Episode #118
#118 The Complexity of Consumption ARR in RevOps – with Markus Jaensch, Head of RevOps at Aiven
Markus Jaensch, Head of RevOps at Aiven, joins Janis and Philipp to unpack what consumption-based pricing actually means for a RevOps team running a $100M+ ARR business. Aiven — the open-source data platform behind managed Kafka, Postgres, OpenSearch, and ClickHouse — recently crossed $100M ARR, and Markus walks through how the forecasting model, comp design, and territory setup have evolved over 4.5 years to deal with the fundamental problem of consumption: a "win" doesn't equal revenue, and the next 12 months can swing either direction. We cover: Why consumption ARR is structurally harder to forecast than SaaS bookings Why Aiven moved away from pure ARR forecasting and back to bookings + finance-modeled ARR The three forecast buckets: new business, add-on, and commit contracts Using MEDDPICC with mandatory mutual success plans and CRM score as a red-flag signal T-shirt sizing (S/M/L/XL) with solution architects to anchor opportunity size The two non-negotiables to close-won at Aiven: valid payment method + 3 consecutive days of consumption Why RevOps owns the close-won gate — and the tradeoff of being a controlling function The Farmer/Hunter evolution: from split, to mixed, to dedicated Inside Sales + named-territory Field reps Comp design: bookings as a sanity metric, ARR as the paid metric, with new-ARR ramp-to-size Stack: Salesforce + data warehouse, and why Aiven switched from spot ARR to a 30-day average Building the process around the customer first, not internal convenience Markus Jaensch on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markus-jaensch/ Aiven: https://aiven.io Weflow: https://www.getweflow.com RevOps Chat Community: https://getweflow.com/community RevOps Letter: https://www.getweflow.com/revopsletter Janis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiszech Philipp on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippstelzer Book recommendation: The Café on the Edge of the World by John Strelecky Chapters: (00:00:00) Intro & Welcome to Markus (00:02:14) Why Consumption ARR Is the Topic — and Aiven Crossing $100M (00:03:39) Why Consumption ARR Is So Hard to Forecast (00:08:30) Bookings vs. ARR Forecasting — and Aiven's Evolution (00:12:53) MEDDPICC, Mutual Success Plans & Deal Hygiene (00:16:21) T-Shirt Sizing with Solution Architects (00:18:01) The 3-Day Consumption Rule for Close-Won (00:22:28) Modeling the ARR Ramp After a Booking (00:26:27) The Farmer/Hunter Evolution & Inside Sales Motion (00:29:37) Comp Design: Bookings, ARR, and Ramp-to-Size (00:31:00) Stack: Salesforce, Data Warehouse & 30-Day Average ARR (00:34:34) Final Learnings on Consumption Forecasting (00:36:29) The Customer-First Principle (00:38:02) Book Recommendation & Close
