Nelson Martinez

Jessica just got promoted. She’s no longer our contact. We lost a $120K account because of that one promotion. It still hurts and it’s the reason we now measure something I call the 'Champion Dependency Score.' Jessica was our champion on a $120K account. She knew our platform inside out, trained her team, fought for us at renewal. For 18 months, every conversation went through her. She fixed every problem and handled every renewal question. Her replacement? Had never even heard of us. Then came the email that made it worse: “Hi Kelly, I’m taking over for Jessica. Can you send me some information about what you do for us? Also, we’re reviewing all our software spend this quarter.” That’s when it hit me: we didn’t have a customer relationship. We had a Jessica relationship. The panic audit I did that night: Single Point of Failure Analysis for Jessica's account: - Who introduced us to the company? (Jessica: Yes) - Who runs internal training? (Jessica: Yes) - Who handles our invoices/renewals? (Jessica: Yes) - Who do we text when there's an issue? (Jessica: Yes) - Who attends our quarterly business reviews? (Jessica: Yes) Score: 5/5 = 100% dependency. We were in trouble. I checked the rest of our portfolio. Out of our top 20 accounts, 14 had scores over 70%. That’s $1.8M ARR hanging by a single person in each account. Three months later, Jessica’s replacement churned us. Despite our best efforts, they went with a “simpler” solution. Translation: no one left inside could explain why we mattered. That loss forced us to create the Champion Dependency Score: - 0–20% → We can survive a departure - 21–50% → Some risk, manageable - 51–80% → High risk — widen relationships now - 81–100% → Crisis mode — one change away from churn What we do differently now: - Every meeting: 2+ customer attendees - Map contacts in IT, Finance, End Users, Leadership - QBRs include the champion’s boss - Track “relationship breadth” as part of our health score The hardest lesson: The stronger your champion feels, the more dangerous it is. Jessica loved us so much she kept it all on her plate and when she left, so did our value. Now I ask my CSMs: If your main contact vanished tomorrow, who else would fight to keep us? If the answer is “no one,” you’re not managing a customer. You’re managing a single point of failure. Who’s lived through their own “Jessica moment”?

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#revenueoperations is a tough job to say the least. One thing I'd recommend is to give your predecessors a little grace 🙏 ▶️ If what they built no longer serves where the business is going that's okay. What they built worked for their time ▶️ If it's a slap dash, hastily built infra or process, take the time to understand why it's built the way that it was. Early operators especially have to continuously force tradeoffs. Five releases at subpar quality? Well guess what, those five releases helped manage the business sufficiently (maybe not well) ▶️ Perhaps the business has outgrown that individual and given the time and investment required to coach or skill them up to where they need to be is a mismatch. That's okay. It happens all the time Avoid trashing what others have done Revenue operations is a really small world and I find that we constantly bump into one another Either build atop what they put in place Rip or replace Just avoid putting down previous work My two cents Go forth and operate 👋

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Ever walked into a surprise 9-alarm fire with a customer? The kind where you thought you were walking into a normal check-in… and suddenly you realize:  • They’re extremely upset  • They have multiple product issues stacked up  • They’re already halfway out the door It happens for a lot of reasons:  • You’re new to the account and inheriting someone else’s mess  • Portfolios shift and you discover things are way worse than you thought  • Or, even if you’ve stayed on top of it, product issues snowball into a much bigger crisis The question is: What do you do when you’re blindsided by a firestorm like this? The only play I’ve seen work isn’t damage control. It’s resetting the relationship. Here’s how: 𝟭. 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲. Open a shared doc or slide, write every issue down in front of them. Don’t flinch if it’s 20 items, keep asking “Anything else?” until they’re empty. 𝟮. 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁. Not every issue is critical. Ask which ones actually block their ability to achieve business value. Focus on the 2–3 that will make the biggest impact right now. 𝟯. 𝗦𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗼. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝗮𝘆. Outline the next steps, owners, and timing. Follow up the same day to prove the shift has already begun. Always state when your next follow up will be and then meet that due date. Even if your update is that the team is still working on the issue. 𝟰. 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗰��� 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲. The customer must feel a clear difference between the old way of working with you and the new way forward. Consistent delivery builds back trust. When you do this, a customer who came in saying “everything is broken” often walks out realizing there are really just 2–3 solvable issues. And solving those gives you the chance not just to save them for one renewal cycle, but to truly reset the relationship for the long term. Have you ever had to walk into a customer fire like this? What’s worked best for you to turn things around? #customersuccess

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This one hits close to my bagpipes-over-sunset loving heart (IYKYK) 🌅 Major compliance crackdown in CA: The Labor Commissioner just hit Ritz-Carlton and its subcontractors with $2M+ in fines for misclassifying 155 janitors as independent contractors. Not a fun wake-up call for anyone using contingent labor—especially when subcontracting gets murky. 🔎 Key takeaways: - Subcontractors were used to dodge CA labor laws - Joint investigation exposed systemic violations - $1.9M in wages + penalties recovered Why this matters: Misclassification risks aren’t just legal—they’re financial and reputational. Companies need clear, compliant ways to work with freelancers and ICs. Question for my network: How are you approaching contractor classification in your teams ? Would love to hear your strategies and experiences!

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between managing a team and leading one, especially as we build out the next layer of leadership at Apollo. The difference often comes down to proximity. Managers report the news. Leaders know the business. They understand the challenges two or three layers deeper, not just what’s happening, but why. Not just what the forecast says, but where the risk is and what to do about it. They don’t just delegate the pipeline review or prep for a board slide. They’re on the calls, in the Slack threads, and engaged with both the customer and the team. Because they’re involved, they can speak to what’s real, and what’s missing, with confidence. That’s how you build compounding leadership. The leaders I want at the table build the team, own the details, and carry the business like it’s their own.

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Over the years, I’ve interviewed a lot of people. I mean, a lot. Probably thousands (wish I were kidding). And one thing I see holding people back over and over? Their ability to tell a compelling story about their work...one that helps me envision what it would be like to work with them and the impact they’d have on my customers and team. You know what you've achieved, your resume shows what you've achieved, but if you can’t talk about it in a way that helps me see what it’d be like to work with you and makes me want to work with you--- unfortunately none of that really matters. So, the next time you’re preparing for an interview, don’t just focus on what you’ve done, focus on how you tell the story. Make it clear, make it compelling, and most importantly, make it memorable.

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After a lot of trial, I’ve landed on a 1:1 template that forces tradeoffs. These are the conversations I have with my leaders. 1:1s are sacred time — we don’t skip them. It’s their time, not mine. Here’s how it works: 1. Personal Check-in - Start with: “How are you feeling? 1–5.” - It’s a quick morale pulse. Forces you to catch issues before they spiral. 2. Priorities Go through every priority on their plate. Then narrow it down and write the top 3 priorities. Draw a line — everything below those 3 is not a priority. This makes tradeoffs explicit and stops the “everything is important” trap. 3. Wins of the week - We always highlight wins before diving into problems to reinforce the behaviors that move the business 4. Most important topics. Limit it to one or two and zoom in: - A deal needing exec coverage - A pipeline gap - Messaging that’s blocking conversion - Anything more, and focus gets diluted. 5. Blockers, Concerns, and Input Turn vague ‘I’m stuck’ into specifics… Leaders walk away knowing exactly where to clear the path: Your job here is to clear the path. 6. Additional Topics? Space for the things that drain focus if left hanging. Comp plans, CRM quirks, random process gripes. Catch them here so they don’t fester in Slack. 7. Action items (with dates) Every 1:1 ends with clear next steps. This structure shifts 1:1s from status updates into working sessions. Both sides leave knowing exactly what matters most that week.

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Weekly now, I talk to company that is “unimpressed” with the AI or Automated QA from (insert their vendor here). Here’s what happening. Automated QA in call centers is broken for the same reason workflows are: it measures compliance, not judgment. Your QA bot checks if agents said the required greeting. Used the customer's name three times. Offered the upsell. Read the disclosure. Followed the 12-step troubleshooting process. It's scoring a checklist while missing the entire point of the conversation. As a result, technology is now driving behavior: Your best agent gets dinged because they skipped steps 7-11 of troubleshooting because they recognized the issue immediately from experience and jumped to the solution. The customer was thrilled. The bot gave them a 60%. Meanwhile, your worst agent robotically follows every step, frustrating a customer who just needed a password reset, not a 20-minute diagnostic marathon. They get a perfect QA score but deliver a terrible customer experience. Traditional automated QA asks "did you follow the rules?" instead of "did you solve the problem?" It measures inputs, not outcomes. This creates a doom loop: agents optimize for QA scores, not customer satisfaction. They become human workflows, terrified of using judgment because judgment doesn't have a checkbox. Policy-driven AI agents flip this entirely. Instead of scoring against a rigid rubric, they evaluate against context: Did the agent resolve the issue efficiently? Was the customer satisfied? Was the interaction appropriate for the situation? An agentic QA system understands that spending 3 minutes solving a VIP's problem beats spending 15 minutes following protocol. It knows when skipping the upsell was the right call because the customer was already frustrated. It recognizes great judgment, not just great compliance. Your agents aren't failing QA because they're bad at their jobs. They're failing because QA is measuring the wrong job. Policy-driven agents measure what matters: did we achieve the outcome the business actually wants? Let's stop scoring workflows and start evaluating judgment. Your customers will notice the difference.

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Your team's performance isn't just a skill problem. It's a state problem. Just watched Tony Robbins speak for 3 hours straight at conference, and wow is it something else. His secret? State management. And it hit me like a freight train how much state plays a role in our success in sales and leadership: **Rep in a bad state:** - "This quota is impossible" - "They'll never buy from me" - "I'm not cut out for this" - Shoulders slumped, energy dead - Makes 20 calls, all rejections **Same rep in a peak state:** - "I've got value to deliver" - "Someone needs what I have" - "I've done this before" - Standing tall, voice strong - Makes 20 calls, books 5 meetings Same skills. Different state. Different results. We can change our state in 60 seconds: - Change your physiology (stand, move, breathe) - Change your focus (what's possible vs impossible) - Change your language (I GET to vs I HAVE to) But here's what got me: As leaders, we obsess over: - Sales methodologies - Tech stacks - Processes - Metrics And spend ZERO time on state management. We let our teams spiral into low-energy stories: "The leads suck" "The market's tough" "The competition's killing us" Meanwhile, their state is killing their performance. What if we treated state like any other metric? - Track it - Manage it - Improve it Not rah-rah BS. Real state work: - Start meetings with 2 minutes of movement - Reframe negative stories immediately - Call out low-energy patterns - Celebrate high-state moments I've been reading Tony for 20 years. Personal Power on cassette. Get the Edge on CD. But seeing him live? Game changer. The man IS his message. Pure energy because he manages his state religiously. Your team's stuck? It's not skills. It's state. Your numbers down? Not strategy. State. Everything feels hard? State problem. I'm committing to this: - Working on my own state daily - Building state management into our team rhythms - Treating energy as seriously as revenue Because the story we tell ourselves becomes our reality. The state we bring becomes our results. Try it tomorrow. Change your team's state before their first call. Watch what happens.

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Something I don’t see discussed nearly enough: team chemistry! It’s so important, yet the hardest thing for a hiring manager to assess. Team chemistry shows up daily in many ways, such as how people handle feedback, jump in to help, or react under pressure. To be clear, it's less about everyone being BFFs and more about how people jive and work together, especially when the going gets tough (as it will). A few things you can ask to assess for this are: - Tell me about a time when a teammate dropped the ball. How did you handle it? What was the outcome? - What’s one thing a past team did that helped you do better work? You're looking for signals of emotional maturity, self-awareness, someone who has leaned in when things got challenging, and someone who understands the importance of collaboration. What questions would you add to assess for this? Happy Thursday to you all!

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Some leadership lessons don’t go out of style. And the more experience I gain, the more I come back to a few fundamentals that have served me (and my teams) well: 1. A bad hire can do more damage than a missed opportunity. Get hiring right—and when it’s not, deal with it directly. 2. Don’t do your team’s work for them. It might feel helpful, but it only masks performance problems instead of addressing them. 3. Spend at least a third of your time developing your people. Give stretch opportunities to those ready for more. And when it’s time to manage someone out, do it with kindness and clarity. 4. Communicate like you’re on repeat. People rarely remember what you said the first time—but they will remember how consistently you show up. 5. Vulnerability, humility, empathy—they’re not soft skills. They’re leadership skills. And they build the kind of trust that lasts. Leadership is about showing up, staying human, and helping people grow. #Leadership #PeopleFirst #TeamCulture #EmotionalIntelligence #LeadWithHeart #MastercardEmployee

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If you’re not curious, you won’t last in operations. The best ops pros I’ve ever worked with all share one trait, ‘’Relentless curiosity’’. I’m not talking about “read another blog post” curiosity. I’m talking about the dig until you figure it out kind. The “no one else is going to hand me the answer, so I’ll reverse-engineer it myself” kind. In ops, no one gives you a perfect playbook. You inherit messy systems, contradictory processes, and an overwhelming number of tools. And the people who thrive learn by breaking things (and then fixing them). AI can give you a head start. Templates can give you structure. But curiosity is the only thing that will make you a backbone in your org. If you’re not willing to self-serve your own learning, you’re signing up to be a permanent bottleneck. Ops moves too fast for that. Remember, your career in ops won’t be defined by the number of tools you know. It’ll be defined by how fast you can teach yourself the next one.

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People skills still matter. I've been fortunate in my career to have hired dozens of people at near-entry level, and contribute to their learning as they grew into the CS leaders they are today. To aspiring people leaders, I emphasize the importance of being genuine. There is a lot to learn from books and talking to others. There are lots of valuable techniques to study and learn from. But be careful with techniques. Make them your own. Incorporate them into your genuine style. People can tell when a technique is being used on them and its sort of off-putting. We've all had someone overtly and obviously bungle the socratic method in a conversation. It immediately diminishes the respect you have for the person attempting the technique when its too obvious. I am not sure who started the "do you have 18 seconds opener" but after the 10th call this week its become comical. Try this instead: Make your pitch actually only take 18 seconds and practice it enough that I can't tell you are reading it to me. If your auto-dialer was smart enough to trick me into answering the phone, don't waste the opportunity to say something meaningful.

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