From Chef to Tech Leader: Laura Fu's Unique Journey

Full transcript

Secret to successful sales

Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Today, we are joined by Laura Fu, head of rev ops and strategy at DevRev and also a author of designing for excellence. Laura, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much. Laura, for anyone meeting you for the first time, what's your story and what actually made you pursue this role? Well, fantastic question. It's a it's a long one. So I would just start with my role. Like, my role is I'm responsible for go to market architecture and strategy at DevRev, which is all things figuring out how to architect to the go to market team so that we can run at maximum efficiency. And DevRev itself is an AI company that help to transform data to make it LLM ready so that we can give our customers the abilities to search for information and get the answers that they want and also run actions and workflows based on those answers. So that's what DevRev does. And I feel absolutely lucky to be at an AI native company like DevRev because I was looking for a job in AI for the last seven years before before joining.

And I'm so happy actually that the opportunity came to me only at this time because this is the moment when AI is is ubiquitous and people understand and can see real value. Right? And so it's easier to understand. This is the right time to be an AI. Prior to being at DevRev, I held a number of VP of RevOps roles. I'm always responsible and responsible for fuel efficiency and just, like, understanding what the levers are to help them become more productive. I have a big heart for sales teams. It's very difficult to be in the field with customers and having to triage them. And actually, before that, before I was in tech, which was quite a long time ago, I was a chef. People paid me money to cook for them. Oh, how did how did it go? Like, how did you transition from being a cook to actually leading teams? That's a very interesting transition.

Yeah. Thanks for asking. So I think two things were true at the same time. One was that, you know, being a cook in the Bay Area did not actually give me the financial independence that I had hoped. And so transitioning to tech was very helpful to to help me with my lifestyle. But then I think the other thing is here's what being in the kitchen taught me. I don't know if any of you have watched the show The Bear, but, um, I always reference it because being in the kitchen is kind of like that. We we tend to glamorize, you know, jobs like being a chef and being in high pressure environment, and we say, wow. That's the hustle that we love. But then at the same time, when it comes to actually executing on rigor, I do believe success comes with consistency. It's doing the small things every single day, the same way every single time. And I think that's what the kitchen taught me. Like, you don't actually get a lot of creativity,

Success comes with consistency

you know, in the kitchen. You have to do it exactly the same way every single time. And that that version of excellence is you know, was was very helpful for me to just, like, understand. My mindset was already set like that. And then in terms of, I think, leading teams, I think the kitchen taught me that you have to be an example. Like, a lot of the chefs in kitchens, they are working alongside you, and you learn from them. And and if you don't roll up your sleeves and help people on the ground, that respect and inspiration is just not gonna come naturally. What do you think goes into a good go to market strategy? Wow. So many things. You know, that that's very that's a very broad question. I would say that it depends on what your outcomes are specifically. Now all of my experience has been in b to b SaaS and in sales light motion, so I imagine that it would be different for a PLG or a b to c company. Right? In sales led motions, we talk about the the Salesforce and having two things, which is

something a mentor taught me. Right? In terms of the Salesforce, there are only two things that help you make your number. The first is productivity and the next is capacity. Capacity is having the number of people and productivity is how efficient they are. Right? Now if you wanna have a go to market strategy that is, let's say, trying to just hit your number. Right? I think the first thing that we wanna focus on is the people. And there there could be all sorts of things like you could have, well, we've got a strategy around pricing and how, you know, pricing is going to lead to better outcomes and higher usage. You could have a strategy on focusing on your, um, existing customers and all those things. Right? Those are all good initiatives. But I'd say, like, you have to focus on one thing. It is focusing on the Salesforce and making sure that they themselves feel inspired to do the things that you need them to do in order to be successful. Do do the things that you think are gonna make

are part of your hypothesis that are gonna help to drive those sales cycles, make them more effective. And the number one thing I think that drives this productivity is their ability to believe that they that they are selling the best product out there out there and that they can make a lot of money doing it. And by the way, I have just written a book. You did mention that I was an author. So my book is Designing for Excellence, and it really talks about that. Like, how do we make sure that our sales teams feel motivated for success? Mhmm. And regarding the book, what actually made you to write it? So the subtitle of the book is sales enablement in the AI native world where sales enablement can be anything from engaging with customers all the way down to finding the right signals, not just, you know, enablement as as a form of, like, learning. Right? And I started writing the book because my CEO, Dheeraj, asked me last year

The secret to sales success

to just write down some thoughts about how we could make the sales team more more effective. And and what started as, like, a little white paper turned into chapters of of a book. And so I decided I'm just gonna flesh it out. I think what's interesting about that is that the first section of it, the first, you know, 40% of the book is really just talking about core principles of running and optimizing a sales organization and the metrics and outcomes that we should be looking for. Mhmm. When people hear sales enablement, they often think it's content or training. Mhmm. In your world, what does great enablement actually include? Yeah. And is there anything that teams miss? Yes. So it's actually detailed in the book. There's seven things, actually. And sales enablement is actually a it it's a system. It's a system made out of people, program content, and ongoing follow-up. And the book actually does talk about this enablement flywheel, right, which is about content programs, analytics,

an AI orchestration engine in in the center that feeds all of these things. And I think if we're not thinking about it as a flywheel and we're thinking about it linearly or we're thinking that, you know, one one session one session of content is going to be able to turn the needle for our sales team, then we're missing the point of what sales enablement is. You know? It's it's about nurturing and development and developing our salespeople to become the most efficient in the field. Mhmm. Laura, you've also emphasized leading indicators. What are the behaviors you actually measure and coach if you want performance to improve? Yes. So right now, we have two hypothesis hypothesis on leading indicators, and that's what leading indicators are. They're actually a hypothesis. Right? They're not actually necessarily proven, but they're hypothesis around whether or not these actions or activity are going to impact the lag metric. And so today at DevRev, we're actually measuring two things. One is first meetings, and the next is number of POCs that we're that we are running.

And the hypothesis is basically, look. If we expand top of the funnel, if we expand the number of first meetings that we're doing, we'll just have a better shot. We'll have more shots to take. Right? And if we get our customers to go through POCs, then they are going to really realize what the value of DevRev actually is, especially now with AI being you know, being having so many field experiments. Right? We want our customers to be able to see the value and realize that value even while they're going through an evaluation process, not just afterwards. So I think training the reps and and just going back down to well, first, are they doing those leading indicators? So we had to create the ability for them to see those see those things, see those first meetings, see those POCs, like, how many am I running at any one point in time? Visibility.

And the next thing that we will work on once we get those once we get that visibility down to the rep level and everybody just knows, like, last week, I did three meetings. Tomorrow, next week, I'm gonna do five. Right? Once we get down to that, then we should talk about whether or not those leading indicators are being done in the right way, and we have an opportunity to coach through what that looks like if we're just focused on these two leading indicators. Mhmm. Laura, if there is a company that's listening that feels actually behind, what would you say to them if they want to take the first step to actually modernize enablement this quarter without actually creating all the chaos around it? Yeah. I was recently on, um, another podcast that I was hosting, um, with a guest, and and I think he said it very well. He said, you know, start with what's working and do more of that first.

So first, figure out what's going really well. Maybe it is a specific, um, messaging that you know is really landing with your customers. When you say these things, customers pick up the phone, they come back next time. Let's work on that. Why isn't all of the digital marketing around that messaging? Why isn't the website just reflecting that same messaging? So I would say start with doing more of what is already working today. And if you don't know what is already working today, then that's a different then that's a different issue. I think, you know, getting to figuring out what that visibility looks like and how you can get there is probably the step zero in this process. Mhmm. You also share recommended books and these sort of mindset shifts for operators. Is there any mindset change that unlocks, like, outsized execution for go to market teams? There are a lot of my favorite books. I would say that not specifically related to go to market teams, but, like, my favorite book around, like, mindset is the book actually mindset by Carol Dweck. And

I think that's a really good book in in terms of, like, helping us understand, hey. I've I've been doing things one way all this time. Right? And is there a way that I can grow my skill set and develop myself? And and should I feel inhibited just by my current abilities, or do I have the ability to get to a different place? So I love that book mindset. I think for leaders, starting with why is a good one by Simon Sinek, and the other one is leaders eat last. I love those two books. Go to market specifically, my favorite book is the John McMahon playbook, which is sales the qualified sales leader. And I I love that book because it's it's a playbook, and, you know, it just really easily just, like, helps to frame things up. And, hopefully, someone will say, you know, at some point of time that my book, Designing for Excellence, is is one of their favorite books too. What does future look like for Deaf Ref? I feel like that's a leading question. Like, the vision for DevRef.

So DevRef has been around about five years now, and our go to market team has been in been in motion for about two years. And I would say that we are set up for success in terms of the people that we have, the product that we have, and the market landscape in positioning, you know, what AI is doing for organizations. Right? So if the question is, what does the future look like? I'd say it looks very bright. Looks very bright. But it all comes down to execution and whether or not we can be rigorous and and execute on those things that we said that we're gonna do. Do those leading indicators. Do them really well. And then do they lead to outcomes? For people listening who want to follow your work or actually pick up the book that you wrote, where should they go? There are two places. The first is my LinkedIn profile, and that's LinkedIn with Laura Zifu. And then the other place is my website, which is laurafu.ai. You can find links to the book there as well. Great. Perfect, Laura. I will add links, and thank you guys for watching.

We will see you in the next one. Thank you.