How Do Proposal Teams Earn a Seat with Revenue Leaders? ✹ Betsy Matthies, VP, Global Revenue Operation and Enablement @ GitHub

Christina Carter (00:08) Today we are speaking with Betsy, who started out running proposals and a bid desk. At AWS, she led the proposal center of excellence where their mantra was.

If we're not in your deals, you're not gonna win. So since her career started, she has been the VP of sales, she's been the VP of RevOps, and right now she is the VP of Global Revenue Operations at GitHub.

Now, proposal leaders, she's exactly the type of person that we are often trying to get in front of both within our proposals and within our internal organizations.

She names the three proposal numbers that she really wants to know about, but rarely ever gets.

She talks about what separated the proposal people she promoted from the ones who didn't get a promotion.

And I'm gonna give you a hint, it's not the ones that were working more nights and weekends necessarily. So if you've ever felt like your team does the work, but doesn't get a seat at that leadership and strategic table, this conversation is for you. All right, I can't wait for you to learn from Betsy. Let's get into it.

Christina Carter (01:07) Hey Betsy, thank you so much for being on the Stargazy Brief. It's amazing that you're here.

Betsy Matthies (01:11) Yeah. Chris, thanks so much for the invite. So glad to reconnect with you again and join your podcast.

Christina Carter (01:17) Yeah, I so many of the people who are listening, they are proposal bid leaders. And, they really we're used to selling to people like commercial leaders, rev ops leaders all the time. But when it comes to our internal, selling of ourselves, of our team to our VPs of RevOps, our RevOps leaders, that's it's a whole nother story. I can't wait to get your insight on it. But

from your own experience, what pressures do sales and commercial and rev ops leaders really have? keeps them up at night? What are they thinking about all the time? 'Cause I know it's gonna be different from what proposal people are thinking about all the time.

Betsy Matthies (01:52) Certainly. great great question, especially all the things going on in in the tech business where I or software development business where I am right now. I would say some of the top of mind pressures that are happening and and occurring would be pipeline velocity, you know, always top of mind. How can we fast move a prospect from, you know, that first hello signal to a signed contract?

I think identifying revenue leakage is another really big opportunity. Where are we losing money because of bad data or clunky handoffs or prolonged negotiation cycles, as well as monitoring churn and contraction in the health of your business? I think another thing that right now is top of mind is the tech stack ROI. You know, managing a very expensive maze of software, ensuring people are actually using it correctly and it's yielding.

the impact and results that the intent of the the product or tool was are probably some of the top things that keep me up at night at this at this point.

Christina Carter (02:52) Things that are just kind of big deals. So that makes sense.

Betsy Matthies (02:54) That's right.

Christina Carter (02:56) yeah, and I mean, oftentimes when we are given advice of how to speak with our commercial and rev ops leaders, you know, they say, Use the language of leadership, you know, what they're what they're talking about, the vocabulary that they're using. And so what does that mean? you already talked about pipeline but how can we speak to people like you in a much more relevant way that is

interesting to you, feel supportive to you, and that you're gonna pay attention to.

Betsy Matthies (03:23) I would definitely say, you know, don't talk about activities. Stop talking about activities and start talking about outcomes. And, you know, proposal bid bid management teams are in such a prime position to be able to do that. Sales leaders don't really care about the mechanics of building a proposal, unfortunately. they care about the quota attainment, they care about the deal size, they care about the win rates. so I think the wrong way to

To package, you know, speaking the language is activity based. we completed 15 RFPs this week. We updated 40 pages of content. You know, to a sales leader, this sounds like an administrative just checklist, right? I think the right way to do this would be outcome based. You know, we unblocked three million dollars of pipeline this week and we reduced our proposal turnaround rate by forty eight hours, giving the reps a competitive advantage. I I think is the best way to to

most appeal to our sales leaders.

Christina Carter (04:16) let's say we don't have a good relationship, like now that we have a bad one, we just don't have a relationship at all with our commercial and rev ops leaders, right? Let's say we want to have one because we know what you're saying, we know what we have, the data we have is really useful. We know what we have to say is useful. what's the best way to start those conversations?

with people like you t without sounding like we are just an admin

Betsy Matthies (04:38) as

a former proposal bid desk leader, you know, I think some of the things that worked really well for me is driving the value of the team. I never went in and said, we can do this, this many proposals, just articulating the impact. This is our win rate. When you bring a deal, we can help shape it. We can help, you know, craft this with other pieces that we've done in successful bids and that would

most resonate with the customer. So I think positioning it around deal momentum versus, you know, getting stuck around the administrative side of deal and deal management, that's important, but it's important kind of internally. Like we definitely want to make sure we we have velocity on RFPs and how many we get done and content is fresh. However, you know, when you're you you need to tailor the communication, the data points

To the personas that you're engaging with. So whether that's a sales VP or, you know, if you're in an elevator for 30 seconds with your CEO, what's the pitch? Hey, you know, we've increased, we worked on some of the largest bids this year and we won them, you know, through some new techniques that we did through you know, deal shaping, for example. That's the kind of stuff they want to hear, versus, hey, you know, CEO, we did 15 more RFPs this year, right? So I think.

Christina Carter (05:54) Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (05:55) Tailoring the communication and those opportunities to connect to the person you're speaking to and what's important to them. Very much like crafting an RFP, right? You're crafting an RFP to tailor it to the customer. Take those points and leverage those internally when you're communicating across your organization.

Christina Carter (06:14) Yeah, I love that. And it shouldn't be that difficult to research what they talk about and how they talk about specific things because you're probably in those pipeline calls. You probably, you know, are in your town halls or whatever it is that they do on a weekly or monthly basis where they speak to everybody. So it's

Betsy Matthies (06:30) Absolutely. Absolutely. It in Chris, if you go to a sales leader and say, Hey, I have a really great idea on unblocking six million dollars in pipeline, can you take 15 minutes with me? Most sales leaders are gonna be like, Absolutely yes, I need that pipeline, you know, I'm short, or let's talk about a plan. one of the one thing that my team and I did when I was over

Bid in proposal management, we actually met with sales leaders on a very routine basis, probably every quarter, to understand what their pipeline for deals look like, where they could get stuck at and where we could help. We would do value proposition workshops and then take that outcome from those workshops with the customer and craft a proposal for them. And they won, period. So sales leaders do want to partner. they definitely want to win. And

and increased revenue and pipeline closed. So take the opportunities to do that.

Christina Carter (07:23) Yeah, no, steal that idea, everyone. go and do that. because I really don't see most people doing that. And I think we like I think you're right, proposal people are in that prime position to be able to provide that value in a way that nobody else in the company really can in that way. So absolutely.

Betsy Matthies (07:39) Totally. I agree.

Christina Carter (07:41) I like and I mean this goes back to I think even a more specific question around that, which is.

What data should we be tracking as proposal leaders that would be useful to you? I mean, obviously they're gonna see the normal stuff that's in the the CRM, but what what else do you think would be unique to us?

Betsy Matthies (08:00) I

think proposal teams in general sit on really a gold mine of qualitative and quantitative data that sales and RevOps desperately want and need. So some things top of mind that that could and should be tracked would be go no go accuracy rate. So, you know, track the win rate of deals, where the proposal team advised against that, against bidding versus those that you advised for. this provides your teams,

very strategic insight, I believe, and save sales reps time wasted on dead end RFPs. So, you know, show us, show us where we don't need to engage, what a bad opportunity looks like would be number one. I think number two would be content utilization versus win rate. So which specific case studies, security answers, product modules, case studies are included in our

most winningest proposals, right? If you're using feature X in a proposal correlated to a 70% win rate, sales needs to pitch feature X earlier in the cycle, right? Versus the RFP. That would be number two.

Christina Carter (09:09) Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (09:09) Number three, I would say, is like the SME bottleneck tax. So track how long it takes, subject matter experts, you know, thinking product legal security.

to give you responses and answers. If a $500,000 deal is delayed five days because product didn't answer a technical question, that's really quantified friction for for our teams, you know, whether it's sales or product or legal security, that we can we can fix, right? We can put some prioritization around it and support the team, the proposal team, and quicker responses, faster, you know, close rates, all the things that come with that. So that would be the third,

thing that I think is beneficial and actionable.

Christina Carter (09:49) Yeah, and one thing that I mean, I like everything you're saying and I want everyone to, steal your ideas. But I think what I've learned from watching you and the team that you manage at AWS is not being afraid to be really, I guess like forthcoming with that data and with your ideas that would change and make things better, to just like go talk to your leaders and not be afraid to go just go do that if you have something interesting to show them or talk to them about.

Betsy Matthies (10:15) I've I think a couple tidbits on that. I definitely say like KPIs and data can help show the currency of your team. And so never shy away, even if the data isn't favorable, you can talk to that and have a plan and share, you know, your your strategy to fix or increase or change what data may show is number one. So, you know, have some sort of data to articulate the value of your team.

Number two is be curious, have conversations. Very few, I think I could probably count on less than one hand how many times people have been like, yeah, this this doesn't mean anything to me. I don't care about this. Most people, I mean, these are your coworkers, peers, leadership, are going to care. They they've invested in the team, they've invested in the tools. And so it's so good to advocate for your team and

Be more than just a transaction and a piece of the process to close a deal. Be a partner. And that starts with networking and, you know, being curious, advocating and sharing your data across leadership to to have them understand the value that the team brings.

Christina Carter (11:25) Yeah, absolutely. And that okay, so when you were AWS, I mean obviously I'm gonna bring up AWS a lot because that's that's where I worked

Betsy Matthies (11:31) Yeah, sure.

Christina Carter (11:32) with you. but at the the center of excellence that you ran, what really separated a proposal person who who really stood out as a leader versus one that just stood out as like maybe a good person that you wanted to keep in your team, but not not a leader. Like what separated those those two people?

Betsy Matthies (11:48) Yeah, that's a great question. I think I think fundamentally it comes down to the difference between an order taker and a strategic partner.

Christina Carter (11:56) Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (11:57) And I think let's call it the proposal professional. you know, one that maybe just wants to stay as a proposal professional. And quite frankly, there's really nothing wrong with that in some cases. but maybe it's more reactive and waits for the RFP to land in the inbox.

You know, they're an enforcer. They focus on strict compliance, font size, rigid deadlines. sometimes there can be some some groaning or friction with sales. I've seen that. And let's just say, you know, sales reps are always submitting things laid and you know, they they're not partnering, they're not responding. and maybe I would say output driven too. So measures what success looks like to number of pages that were shipped, right? That that

And there's nothing wrong with some of those things. but that's truly like, you know, individual contributor. I'm just here check, check, check, we're gonna get things done. Where I think I had the opportunity to promote proposal leaders were when they were proactive. You know, they're tracking pipeline, looking ahead, understanding what's coming into the team, planning for that, you know, having strategy for some of those deals, even be even before we started work on.

I would say someone that's an enabler, focusing really on messaging and value propositioning and winning the deal versus, you know, again, strict compliance font size deadlines. Someone who problem solves, that's always beneficial. You know, building a self-serve portal, for example, that that sales reps can handle smaller deals on their own versus just saying, nope, we're not taking them too small for us, help like help help scale, you know, without.

the resources needed, but with the knowledge from your team. And then I would say lastly, would be an impact driven leader. So, you know, measuring success by win rate, I know that's a spicy one sometimes, and revenue influence, I think that's, you know, important, right? To again tying back to what I just last mentioned, the value of your team and helping showcase, showcase that to leadership. But

I think the promotion trigger, I promoted leaders who wanted to bring me solutions to scale the business, not just requesting more headcount to handle more paperwork, really true thought leadership individuals.

Christina Carter (14:08) Yeah, I

Betsy Matthies (14:08) I'm not there.

Christina Carter (14:09) no, those are so many good things. I I love all of it. I am just thinking that there's like I guess to dive into just one of those things a little bit more, so many proposal people that I know that who are really good at their jobs, they think in order to be seen, I just need to be better at my job and I need to sacrifice more of myself. So like going back to what you're saying about hey, there are these smaller deals.

Instead of saying, no, I'm not going to do it. I'm just gonna be like, I'm gonna just say yes to everything and I'm gonna spend my late nights to do it. I'm gonna spend my weekends to do it. You know, so it's it's almost like burning yourself out to be seen as really good at your job as opposed to what you said, which is building a self service tool to help with those smaller deals that maybe you shouldn't be putting your time into. So it's I don't I guess I don't really know what my question is, but but I mean like, would that really stand out to you though is that person who's like burning themselves out and just like good at

what they do as opposed to yeah, thinking more strategically in ways that I don't know my question is Betsy. But yeah. Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (15:07) I think think I I think I where you're going. Like, hey, what do you what

what do we tell the folks that are, you know, burning themselves out and may not understand or know how to scale their skills. and instead they just want to do everything, right? Like

Christina Carter (15:16) Yeah. Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (15:19) and look, I think in every occupation that that could potentially happen, we all want to put the superhero cape on and come in and save the day and you know, help our friends. And we think sometimes that that's how we bring value. We think sometimes that that's how you know we

Proposition or, you know, push ourselves up for the next promotion. But really, it it can be, right? It's, it's, it's valiant work, so to speak. However, imagine if your name was on the tool or, you know, you got the credit for the tool, the idea, this strategy for building something that scaled. So instead of you putting on that superhero cape late nights and you got five more proposals done, you built the tool or

partnered with somebody or, you know, had the logic and strategy behind something that scaled to 5,000 people. Right. But I understand that sometimes in the moment, you can get mired in like, let me just do this last one. Let me just help out the sales rep. They're so good to me. They respond really quickly when I ask. I get it. I've seen it. but you have to help yourself out if if that's what you want, if you want to

you know, have big, impactful projects, put your mask on first, take a step back and say, like, how this is a an ongoing problem, right? These small deals, they come up and try to get to the root cause, make a solve and a solve that scales. And the impact that that person could have has so much more magnitude than, you know, the superhero cape late at night, you know, you missed your kids sports game because you helped on a deal.

Christina Carter (16:54) Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Thank you for interpreting my question. Cause I wasn't quite sure how to ask it. It's just it's just a scenario that I see time and time again. that people will do this and then they'll be like, Well, why didn't I get a promotion? I don't always think heroics is what gets you that promotion, even you know, even though of course like there is value and effort, it's just not what's gonna get you to the next step, in my opinion.

Betsy Matthies (17:15) Yeah, I would just probably say this. Just because you're doing a lot more doesn't mean you're getting a lot more done.

So, you know, find a way to to help you and your your customers or your stakeholders. and if I may, I w one thing, you know, proposals has legacy just been, you know, open a Word doc, start it, get your your drafts done. I think the other thing too is there's a shift in the industry with tooling, with AI. And, you know, that once superhero cape now needs to be thought.

of differently and bigger with some of the the tools that are out there. And so with that, you know, having our teams that flex that new muscle to understand the art of the possible is is different

too.

Christina Carter (17:59) RevOps commercial sales leaders.

You're not constantly thinking about RFPs. You're not thinking about proposals all the time. in fact, like I I know because I've been in a lot of these conversations where it won't get brought up at all. in most, you know, strategic or pipeline or forecasting meetings. Like it's just not brought up. So what's something that we can do as proposal leaders to be seen more as strategic to people who are it's just not a part of the conversation at all?

Betsy Matthies (18:23) I would say first off, really be there. Where? be everywhere, make connections, network, ask for coffee chats and and basically pull yourself of what some see as the back office, pull yourself out of that and really own market intelligence. Because our our proposal teams read every single RFP, or most of them.

You know exactly what the market is asking for, really before product teams do or sales teams do. So you you see these valuable patterns. So I think a really strategic opportunity or move would be to show up to quarterly business reviews or monthly business reviews with you know the organization that you report into, as well as your stakeholders, with information and data that we discussed, but also things like win loss and market friction reports. Like this quarter, we have seen this trend come through in RFPs. There's

A strong propensity for customers to ask about AI, for example, or XYZ feature, for

example. I think what that can package up for leadership is: hey, the team, you know, we looked at 20 RFPs we lost, 60%, 60% of them asked for, you know, insert security compliance PCR, which we don't have. another 30% flagged our pricing model. It's too complex.

You know, and if we fix these two things, we could unlock X amount of millions and addressable pipeline for next quarter. Boy, would that not be some of the most interesting conversation heard at one of those MBRs or QBRs? I I think it would. So suddenly you're not just formatting documents and responding to an RFP, you're actually guiding enterprise or corporate strategy, which is incredibly powerful and will invite you back to the table and those meetings in the future.

Christina Carter (20:08) I

like I feel like that's gold. I mean, if let's say a proposal leader is not invited to a QBR or an MBR, what would you suggest say go up to their VP of RevOps or VP of sales, like whoever the right person is and say, Hey, I have this information. I wanna take five minutes or whatever and present it at the QBR. Like it

do you think it's

Betsy Matthies (20:26) Absolutely.

Christina Carter (20:26) that simple?

Betsy Matthies (20:27) I I think it could be. It depends on the organization, right? It depends on a couple dynamics and we can talk through those. But I think there's two ways you could approach it. One, I have some really valuable information. I would love to showcase this. I think it could be helpful in driving X business result. It's number one. Matter of fact, very point. Number two.

Would it be okay if I join the next QBR or MBR? I'd love to listen in, better understand what some of our future strategy looks like, you know, as a learning opportunity or growth opportunity. What that then unlocks, Chris, is after you're done with that QBR or MBR opportunity, go back and craft what could be value add with the data, information, and knowledge that your team has, package it up and then go back to number one. I sat in.

MBR, this was talked about that you know, this was important. We didn't have a solve. I think I have some information that could be very beneficial for the team, you know, as mentioned in the MBR or QBR. So I I think that could be a an another approach as well.

Christina Carter (21:26) Yeah, absolutely. I'm I think that there are so many different ways to be to be seen and we don't take a lot of those. I don't know why we don't. So I am I'm glad that you're giving these suggestions to make us I don't know, just have the bravery, I suppose, to just ask. to get into the conversation. Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (21:43) Know your worth. Like

the companies invest in centers of excellence and proposal teams and bid management teams. Not because you know they they have to, they could go through other different methods. Like bring value, like bring value and just know the worth that these teams have, which is substantial.

Christina Carter (22:01) Yeah, I mean, genuinely. I'm one of the few people with this data or looking at this data with my mindset and my understanding. And so if I don't give it, I'm almost being a bad employee if I don't give that information. Because I do feel like it it leaves revenue on the table if I don't give this information to to leadership. So I I don't even think of as like if do I deserve this? Am I worthy? It's more of like, no, it's my job to do this.

Betsy Matthies (22:24) Yeah, and it's it's it's intent, right? Nobody intends to withhold information. but you

Christina Carter (22:29) Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (22:29) should be intentional with sharing it and wanting your organization to thrive and get some learning points from it. Our product team, even today, you know, we provide insights from customers to, you know, go develop with. And during my time at AWS, we would frequently pull those key insights and

whether it was, you know, friction points. We we had some friction points, for example, with legal, you know, long timeline. I think everybody's legal team is is very busy from all different dynamics, right? We ended up doing we we had a better process put in place at AWS to move quicker because the legal team then understood, like, my goodness, these are high priority, high value, you know, must wins. And so we had a a very bespoke

process just for our proposal team to move quicker on those deals. So again, the legal team wasn't trying to, you know, add friction,

Christina Carter (23:23) No.

Betsy Matthies (23:24) but if nobody tells them, hey, here's an opportunity to improve, goodness, I mean you can't just expect it.

Christina Carter (23:30) No, no, absolutely. And this goes a lot to my my next question. where can proposal leaders find more revenue levers so that we can be become, truly become and also be perceived as revenue and demand generators?

Betsy Matthies (23:44) So I think to be seen as a revenue generator, you have to look beyond, you know, cold the cold flow of RFPs coming in and really look at, you know, expansion and retention. what that could look like is a proactive renewal playbook, you know, working with a customer success team.

So don't wait for a major client or customer to put their contract out for bid. We usually dread that. But help maybe see us create a highly tailored, proactive, you know, value realization playbook or something six months before a renewal comes up. I think that could be incredibly valuable and help drive additional revenue. Another thing I would think could be very beneficial is maybe like a competitive takeout kit.

Or a briefcase. so identify your top competitors' weakness spots. You you see them tail you know, RFPs are traditionally tailored to ask certain questions. Create basically a plug-and-play proposal framework specifically designed for sales reps to use when they're trying to poach customers from that account or excuse me, from that competitor. So that could be very beneficial, very scalable as well, depending on the size of your sales team.

I think another low-hanging piece could be maybe a 80-20 rule for self-serve. So automate again, automate and templatize maybe the bottom 80% of small transactional deals so sales reps can generate their own proposals. I I think that's incredibly important. this frees up you, your team, to dedicate really 100% of your time to really this strategic top or you know, the firepower of the top 20%.

Of those really high value enterprise accounts that really move that revenue needle, but also provides you know the skills and the knowledge for the bottom 80% that still need help. We don't want to just not respond because a customer is small. We also don't want to respond with a really bad RFP that's out of compliance

Christina Carter (25:42) No.

Betsy Matthies (25:42) that somebody you know wrote on the back of a napkin just to say they responded. So

I I would think those three things are very impactful, would drive revenue and you know, a bit different than a proposal team, but scalable, fun could be fun projects, and really impactful.

Christina Carter (26:00) Yeah, I agree. And I I hear a lot of proposal people who say something like, Well, why isn't proposals, why isn't it enough to focus on that one little thing? And I think there are a few reasons, but one of them is is going outside of just that responding to an RP is gonna make you better at proposals anyway. Like if you're helping with the front end, the buyer stakeholder mapping or whatever it is, capture management, if you use that term.

Then that's gonna make your proposals that much stronger. And then once again at the end, you're gonna know that customer so much better and be able to tailor for the next time around. Like I think all these are really, really connected and we shouldn't be seeing them quite so segmented. which I think a lot of people do see them as really segmented. But

Betsy Matthies (26:41) I I agree. and look, businesses, enterprise businesses, most businesses need and want scale. And so because proposal managers, again, like have so much knowledge, they can only do so many proposals a month, right? So how can we take that and do, like, for example, that 8020 model that I just shared, or you know, self-serve? You're basically creating

10 people with your knowledge as a proposal manager. So yes, proposals can be enough to your your comment. However, like boy, you can have such a bigger impact if if you find some of these other ways to drive revenue too. And again, it just really magnifies the value that the proposal team does beyond just like, here's a proposal, here's another one, here's another response.

It's, yeah, we're managing this, this, this, and this. Like, can you imagine, Chris, if you or I just said, This is my job, this is my lane, this is what I'm supposed to do. And I I was sitting on, you know, the ability, so to speak, to deliver a tool or knowledge for a tool or something like that that could help our my organization. Then my stock hopefully increases because we've won so many deals. you know, it's like, gosh,

The opportunity out there is endless to to drive more value for yourself, I think too, advocating for yourself. And that's how it's exhibited.

Christina Carter (28:04) Absolutely. And it's also fun to learn new things, get better at things. I I think staying in your your lane is boring anyway. I'm I'm personally bad at that, but okay, you have managed, I mean, you've been a VP of RevOps, of sales, you've you've done so many things where you have been leading not just proposal teams but huge sales teams,

when you're managing your proposal team and you got so many other things that you have to talk about when you're speaking with with your CEO, with your CRO, like how do you how do you talk about them? Because I do know some people listening to this podcast are like in your situation and that they do need to talk about proposals and they want to talk about them well, but there's so many other things to talk about. What what would your advice be to them,

Betsy Matthies (28:49) I would certainly say find a way to showcase what's coming down the line. So in sales and RevOps and any of these functions, we are always trying to look at what the deal velocity looks like, pipeline, understanding where deals are in in the stages. This is a piece of that. Proposals are a piece of that. Sure, they may show up in opportunities, however, they may not. I'll I'll give you an example.

Here of why it's so important for sales leaders, rev ops to be talking about this. going back to some time at a hyperscaler that I worked at, I had connected with one of our top let's just say, you know, strategic leaders in the organization. And I said, Hey, I I think this is value add information for your MBRs. And

wanted to start with MBRs and you know, just feeding a pipeline of data information and and maybe some behind the scenes dynamics, potentially flags. We have a flag on this deal that maybe others have not seen yet. just knowledge share, right? That leader was like, no, this is not MBR. This is WBR, which is weekly business review. So I ended up building out on a CEO level weekly business review.

Our active and highest proposals in flight. And what did that do? It wasn't just a reporting mechanism. I wasn't just saying, that, you know, we're working on this billion dollar deal or this 500 million. It unlocked resources, partnership, removal of friction, you know, and the magnitude of impact on the team when they felt like, my goodness, the CEO can see what deals I am working on. My name is next to that.

And I am empowered to be a leader here, you know, to bring these stakeholders together to get something of significant impact done for our organization. I would say, you know, again, like as I mentioned earlier on, no sales leader is gonna say, no, I do not want to know this information. I do not want to know how I can make this deal close quicker. And if they do, I you may be working at the wrong place. But

Christina Carter (30:50) Yeah. Not a good sales leader. Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (30:55) Like that is just one real example of how and why sales leadership, RevOps leadership want to bring proposal data and information into conversations with leadership because it is that impactful. Can you imagine if one of those billion dollar deals did not go through? That impacts shareholders, right? That impacts bottom line.

Christina Carter (31:16) yeah. Board's not gonna be happy.

Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (31:19) And if there was no

line of sight, Chris, and we knew, like we're sitting back here, the proposal team, like, yeah, we we knew that was gonna not win. We knew that was gonna fail. And we did nothing about it. We didn't ring the the bell or the alarm. So again, super powerful sales, sales leadership, revenue leadership, they do want to see and know this. but again, sometimes they may not know that there's this trove of information, insights, and indicators available.

Christina Carter (31:44) Yeah, and I the reason why I wanted to ask you that question is because I think you have been one of the best champions for the proposal or center of excellent teams that you have like that I've seen. So I'm like, whatever whatever Betsy's doing, I wanna I wanna be able to make sure I do what she's doing. So yeah.

Betsy Matthies (32:01) I appreciate that. I I mean I love to be a fierce advocate of the teams that I'm you know very thankful to lead. And you know, when I was over the center of excellence, boy, you would have thought we were like a hundred billion dollar org. I was just we close deals, we like we if we're not in your deals, you're not gonna win. Like it was that

Christina Carter (32:20) Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (32:21) that was kind of the mantra. but boy, damn good team. And and we did win and we learned and we lost and we learned from those those from time to time.

but thanks for the feedback.

Christina Carter (32:32) No, well I think I think it's important for people who are listening to the to this to realize that you're saying a lot of these things to do, but I've seen you do them. it was really impactful. And so seeing the impact that what you did had on the teams that you manage, on yourself and just like the people around you, I think.

People like this is this is very doable. Like what Betsy is saying is doable. So go go do those things.

Betsy Matthies (32:55) Yes.

Christina Carter (32:56) It's gonna only have a positive impact.

Betsy Matthies (32:58) It is. Thanks, Chris.

Christina Carter (33:00) sorry, I don't wanna like yeah. Make you feel silly, but it's I do want people to know that.

Betsy Matthies (33:02) No, I appreciate no, I appreciate I appreciate it. It's it's

doable any size company too. I know some of my examples may be large enterprise, but it's really doable. I I strongly believe that. Any size organization.

Christina Carter (33:14) I I completely agree. yeah, you're just a good example of it. One last question is if you could tell proposal leaders like one thing to be successful, what would that be?

Betsy Matthies (33:23) I would say your job is not to manage a process, the RFP process. Your job is really to help the company or enterprise that you work for win revenue efficiently and effectively. So shift your mindset entirely from completion to conversion.

that can look like win rate sometimes. But when you when you stop looking at an RFP as a checklist of a hundred questions to answer and really start looking at it as a strategic puzzle and you're putting the pieces in to win a multi-million dollar deal or a couple hundred thousand dollar deal, everything changes. And I think the way you talk to sales changes, the data that you track changes, the leadership will naturally begin to treat you like a revenue driver that you that you are.

And so th those would be my that would be probably my one recommendation or tip.

Christina Carter (34:14) a great recommendation.

So Betsy, where can people find you? Where can people follow you, learn from you? Yeah.

Betsy Matthies (34:21) LinkedIn,

l big LinkedIn user and engagement. I try to respond to all my messages. So find me on LinkedIn.

Christina Carter (34:28) Yeah, yeah. Go follow Betsy. She does you speak at so many cool places. You yeah, you're on podcasts. I suggest people go go and follow you. So all right. Thank you so much, Betsy. And yeah, thank you so much for being on Stargazy Brief.

Betsy Matthies (34:42) Yes, Chris, thanks so much. My pleasure.