change in this ever-changing landscape and go to market and just tech and AI in general.
Speaker 2Love it. Dan, thank you so much was awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening to the RevOps Lab podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support us share it with a RevOps friend or drop us a five-star rating right now. And if you have feedback questions or guest ideas, just send a message to Yannis or me on LinkedIn. Thank you and see you next time.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. The episode explores the trade-offs between global functional and regional GM go-to-market operating models in revenue operations.
  2. Guest Dan Jiao, VP of RevOps at Aircall, shares his experience leading a shift from a global functional model to a regional GM structure.
  3. A regional GM model typically makes sense when a company reaches roughly $150–200M ARR with multiple distinct business units each capable of $20–30M.
  4. RevOps acts as a global center of excellence owning segmentation, territory design standards, capacity modeling, and forecasting frameworks.
  5. Regional RevOps business partners are embedded with GMs to help diagnose gaps, reinforce global standards, and run local operating rhythms.
  6. Account prioritization and scoring models are built globally but calibrated regionally to account for market nuances like privacy laws and buying behavior.
  7. Capacity and hiring decisions are made collaboratively between RevOps, finance, HR, and GMs, with RevOps serving as a neutral referee.
  8. The book "Switch" by Chip and Dan Heath is recommended for RevOps professionals navigating the people side of change.

Summary:

This episode of the RevOps Lab podcast features Dan Jiao, VP of Revenue Operations at Aircall, discussing the shift from a global functional go-to-market model to a regional GM model. Dan explains that this transition typically makes sense around $150–200M ARR when distinct regional business units each generate $20–30M and warrant localized ownership of the full P&L. He describes how Aircall organized around a global small business unit plus Americas, EMEA, and APAC regional GMs, each owning the complete funnel from BDRs through account management and renewals.

A central theme is RevOps as a global center of excellence that defines standards for segmentation, territory design, account prioritization, capacity modeling, and forecasting, while embedding regional business partners with GMs to diagnose gaps and drive adoption of global standards. Dan emphasizes co-designing territory and scoring models with GMs and frontline leaders, calibrating thresholds regionally, and using a feedback loop to refine models. He discusses capacity planning as a collaborative effort with finance, HR, and GMs, where RevOps acts as a neutral referee.

The conversation also covers global sales process standards versus regional nuances in deal inspection, the importance of buyer-verified exit criteria, and best practice sharing across regions. Dan recommends the book "Switch" for managing the people side of change.

FAQs

A global functional model has centralized VPs for sales, CS, partnerships, and BDRs. A regional GM model localizes these functions so regional GMs own the full P&L and go-to-market end to end.

It typically makes sense around $200M+ ARR, when regions become large enough to stand alone. Dan's example: Aircall started the year around $200M ARR with regions each doing $20-30M.

RevOps centralizes segmentation as the global standard, while territory design is co-designed with regional GMs and frontline leaders to account for local nuances.

It uses a hybrid model: a global center of excellence for planning, insights, analytics, and commissions, plus embedded regional RevOps business partners who act as de facto chiefs of staff for each GM.

RevOps defines one global scoring engine based on fit, intent, and white space, but regions can calibrate thresholds locally based on data availability and market differences.

RevOps builds the capacity model using productivity and potential, then acts as a neutral referee between the CRO and GMs who want more headcount and the CFO who focuses on margin and EBITDA.

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