Democratizing Sales Excellence with Hank Taylor, Vice President of Marketing and Revenue Operations at Vercel

In this episode of Sales Ops Demystified, Tom Hunt and Alex Freeman are joined by Hank Taylor, Vice President of Marketing and Revenue Operations at Vercel. They discuss Hank’s transition into marketing and rev ops, how data analysis increases productivity, and the benefits of transferring data in the Salesforce Service Cloud. 

• Hank’s LinkedIn
• Vercel website

Transition to Marketing and Rev Ops

Hank interned at MySQL as a lead generator. His first professional role in 2011 was as a BDS (Business Development Specialist) at Pentaho, which required him to transform the lead qualification process. Hank’s lead transformation strategy resulted in a higher quantity of touches (+50%) and a higher response rate (+40%). 

During this role, Hank strategized new processes, trained business development teams, and oversaw the implementation. Consequently, he overachieved the targets by 123% for qualified leads passed to sales. Hank loved the strategizing, training, and implementation process and since then has been fascinated with strategizing sales growth. 

In 2012, Hank joined MindTouch as a Sales Operations Specialist and has since worked in key positions transforming sales, marketing, demand, and revenue operations.

Rev Ops team structure at Vercel

Hank initially had a team of three for both marketing and rev ops. This team had raised over 140 million in funding and just last week, they announce another 150 million funding and is growing each day. Currently, Hank has six members in the rev ops department.

Do open-source products have an impact on Vercel’s growth? 

Vercel has taken the coding framework to the next level by developing, previewing, and publishing billions of dynamic websites. It currently offers two free products; the self-serve version and the enterprise version. The freemium products have helped Vercel scale at innovations globally in terms of both resources and revenue. 

What is the biggest initiative in Sales Ops at Vercel? 

Integrating leads, contracts, and sales data analysis into the CRM has been the biggest initiative in sales ops at Vercel. It makes the data available, searchable, and reportable, which is then utilized by skilled sales personnel for decision making and strategy creation. 

Data integration and automation have helped Vercel run a smooth process and increase the revenue by two folds.

How does data analysis increase productivity? 

The key is to start small. Data-driven analysis helps sales reps to identify the most impactful products, their subsequent sales, and monthly trends. This allows sales reps to be independent and identify the gaps without support engineers’ assistance, and share their input to increase productivity.  

The benefit of transferring data to Salesforce Service Cloud

The process starts from transferring the customer success data to the Salesforce Service Cloud for a more unified CRM. This direct data gathered by customer support engineers assist sales reps in customer support management and in making informed decisions.

It also helps the teams across Vercel to collaborate and indulge in healthy discussions that are more solution-oriented and valuable to the rev ops model.  

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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