RevRev Ep. 8 – Jim Thoeni
It started with a moose. I’m not talking about Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Vacation; I’m talking about Zeotap CRO, Jim Thoeni’s, path to becoming a revolutionary sales leader. Born with a desire to help people, Jim Theoni has been serving others since grade school. Jim provides a truckload of inspiration and wisdom in this episode of Revenue Revolutionaries.
Episode Key Takeaways
1. Be open to learning from anyone at any time – Open yourself up to being more vulnerable to learning. It’s the most important lesson for Jim throughout his career. You can learn anything from anyone if you’re open to it but you have to be open to it. Jim challenges his teams to always be curious, always be inquisitive, and always be learning.
2. You need to want to make other people successful – You become more successful when you fully invest in understanding the needs of the individual on the other side of the table. If you’re not investing in learning more about the people you are serving you are not putting yourself in the best position to provide the correct solutions.
3. To be an effective leader it’s imperative that you define the north star for your team – Jim uses an exercise called WAR (weely activity report) to create a north star for his team. Within the framework, he crafts a purpose statement, the ‘WHY’, to set the tone for managing and effectively executing work. It’s absolutely necessary to use something to prevent distraction and stay focused on why you are building what you are building.
4. CROs are responsible for creating ‘growth energy’ within the business – Jim shares that one of his key responsibilities is to create and facilitate a growth mindset environment within the business. He helps the organization understand what it’s going to take to grow the company. The output can’t be what you want if you’re not focused on the right inputs.
5. CROs will need to unify the organization more in the future – With the responsibility of generating and managing revenue, it will become more necessary for CROs to unite the organization. CROs need to proactively bring leaders in Sales, Services, Customer Success, and Product together to better understand how cross-functional collaboration can produce results across the revenue cycle.
6. Stick to the science of the buyer’s journey across the lifecycle – The science of selling must exist in your organization and it should align to a buyer’s journey that works. Once the buyer’s journey is established, Jim says to stay true to the journey because it’s a ‘science’ that has been determined to work. This needs to be a mindset across the lifecycle, encompassing growth, and expansion.
7. Always bring new ideas and value to customers – Jim explains the importance of always thinking about how to help customers improve. In managing customer relationships, you need to create an expectation internally that customers always need to be presented with new ideas and opportunities to receive value. These are the seeds for growth and expansion.