Ben Staley envisioned what marketing operations could do and drive at Rackspace when he was asked to take on the function as part of his demand gen leadership team role in September 2019. Due to attrition, he had to staff the team from the ground up. Nevertheless, Ben and the team put together a roadmap of what they wanted to accomplish and, in less than a year,

delivered some impressive achievements that drove tangible business impact: YoY increases in sales-accepted leads (+23%), marketing-sourced revenue (+42%) and average deal size (+26%), a greater than 30% increase in SDR productivity, and more than 40X time savings for marketers to make data- and AI-driven account-based targeting decisions.

Can you share any particular achievements you are most proud of in your current role?  

I’m tremendously proud of building a creative, innovative marketing operations team that drives success for the whole marketing organization. Our marketing department had significant attrition in 2019, so I got the opportunity to build the team from a blank slate. The team of  three was formed by bringing over a very data-driven SDR, a top integrated campaign marketer and just one external hire. The mix of new perspectives, sales experience and deep background in our business and existing processes gave the team instant credibility, which was needed to drive substantial change and transformation. And of course, the team was able to do the majority of their innovative, transformational work in a completely remote environment while still being incredibly collaborative.

Can you share any details about how your team, or individuals on your team, have helped drive innovation? How have you maintained your collaboration and innovation despite the current WFH reality? 

There are a couple of platforms that the team has leveraged to drive our use of data to make better decisions, drive more predictable outcomes and accelerate the marketing organization’s performance. The first step for us was a complete redesign of our Lattice instance, modernizing our ideal customer profile (ICP), increasing by 5X the number of data points we were ingesting from our CRM and overhauling our approach to intent. We then fed the ICP, intent and other data back into our CRM for use in segmentation and targeting. This is accomplished in a few different ways, but the biggest innovation for us was marrying this with DiscoverOrg data through Salesforce’s Einstein Analytics. Among other tangible results this drove, one of my favorites is the 40X — no, that’s not a typo — time savings this delivered for marketers wanting to self-serve segmentation. What used to take over week as a cross-functional project can now be done in less than an hour.

In terms of work from home, there are lots of techniques I use to help foster collaboration amongst the team. We’ve formalized and added monthly check-ins with stakeholder teams so we can be more deliberate about information-sharing. I also do regular “Office Hours” drop-in meetings, which is an idea I got from an HBR article. It’s different from a structured stand-up meeting. Oftentimes, we end up using half the time as watercooler talk, but it’s a great forum to catch up more casually and hear what the team is dealing with in real time, whether personal or professional.

In the midst of Covid-19, what are some lessons you’ve learned that will impact or influence the future of your work?  

I’ve definitely learned how to be a better leader through the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly when it comes to my approach to authenticity, and how I deploy empathy.

With regards to authenticity, I’ve incorporated it probably similarly to how a lot of folks have. I have an “open door” policy to my workspace at home, so many of my co-workers have seen my four-year-old daughter come in to get her iPad, come color while I’m on a call, or come tell me she needs me to help her with something. These are not normal work-from-home circumstances, so I don’t try to hide that from my team or co-workers.

On the empathy front, I’ve become much more attuned to individuals’ work preferences. When everyone’s not coming into an office to be at their desk, and parents are juggling remote learning for their kids, what each person on my team needs to do their best work varies dramatically — and that’s okay. In the past, I expected myself and others to accommodate the perceived needs of the team and stakeholders by showing up to the office at more defined times. Now, I realized that myself and everyone else needs to be much more accommodating of the needs of each individual in order for everyone to be at their best.

I’ve tried to model these approaches more this year as well. One way is through actually using the majority of my time off. While I naturally haven’t been able to take normal vacations this year, I’ve made a point to make time for 3- and 4-day mental health weekends and stay off email and Slack during this time. Not only does this hopefully show my team that I trust them in my absence, and that it’s important to take time to recharge, but it’s also an important opportunity to elevate my team and allow them to interact with other teams and leaders that they might not otherwise, if I was providing the buffer and filter.

What sources for inspiration help you stay excited and invigorated in your work?   

I have two sources of inspiration outside my Rackspace role that invigorate me.

The first is my family — my wife and 4-year-old daughter. Being a #girldad and supporting my wife as a mom, part-time homeschool teacher and owner of her own business makes me want to show up and be my best every day. It has also made me much more aware and sensitive to the inequities women and working moms still face in the workplace, and therefore makes me more conscious and passionate about elevating the awesome women on my team.

Secondly, I mentor as part of a program founded here in San Antonio, TX called Digital Creative Institute (DCI). This is a digital marketing apprenticeship — a year-long program for usually young professionals looking to gain modern marketing workforce skills who haven’t had a ton of hands-on exposure or leadership guidance previously. With Covid-19, DCI has also started a bootcamp accelerator to assist in re-skilling the workforce that is out of a job because of the pandemic. Being a part of DCI enables me to be around young, super-passionate professionals looking to make an impact in their jobs or the world. While I “teach” them as a mentor, I always say I learn at least as much from them as they do from me. And guiding the bootcamp sessions makes me feel like I’m using the knowledge I’ve gained as a marketing leader to help local folks put out of work by the pandemic find their footing and help get them on their way to finding a job again — it’s incredibly humbling.