Podium

The Go-to-Market Systems team at Podium spans a total of 15 people.

 * Sr. Director, Business Applications

 * (2) Manager, Business Applications

 * Salesforce Engineering Manager

 * (2) Salesforce Architects

 * (2) Salesforce Business Analysts

 * (4) Salesforce Administrators

 * (3) Salesforce Engineers

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By the numbers, it's a fairly standard group for an org this size, given they support Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, CPQ / Billing, and Mulesoft.

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The area that caught our eye most is how they resource the portion of their team focused on Salesforce CPQ / Billing, which is typically the product area causing the most headache for companies operating on Salesforce at this scale.

In our team analysis, we focus on exactly how they have resourced this segment of the team to create perfect alignment across the organization.

The fact that Podium only has 3 people on Deal Desk is evidence of success.

• Deal Desk Manager
• Deal Strategy Analyst
• Sr. Deal Desk Analyst

You don’t see ANY bloat on this team.

A huge Deal Desk team means you’re covering up for inefficiencies. Order Operations and keyboard punching becomes the primary use of time.
And Deal Strategy takes a backseat.

The exact opposite of what you want to happen.

But this alignment doesn’t just happen after implementing CPQ. It requires an ongoing collaboration btwn business teams & GTM Systems.

And that partnership needs to exist at every level within the business. When it comes to CPQ, you need Specialists driving at every level.

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Frankly, the only way to succeed with Salesforce CPQ is cross-functional alignment.

And the lack of that alignment is what causes a cascading sequence of issues for companies trying to leverage CPQ.

The reality is quite simple: you won't achieve it without properly structuring the Salesforce team.
Simply having a big team won’t solve your problems.
You need to design the org with precision.
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Salesforce CPQ Org Design at Podium

At this scale & stage of growth, Podium is in a uniquely challenging position.

Rev Ops & GTM Systems need to support both SMB & Enterprise motions.

• Sales & Service Cloud need to serve a huge number of accounts
• CPQ / Billing infrastructure needs to work for self-serve and sales-led

And doing so across 8 distinct modules with wildly different parameters creates an added layer of difficulty for Podium.

It means you have to support transactional sales & complex pursuits.

Simply throwing a robust tool like CPQ at the challenge will cause more trouble than good if you haven't nailed pricing & packaging strategy. But once your Rev Ops team has successfully done it, you can put everything else on autopilot.

It's why they place a big emphasis on creating alignment around CPQ:

1. Build partnerships at the highest level of the org
   It creates an understanding of where GTM Strategy is headed.
   
   Who Does It at Podium:
   Sr. Director, Business Applications (Promoted from Director, Quote-to-Cash Applications)
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2. Design best-in-class solutions to leverage full platform capabilities
   Salesforce CPQ is a beast and poorly released functionality gets you in trouble quickly.
   
   Who Does It at Podium:
   Solution Architect, Q2C Applications
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3. Support key stakeholders in a proactive, advisory capacity
   It’s the most critical relationship to building sustained alignment.
   
   Who Does It at Podium:‍
   Manager, Business Applications (Promoted from CPQ Business Analyst)‍
   Sr. Business Analyst (ex-CPQ Product Manager at Pluralsight)
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4. Support users, facilitating a quality day-to-day experience in the tool.
   CPQ is complex. Change management and support are essential.
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   Who Does It at Podium:
   Salesforce Business Analyst / Admin (Promoted from Salesforce Billing Admin)

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Success with Salesforce is about hiring the RIGHT people. Simply having a big team won’t solve your problems.

You need to design the org with precision by identifying the critical focus areas and creating specialization around them within the team.