Navigating Sales Ops Challenges: Insights from Netflix’s Isha Dhar

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:00]:

Welcome to The Strategy Gap, a show for leaders who want to bridge the gap between strategy creation and strategy execution. I'm Jonathan Morgan and along with Joe Krause, each episode we have conversations with strategy and operational leaders on key issues in strategic planning and strategy execution. If you're looking to actually accomplish your goals, this is the show for you in today's conversation. Joining us is Isha. Dhar it. Isha currently leads global sales strategy and Ops for Netflix's recently launched ads platform. Prior to Netflix, she held various sales ops, business development, analytics roles at meta platforms and Dell Technologies. She brings the conversation over 15 years of experience leading diverse and cross functional teams in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:50]:

She holds an MBA from UNC and undergrad degree in engineering from India and she currently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two children. And in her spare time she enjoys reading, autobiographies, traveling and cooking. Isha, welcome to the show.

Isha Dhar [00:01:05]:

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:08]:

So, Isha, you certainly have a background in a variety of different roles, even beyond what was mentioned in my brief introduction. I wouldn't say that's unique to strategy and operational leaders, but your path may be a little bit different than most. And that's one thing I learned throughout our previous conversations. And I through kind of looking at your background as well as there's a common trend of sales operations roles that's built the sales job that's built in across your roles. So I'd really love to start the conversation today by getting your perspective on the importance of sales operations and why you think you've been drawn to it throughout your career.

Isha Dhar [00:01:45]:

Yeah, sure. Let me start with why being drawn to it, and then my perspective on the importance there. Why drawn to it? I think sometimes some things happen that start off as accidents and they help you find yourself. I totally by accident started at Dell in sales operations, supporting a really, really great leader for sales for large enterprise and public sector. And I learned a ton from him. What kept me, honestly was the proximity sales operations has to sales and by extension to the business itself. So you are so close to knowing what a customer is spending, what are they struggling with, what are the customer needs. You understand what products are working, what is not, because whether customers, they're voting with their money.

Isha Dhar [00:02:35]:

So if they're buying or not buying your product, you are very well attuned to what is working and what is not for the business. It's the closest you can smell, taste, run a business without actually being in the sales. And that's what attracted me always, always love being that close to the business, knowing what's working, what's not, knowing who are our customers, knowing what are their pain points, understanding what are parts of their business that they're using our services or our products to help take them to the next level of growth, efficiency, success. Whichever way they define it. Schools define success differently from a bank maybe, to a small medium business. So whatever is their barometer of success, it's incredible to be part of that journey, whether it's Adele or Facebook or Netflix now, and to really sort of be close to what's working in the business and what's not. So that drew me there. That's what has kept me in the sales operations space.

Isha Dhar [00:03:34]:

You asked me what is important, why it's important. It is incredibly important because you need a partner. Every business needs a partner that they can have as a trusted advisor who can both champion and challenge what are the needs of the business? Whether it is a need for a new product, whether it is the need for pricing, whether it is the need for having a more sharpened go to market strategy, whether it is improved segmentation so we can service our customers better. All of this you cannot expect sales to do by themselves because they are out there every day in front of the customer, talking to them, interacting with them, servicing them, making sure that they are successful. And you need this team that is working closely tied at the hip with the sales team to help land all of the things that I just said. So we are solving for the most optimal outcome for our customers. That's the shorter fit. Of course, others might have other perspectives there.

Joe Krause [00:04:33]:

That's helpful. And I think especially as the economy is in this interesting cycle right now, you're hearing about layoffs, you're hearing about some companies growing. It's not a consistent across the board where unemployment rate is still pretty low. And the through line though is the roles that are not being eliminated and the roles that are expanding are ones, to your point, that can draw a bright line to revenue. Theyre saying I directly contribute to the companys top line because of the work that im doing. And I think thats something that some organizations lose sight of. I know I saw an interesting article the other day. Its like there is no term of strategy leader at a startup.

Joe Krause [00:05:07]:

Lets say its like everybody either has to be selling something or building something, and that's really what it comes down to. So that doesn't change. It doesn't seem, it doesn't change even as you go to bigger organizations like the ones you mentioned. That's still the case. And so how have you been managing to get sales operations that seat at the table that you referenced? Because I know that some organizations, it may not be as mature as the ones that you've worked for, and maybe they're just starting a new revops department and they're struggling to jockey for position. How have you managed to be in the conversation, be joined at the hip as a salesperson, and be deemed a peer so that your perspective and your opinion is considered on every decision?

Isha Dhar [00:05:45]:

That's a great question. Right. And I've seen it done differently at various companies. There are times when certain aspects of a sales operations function, and if I were to just put it broadly in big buckets, it's typically, you know, your core revenue operations or insights, what is working in the business, what's not, what's growing, what's not, what are areas of push pull, etcetera. There's obviously a heavy planning component, right? Some companies call it strategy, some companies call it go to market strategy, what have you. But there's essentially, how are we planning to take our business to the streets and what is the path for us to get there? Whether that is in terms of planning for headcount, whether it's planning for territories, whether it is planning for compensation, whether it is planning for segmentation and go to market strategy, whether it's the annual plan of what the revenue should be, all of it falls into that bucket. And then there's a third usual business of running operations, right? Which is typical where strategy meets execution in terms of building books, building out territories, making sure things are flowing in the right direction, quotas are being landed, etcetera, etcetera. Now, to your question, Joel.

Isha Dhar [00:07:02]:

Every company does there is jockeying for positions oftentimes. A lot of sometimes revenue insights comes from finance. And that's then your scope is sort of more positioned on planning and operations. Sometimes operations sits elsewhere within core operations, and you are probably more focused on revenue and strategy. I think the most important piece of this is keeping an eye on what are the right jobs to be done for the business to be successful, and whatever realm they fall in within these three buckets. If you are driving the right data driven conversations around those key questions, you will not have to jockey for a state at the table. These people will bring you on to hear your opinion or your perspective on, okay, what do you think is the right go to market strategy for me? Or okay, what do you think? How should I be thinking about my compensation planning for next year? Because this is my go to market strategy or, okay, these are the problems I'm seeing in the business. Finance has told me the numbers.

Isha Dhar [00:08:02]:

Now what do I do about it? What's the so what there? So anytime that you are able to thread that needle from what you're seeing in the business to what to do about it, whether it sits in revenue insights or in operations or in planning, you will have a seat at the table. The importance is on being data driven. The importance is being on being company first. And not oftentimes I swirl around office politics or this and that, staying out of that and being a true champion for the business and for the customer and a champion and challenger for the sales teams.

Jonathan Morgan [00:08:38]:

Yeah, I think, I think you make a lot of great points. There is. People tend to, maybe not so much in pure strategy, but certainly happened in strategy and oftentimes happens in operations, that youre often so busy taking orders, for lack of a better term, that you cant really be strategic. You cant have that seat at the table because youre constantly taking orders. One thing ive really picked up on from the last time we talked is that youve had a lot of experience building that foundational aspect or scaling that foundational aspect. You know, building teams. It's a set of strategic decisions that organizations and leaders will have to do. It's important to get it right.

Jonathan Morgan [00:09:16]:

And beyond just building the teams, they have to be able to build those supporting processes that, and honestly, they might be even more important than building the teams as the process is to go along with that. So really, in your experience, I feel like you've had the opportunity to do both at a variety of different organizations, both different size, different shapes, different types of organizations. I'd love to hear what's your approach as you go in to build that foundation for both the sales teams and the processes, as you either enter an organization or come across the need to change the trajectory of your organization?

Isha Dhar [00:09:49]:

It's a fair question. I think it depends on which stage of the business you're at. When I was at Dell, it was a company that had been around for 27, 28 years. It was a much more mature business. From what I hear from my colleagues and friends. It's gotten way more mature even since then. Processes have gotten more streamlined, reporting has gotten sharper, more accurate. There's clarity on what are the metrics to be tracked.

Isha Dhar [00:10:18]:

It depends on what stage of the journey the company is at versus, say, where I am currently at Netflix. We are building the business from the ground up. There is tremendous necessity to be extremely flexible and adaptable. In what we are doing. It's a smaller business within the bigger Netflix conglomerate, and we are figuring out what are the right next steps for us to set the business up for success. And in that, it is critical to have a little bit of a vision of we will try this, we will fail fast if it doesn't work and we learn it from it. Always keep an eye on the learnings and then build better next time. And to be honest, it was something that was very existent even at Facebook, even though Facebook was at a more scaling level when I worked there.

Isha Dhar [00:11:07]:

The fear of failure cannot stop one from trying to build something. The answer is probably building something, iterating on it, getting a good bit of feedback, advice. And then if it doesn't work, that's okay, we go back to the drawing board and we start again. That shouldnt stop one from executing. I think sometimes there can be a little bit of analysis paralysis, especially at larger companies where you have to have a lot more sort of agreement alignment before anything gets implemented.

Joe Krause [00:11:39]:

Preston, its interesting you bring up failure, especially, what, two weeks ago with crowdstrike. Im pretty sure that person was responsible for that decision. Maybe hes not working there anymore. But more generally speaking, not every project that you select or every idea you come up with is going to yield perfect results. And so I think we, as leaders, always will say failure is something that you shouldnt be afraid of. But also it does come from the point where eventually you say that and somebody is going to fail, and how you react to that failure is going to then dictate how everybody else feels. So do you have a time in your career where maybe your first inclination was to get upset? Because I know sometimes when I see a result I dont like, my first emotional reaction is like, what's going on? But then you took a breath and you said, okay, let me see how I can maybe fix the problem and also let everybody else know that this person who brought this to my attention was not dealt with in a poor way. It's something that was respected.

Joe Krause [00:12:29]:

So how do you, like, highlight those moments so that everybody else not only trusts that you say these things, but also saw it? How have you done that?

Isha Dhar [00:12:37]:

So if I didn't misunderstand the question, the question is, how do you prevent people from not being afraid of failure? Is that what you're asking?

Joe Krause [00:12:46]:

Yeah, more or less. So someone is going to fail on your team, and then, so ultimately, that's at a point where you as a leader are going to then respond to that. So how you respond is how everyone else is going to then say, oh, okay, she said this and she means it. How have you been demonstrating that in your career?

Isha Dhar [00:13:00]:

Oh, yeah, no, definitely. I joke with my team, or I also say for myself, there is no harm in making mistakes. Let's not make the same mistake again and again. And I think that's rule number one. Right. Because if we're making the same thing again and again, we're not learning from it. And that sort of defeats the purpose of having a fail fast approach. So did we take a second to reconcile and understand, if something did not work, why did not work? And it's quite possible that maybe 70% of the factors that led to the failure are out of your control.

Isha Dhar [00:13:33]:

Right. I had a situation where we ended up hiring way more, a little bit more than we were planning to, but there were multiple factors, one of them being Covid, where nobody knew how to really forecast attrition or forecast how much attrition, and it came on the heels of a reorg, and there was a strategic decision in the business that changed it. I took a second to take a step back and say, okay, five out of these five things, three of these were not in my control. The other two I could have solved maybe by having a close circuited conversation with some peers to make sure we were all staying in touch. But the important pieces are you learning from where you failed, and are you making sure you're not trying to make the same mistakes again and again? That's one. The second is it's still, you know, you have to really understand what are the ramifications of the failure? Is it leading to a reversible change or an irreversible change? Right. If something is totally getting massively messed up, then it's a much more serious problem, and we should have thought through the ramifications before implementing it. But if we know it's, hey, it's fairly harmless to slip it back, then failing isn't the worst.

Isha Dhar [00:14:46]:

Right. It's getting us on our path to success.

Jonathan Morgan [00:14:48]:

Yeah, I think that's a great way to really think about those dynamics and approaching failure. And obviously that varies at different size organizations, but if I look at the through line of most of our conversations so far today, it's, how do we make decisions? Right? Is that decisions on what to do or what not to do, how to respond, how to adjust? And I feel like while every department has to make these frequent changes and key decisions, for better or for worse, on sales, gets the most attentions because it is the closest to revenue and it makes sense, right? It's closest to revenue generating. It's going to get the more attention, but it's also an important consideration towards like, how does this impact rest of the organization strategy? So when you're going through these decision making processes, what is your thought process? How do you optimize the decision making to really understand, hey, is this something we can come back from? Is this something that we just need to go with? What's the thought process that you'd like to build in as a foundation for optimizing those decision making?

Isha Dhar [00:15:47]:

Yeah, this is from my boss at Facebook. She's incredible. And this is something I learned from her specifically. It is having a very good set of guiding principles for when we want to make a decision. And those guiding principles should be both principled yet pragmatic. You cannot just have hard, rigid, sort of impractical, idealistic views either. But they cannot also be not rooted in principles, data and prone to change. So a few ways.

Isha Dhar [00:16:20]:

First and most important, right, is what we are evaluating, based and rooted in data and information to the best of what we have that's important. Second, the decision that we are making, or the hypothesis on the table, or the recommendation that we are making, is it in the right interest for the business overall for our customers, even in certain cases for our employees? And do we feel justified on those fronts? Are we setting the right precedents for the business by doing this? Because oftentimes 1 may make a decision and then that becomes the precedence for all future decisions, and they may not always go through that level of due diligence. So you want to be careful about, hey, if I'm saying going forward, we will have x and y in our business, is that the right precedence to set for the business? And then lastly, as I mentioned earlier, is the decision reversible, a two door decision or a one door decision? Right, is there coming back from it? And hence we can take a calculated risk, or there is no coming back from that decision. And we really need to make sure we have fully got a representation of not just all the facts and the data, but also a good representation of cross functional partners weighing in to help us make that decision in a holistic way. So we are not just solving maybe in a silo, but we're making sure that any downstream repercussions are not negative for any other teams, and which would then probably lead us to having to repeat some of that.

Joe Krause [00:17:51]:

The topic of silos comes up quite a bit on our podcast, just because it exists in pretty much every industry and we're talking nonprofits all the way up to multibillion dollar organizations. So it's a topic where, to your point, a decision's made and maybe another group has not been considered, or we've created a strategic plan and we all kind of made it in a vacuum, and we're all working on similar things. So, generally speaking, how have you been able to, beyond what you just mentioned, eliminate silos to the best of your ability? Like, sounds like you can't have a silo with sales in your role, but just in general with other parts of the organization, finance, leadership, you name it. How have you found a way to, like, create visibility of your work and have those conversations so that nobody, everybody feels included, but also you're able to do your work. What techniques have you employed to make that a reality?

Isha Dhar [00:18:36]:

First and foremost is these are not cross functional functions. These are people. There is person a, person b, person C, Jill, John, somebody in each of these roles who is working that role. So the first and most basic rule that applies is building relationships. You have to put yourself out there in similar roles such as ours, to proactively build relationships, to have a common sort of human connection. So you know each other. And I realize it's getting harder with being more virtual, sometimes having organic sort of cooler discussions or just meeting somebody in the cafeteria and bumping into each other a little bit harder. But we cannot let technology be the separator here we are.

Isha Dhar [00:19:21]:

On the contrary, we should ideally try to use it to build those gaps, bridge those gaps, and make genuine human connections first, because people trust people even before they start looking at the data. So invest the time in building relationships. Unfortunately, a lot of times when we start very high velocity jobs, we are in so much of a rush to get things done, we forget the first one or two steps of building those foundations, building the relationships, having a human connection and talking to each other second, which happens over a period of time and is an acquired skill, is being able to talk in the other person's language. Right. It isn't just about what an initiative, what a project, what a strategy means for you and in your language, it is important to be able to translate it so it is understandable, so it's easily digestible as you're talking to somebody else. What are the. And that means taking a step further and outside of your comfort zone in terms of what you are only trying to achieve from your project. But what are the repercussions? What are the upstream, downstream impacts that you see for the other person? Because that lets that other person know that you're thinking for them, with them and not just trying to throw a strategy their way and hope they catch it that way.

Isha Dhar [00:20:35]:

They feel, hey, I'm included. This person thought this through. They thought about the impact it could have on my project or my team and they're involving me in the decision. People want to be heard and they want to be included. And it's good to be transparent and honest in terms of what is within the realm of control to be changed, altered, improved versus, hey, some of this is going to be a non changeable or a non movable. Let's figure out what is the best way of working around it. So I think that's the thing. Build relationships, speak in a language that makes sense.

Isha Dhar [00:21:10]:

Think through the problems with a wider lens for everybody. And it's hard because we work on projects on tight deadlines. We are so fixated on getting to our answers, it is hard to look around corners. But I think that's where knowing how to play that accordion of how much do I want to make sure this gets done correctly and gets bought in really matters and helps.

Joe Krause [00:21:33]:

And as an organization, we're fully remote, so achieve it as and we used to have an office and then Covid upended that. We still make it a point to get together once a quarter as a full company. So as you can imagine, there's an expense tied to that. Theres a time commitment. Youre taking salespeople away. Youre taking all that stuff is still worth it. Just because even though all of us have been working together for quite a long time, there is a halo effect that happens after you break bread with somebody as you spend a few days with them and just sitting across the table. And it sounds obvious, but there are people that ive come across in my career that dont make that a priority where its like, Im at my desk and our paths cross in the future, great.

Joe Krause [00:22:07]:

But especially being new in a role, it sounds like getting out there. And if your travel budget allows, do a little bit of a roadshow and meet all your stakeholders to make sure they see you as a person. Not to state the obvious, but that doesn't always happen. And so I think your point around, if people know you as a person and understand your intentions, they're going to give you a little bit more grace than if you who is this new person coming in telling me what to do seems obvious, but I assure you it is not. So thank you for bringing that up.

Isha Dhar [00:22:31]:

No, you hit the heel on the nail on the head and I missed mentioning the good intentions piece, which is also something which would said very often at Facebook, which is assume good intent. So every conversation that you're having, assume that the other person is not here to sabotage your project or your work stream or your function. It is for them to be able to land whatever they're working on in the best way possible across the company. So it's also coming from a place of humility that, hey, I do want to work together, and this is not meant to upend anything. That's one. And then you mentioned this about the travel and meeting in person. It's something I learned when I was in London. At Dell, there was a person who was on the team for business development, and he used to say to me, I never eat a meal alone.

Isha Dhar [00:23:18]:

I never, if I am traveling or if I'm in the office, I always make it a point to grab somebody for, if I'm eating breakfast, I grab somebody for breakfast. If I'm eating lunch, I'm going to grab somebody for lunch. Because these opportunities to connect, and this was pre Covid like this, Washington in 2015, 2016, he would always, always make sure that he ate with somebody and made use of the time, even if there was no agenda to at least get to know that person personally, learn from where they were coming from. I took that to heart as well. I think it's a smart strategy to have even more so when human interactions are so few and far between now.

Jonathan Morgan [00:23:57]:

Yeah. And certainly I think a lot of this is great leadership advice for individuals to have as they go about their careers. A lot of it may be cultural within an organization. I'm sure a lot of our listeners are curious. So with you having spent time at multiple large tech organizations at different phases in their journey, how much of the stuff that you've been talking about today, whether it's strategies or the approaches for sales operations, how much of that has been similar across different roles, or how much of it is totally different based on the organizations that you've been a part of?

Isha Dhar [00:24:29]:

I would say a bulk of it is similar because the core of, as I said, the core of decision making, the core of using data to drive decisions, the basis of working with cross functional partners, for instance, in certain companies, it's probably much more than others, like Dell, which is famously highly matrixed. You cannot get something done if you've not talked to all of the constituents. It's extremely hard, and rightly so, because it's a very matrixed organization. You have to do that whole loop of making sure everybody's signing off. So collaboration probably is at an all time high there to ensure things land and land without too many barriers, versus maybe other companies where there's slightly more room to move faster because of the age and stage they're in. Like, I mean, here at Netflix, typically they have this notion of having informed captains. And if you, as an informed captain, have used data, you've used the principles of doing what's right for Netflix and you have found for dissent, you're able to push something through without maybe too much matrix touching it. And I think Facebook was somewhere in the middle around the time when I was there.

Isha Dhar [00:25:42]:

So it depends on also, as I said, the stage where the company is at the, and what's also maybe intrinsically in the culture as well.

Joe Krause [00:25:49]:

So it sounds like the soft skills in terms of the way that you work with people and the way that you approach solving problems is consistent across the board, but how those decisions are made are going to be different. If it's a large organization, just by the nature of that, it's going to be matrix. But if it's smaller, it's probably a council there. So the idea of just having a through line, of just acting a certain way and having a certain kind of code, so to speak, is going to apply to all of our listeners, depending if there's somebody who's starting a brand new thing or is struggling at a large organization. I think there's a lot of really good takeaways from what you mentioned, so I appreciate that. And Jonathan has one final question for you, one that we always typically ask all of our guests as we draw to a close, because we want there to be one topic that's constantly brought up so we can get the different perspectives. So, Jonathan, please give her the best question we have.

Jonathan Morgan [00:26:35]:

Thank you, Joe. So, really, Isha, as you think about your career as a whole, obviously you've learned a lot. You've shared a lot of great insights today. If you had to revisit yourself as you were just starting your career journey, or your journey in sales operations, pick a point of where you're starting this current career journey and you had to go give yourself one piece of advice, what would that advice be?

Isha Dhar [00:26:55]:

Oh, wow, that's a doozy.

Jonathan Morgan [00:26:59]:

It's always a stumping question.

Isha Dhar [00:27:00]:

It is a stumping question over the years, and this is something, this consistent feedback I've received is that I have good instincts. So maybe I would tell my younger self, trust your gut, trust your instinct. And it's especially harder for folks who are earlier in career. Because what is really gut instinct, it's years of experience that helps you see patterns beyond the data. It helps you see and connect the dots that may not obviously be terribly obvious. I would probably tell myself a younger version of myself to trust my gut instinct that it is going to continue to point me in the right direction and to own that. I would tell myself to continue to build relationships as I do, which have helped me tremendously throughout my career. Building relationships, having good partnerships, being data driven, being focused, having the best interest of the company.

Isha Dhar [00:27:58]:

All of those have always stood me in a good stead. And I would tell myself, things will be okay because sometimes we can be very warts and we can be, oh my God, this is a huge change that we're trying to land. Will it work out or not? It will. Things always work out for the best. And if they don't, we learn something from it and make something even better. So not to worry too much about the results and do the right thing. Always.

Jonathan Morgan [00:28:23]:

Well, perfect. Isha, I think it's a great way to close out the conversation today. We both thank you very much for your insights and hope to talk again sometime soon.

Isha Dhar [00:28:31]:

Sounds great. Thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

Joe Krause [00:28:34]:

Thank you.