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Business Operations

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Purpose

Overview of systems, workflows and processes for the three functional groups - Sales, Marketing and Customer Success - that work closely together. This section is a singular reference point for operational management of the database and where the most up-to-date workflows, routing, rules and definition sets are managed. Tracking all tools, license allocation, admins and contracts for the combined Go-To-Market tech stack. Tips, tricks and how to's for the various applications and external resources that will help user be more productive in the business systems.

The Business Operations teams, in its many capacities, is both a product function and a service function. The Data team is responsible for both maintaining an accurate and up-to-date data warehouse (product) and building our analyses for stakeholders in other functions as-needed (service). The result of that service may be a dashboard, which can become a new product that is maintained. As a service function, the data team can often be responsible for support, answering questions such as "Where does a dashboard exist?" or "What does a metric mean?" The same principles apply to all of the Business Operations functions.

Data Quality Process

Data isn't perfect, processes change, people make mistakes. We recognize that and make sure that when we identify an opportunity to be more correct we are moving quickly to resolution.

Our Data Quality Process is meant to capture and document these improvements as they're discovered, and to ensure that communication is made to impacted parties in a timely manner. For a general discussion on Data Quality, read this.

What is the difference between Business Ops, Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, Marketing Programs, IT Operations, and IT Helpdesk?

Business Operations Sales Operations Marketing Operations Marketing Programs IT Operations IT Helpdesk
Answering the question: “How do we build go-to-market infrastructure to support company growth and pivots?” Quota assignments Day-to-day management, maintenance and integrations in the entire tech stack Day-to-day program and marketer support, including landing pages, Marketo program and Salesforce campaign management Ensures sufficient controls and streamlines cross-fuctional & cross-system processes, such as onboarding & provisioning Triage all IT related questions as they arise
Strategic analytics and data management Field & RD Forecasting Evaluate, purchase and implement new technologies into GitLab tech stack Development and growth of webcast program Build and maintain controls via monitoring, source controls, and automated processes to enable sufficient controls, without the inefficiencies of complete separation of duties via organizational hierarchy Build a knowledge base of IT practices and pragmatic problem solving in the handbook
Cross-functional process automation and optimization Sales Compensation Lead management & Data enrichment Improve and develop newsletter program Development and maintenance of automation of systems and processes for G&A and with Engineering to eliminate bottlenecks and slow manual activities. Account management for password resets and lockout
New business technology review Sales/Marketing SLAs Grow the opt-in communication channel Salesforce administration, development, architecture, customizations, and technical documentation   On call support for immediate software and hardware issues during local business hours
Holistic business systems administration, development, integration, architecture, and planning around the entire GTM tool stack. Ad hoc analysis for CRO Marketing process design Support Field Marketing with conference, event & VIP invitation, reminder and follow-up   Diagnose computer errors and provide technical support
Prioritization of business operations issues Sales Process Training/Documentation Marketing & Sales process training and documentation     Troubleshoot software and hardware
Prioritization and resolution of non-development customer portal process and support issues Sales Enablement functions Prioritization of Marketing-related business operations issues     Support Weekly IT Onboarding Sessions for new Team Members
Prioritization and resolution of non-development license app and signups process and support issues Sales training on process flows Marketing tech stack implementations, development and integrations     Train end-users how to setup and use new technologies
Reporting infrastructure Handbook documentation Salesforce administration     Provide technical support over the phone or Web
  Reporting and business analysis related to the sales function New technology review, implementation, customization, documentation and administration     Use specialized help desk support software to take control of end-users' computers to troubleshoot, diagnose and resolve complex issues
  Prioritization of Sales-related business operations issues.
This means consolidating all of the requests from sales into a single funnel with prioritization.		 List pull requests      

Reaching the Teams (internally)

Business Operations Labels

Label Description project/group type
BusinessOPS BZO is actively involved gitlab-com -
BusinessOPS-FYI No direct action needed from Bizops, but awareness for potential support/questions gitlab-com -
BSA business systems analyst work gitlab-com -
BSS business systems specialist work gitlab-com -
IT-Help IT-Help work gitlab-com -
IT-Ops IT-Ops work gitlab-com -
BizOPS-Status::1-Needs Review Business Operations: This has not been looked at. gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Status::2-Backlog Business Operations: This work is in the backlog and will be pulled forward when expedient gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Status::3-Investigation Business Operations: This is being investigated gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Status::4-Working Business Operations: This work is in progress. gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Status::5-Change Business Operations: This needs a change in order to be approved or merged gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Status::6-Needs Info Business Operations: This needs information from requestor to move forward gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Status::7-On Hold Business Operations: This is on hold for a longer period of time gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Status::8-Ready to Deploy Business Operations: This is ready to be merged or the work executed gitlab-com -
BizOPS-Status::9-Denied Business Operations: This work is considered incomplete and won't be worked on or will not be worked on at this time. gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Priority::1 Business Operations: Critical gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Priority::2 Business Operations: Important not urgent gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Priority::3 Business Operations: No rush to do, but please do it. gitlab-com scoped
BizOPS-Process Business Operations: Change or addition to process/operations gitlab-com -
blocker This blocks other work gitlab-com -
laptop-request laptop request gitlab-com -
Documentation documentation gitlab-com -
BizOPS-Process change or addition to process gitlab-com -
user journey denotes information regarding the user's journey through our tech stack gitlab-com, gitlab-org -

BizOps Planning Hat

A "hat" is a used for a responsibility that any team member can pick up. It is not a part of a specific role or job description. This hat is to make up no more than 10% (half of a work day) of an employee's responsibilities.

The team member who is putting on the planning hat is responsible for:

The team member who is putting on the planning hat is not responsible for:

Business Operations Team Organization

Tech Stack

The GitLab Tech Stack is the approved list of applications. It lists additional information such as the Business Purpose, Who should have access, Contact/Admin, Data Classification, Okta information, and Sox Compliance information.

Glossary

Term Definition
Accepted Lead A lead a Sales Development Representative or Business Development Representative agrees to work until qualified in or qualified out
Account An organization tracked in salesforce.com. An account can be a prospect, customer, former customer, integrator, reseller, or prospective reseller
AM Account Manager
AE Account Executive
APAC Asia-Pacific
BDR Business Development Representative
CS Customer Success
EMEA Europe, Middle East and Africa
EULA End User Licence Agreement
High intent an event, webcast, demo that is a strong indicator of purchase or evaluation
Holdover Account Account ownership retained by someone other than the territory owner
Inquiry an Inbound request or response to an outbound marketing effort
IQM Initial Qualifying Meeting
LATAM Latin America (includes all of Central & South America)
MQL Marketo Qualified Lead - an inquiry that has been qualified through systematic means (e.g. through demographic/firmographic/behavior lead scoring)
NCSA North, Central, South America (legacy region being phased out)
NORAM North America
Qualified Lead A lead a Sales Development Representative or Business Development Representative has qualified, converted to an opportunity and assigned to a Sales Representative (Stage 0-Pending Acceptance)
RD Regional Director
ROW Rest of World
SAL Strategic Account Leader
Sales Admin Sales Administrator
Sales Serve A sales method where a quota bearing member of the sales team closes the deal
SAO Sales Accepted Opportunity - an opportunity Sales agrees to pursue following an Initial Qualifying Meeting
SDR Sales Development Representative
Self Serve A sales method where a customer purchases online through our web store
SLA Service Level Agreement
SCLAU Abbreviation for SAO (Sales Accepted Opportunity) Count Large and Up
SQO Sales Qualified Opportunity
TAM Technical Account Manager
TEDD Technology, Engineering, Development and Design - used to estimate the maximum potential users of GitLab at a company
Won Opportunity Contract signed to Purchase GitLab

Customer Lifecycle

A customer lifecycle is a term used to track the different milestones prospective customers go through as they learn about GitLab and interact with our sales and marketing teams. Each subsequent milestone is a subset of the previous milestone, and represents a progression from not knowing GitLab to being a customer (and fan) of GitLab.

At the highest level of abstraction, we use the terms lead, opportunity, and customer to represent a person's progression towards becoming a customer of GitLab. Those three terms also correspond to record types in salesforce.com

Lead => Opportunity => Customer

However, there are more granular steps within the above milestones that are used to track the above process with more precision. They are tracked as follows:

Funnel stage Record Type Status or Stage
Raw Lead or Contact Raw
Inquiry Lead or Contact Inquiry
Marketo Qualified Lead Lead or Contact MQL
Accepted Lead Lead or Contact Accepted
Qualifying Lead or Contact Qualifying
Qualified Lead or Contact Qualified (converted)
Pending Acceptance Opportunity 0 - Pending Acceptance
Sales Accepted Opportunity Opportunity 1 - Discovery
Sales Qualified Opportunity Opportunity 2 Scoping - 5 Negotiating
Customer Opportunity 6-Closed Won

For the definition of the stage please click the record type link.

When going from Qualifying to Qualified Lead the lead is duplicated to an opportunity, and the lead is set to qualified and not being used anymore.

Note: Our lifecycle is undergoing a revamp! See how things are progressing here.

SAL Sales Capacity

The following calculation is used to measure/plan for sales capacity. This is a calculation only and should be used to set goals and plan. Sales capacity is an individual metric that is based on several factors (lead source, tenure of salesperson, competitive landscape, geographic location, rep productivity) not included in the formula below:

How tos & Setup

Events (Conferences, Field Events, Owned Events)

Event details are owned by the Field Marketing Team with execution of system tracking, landing pages, reminders, and follow up completed by Marketing Program Managers.

Who to work with

How to do Step 1 cleanup of lead lists before passing to MktgOPS

Use this template which uses formula fields to

Steps (also documented in How it Works sheet):

  1. Keep your data in the original export version so you can always check back on an untouched file
  2. Use the "DROP IT HERE" tab to drop your relevant data into the matching blue columns in the left-most rows (i.e. copy the column in your file for "First Name" and paste it in the column "First Name")
  3. Do not add or delete any columns that are present on the spreadsheet. The data must remain in the column order as presented.
  4. Do not touch any rows with the green column headers. These contain formulas that will reference your inputs and provide you with proper capitalization (see clarifications below for more detail), as well as data entry that is acceptable for Salesforce, and check the syntax of the email provided by your event organizer.
  5. Check for any ""warnings"" highlighted in red in the green columns - if there are none, you are good to go! (If there are highlighted cells, follow the instructions in the Warning Handling steps below. Correct the errors and then proceed.)
  6. Copy the columns with the green header and PASTE > VALUES into a new sheet of your original doc.
  7. Pass this to MktgOPS for next step in the list cleaning process.

Error Handling:

Video of how this works tbd.

Webcasts

Webcasts are an excellent tool used by Sales, Marketing and Customer Success to communicate with prospects, customers and partners.

Who to work with

Best Practices

  1. Give yourself at least 30 days of promotion.
  2. Send invitation emails 3 weeks out, 2 weeks out, 1 week out, and 2 hours before event. Sample emails can be found here.
  3. Only send promotional emails Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday for optimal results.
  4. Send reminder emails to registrants 1 week out, day before, and one hour before the event.
  5. Host webcasts on a Wednesday or Thursday, see note below about scheduling.
  6. Post links to additional, related resources during the event.
  7. Include "contact us" information at the end of the presentation.
  8. Video recording of webcast uploaded to YouTube same day as event occurred.
  9. Send the recording to all registrants, whether they attended or not within 24 hours post webcast.
  10. Publish a post-webcast blog post capturing some key insights to encourage on-demand registrations.
  11. Add webcast to the GitLab resources page.

Speaker Approval

We sometimes depend on GitLab's subject matter experts to deliver webcast presentations. However, we must ensure that when we ask a speaker to participate on a webcast that the work is approved. Please use the following guideline when asking a subject matter expert to participate on a webcast.

  1. Have an abstract of the content prepared before asking for a presenter.
  2. Send the abstract to both the proposed speaker and their manager to review. A speaker is not considered booked unless they have approval from their manager.
  3. Address and resolve any concerns regarding the abstract.
  4. Once the manager approves and the speaker accepts, you can move forward with the webcast.

Tips for Speakers

Here are some basic tips to help ensure that you have a good experience preparing for and presenting on a webcast.

Before Committing

Ask us any questions you have about the time commitment etc. and what exactly our expectations are. Talk about it with your manager if you're on the fence about your availability, bandwidth, or interest. Make sure you're both on the same page. We want this to be a meaningful professional development exercise for you, not a favor to us that you're lukewarm about — if you feel that way, none of will be able to do our best job. We'll be honest with you, so please do the same for us.

Before the Dry Run

Select and set up your presentation space. Pick a spot with good wifi, and we recommend setting up an external mic for better audio quality, although this is optional. If you will be presenting from your home, alert your spouse/roommates of the time/date & ask them to be out of the house if necessary. Depending on your preferences and comfort level with public speaking, run through the script several times.

Before the Presentation

Try to get a good sleep the night before, and, if the presentation is in the morning, wake up early enough to run through your notes at least once. Review our Positioning FAQ, or keep the page handy in case you are asked in the Q&A about how GitLab compares to our competitors.

Logistical Setup

Marketo & SFDC

Setting up the event in Marketo & SFDC

  1. Create the webcast program in Marketo
    • Title the webcast in the following format: YYYYMMDD_{Webcast Title}. For example, 20170418_MovingToGit
    • Click salesforce campaign sync and select create new to create campaign in SFDC
  2. Update My Tokens at the webcast program level
    • DO NOT UPDATE THE apiKey or apiSecret. These should be the same for every webcast
    • Update the {{my.zoomWebinarId}} token with the webinar ID from the Zoom webcast created in step 1
  3. Turn on smart campaigns in Marketo
    • Activate the Zoom Attended campaign
    • Activate the Webcast_Registered campaign
    • Activate the Registered From Zoom campaign

Setting up event follow-up

  1. Update email attended and email no show with content provided by webcast project manager
  2. Approve and send samples to content [at] gitlab [dot] com
  3. Schedule email send within follow-up no show and follow-up attended smart campaigns
Zoom

The Marketing OPS Zoom license can only be used for a single session at a time. This license is used for both external webcasts and internal cross-team training. Therefore, when a webcast is requested please confirm there is not going to be a conflict between the pre-scheduled sessions using that license. Schedule no less than 30min between sessions (before & after) so there is less chance of a conflict and allows for a buffer.

Recurring sessions using the license:

Setting up the webcast

  1. Create webcast in Zoom
    • Log in to Zoom, and select the webcast from the Webinars tab
    • Add webcast project manager as altnerative host and add webcast speakers as panelists
    • Add polling questions to the webcast (if applicable)

Adding alt-host and panelist to a webcast

Adding poll questions to a webcast

  1. Edit the confirmation and reminder emails under the email setting tab.
    • Make sure the registration confirmation email and the reminder emails are set to send from Zoom. As Zoom implements their more robust Marketo integration, we will send from Marketo, but for now we need to send from Zoom to ensure that the correct unique link is sent to registrants.
    • There is limited editing capabilities within Zoom. In the confirmation email you can add a snippet of text after the templatized body text and the footer of the email can be edited. In the reminder email, only the footer can be edited.
  2. Set up Marketo integration within Zoom
    • Scroll down and click on the Integration tab
    • Click Edit next to Generate Leads in Marketo
    • Turn on Send registration information to a Smart Campaign and select the Registered From Zoom smart campaign for the proper webcast program
    • Turn on Send attendee information to a Smart Campaign and select the Zoom Attended smart campaign for the proper webcast program
    • Select the ZoomWebinarOtherInfo custom object, check the following boxes, and select the corresponding Marketo Custom Object Fields:
      • Webinar ID
      • Webinar Topic
      • Q&A
      • Poll
  3. Edit the landing page to have the appropriate webcast description, date, time. Click on branding and update the header (optional)

Hosting the webinar

Will add instructions on how to start the webcast in zoom, promote panelists, polling, etc.

Routing

For webcast lead routing rules, see global routing rules below.

Requesting an Email

To request an email, create an issue in Digital Marketing Programs project, using the Email-Request-mpm.md issue template. Be as complete as possible providing all requested detail related to the email, goal, target audience and any other pertinant details.

Email requests should be submitted no less than 72 hours* before intended send date so the new request can be added into the responsible Marketing Program Manager's (MPM) and for select cases (see email review protocol below) into Content team's workflow. The responsible MPM will be determined by type of email requested, see division of duties.

All links in email sends, going to about.gitlab.com will need to be appended with utm parameters, following the nomenclature outlined in this document. This is the way we track and give attribution to emails.

Below are the information from the issue template that will need to be filled out:

*Urgent security emails are exempt from this SLA.

Email review protocol

Note: If you would like additional people to receive a test email *prior to sending it out, please specify that in the request template.*

Internal Email List

There is an internal email list, called INTERNAL - Email Send List in Marketo that will be included on every outbound email that is sent. If you are a team member and wish to be included on every email that is sent, please post a request to the #marketing-programs slack channel and the MPMs will review. To avoid skewing email results (particularly on smaller sends), this list will be kept to a minimum.

If you are an internal team member and wish to subscribe to a segment or segments please subscribe through the preference center and you will only be included in those dedicated email sends.

Record Management

MQL Definition

A Marketo Qualified Lead is a lead that has reached a certain threshold, we have determined to be 90 points accumulated, based on demographic, firmographic and/or behavioral information. The "MQL score" defined below is comprised of various actions and/or profile data that are weighted with positive or negative point values. Any record with a Person Score greater than or equal to 50 points will be inserted into the routing flow. Using LeanData every time a Person Score is updated, LeanData will run a check to see if the record needs to be processed through the flow.

MQL Scoring Model

The overall model is based on a 100 point system. Positive and negative points are assigned to a record based on their demographic and firmographic information, and their behavior and/or engagement with GitLab marketing.

The MQL scoring model below is correct as of 30 September 2018. Additional changes are being made and the following will be updated over time.

MQL = 90 pts

Positive Point Values
Negative Point Values

*In-product trial requests for SaaS and self-hosted are applied using batch method that runs daily at 6a Pacific time.

Segmentation

Sales Segmentation is based on Total Employee count of the Global Account. If a Global Account has a lower segment than any of its child accounts, the Global Account will adopt the largest sales segment of any of its child acocunts.

Total Employee count is based on the number of employees that our data tools return for that account. We use a hierarchy structure to determine what the number of employees is for the account. The hierarchy of our data tools on Accounts as they relate to the Total Employee count is shown below.

  1. DataFox…….(Default Value)
  2. DiscoverOrg…(Only used if DataFox Employee Count field is blank)

LinkedIn/Websites are not designated data sources. If a prospect communicates a different employee size from DataFox/DiscoverOrg that conflicts with segmentation of what is determined by DataFox/DiscoverOrg than SalesOPS should be notified via chatter on the record. Admins have the ability to override the Number of Employees and bypass this hierarchy but only during our sales segment review process

Sales Segment and Hierarchy Review Process

In order to address issues when it is believed that the Total Employee count is incorrect the Sales Ops team on a Yearly schedule(TBD) will review accounts where individuals think that the segment is incorrect. Reviews for updates to the Total Employee count field that do not result in a change of segment will not be reviewed.

For an individual to submit an account for review as it relates to the number of employees at the account they must fill out the following two fields on an accounts:

For an individual to submit an account for review as it relates to the hierarchy and final address of the account they must fill out the following four fields on an account:

Examples of valid sources include but are not limited to financial filings, newspaper articles, reports directly from the company. As a rule LinkedIn is not accepted as a valid source. During the Sales Ops review period it is at the discretion of the Sales Ops team to have the Total Employee count updated or to have it remain the same.

Region/Vertical

Territories

Territory tables are maintained within the Sales Handbook. Both maps & written tables are kept up to date with all pairings and territory assignments. Our LeanData routing workflows and SFDC reports are based on these tables.

Account Ownership Rules of Engagement

  1. Source of Data: The data source prioirty order for Employee count, Address, Industry and Corporate Hierarchy will be Datafox, DiscoverOrg, otherwise or `[[unknown]]` until resolved through maunual research.
  2. Account Ownership: Will be determined by the Ultimate Parent Account Segment, Address and Corporate Hierarchy and all children accounts, regardless of physical location. All of the accounts will be owned by the Global Account owner unless it is either a Named Account (see point 3) or it has been agreed upon by both reps and their managers that the customer is best serviced by the Territory rep (see point 12).
  3. Named Account: Defined as an account that is owned by a sales rep regardless of corporate headquarters. A sales rep will own no more than 30 named accounts.
  4. Transfer of Named Accounts: A transfer and ownership time frame of a Named Account should be agreed upon by both sales reps and their managers. This should be documented in the Account Transition MASTER document (found in Google drive).
  5. Open Opportunities of Transferred Accounts: Any open opportunity on an account subject to transfer to the global account owner will remain with the original owner for a period of no more than 180 days after opportunity creation. No later than the 120 day mark, the original owner can request an extension and must provide sufficient evidence that the deal will close within the next 90 days. If the evidence is insufficient, the global account owner can request that the opportunity be transferred immediately. These opportunities will be tracked in the Account Transition MASTER document (found in Google drive).
  6. Reassigning to a Territory Rep: The global account owner can reassign any child account to a territory rep if it is determined that the client/prospect would be best serviced by a local rep. To do this, please Chatter the territory rep and provide an explanation on the transfer. Please review point 12 'Considerations for Transferring an Account to a Local Rep'.
  7. Requesting Reassignment: A territory rep can request reassignment of a child account if he/she feels that the client/prospect would be best serviced by a territory rep as opposed to the global account owner. To do this, the territory rep must Chatter the global account owner and provide an explanation, (please see point 12, “Considerations for Transferring an Account to a Local Rep”). It is at the discretion of the global account owner to keep or reassign the account, but they must provide a compelling and explicit reason why a territory account should be managed globally. If the territory rep does not agree with the decision, it can be discussed by their respective managers.
  8. Parent/Child Segmentation: All Accounts in a hierarchy will adopt the highest Segmentation of any account in the hierarchy.
  9. Changes to Ultimate Parent Details: In the event of a merger or acquisition, or any other changes that impact the ownership of an account, such as a move of headquarters to another territory, either the global account owner or territory sales rep should submit the updated information in accordance with the sales segment review process, who will then initiate a review of all affected accounts. A transition plan (if needed) should be agreed upon by all reps and their managers.
  10. Final Decision: In all situations where an agreement between the regional directors cannot be reached, the CRO will decide the final outcome.
  11. Ownership: All Lead, Contacts and Accounts are to be owned by the owner of the Account (RD/SAL/AE) per the handbook.
  12. Considerations for Transferring an Account to a Local Rep: If the decision-making power, end users, PO and Terms (or a majority combination) are confined to the child account, the Ultimate Parent owner should hand off the Lead to the appropriate Territory owner as this would be in the best interests of the customer and for GitLab.

Website

Since an accounts Website is a key data point in determining the accounts segment and the accounts address and thus the resulting territory and ownership, the website on an account in salesforce is a requiered field on the layout. In the event that the account is linked to an individual that uses a free email domain (or other similar cases) than the value of [Blank] should be used as the value for the accounts website.

Initial Source

Initial Source is first "known" touch attribution or when a website visitor becomes a known name in our database, once set it should never be changed or overwritten. For this reason Salesforce is set up so that you are unable to update both the Initial Source and Lead Source fields. If merging records, keep the Initial Source that is oldest (or set first). When creating Lead/Contact records and you are unsure what Initial Source should be used, ask in the #lead-questions Slack channel.

The values listed below are the only values currently supported. If you attempt to upload or import leads or contacts into Salesforce without one of these initial sources you will encounter a validation rule error. If you think that there needs to be a new Initial Source added to this list and into Salesforce please slack the appropriate team member(s) listed in the Tech Stack.

The Initial Source table below is current as of 10 October 2018.

Status in the table below means:

Source Definition and/or transition plan Status*
Advertisement to be evaluated Active
AE Generated Sourced by an Account Executive through networking or professional groups Active
CE Download Downloaded CE version of GitLab Active
CE Usage Ping Created from CE Usage Ping data Active
CE Version Check to be evaluated Inactive
Clearbit transition to Prospecting -> sub field Clearbit Active
Conference Stopped by our booth or received through event sponsorship Active
CORE Check-Up will be activated for new records created by the Instance Review in-product Inactive
Datanyze transition to Prospecting -> sub field Datanyze Active
Demo Filled out form to watch demo of GitLab Active
DiscoverOrg transition to Prospecting -> sub field DiscoverOrg Active
Education Filled out form applying to the Educational license program Active
EE Version Check to be evaluated Inactive
Email Request Used when an email was received through an alias (will be deprecated) Active
Email Subscription Subscribed to our opt-in list either in preference center or various email capture field on GitLab website Active
Employee Referral to be evaluated Active
Event partner to be evaluated Inactive
Field Event Paid events we do not own but are active participant (Meetups, Breakfasts, Roadshows) Active
Gated Content - General Download an asset that does not fit into the other Gated Content categories Active
Gated Content - Report Download a gated report Active
Gated Content - Video Watch a gated video asset Active
Gated Content - White Paper Download a white paper Active
Gemnasium Previous a Gemnasium customer/prospect merged into our database when acquired Active
GitLab Hosted GitLab Hosted customer/user Active
GitLab Subscription Portal Account created through the Subscription app (check for duplicates & merge record if found) Inactive
GitLab.com Registered for GitLab.com account Active
Gitorious Previous a Gitorios customer/prospect merged into our database Active
gmail unknown, to be deprecated Inactive
InsideView transition to Prospecting -> sub field InsideView Inactive
Leadware transition to Prospecting -> sub field Leadware Active
Legacy to be evaluated Active
LinkedIn transition to Prospecting -> sub field LinkedIn Active
Live Event transition to correct category based on first event attended -> Owned Event; Field Event or Conference Active
MovingtoGitLab to be evaluated Inactive
Newsletter to be evaluated Active
OnlineAd to be evaluated Inactive
OSS Open Source Project records related to the OSS offer for free licensing Active
Other Should never be used but is a legacy source that will be deprecated Active
Owned Event Events that are created, owned, run by GitLab Active
Partner GitLab partner sourced name either through their own prospecting and/or events Active
Promotion to be evaluated Active
Prospecting Account research and development prospecting work Pending
Prospecting - LeadIQ transition to Prospecting -> sub field LeadIQ Active
Public Relations to be evaluated Active
Referral to be evaluated Inactive
Registered transition to correct event type source Inactive
Request - Contact Filled out contact request form on GitLab website Active
Request - Professional Services Any type of request that comes in requesting to engage with our Customer Success team Active
Sales to be evaluated Inactive
SDR Generated Sourced by an SDR through networking or professional groups Active
Security Newsletter Signed up for security alerts Active
Seminar - Partner not actively used - transition to Owned Event or Field Event Active
SocialMedia to be evaluated Inactive
Swag Store to be evaluated Inactive
Trial - Enterprise In-product or web request for self-hosted Enterprise license Active
Trial - GitLab.com In-product SaaS trial request Active
Unknown need to evaluate what records are in this status - it should never be used Inactive
Unsubscribe Form to be evaluated Inactive
Web transition to Web Direct Active
Web Chat Engaged with us through website chat bot Active
Web Direct Created when purchase is made direct through the portal (check for duplicates & merge record if found) Active
Webcast Register for any online webcast (not incl Demo) Active
Word of Mouth to be evaluated Active
Zoominfo transition to Prospecting -> sub field Zoominfo Inactive

Lead & Contact Statuses

The Lead & Contact objects in Salesforce have unified statuses with the following definitions. If you have questions about current status, please ask in #lead-questions channel on Slack.

Status Definition
Raw Untouched brand new lead
Inquiry Form submission, meeting @ trade show, content offer
MQL Marketo Qualified through systematic means
Accepted Actively working to get in touch with the lead/contact
Qualifying In 2-way conversation with lead/contact
Qualified Progressing to next step of sales funnel (typically OPP created & hand off to Sales team)
Unqualified Contact information is not now or ever valid in future; Spam form fill-out
Nurture Record is not ready for our services or buying conversation now, possibly later
Bad Data Incorrect data - to potentially be researched to find correct data to contact by other means
Web Portal Purchase Used when lead/contact completed a purchase through self-serve channel & duplicate record exists

Routing

Routing is determined by Sales Segmentation, Region, and Global Account Ownership. Routing through Lean Data when a record has no less than 30 points, this means that they have engaged with at least one piece of content or visited a high value page.

NORAM

EMEA

APAC

Universities

United States

Rest of the World

Contact Requests

All Contact Us requests must be followed up within one (1) business day Service Level Agreement (SLA) and follow up must be tracked as an activity on the record within Salesforce.

Contact requests are routed in the following manner:

U.S. Public Sector: Routed to the U.S. Public Sector SDR and Inside Sales team.

Professional Service Requests

Professional Service Requests are treated like a Contact Us request and followed up within one (1) business day Service Level Agreement (SLA). Follow up must be tracked as an activity on the record within SFDC.

Requests submitted through the professional services page will be routed following Global Account Ownership rules. Notification of form submission will be sent to the Strategic Account Leader (SAL) and Sales Development Representative (SDR) as well as Customer Success manager. Initial response to form submission is the responsibility of the Account Owner (i.e. SAL).

Trial Requests

Trials can be requested through web form or within product UI for both self-hosted Enterprise or SaaS. Default trial length is thirty (30) days, but can be manually extended by the GitLab team for both the SaaS and self-hosted products. Trial extensions for the SaaS product use the plan_change_request issue template found in the dotcom Group, dotcom-internal project. Extending self-hosted trials requires access to the internal Licensing App. Trial requests are routed in the following manner:

Record Ownership

Contacts on accounts owned by a member of the Field Sales Team (RD/SAL/AE/AM), will be owned by the named Account Owner (i.e both the Account and Contact ownership will match). When an SDR is assigned to an Account to support and assist with outreach, the SDR will be added to the GitLab Team on the Account object within SFDC, which then populates down to the related Contact records.

Records, both LEAD and CONTACT, need to be synced to Outreach to ensure email activity is properly mapped back to Activity History in SFDC. The owner of the record in SFDC does not need to match the owner in Outreach.

Changing Ownership in Salesforce

Changing Account Ownership in Salesforce

Everyone in Salesforce has some ability to change the ownership of accounts. When accounts have their owners changed, by anyone other then an admin, there will be an email notification go out to both the previous account owner and the new account owner. This is to allow individuals to change ownership of accounts if they think they should belong to them. If there are any questions in regards to who should own an account Sales Ops will assist in that decision and you can mention @sales-ops in salesforce. It's also important that just because a user can change the owner of an account does not mean that they should own the account. Please refer to the criteria for reassigning accounts and our account territories for more information.

  1. Any account owner can reassign their own account to someone else
  2. Any RD can reassign any account
  3. Any Team Lead can reassign any account that is located within their region
  4. Anyone can reassign any account as long as the following critieria is met A. The account does not have a parent account B. The account is located in the same region as the individual transferring ownership of the account C. Datafox has enriched the number of employees on the account D. The sales segment of the account is the same as the segment that the user is working on (SALs/Large,AEs/Mid-Market)
  5. Any Admin can reassign any account

Changing Contact Ownership in Salesforce

Everyone is able to change the owner of a contact as long as they are either changing the Contact Owner to match the Account Owner or they are the current Contact owner. Since all contacts are to be owned by the owner of the contacts account this should address all needs to update contact ownership.

Changing Lead Ownership in Salesforce

Lead ownership follows the same rules as contact ownership - whoever owns the account also owns all of the leads. However since leads are not directly tied to Accounts someone looking to update the ownership of a lead should match the leads data points with our rules related to Global Account Ownership, Named Account Ownership as well as Territory Account Ownership. Regional Directors, Team Leads and Admins can all change the ownership of any lead.

Record Creation in Salesforce

ACCOUNT/CONTACT records in Salesforce are created in a number of ways - list imports, mass creation screen flows, field event booth scans, research, networking, webcasts, content downloads. Ideally all ACCOUNTS exist in Salesforce and team members are only creating CONTACT records; however, if a connection is made at an event and follow up needs to be done prior to official event list upload occurs team members should do the following:

When official event list import is completed the created ACCOUNT or CONTACT record will be appended with the additional data collected at the event. If there are any questions or you need assistance, please ping Marketing or Sales OPS in Slack #sfdc-users channel.

Best practices
  1. Be as accurate with your data as possible. If you do not have a Contact Phone do not substitute the Account Phone - Leave it blank on the Contact record.
  2. Search the database for duplicates before creating new records.
  3. When merging records, retain the Initial Source of the record that was created first.

Mass create contacts on opportunities with contact roles

This process is specific for the unique cases of creating totally new contacts for an account that also have to be associated with an opportunity. An example of when to use this process is when you meet a number of new contacts at an account during a demo for a specific opportunity. The process to create these contacts for that account and to have them related with that opportunity would be through the steps listed below or as demonstrated in this video:

  1. Navigate to the Opportunity record in Salesforce that these contacts should be associated with
  2. Click on the button New Contacts & Opp Contact Roles
  3. Follow the screen flow and instructions for creating all contacts and associating them with the opportunity, providing all required and known information
  4. If there is additional information for any of the contacts that you have but you were not able to input the informaiton via the screen flow, navigate to the contact(s) once the operation is complete and fill in any additional information you have for the contact(s)

It is important to note that by following this process that all contacts must meet the following critieria:

  1. All of the contacts that are created are to be associated with both the account and opportunity for that opportunity record.
  2. All of the contacts are net new and do not exist within Salesforce already - as either contacts or leads.
  3. All of the contacts will be assigned a contact role on the opportunity.
  4. There already is a primary contact, or one of the new contacts will be the primary contact on the opportunity.

List Imports

There are three primary ways to import records into Salesforce:

Import Method SLA Instructions
DiscoverOrg VisualForce w/in SFDC self-managed Instruction video how to do this
Written Instructions how to use template
csv file Accepted by OPS - 24 business hours
Upload to SFDC - up to 5 business days		 Use MktgOPS issue template, format as a Google Sheet (Gsheet) & place link to Gsheet in issue
List from Field Event, Sposorship or Advertising Accepted & uploaded by OPS - 24 business hours Use MktgOPS issue template, format and clean csv per instruction & place link to Gsheet in issue

List imports are done by the Operations team and unless otherwise specified or discussed, list imports are input to Salesforce as CONTACTS. Field event list uploads are to be done before any kind of follow up or outreach is done so we can ensure proper order of operations & attribution is given correctly.

The following data cleanup is required for any list prior to sending it to the Operations team. If your spreadsheet/data does not meet these guidelines it will returned to you to fix prior being uploaded.

Best Practices

  1. Account or Company Name needs to be consistent throughout the entire spreadsheet, please review to ensure that all members of a single company are the exact same including punctuation
    • Example: GitLab, Gitlab, gitlab - will create three different accounts when the list is uploaded to Salesforce
  2. Remove inaccurate entries
    • Title remove "self", "me", "n/a", etc
    • Phone remove obvious junk numbers 0000000000, 1234567890, etc
  3. Blank fields are better than junk data. We have enrichment tools that are designed to write to blank fields. Also we can run reports on the blank fields to find where our data gaps are.
  4. If you do not have a CONTACT Phone do not substitute the ACCOUNT Phone and vice versa. Leave it blank.
  5. Sort spreadsheet by Email Address and remove duplicates.
  6. Only records from authorized sources that have verifiable GDPR compliance will be flagged as GDPR Compliant.
    • Pulling list of names out of LinkedIn and importing the records into SFDC does not qualify as compliant. In EMEA these lists will not be uploaded
    • Field events that have not gained consent from the attendees that their name will be shared are not compliant.
    • Getting someone's name and/or business card from a meetup does not qualify as compliant.

File will be reviewed and will be returned to you if the data does not meet the above cleanup requirements. Once the file has accepted (w/in 24 business hours from issue creation), please allow up to a five (5) day turnaround time for DiscoverOrg or other list import.

If a last minute request, please open issue any way and ASK for a faster turnaround or ping OPS in #mktgops slack channel to discuss options.

Field event lists will be uploaded and associated to correct campaign within 24 hours of receipt.

Rules of Engagement

Named Accounts are owned and worked by the designated Strategic Account Leader (SAL) and the paired Sales Developmemt Representative (SDR). This pairing owns all records (LEADS and CONTACTS) associated to a Named Account and any related Child accounts within SFDC. See global ownership and named account descriptions above.

Territories are assigned based on Sales Segmentation and routing for each type of inbound request is listed above.

LEAD/CONTACT Records with the Initial Source of GitLab.com are not to be engaged, prospected or targeted unless they have taken a handraising 'active' activity, such as Trial - Enterprise, Trial - GitLab.com, Contact Us, Demo, 'Webcast', 'Content' and/or engaged in Web Chat.

For information about GitLab's email policy and the types and number of emails we send, please see our Email Communication Policy.

Active vs. Passive

Initial Source cannot be used to determine if a lead is 'active' or 'passive' since the Initial Source is set upon first touch attribution; therefore, looking at the Last Interesting Moment field is the primary field used to begin determining if a record is actively being worked. Reviewing the Activity History in Salesforce is another factor considered when evaluating 'active' or 'passive'.

A LEAD or CONTACT is considered 'Active' if they have taken an Trial - Enterprise, Trial - GitLab.com, attended a high intent live webcast or demo and/or engaged Web Chat, these are all handraising 'active' activities. These types of records are considered 'Active' for a minimum of 60 days from the date of the handraising activity. For example: the record is considered 'Active' for entire duration of EE trial, plus 30 days after EE Trial End Date.

Campaigns

Campaigns are used to track efforts of marketing tactics - field events, webcasts, content downloads. The campaign types align with how marketing tracks spend and align the way records are tracked across three of our core systems (Marketo, Salesforce and Bizible) for consistent tracking. Leveraging campaign aligns our efforts across Marketing, Sales and Finance.

System Set-up

Salesforce Campaigns

There are MASTER Campaign templates created for each of the campaign types with the correct progression statuses pre-designed. When creating a new campaign, clone the template & modify the name to match the program/event.

SFDC template quick links (only available when logged in):

Marketo Programs

The Marketo programs for the corresponding campaign types have been prebuilt to include all the possible necessary smart campaigns, email programs, reminder emails and tokens that are to be leveraged in the building of the program.

Marketo program quick links (only available when logged in w/ Marketing Activities access):

Campaign Type & Progression Status

A record can only progress one-way through a set of event statuses. A record cannot move backward though the statuses.

i.e. Record is put into Registered cannot be moved backward to Waitlisted

Cohort

A method of tracking a group (cohort) of targeted known records and/or records included in an ABM strategy. All touchpoints related to this specific campaign are excluded from Bizible tracking.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Sales Nominated ACCOUNTS/CONTACTS Sales has identified for inclusion that Marketing would otherwise be suppressing because of late-stage open opps &/or active sales cycle  
Marketing List ACCOUNTS/CONTACTS Marketing has identified for inclusion based on the target audience, the "ABM list", demographic, etc.  
Organic Engaged LEADS/CONTACTS added to the campaign through the listening campaigns that engage with the pages &/or assets for the integrated campaign that do not contain utm_ params Yes

Conference

Any large event that we have paid to sponsor, have a booth/presence and are sending representatives from GitLab (example: AWS). This is tracked as an offline Bizible channel.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Sales Invited Invitation/Information about event sent by Sales/SDR  
Sales Nominated Sales indicated record to receive triggered event email sent by Marketing  
Marketing Invited Marketing geo-targeted email  
Meeting Requested Meeting set to occur at conference  
Meeting No Show Scheduled meeting at conference was cancelled or not attended  
Meeting Attended Scheduled meeting at conference was attended Yes
Visited Booth Stopped by booth for any reason Yes
Follow Up Requested Requested additional details about GitLab to be sent post event Yes

Field Event

This is an event that we have paid to participate in but do not own the registration or event hosting duties (example: Rancher event). This is tracked as an offline Bizible channel.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Sales Invited Invitation/Information about event sent by Sales/SDR  
Sales Nominated Sales indicated record to receive triggered event email sent by Marketing  
Marketing Invited Marketing geo-targeted email  
Waitlisted Holding state if registration is full will be moved to Registered if space opens  
Registered Registered for event  
No Show Registered but did not attend event  
Attended Attended event  
Visited Booth Stopped by booth for any reason Yes
Follow Up Requested Requested additional details about GitLab to be sent post event Yes

Gated Content

White Paper or other content offer. This is tracked as an online Bizible channel.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Downloaded Downloaded content Yes

Inbound Request

Any type of inbound request that requires follow up. This is tracked as an online Bizible channel.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Requested Contact Filled out Contact, Professional Services, Demo or Pricing Request Yes

Owned Event

This is an event that we have created, own registration and arrange speaker/venue (example: Gary Gruver Roadshow). This is tracked as an online Bizible channel.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Sales Invited Invitation/Information about event sent by Sales/SDR  
Sales Nominated Sales indicated record to receive triggered event email sent by Marketing  
Marketing Invited Marketing geo-targeted email  
Waitlisted Holding state if registration is full will be moved to Registered if space opens  
Registered Registered for event  
No Show Registered but did not attend event  
Attended Attended event Yes
Follow Up Requested Requested additional details about GitLab to be sent post event Yes

Referral Program

This campaign type is used for our third party prospecting vendors or meeting setting services (Like BAO, DoGood). This is tracked as an offline Bizible Channel and touchpoints.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Target List Identified as persona we want to speak with  
Meeting Set Vendor has set & confirmed a meeting time  
Meeting No Show Scheduled meeting was cancelled or not attended  
Meeting Attended Scheduled meeting at conference was attended Yes

Speaking Session

This campaign type can be part of a larger Field/Conference/Owned event but we track engagement interactions independently from the larger event to measure impact. It is something we can drive registration. It is for tracking attendance at our speaking engagements. This is tracked as an offline Bizible channel.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Sales Invited Invitation/Information about event sent by Sales/SDR  
Sales Nominated Sales indicated record to receive triggered event email sent by Marketing  
Marketing Invited Marketing geo-targeted email  
Registered Registered or indicated attendance at the session  
No Show Registered but did not attend event  
Attended Attended speaking session event Yes
Follow Up Requested Had conversation with speaker or requested additional details to be sent post event Yes

Trial

Track cohort of Trials for each product line (Self-hosted or SaaS) to see their influence. In-product trials are tracked as an offline Bizible touchpoing. Webform Self-hosted trials are an online Bizible touchpoint.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Target List LEAD or CONTACT record that has been identified for marketing campaign prospecting Yes

Virtual Sponsorship

A virtual event that we sponsor and/or participate in that we do not own the registration but will generate a list of attendees, engagement and has on-demand content consumption post-live virtual event. This is tracked as an offline Bizible channel.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Sales Invited Invitation/Information about event sent by Sales/SDR  
Sales Nominated Sales indicated record to receive triggered event email sent by Marketing  
Marketing Invited Marketing targeted email  
Waitlisted Holding state if registration is full will be moved to Registered if space opens  
Registered Registered for event  
No Show Registered but did not attend event  
Attended Attended event  
Visited Booth Stopped by booth for any reason Yes
Follow Up Requested Requested additional details about GitLab to be sent post event Yes
Attended On-demand Watched/consumed the presentation materials post-event on-demand Yes

Webcast

Any webcast that is held by GitLab or a sponsored webcast with a partner. This is tracked as an online Bizible channel.

Member Status Definition Success
No Action default starting position for all records  
Sales Invited Invitation/Information about event sent by Sales/SDR  
Sales Nominated Sales indicated record to receive triggered event email sent by Marketing  
Marketing Invited Marketing geo-targeted email  
Registered Registered through online form  
No Show Registered but did not attend live webcast  
Attended Attended the live webcast Yes
Attended On-demand Watched the recorded webcast Yes

Opportunities

Criteria for Sales Accepted Opportunity (SAO)

The following criteria are required for all SAOs: An Opportunity is deemed a Sales Accepted Opportunity (SAO) when the Opportunity is moved from Stage 0-Pending Acceptance to 1-Discovery by the Strategic Account Leader.

The following criteria is required for an XDR (SDR or BDR) to submit an opportunity to sales:

Authority The prospect being met is directly involved in a project or team related to the potential purchase of GitLab within this buying group, either as an evaluator, decision maker, technical buyer, or *influencer. *If the “influencer” is not directly involved (i.e. is related to a "decision maker" in another group/division or someone who is not directly tied to the opportunity at hand) the XDR will continue to own the opportunity and will seek to set-up the next meeting with a key contact in the buying group (leaving 0-pending status until date/referral is confirmed), updating the current opportunity with the new directly-involved point of contact in the buying group once it's acquired.

Initiative An initiative the company is working on has been identified and GitLab can potentially help the initiative. Identified by either a business problem (i.e too many tools), strategic direction or modernization interest (impetus to change).

Fit The following fields have been obtained:

Timing After the initial qualifying meeting with the account leader/executive, there must be a next step that is set to occur within a 60 day timeframe. (If next step isn’t within a 60 day timeframe, the opportunity remains in stage 0 and in XDR ownership to nurture until the next step is actualized.)

XDR best practice: Ask prospect about their environment, what they develop software for etc. to try build a picture of the company and how we will be able to help them Share relevant resources with the point of contact Add other potential influencers/buyers from that company into our database and the Outreach cadence in an effort to build more momentum within that organization.

Before the IQM with the account leader/executive, the XDR will also aim to gather:

Post IQM: Opportunities in 1-Discovery stage are accepted and owned by the account leader/executive. The account leader/executive is responsible for the progression, activities, engaging other resources, and converting this early engagement to a mutual win. The Sales account leader/excutive is responsible for taking the next step within 60 days, or reverting the opportunity back to XDR ownership or disqualifying the SAO if ultimately there is no opportunity. Managers should be able to use the 'NEXT STEP DATE' field to determine if the IQM has taken place but opportunity has not been moved to new stage. Opportunities should be moved to new stage within 48 hours of IQM.

How to create an Opportunity

An OPPORTUNITY can be created in Salesforce a) when converting a LEAD to CONTACT; b) from a CONTACT. All opportunities should be created with a Stage = 00-Pre Opportunity regardless of how you create the OPPORTUNITY. Once the initial setup is complete, the OPPORTUNITY Stage can updated based on the criteria below.

Creating a New Business Opportunity from CONTACT record

  1. On CONTACT record, click the New Opportunity button. Required fields are:
    • Opportunity Name - using Opportunity Naming Convention
    • Account Name = This should NOT need to be changed as it pulls from the CONTACT object
    • Type = New Business
    • Initial Source = DO NOT CHANGE
    • Close Date = if no time frame defined, BDR set close date rolling 4-months; SDR set close date rolling 9-months
    • Stage = 00-Pre Opportunity - starting stage for ALL opportunities
    • Add as much detail on the OPPORTUNITY record as you can.
    • Click SAVE
  2. Scroll down OPPORTUNITY record to the Contact Roles section, click New. CONTACTS associated to the ACCOUNT will be listed (up to 50 records). You must select a CONTACT as Primary and define the Role.
    • If you do not define a Primary CONTACT marketing attribution & activity influence on the OPPORTUNITY will not be accurately captured.
  3. Change the OPPORTUNITY Owner to the Account Owner (i.e. SAL/AM). Click Save.
  4. Within the OPPORTUNITY record, click the Initial Qualifying Meeting button. Enter the required fields (Start/End dates, Type) and update the description field with any notes the SAL/AM should have and review before taking the scheduled meeting.
    • Fill in the Related to section for BOTH the CONTACT and the OPPORTUNITY
    • Change the Assigned to field to the OPPORTUNITY owner
    • Click Save
  5. Update the OPPORTUNITY Stage from 00-Pre Opportunity to the correct stage -> normally 0-Pending Acceptance.
  6. Update the 'NEXT STEP DATE FIELD' with the date of the next action step (most often an IQM).
  7. Enter in 'NEXT STEPS' with details that correlate to the NEXT STEP DATE FIELD.

Creating a New Business Opportunity from LEAD record

  1. On LEAD record, fill out the required qualification questions, add additional notes to the optional sections if gathered AND update to Lead Status = Qualified. Click Save.
  2. Click the Convert button:
    • Change Record Owner to the Account Owner (based on Global Ownership rules)
    • Check the "Send Email to the Owner" box
    • Lookup the correct Account Name - if unsure assign OPPORTUNITY to the "Parent" account
    • Opportunity Name - using Opportunity Naming Convention
    • Click CONVERT
      • If CONTACT record exists, associate converted LEAD to existing CONTACT. Do not create duplicate if possible
  3. The OPPORTUNITY will need to be updated with the following:
    • Click Edit
    • Type = New Business
    • Initial Source = DO NOT CHANGE
    • Close Date = if no time frame defined, BDR set close date rolling 4-months; SDR set close date rolling 9-months
    • Add as much detail on the OPPORTUNITY record as you can.
    • Click SAVE
  4. Scroll down OPPORTUNITY record to the Contact Roles section, the converted LEAD will automatically be set as "Primary". Click Edit and define the Role.
    • Add any additional CONTACTS and define their Role that need to be associated with the OPPORTUNITY
    • Opportunities must have a Primary CONTACT defined so marketing attribution & activity influence is accurately captured. Change the OPPORTUNITY Owner to the Account Owner (i.e. SAL/AM). Click Save.
  5. Within the OPPORTUNITY record, click the Initial Qualifying Meeting button. Enter the required fields (Start/End dates, Type) and update the description field with any notes the SAL/AM should have and review before taking the scheduled meeting.
    • Fill in the Related to section for BOTH the CONTACT and the OPPORTUNITY
    • Change the Assigned to field to the OPPORTUNITY owner
  6. Update the OPPORTUNITY Stage from 00-Pre Opportunity to the correct stage -> normally 0-Pending Acceptance.
  7. Update the 'NEXT STEP DATE FIELD' with the date of the next action step (most often an IQM).
  8. Enter in 'NEXT STEPS' with details that correlate to the NEXT STEP DATE FIELD.

Creating an Add-on Opportunity

An Add-On OPPORTUNITY will inherit information from the original New Business OPPORTUNITY. The steps to create an Add-on OPPORTUNITY varies slightly from the instructions above because this type of OPPORTUNITY is created from the New Business OPPORTUNITY not from a converted LEAD or CONTACT.

This creates a parent-child relationship between the original New Business OPPORTUNITY and the Add-on OPPORTUNITY.

  1. Navigate to the original New Business OPPORTUNITY (this will become the "parent" opp).
    • Example: If you are selling additional seats to an existing subscription - you should go to the original New Business OPPORTUNITY.
  2. Click the New Add-on Opportunity button.
  3. UPDATE the OPPORTUNITY Name - see the [Opportunity Naming Convention] guidelines
  4. Define:
    • Initial Source = see the definition table to choose the most correct source. It is important to be accurate as this does impact reporting and marketing attribution.
    • Close Date = if no timeframe defined input close date on a rolling 9-months.
    • Stage = All opportunities start as 00-Pre-Opportunity
  5. Add any additional details on the OPPORTUNITY record
  6. Click Save

Within the parent-child OPPORTUNITY hierarchy some information will pass from the parent (New Business) to the child (Add-on). This information will be used in our reporting and analysis to track add-on business OPPORTUNITIES to their Initial Source and contributing team members.

There are additional validation rules that are presently in effect:

Creating an Upside IACV Opportunity

An Upside IACV OPPORTUNITY will inherit information from the original OPPORTUNITY. The steps to create an Upside IACV OPPORTUNITY varies slightly from the instructions above because this type of OPPORTUNITY is created from the OPPORTUNITY not from a converted LEAD or CONTACT. An Upside IACV OPPORTUNITY has a minimal amount of fields as it's only for tracking the potential upside amount.

This creates a parent-child relationship between the original OPPORTUNITY and the Upside IACV OPPORTUNITY.

  1. Navigate to the original OPPORTUNITY (this will become the "parent" opp).
  2. Click the Upside IACV button.
  3. UPDATE the OPPORTUNITY Name - see the [Opportunity Naming Convention] guidelines
  4. Define:
    • Close Date = if no timeframe defined input close date on a rolling 9-months.
    • Amount = the upside value in addition to the Parent OPPORTUNITY value. If Parent OPPORTUNITY amount is $100,000 and total OPPORTUNITY amount potential is $150,000, then the Upside IACV amount is $50,000
  5. Click Save

Creating a Professional Services Opportunity

A Professional Services OPPORTUNITY will be used to cover any integration, consulting, training or other service that a Sales rep will sell to a prospect/client and needs or wants to be invoiced separately. To invoice separately a new quote and opportunity must be created. A full list of professional services can be found here.

  1. Navigate to the original OPPORTUNITY (this will become the "parent" opp).
  2. Click the "New PS Opportunity" button and fill out the following:
    • OPPORTUNITY Name = will already be set correctly; do not change
    • Type = do not change it will populate from parent OPPORTUNITY
    • Initial Source = do not change it will populate from parent OPPORTUNITY
    • Close Date = if no timeframe defined input close date on a rolling 9-months.
    • Stage = All opportunities start as 00-Pre-Opportunity
    • Professional Services Value (ProServe Value) = enter dollar value, which is defined as the total value of all consulting, training, integration, or other professional services as outlined in the Statement of Work.
    • ACV = do not populate an automated workflow will fill this information
    • Amount = do not populate an automated workflow will fill this information
    • Professional Services Description, Project Scope, Task Schedule and Key Assumption fields = these will push to the Statement of Work when a PDF is generated from Zuora.
    • Verify the Professional Services OPPORTUNITY has the original OPPORTUNITY in the Parent Opportunity field. If this is not a validation rule error will occur while attempting to save the OPPORTUNITY.
  3. Click Save
  4. To create a quote, see the 'Creating Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities and Quotes' and begin with Step 4. Here is a video that hightlights the process.

Tracking Sales Qualified Source in the Opportunity

Sales Qualified Source is dimension used when analyzing pipeline creation, lead conversion, sales cycles, and conversion rates. Sales Qualified Source may be different from the Lead Source of an Opportunity, which captures the original source (event, campaign, etc). For example, if a prospect originates from a trial (lead source), that prospect can be qualified by a BDR, SDR, Account Executive, Channel Partner, or the Web (sales qualified source).

The logic for the Sales Qualified Source is as follows:

  1. If the Business Development Representative field (Opportunity) is populated, regardless of opportunity owner, the Sales Qualified Source is "BDR Generated"
  2. If the Sales Development Representative field (Opportunity) is populated, regardless of opportunity owner, the Sales Qualified Source is "SDR Generated"
  3. If both the Business Development Representative and Sales Development Representative fields are NULL and the opportunity owner is:
    • a Regional Director, Account Executive, or Account Manager, the Sales Qualified Source is "AE Generated"
    • a GitLab team-member that is not a Regional Director, Account Executive, or Account Manager, the Sales Qualified Source is "Other"
    • an authorized reseller, the Sales Qualified Source is "Channel Generated"
    • the Sales Admin, the Sales Qualified Source is "Web Direct Generated"

Reseller Opportunities

Opportunities utilizing a reseller require slightly different data:

Opportunity Naming Convention

Opportunities for subscriptions will use the following guidelines:

Opportunity Types

There are three things that can be new or existing:

That gives 4 types of opportunities:

  1. New account (new account, new subscription, new amount) This type should be used for any new subscription who signs up either through the sales team or via the web portal. Paid training also falls under this type if the organization does not have an enterprise license.
  2. New subscription (existing account, new subscription, new amount) If an existing account is purchasing a new license for another GitLab instance, this will be new business.
  3. Add-on business (existing account, existing subscription, new amount) This type should be used for any incremental/upsell business sold into an existing subscription division mid term, meaning not at renewal. This may be additional seats for their subscription or an upgrade to their plan. If an existing account is adding a new subscription, this would be new business, not an add-on.
  4. Renewal (existing subscription, existing subscription, existing amount) This type should be used for an existing account renewing their license with GitLab. Renewals can have their value increased, decreased, or stay the same. We capture incremental annual contract value growth/loss as a field in Salesforce.com. Renewal business can be a negative amount if renewed at less than the previous dollars paid for the subscription (renewal rate). Only the part that is more or less than the old amount is IACV, the rest is part of the renewal opportunity.

New business is the combination of new account and new subscription

Opportunity Stages

To help move sales through the sales process, here is a list of questions to ask at each stage

00-Pre Opportunity- This stage should be used when an opportunity does not meet our opportunity criteria. However, there is a potential for business, and it should be tracked for possible business.

0-Pending Acceptance: This is the initial stage once an opportunity is created.

1-Discovery: Uncover as much intelligence about the project as you can, which will be confirmed at later stages throughout the sales cycle.

2-Scoping: Uncover business challenges/objectives, the competitive landscape, realizing fit.

3-Technical Evaluation: Confirming technical requirements. A proof-of-concept (POC) might occur at this stage. This is also the stage to confirm information before a proposal is delivered.

4-Proposal: Business and technical challenges and been uncovered and resolved. A proposal is drafted and delivered to the prospect.

5-Negotiating: The prospect or customer has received the proposal and is in contract negotiations.

6-Awaiting Signature: The prospect or customer has verbally agreed to the terms and conditions outlined in the proposal and has submitted for signature.

7-Closed Won: Congratulations!! The terms have been agreed to by both parties and the quote has been approved by Finance.

8-Closed Lost: An opportunity was lost and the prospect/customer has decided not to pursue the purchase of GitLab.

9-Unqualified: An opportunity was never qualified.

10-Duplicate: A duplicate opportunity exists in the system. This usually happens when a web direct opportunity is won when an existing opportunity already exists in Salesforce. Another reason could be multiple renewals created for the same opportunity. This stage should not be used when disqualifying an opportunity or if it is discovered at some point after acceptance that the opportunity is really part of a larger initiative. If the opportunity was accepted, it cannot be marked as a duplicate. Instead, you must mark the opportunity as 8-Closed Lost and select the appropriate reason. Possible selections could include "Consolidating order - part of another subscription" or "Merged into another opportunity" as reasons why a duplicate opportunity may have been created.

Opportunity Stage Movement Considerations

Note that once you qualify an opportunity via our standard qualification process, you cannot revert an opportunity back to the following stages: 00-Pre Opportunity, 0-Pending Acceptance, or 9-Unqualified. If you need to revert an opportunity you've previously qualified to one of these stages, please contact Sales Operations and we can determine why the opportunity (once qualified) is no longer qualified.

Reverting an Opportunity to a Previous Stage

If a previously met criteria has become unmet, you are required to revert back to the latest stage where all activities were completed. For example, if a prospect had previously signed off on GitLab from a technical standpoint, requested a quote and has begun contract negotiations, you would set the opportunity to 5-Negotiating. However, if at any point during the negotiations, additional technical questions or requirements arise that result in a re-evaluation of GitLab's technical capabilities, you would revert the opportunity back to 3-Technical Evaluation. After the opportuniy has once again met the stage completion criteria, you are able to move the opportunity to either 4-Proposal if a new order form was created as a result of the additional technical requirements, or back to 5-Negotiating if no changes were made to the original order form.

Locking Opportunities as a result of their "At Risk" potential

In order to be in compliance with US Regulations there is a need to screen opportunities against known individuals and organizations who we should not be selling to. In order to meet these regulations opportunities are screened when they are created through a third party application, Visual Compliance. If an opportunity triggers any Red Flags it will be locked until it is reviewed by our legal team and it is deemed that it is okay to move forward with the opportunity.

Types of Accounts

Accounts Created in Salesforce utilizing CE Usage Ping Data

The CE Usage ping provides GitLab with some limited insight into how end users are utilizing the platform. The raw information is cleaned, enriched and then pushed to SFDC as an Account by the Data Team.

If there is not an existing account match in Salesforce, a new account record will be created with the following information populated:

SFDC Field Default Value
Account Name  
Account Source CE Download
Number of Employees  
Billing Street  
Billing City  
Billing Zip  
Billing Country  
Account Type Prospect - CE User
Account Website  
Industry Populated by Clearbit (since been deprecated)
Active CE Users Populated by Usage Ping
CE Instances Populated by Usage Ping
Account Owner Sales Admin by Default
Using CE Checked True

Process

  1. Sales Team members can use this data to proactively identify Prospect - CE User accounts that fit their target segement(s). Accounts owned by Sales Admin can be adopted by a Sales Team member changing ownership in Salesforce. The adoption of any Sales Admin owned records will trigger an email alert that is sent to the Account Research Specialist for transparency and awareness of what account records have been claimed.
  2. The Account Research Specialist will be responsible for reviewing the Prospect - CE User accounts on a regular basis to determine additional account records that should be worked either by a Sales Team member or Outbound SDR.
  3. When an account record has been identified for follow up, the Account Research Specialist will work with the appropriate Regional Director (RD) to determine Outbound SDR assignment based on work load and available capacity.
  4. The assigned Outbound SDR will work the Prospect - CE User account the same as any other known CE User account leveraging the tools at their disposal (DiscoverOrg, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, etc) to add contacts to the account record and populate the firmographic profile of the account.

Reporting

Marketing Reports

The Online Growth team is in charge of updating reports and dashboards for marketing meetings. Our key metric is pipe-to-spend. Pipe compared to marketing spend shows how effective our marketing is in filling the pipeline. This report will include all pipe, not just large and up, and is better than cost per lead as it will account for each type of lead in our hybrid sales model and show the value of leads in larger organizations as they generate more pipe. More information on pipe-to-spend as a marketing metric can be found in Salesforce and Marketo. Currently we are using the Full Path revenue model to show all Touchpoints in a path.

Marketing metrics sources are here:

Report on SCLAU Opportunity Creation

An area of focus is to create Sales Accepted Opportunities (SAO) in the large and up sales segment - we call this type of opportunity a SCLAU. For visibility into performance in these market segments we use a Large and Up Opportunity Performance dashboard in salesforce.com. The dashboard tracks the pending acceptance opportunities, SAO, and SQO.

The dashboard analyzes opportunity measures by the dimensions initial source type, sales segmentation and sales qualification source. We set our demand generation targets based on SAO count in large and up segments (SCLAU) by initial source type and sales qualification source as follows:

Using Bizible Fields in Salesforce to Report Attribution

In 4Q18, we are making updates to the Bizible Channel rules, but currently, these channels and subchannels are pulled into Salesforce and can be further filtered by using medium for those channels with overlap or with Ad Campaign name to search for specific UTMs or campaigns:

Bizible Online Channel or subchannel Type of marketing SFDC Marketing Channel-path
CPC Google Adwords or other Paid Search CPC.Adwords
Display Display ads in Doubleclick, Terminus, etc Display
Paid Social Ads in Facebook or LinkedIn Paid Social.[Name of site]
Organic Organic search Marketing Site.Organic
Other Not specifically defined [Name of channel].Other
Partners Google or events Marketing Site.Web Direct
Email Nurture, Newsletter, Outreach emails Email.[Name of email type]
Field Event From Field event, will show Salesforce campaign as touchpoint source Email.[Field Event]
Conference From conference, will show Salesforce campaign as touchpoint source Conference
Social Any referral from any defined social media site Social.[Name of site]
Sponsorship Paid sponsorships, Display, and Demand gen as well as Terminus Sponsorship
Web Direct Unknown or direct (NOTE: this is not the same as Web direct/self-serve in SFDC, this is a Web referral where the original source was not captured) Marketing Site.Web Direct
Web Referral Referral from any site not otherwise defined Marketing Site.Web Referral
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