The Marketing Operations Strategist - How to Break into Marketing Operations People Management

Happy June! ☀️ Today, we’re going to cover how to position yourself for a people management role within marketing operations! If you are looking for more day-to-day tactical run-the-business marketing operations tips, hang in there…we will start covering that in the following editions of the newsletter. 🙂 

How to break into marketing operations people management:

1. Work on your soft skills.

People management is a completely different type of role than your current job as a marketing operations individual contributor. Yes, your experience as an IC (individual contributor) is valuable, but you won’t be logging into HubSpot or Marketo every day. You’ll want to grow skills in:

A. Negotiation. Strong negotiation skills are useful in almost all areas of life, not just compensation discussions. You will likely need to use these skills to negotiate project timelines, budget, resourcing, and more. I’m a big fan of Chris Voss — if you’re not ready to read his full book yet, check out this shorter Ted Talk about negotiation skills.

B. Building relationships and navigating politics. Most of your job as leader will likely be creating and growing relationships between yourself, your team, and others within the organization. Jennifer Brick has some great videos on how to navigate professional relationships and (yuck!) office politics.

C. Presentation. Much of your job will also be presenting ideas to other leaders and your own manager, to get buy-in for projects and budgets. I’d prioritize Zoom presentation skills first, and then move into in-person presentation skills. Here’s a great intro on presentation strategy. If you’re looking to practice by yourself, look at a tool like Speeko (affiliate) — if you’re looking to learn about in-person presentation, look into Toastmasters.

2. Work on your self-promotional skills.

We all wish that if we worked hard, we’d be appropriately awarded for that hard work. Unfortunately, in many cases, that doesn’t end up happening — the person who is the loudest about their work is rewarded, even if they aren’t the hardest-working or most productive. Because of this, we have to actively self-promote to get recognition and resources. Watch this video about self promotion strategy. Get comfortable creating a brag book and promoting your own accomplishments. Find a popular Slack channel where other marketers post their accomplishments and/or wins, and post your wins! Don’t forget to tie the wins into revenue impact, wherever possible.

3. Look at job descriptions for the role you want and fill any skill gaps.

Make sure you’re qualified to become a manager or leader; take a look at job descriptions and see where you may be missing experience. Make gaining experience in those areas a career goal with your manager and try to do any outside learning you can on those topics.

4. Work on understanding what the CMO cares about.

One of the biggest mistakes I see folks make during the transition from IC to leadership is not understanding what the CMO cares about. The CMO doesn’t care about APIs or Marketo; they care about key metrics like ACV, ROI, CPC, and other revenue-impacting metrics. Leave out the technical jargon and focus on 1) learning what your specific CMO is measured on/cares about and 2) presenting in a way that catches and keeps their attention.

5. Have ongoing career conversations with your manager and make your intentions clear.

If you aren’t having at least monthly career 1:1s with your manager, ask if you can have them — seriously, ask them tomorrow. These check ins are a space for you to discuss your career development, career goals, and how your manager and leadership chain can help you get there. Ask for things like mentorship, feedback, paid trainings, and more. See if they can set you up to lead a team or take over some management tasks, even if you aren't officially a people manager yet.

People usually land in a management or leadership role one of three ways — either through sticking around long enough for an internal promotion, sticking around long enough for another manager to leave (and being chosen as a replacement), or leaving a company for a new opportunity elsewhere. Decide which path you prefer — or play both sides, and work on a promotion while also keeping your eyes open for other opportunities that may happen sooner. Either way, do some soul-searching and keep in mind that management roles tend to take you away from the tactical and tech-focused work — so if you aren’t willing to give that up, consider a senior IC role instead! There is no one-size-fits-all career path.

Recommended book of the week:

Learning resource of the week:

Helpful AI tool of the week 🤖

Are you finding that your calendar is becoming unwieldy and hard to manage? Use a tool like Reclaim.ai or Clockwise to optimize your schedule! These tools do require that you give them feedback on their scheduling habits…and the more people at your company using them, the better they perform. When I’ve used them, I’ve enjoyed the insights into how I’m spending my time.

What I’m up to/what I’m studying

This week, I’ve been learning about data enrichment tools…there are so many new offerings, many claiming AI capabilities! I’m thinking about writing an edition about data management and enrichment, highlighting the findings of my new investigations. 🤔 I’m also about to put my Marketing Operations Master Playbook course into beta with a few folks, hoping to release it officially to the public within the next month. 😁

Dear Sara ✍️

New to marketing operations? On a team of one at your company? Shy/introverted? Wish you could ask a question to an experienced marketing operations professional, without them knowing who you are? Here’s your chance! Submit an anonymous question to me here and I’ll answer a new question in every issue.

Here’s my answer to a question from last week:

This a great question, considering the revenue operations job market is growing rapidly! I would start by learning Salesforce and getting Salesforce Admin certified. This certification will help introduce you to some sales concepts while also helping you gain credibility in one of the main sales tech tools. I really like Focus on Force’s study materials. Even if you decide revenue operations isn’t for you longer-term, this is a valuable certification to have in general (even if you stay in marketing operations).

Then, I would learn the main sales methodologies. Check out some of the main ones here.

Next, I would learn about customer success. Gainsight has a pretty good overview here.

I’d learn more about sales operations — starting with this resource.

Finally, if you’re at the stage where you are willing to invest some money into your education, I’d check out Jeff Ignacio’s courses. He’s a prolific revenue operations professional and I’ve taken his Sales Ops course and have found it very insightful. Next, I’ll be taking his revenue operations class!

These are not the be-all, end-all resources by any means; do some Google searches of these terms and learn as much as you can for free.

Doing all of these things should help you become familiar with what is involved in revenue operations. Next, I’d figure out what kind of work you want to do — if you want to be a specialized technologist, I’ve heard that there’s a lot of value in learning CPQ. If you’re looking to be more of a strategist, I’d check out more online resources or classes like Winning by Design’s Revenue Architecture course (I took and loved this course as well!). If you’re unsure, check out a few job listings and see which title resonates most with you.

Finally, I’d express my interest to my manager, to see if I can either shadow some sales operations folks at my company, or if they are willing to support any of the aforementioned paid education. If you can’t shadow a sales operations or CS operations professional for a day, maybe you could have a 1:1 overview instead. Your manager could help rally for this as a part of your career development!

What else do you want to hear about from me?

I have a bunch of content lined up, but I want to hear from you — did you enjoy this issue? Is there anything specific you’d like to hear my take on? Please do reply to this email with any and all feedback! 😄 If you enjoyed this issue, please refer your friends by forwarding this email/sending them here!

Til next time,

❤️ Sara