CUSTOMER STORY

OpenComp’s RevOps team uncovers predictable revenue for Sales

About
OpenComp provides compensation benchmarks, analytics and insights for businesses.
integrations
I see Calixa as our dedicated GTM platform for our PLG revenue stream.

OpenComp empowers companies to get compensation right and pay employees fairly. With trusted market data, planning, analytics, and professional consultation in one complete platform, OpenComp greatly simplifies compensation planning.

Since the beginning, OpenComp’s team had strong executive buy-in for a product-led growth (PLG) motion. OpenComp’s CEO Thanh D. Nguyen and COO Ian Gover spearheaded their PLG initiative together. With inbound sign ups in place, VP of Sales Sean Lakind came from Dropbox to lead OpenComp’s Product-Led Sales motion.

We recently chatted with Director of Revenue Operations Rachael Watton about how Calixa impacts daily revops and sales workflows. The core of her role is to create a data bridge between various teams. “In PLG, there’s a crucial link between product and sales data,” she said. “We have dedicated PLG SDRs who want the autonomy to self-service product insights.”

Goal

The OpenComp team is highly proactive in adopting a PLG mindset. Instead of waiting until reps were overwhelmed by their volume of signups, Rachael’s team researched  Product-Led Sales platforms before data became a problem holding back potential revenue. 

“Early on, we knew we needed visibility into product adoption for sales.” she explained. “Everyone across a business can use our platform, so it’s great for bottom-up selling. If you've got individual contributors using it, then you can go to the department head. If you've got five departments using it, then you can go to the business executive. Therefore, we have to make the most of the people that sign up.”

When the team first started a PLG motion, they had an uncertain expectation of its revenue impact. Rachael was ready to change that. She knew data was key to incentivizing the right sales behavior and uncovering a predictable revenue.

“We knew we needed to get insights out of the product in order to generate revenue.”

Challenge

Establishing the bridge between product and sales data wasn’t easy. Rachael’s team initially tried to put a link to Mixpanel in each Salesforce record. This approach made the assumption that sales reps would (1) look for that link, (2) click the link and navigate to a new tool, and then (3) have a worthwhile insight and then jump back into Salesforce to take an action. Unfortunately there were drawbacks to this method. “Prior to Calixa, we had no PQL score.” she said. “There was no way to surface users who have done actions that we really care about. It was a manual process with disparate systems.” 

In addition to having reps log into extra tools, cobbling together Mixpanel and Salesforce data was high maintenance. The company was bogged down by a daily manual process: write SQL queries on product data, export from the database, and upload those lists to Salesforce. This entire process required engineering resources and time.

Keeping this bare minimum of data coverage took lots of work. To go above and beyond was a greater headache. Curiosity is key to strong selling – but when reps were curious about their users it resulted in ad-hoc manual digging and siloed spreadsheets. Even then, the product data was often hard for sales to digest.

Once reps finally found a high potential user, they emailed the user in Outreach. Then…the process starts all over again.

“Before Calixa, firmographic and product usage insights were hard to put together unless we built something custom.”

Solution

Rachael realized a purpose-built solution was the only way to remove the team’s manual processes all in one go. Using Calixa, they were able to streamline their end-to-end product-led workflows.

Fine-tuned PLG engine with evolving PQL score 

PQLs usually evolve as products and personas evolve. As a startup that originally had no PQL score, Rachael’s team appreciated the freedom to continually experiment with PQL definitions with Calixa’s Scoring. “Just having the ability to easily move those PQL scoring toggles in Calixa is huge. It gives us a level of control but also experimentation we have never had.”

Improve PQL conversion

15% quarter over quarter increase 

in opportunities from self-serve signups

Rachael achieved her goal of creating a predictable PLG revenue stream. After getting PLG tooling in place, the team was able to implement quotas for the first time. “Now we have the tools we need to confidently find and grow revenue from our top signups.”

Proactive sales engagement from PQL alerts 

One of the biggest drawbacks with their manual process was lack of alerting – meaning they were unable to notify a rep that something notable happened in the product and action should be taken. 

With Calixa’s Alerts, Rachael’s team sets up automated email notifications to reps. “Going from no rep alerts to automating alerting and therefore knowing reps are on top of the latest PQLs is such a relief.”

End-to-end workflows through data unification 

Previously, the RevOps team relied on SQL queries and exports. Calixa’s integrations reduced manual processes by combining insights across their GTM tech stack. “Even when we’ve just released a new feature, the product events automatically show up in Calixa,” she said. “That way nothing misses a beat. Reps can have more informed and personalized conversations.” OpenComp reps now see these product insights while working on their daily Salesforce tasks using the Chrome Extension for Salesforce.

Reduce context switching   

From juggling 5 tools down to 2

The RevOps team was able to cut the amount of context switching by more than half. “Trying to get sales in and out of multiple different tools is always challenging. Calixa eliminates our fragmented systems and Excel spreadsheets”

Improved rep efficiency using Outreach automation 

Instead of having to email signups one-by one, sales reps now use Calixa’s automated workflows that place groupings of PQLs into Outreach sequences. PQLs are dropped into sequences straight from within Calixa based on the Salesforce account owner.

“Each rep saves 1 hour per day with Calixa’s Outreach integration.

Since Calixa places PQLs in the right Outreach sequences, OpenComp reps spend less time on administrative tasks and can focus on higher level strategic selling. “Reps no longer have to add PQLs into sequences one-by-one. They can trust that Calixa will trigger the right PQLs and drop them into the right sequence.”

Full context in GTM-ready product insights

In the past, reps were discouraged for curiosity because it created ad-hoc data requests for revops. Now with Calixa’s Views, reps are rewarded for being curious and experiential. Calixa makes product metrics understandable and aggregates users into an account level, so reps could zoom in and out between account or user treads. 

With Calixa, the RevOps team’s lives became easier, and reps finally had the self-service product insights they needed. Calixa was able to help unify firmographic & usage data to unlock revenue gains and increase PQL conversions 15% QoQ. And Calixa regularly gives reps back 1 hour a day due to automations – which adds up to more than 13k in saved time per AE/year.

What’s next

As for what’s next, Rachael anticipates using Calixa for marketing nurture. “We’re hoping to create re-engagement campaigns off the interesting user cohorts we see in Calixa. These will nurture sign ups until they’re ready for sales outreach.”