Director of Revenue Operations: David Kohn of Built In

David Kohn joined the recent podcast of Sales Operation Demystified and shared his knowledge of the sales and revenue operation. Check out all the other episodes of Sales Operations Demystified here.

Connect with David and Built In here:

• David Kohn
• Built In

 

Tools Mentioned:

• Salesforce
• Outreach.io
• Chorus.ai
• Leandata.inc
• InsightSquared
• ZoomInfo
• Visitor Queue
• Drift
• Sales Navigator
• LeadIQ

Key Takeaways

Entry into sales operation

David didn’t plan on going into sales, he kind of fell into it. He first worked as a consultant for hospitals figuring out ways to improve processing, change management, and using hospital data to develop and implement electronic medical records. 

David then shifted to a completely different industry to work as an Insights Analyst at LinkedIn. He found his calling was using data into the context of sales. It’s then that sales started to make sense to him, which led him into giving it a try and he moved to Shiftgig. 

At Built In, he got the opportunity to further his role in sales and extended his journey to revenue operations across the entire business.

Sales and operations at Built In

David explained that since Covid-19, the organizational structure of Built In has changed a bit. Recently Built In has 7 AEs (Account Executives), 3 STRs (Sales and Total Revenue), 10 account managers, and 6 customer service representatives. 

It all starts with the Salesforce in the middle. He found way too much value from just one tool. But uses various tools to manage different things. The shift in revenue operations and impact of COVID-19 on business

David’s initial charter was to help new business sales growth and sales operations. His primary focus for the first 6 months was to drive more sales by working on sales cycles, pipeline size, win rate, and ECBs. 

When CEO of Built In expanded David’s responsibilities, he worked on the entire revenue and pipeline number which is affected by the delivery of products, customer success elements, customer services. 

Sales forecasting process at Built In

#1 rule is to build the infrastructure and the process of forecasting. He explained that he empowers the sales manager to update forecast daily and have a deep conversation with sales reps on how to best forecast the deal so that we can get an overall number. 

David carries out all processes by using standard pipeline best case, commit to every single deal he makes with customers, makes sure his sales rep updates the sales amount on the closed date. 

#1 Sales Metric – the size of the pipeline

According to David, one sales matrix that matters most is the size of the pipeline. At one point, a mentor taught him to focus on four things, pipeline size, win rate, deal duration, and ACV (Annual contract value). He thinks that out of these, three things are consistent in sales. 

Since COVID-19, David explained that the Built-In win rate has dropped a little since he joined the company, but the pipeline has grown tremendously over the years which makes it the biggest variable to watch at the moment. 

How Built In is moving reps across focused industries during this time of crisis?

David explained that they have been watching funding wire closely, especially, the micro-industries. As all the companies are going remote, Built-In is trying to focus on different industries and evaluating the market share of other industries. Right now David thinks that funding is the number one indicator of propensity to hire.

David’s biggest influencers:

During his early days in sales and operations, David’s colleagues mentored and taught him about sales operations

• Anish Shah – Vice President Sales Operations at Sprout social
• Dave Teplinsky – Sales Leader at Linkedin

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