Utilizing Support Ops With Brian McTeague, VP of Revenue Operations at FastSpring

In this episode of Sales Ops Demystified, Tom Hunt and Alex Freeman are joined by Brian McTeague, VP of Revenue Operations at FastSpring. They discuss Brian’s journey from finance to sales and rev ops, FastSpring’s growth goals for 2022, and the role of support ops as the combination of sales and rev ops. 

• Brian’s LinkedIn
• FastSpring Website

A journey from finance to sales and rev ops

Brian started his professional journey in 2001 at HSBC as Senior Manager (Finance Strategy and Analysis). After HSBC, Brain joined Websense (now Forcepoint) in 2008 as a Finance Manager. This is where his transition from finance to sales strategy and operations took place. 

At Websense, Brain was responsible for support, forecasting, pricing, bookings, and later managing sales operations and marketing teams. His financial background and understanding of statistical information refined his ability to grasp complex subjects, which helped him transition from finance to sales ops and strategy. 

After two years of working at Websense, Brain was promoted to Director of Sales Operations and was placed in London, which was new territory for Brian. He appreciates the experience gained by this particular placement, as he learned a lot about the region, cultural differences, and how operations switch pace and technicalities regionally. Brian loved the experience he gained in this role and decided to make sales ops a full-time career.

After this, Brian’s career took off. He has led sales operations and strategy for leading organizations such as Kyriba, AppFolio, Cylance, and FastSpring, where he is currently the VP of Revenue Operations.   

Brian’s team at FastSpring 

The sales team at FastSpring consists of twenty sales reps, fifteen business development reps, and six people directly reporting to Brian for sales and rev ops. Others are part of marketing and management teams. 

Due to the limited team structure at FastSpring, Brian and his team directly look into sales, rev, marketing, and support ops.

Brian spends fifty percent of his time strategizing sales ops and CSM (customer support management). He believes that streamlined operations help all team members and organizations to execute plans and sales efficiently. 

FastSpring’s growth goals for 2022 

Revenue Growth: The company is ready to move into second gear, where the goal is to reach higher and continued revenue. 

Operational Growth: Similarly, they are also trying to focus more on sales enablement. From an operational standpoint, FastSpring is trying to manage remote teams and support sales managers in hiring, recruiting, one-on-one coaching, and answering calls. 

Technology Growth: Feature more data analytics into decision making. The team is working on customizing data of different segments so that a rep can sort, identify, and plan targeted execution. 

Sales Growth: From a sales perspective, FastSpring plans to integrate New Product Introduction (NPI) technology into FastSpring’s system to extract refined data. 

Support ops as the combination of sales and rev ops 

Support ops work to keep different teams working on variable tasks in sync so that everyone’s effort translates into resonating the company’s vision and values. Support ops mean consuming data and information and processing it to produce recommendations to improvise operations. 

Support ops influence the operations of the entire organization. It builds workflows, provides back-to-back information, and escalates the entire business process. It does most of the data collection so that the sales rep doesn’t have to and can focus more on sales execution. On the other hand, it helps sync up sales strategy with marketing plans to acquire maximum results. 

At FastSpring, Brian uses Salesforce for both sales and service ops to bring data and insights forward. The Salesforce data helps translate information to support reps.

Recommended episodes

• The Six Pillars of Revenue Operations with Rhys Williams, VP Revenue Operations at Convercent
•  SVP, Revenue Operations, Strategy, and Enablement: Carolyn Mellor of Procore Technologies
• Making Sales Ops More Actionable with Ethan Trombley, Director of Revenue Operations at Keyfactor

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