Episode #141
Ep. 140 - How Great CROs Build Revenue Engines That Actually Scale with Lance Haffner - Part 2
General Episode Description: In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Lance Haffner, Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global, returns to discuss one of the biggest challenges facing modern revenue leaders: creating demand for problems buyers do not yet recognize. He shares practical strategies for validating market fit, identifying the right buyer personas, building effective sales processes, and knowing when it’s time to pivot. The conversation also explores the growing trust deficit created by AI in sales. Lance explains why AI should enhance, not replace, human interactions, how revenue teams can use AI to improve forecasting and sales execution, and why speed, simplicity, and transparency are becoming essential competitive advantages. Finally, he shares leadership lessons from building a CRO organization from the ground up and the timeless sales disciplines every revenue leader should never overlook. What You’ll Learn: How to create demand when buyers don’t yet recognize the problem they have Why validating market fit should come before scaling go to market efforts The importance of identifying the right buyer persona before refining messaging How continuous feedback loops help improve sales messaging and execution Why AI should remove friction instead of replacing human relationships Practical ways AI improves forecasting, pipeline management, and coaching How to recognize when a go to market strategy needs to change Leadership principles for building high performing revenue organizations from scratch Key Topics: Creating new market demand Market fit validation Buyer persona strategy Sales methodology and discovery Revenue operations feedback loops AI enabled sales execution Building trust in an AI driven buying environment Pipeline management and forecasting Revenue leadership CRO best practices Customer experience Sales process optimization Guest Spotlight: Lance Haffner Lance Haffner is the Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global, where he leads the company’s global revenue organization through its next phase of growth. With leadership experience spanning staffing, HR technology, and enterprise SaaS, Lance is known for building scalable revenue functions, applying data driven decision making, and combining AI with disciplined sales execution to accelerate growth. Resources & Mentions: Papaya Global Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines AI enabled sales organizations Revenue Operations Sales methodologies including SPICED and Challenger Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with today’s leading revenue executives, sales innovators, and GTM operators. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mark Petruzzi (00:36) Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi. KK Anderson (00:40) And I'm KK Anderson. This is part two with Lance Hafner, Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global. Be sure to go back and listen to part But if you want to start here, let us bring you quickly up to speed. Lance told us how he has moved from staffing sales into HR and then into revenue leadership by applying a business enablement mindset where he wherever he sat and what it's taken to build papaya's first ever CRO function. While the company shifts from years of product investment into a scale up phase. Mark Petruzzi (01:12) In part two, we get into how Lance is building demand for a problem most buyers don't know they have yet, the trust deficit. Lance is watching this show up directly into his AI enabled sales motion. And we'll go into and we'll analyze how he uses AI day in and day out to diagnose what's actually happening inside his sales team. Lance, welcome back. Lance Haffner (01:36) Thanks, Laura. Thanks, KK. Happy to be here again. Mark Petruzzi (01:39) Great. So yeah, let's jump into creating demand for a problem buyers do not know they have. you've compared the awareness problem you're facing to introducing a genuinely new category. How do you build go-to-market motion around the pain point most buyers don't even know they have yet? Lance Haffner (01:56) This is such a great question. And and it's it's it's been salient a few times in my my career. if you look back over the years and you look back at the new we as consumers, things that have been launched in the consumer market. I remember this this thing in in two thousand and six, seven, Apple releases the iPhone and we didn't even know we needed a handheld computer device that didn't have keys. In fact, it was absurd to think about it. I was a Blackberry fan to be honest, and I wanted my keys and I resisted for two years. Mark Petruzzi (02:26) Ha ha KK Anderson (02:28) Was it clipped on your belt, Lance? Did you have it clipped on your belt? Lance Haffner (02:32) I look, I may have had a clip. Yes, I may have had a clip. yeah. I mean look, we can go Mark Petruzzi (02:36) I'm not gonna admit to that, Lance. KK Anderson (02:38) yes you are. Lance Haffner (02:39) back to you, we can go back to the days you had the pager clipped, right? Not less, yeah, or Mark Petruzzi (02:42) Yeah, yeah. Lance Haffner (02:43) the mo onto KK Anderson (02:43) Yeah. Lance Haffner (02:44) the Motorola Razor, onto the Blackberry telephone. But I know it's a consumer, that's really a consumer application review, but this the Point still stands. We didn't know that we needed that. It's like we actually, in fact, some people took the antithesis side, the antithetical side of I hate keys, I don't want them. Not only do I not need it, is it not a pain? I don't want it. And so I think lots of CROs and businesses deal with this. You're it you're entering market with a new product. I want to be clear, sometimes it's not a new product. I, you know, in a prior job, it wasn't a new product, but it was a new application of that solution in market. but it's the same. Right? Whether it's new or not, it's the same. you're dealing with with the problem of of market awareness and creating that demand. So first and foremost, I think coming back up to my, in our prior conversation, when I talked about moving from moving into scale, make sure market fit exists. Even if people aren't aware they have pain, make sure you got a market fit fit. You're dealing with the insights KK Anderson (03:40) Right. Lance Haffner (03:40) RevOps leader's creating, your Markovs leader who should who's likely. According to RevOps, the insights your product team has, particularly your product marketing team who's done the research, competitive analysis. They're reading, the analysts and seeing what the analysts are saying about you in market, about other solutions. Do you got the market fit? Let's agree that you do. You've done the analysis. There's not just a TAM, but ultimately you have some serviceable, addressable market that you can actually sell that product into. All right. That's point number one. Don't go off the gut thesis. I try to do it all the time. I gotta be honest. I'm preaching to myself here. We we get a thesis, we have bias on that thesis, and then we go look for everything to confirm the bias. No. Go look at the data and confirm that you actually have market fit and you actually have a market that you can sell, that you can service, and that you can obtain, and you can be successful successful. Number one. Number two, I you know. If anyone can figure out how to make it really successful, a product or a pain that people don't know they need or have a pain they don't know they have, they're gonna be wealthy. by the way, people have done that. And they are, they were very wealthy. So but I don't think KK Anderson (04:42) Ha ha ha. Lance Haffner (04:44) it's it's not easy. we one of my leaders, another colleague, I have the fish, the fish can't climb the tree colleague who's who's brilliant sells mine. And another one says, Lance, I call this normalized power. Having a conversation with the buyer, I'm going through my methodology process, I'm listening for the signals, and they just don't know they have pain. and I go back to the Apple versus BlackBerry method. None of us knew we had pain. In fact, it we had maybe an antithetical view of it. Not only do I not have pain, it sounds painful to go to a screen without prescribed buttons that are, can be precise. So so there's there's this normalized pain that exists. I think the key to getting through that is two things. One, you've got the right buyer persona. sometimes go back to my example of where you have a product and market. It's not a new product and market, but maybe it's a new application, new go-to-market motion. We're thinking of it differently and how the buyer can apply that. who is the buyer though? Because the buyer might have shifted. Formerly, you might have been working with the HR department. Now you're in finance and you're particularly a layer down in KK Anderson (05:45) Right. Lance Haffner (05:45) finance, maybe with treasury. Do you have the right buyer persona? Because if you don't, you have zero chance of helping them see the pain that they're that they they have. Okay, number one. So be dogged about landing on the right buyer persona and let that feedback loop happen. Listen to the sales calls, receive the sales feedback. Why am I not converting? Why am I disqualifying? Listen, watch, and be hyper quick. On pivoting. Go back to the bow tie we talked about, right? You're all on top of funnel here going through your sales stages. Your RevOps leader is acutely watching this and giving you real-time feedback and you're shifting. Could be your campaign in market right now and the pitch in the campaign. Could be a lot of things, right? But you're watching. And then lastly, I would say the process itself, and I already mentioned it, but the sales process you're going through has to be spot on because the process is there to help them identify the pain. Now, for 80 foot percent of what we sell, they know the pain. So it's easy. We know the pain before we go in generally, but we get that out of them through our sales process, whatever methodology you're using. I've used Spice by Winnie our friends at Winnie My Design, so roll out that in my last KK Anderson (06:50) Mm-hmm. Lance Haffner (06:51) job, but but Matic Challenger, whatever you're using, right? Go through that pain process, and there, right, right, is in my opinion, kind of the inflection point of them understanding that they actually do have the pain. And and that's the hardest piece to get through. So let me let me headline that just quickly because I said a lot of words. Do you have right market fit? Using the insights from your analysis through RevOps, marketing ops, through product marketing. don't have bias confirmation. Many of us want to believe, this is great. Let's go sell this. Let's apply this this way. Prove that out. Don't have bias confirmation. Come down here, think about your sales process. think through buyer persona. Are you are you now with the right buyer within the organization? And do you have the right pitch through pain or through your methodology? Excuse me, are you getting them through the pain process and helping them identify? And you and you have feedback loops that are telling you very quickly, real time, is it working or is it not? And you're pivoting. And by the way, I'm gonna say KK Anderson (07:43) Mm. Love that. Lance Haffner (07:44) this last thing. This is gonna be hard for me to say. Give up when when you're done. When the data tells you. This isn't working. Stop investing resources because you're burning, you're burning money, you're burning funds, you're burning resources and opportunity of other things you can be selling. And I think that's a really KK Anderson (07:59) Right. Lance Haffner (08:00) important note here is then it's time to probably say, we tried this, it didn't work, let's close the book on it. And that's really hard for a guy like me to say. KK Anderson (08:08) Right. we have this, you know, I've been teaching this philosophy for, over a decade now. and I call it the two sale mentality. And that is that every sale, I don't care if you're selling Girl Scut cookies or you're selling multi-million dollar software, it's two sales. The first sale is getting your customer to articulate why they need to change. And the second sale is why you and why now. And so It occurs to me as I listen to you speak, Lance, that that's exactly what you're doing when you're selling to someone who doesn't know they have a problem yet, their eyes haven't been open, you have to really nail that first sale and pull the pane. And once you get that, then you can go into, why papaya and why now? Lance Haffner (08:48) Why Papaya and why not? I love it, yeah. I love it. Okay. KK Anderson (08:52) okay, so yeah, and do you feel like your sales team is good at doing that? So as far as like selling value to something that they don't know that they need, like I think you're you nailed it when you talked about the sales process, but it really is everything, doing it in the right order. Lance Haffner (09:06) everything. Yeah. It is everything. And yes, I think so. I think look, I'm biased. I think I've got some extraordinary sellers and I think they really do KK Anderson (09:13) Right. Lance Haffner (09:14) care. Like let's let's maybe go to the we've been talking in kind of a technical manner, but let's go to our people. Yeah, I think they care and I think they do understand. Certainly they're motivated, they're sellers, but I think the best sellers do care about the value they can bring their customer. And I think that shows up in the processes they employ and the methods. They use to work through the sales process. So it's not just about identifying the pain. It's about I have conviction that I can help you. And this solution can save you time, it can save you money, whatever, whatever the value prop is. And and so yeah, I think my sellers are doing. I think they're fantastic, and I think they see they see the vision. And frankly, some of them are leading us, right? I've got some great sellers leading us, giving us market insights that we then back through process, very quickly take that in, the feedback loop. and iterate KK Anderson (09:59) Mm-hmm. Lance Haffner (10:00) w what we need to iterate to to help them be successful. KK Anderson (10:03) It's all about the loop. Mark Petruzzi (10:04) Beautiful. Lance Haffner (10:06) It's all about the lube. Mark Petruzzi (10:08) Lance, what tells you that the messaging is actually starting to land in the market? What what tools Lance Haffner (10:13) Yeah. Mark Petruzzi (10:14) and what approaches do you look at to really understand that? Lance Haffner (10:17) Yeah, don't overthink this. I think I'm an Occam's Razor fan, another colleague who brought that to me. Usually, the simplest answer is the right answer. if you Mark, going back to what we started the call with, or as we talked about the CRO function, those insights will show up pretty quickly. now they may not be they're they're going to tell you a variety of things that may not be overly structural in nature, but if you have your system set up. From top of funnel through closed loss through to activation through retention. Go there. Remember the bow tie and to KK's point. We may have a really good sales process and pitch. We don't have market fit just yet, but man, the pitch sells it and we get it in, we install, but yet we turn six months later. That's no good. Those insights are telling you, they're giving you real-time feedback. So your question is, how do I know the map the message is working? Start at top of funnel. I can see the outbound scripts are working and that we are qualifying. leads. They are becoming opportunities. I can see the same in in lead gen and in marketing. But I can see in the SDR outbound motions. I'm producing Topafuna pipeline. Number one. Number two, I'm converting that pipeline. It's happening. And this is all again, Mark, real time set up through your systems and processes and your sell stack and your insights coming from your revenue. Obviously, here. I do want to say this, it has to be bifurcated a bit. Bifurcated's maybe the wrong It has to be highlighted. You kind of have to have a bit of a tiger element about this, that you're watching it discreetly, explicitly. If you're not, then it can kind of get it, it can get in the overall noise of the funnel and your insights and your data and the pipeline management. So make sure you've got it set out separately. But if you got the right structure in place, you are going the key, the simple key. You're going to get those insights immediately, and then you can pivot. And ultimately, back to I love KK taking us through the other side of the funnel. If I'm beginning to turn, turn, churn, okay, man, it's working up here, great, but I'm an ARR business and my churn is is not good. And so we may have to go back to the drawing board and rethink market fit, product design, whatever. I C P KK Anderson (12:11) I C P, yeah. Yeah. Lance Haffner (12:13) all of it. Yeah. KK Anderson (12:15) Okay, let's move into talking about the trust trust deficit, you know, that Lance Haffner (12:20) Yeah. KK Anderson (12:20) we are all in right now with our AI enabled sales motion. And, you we talked about this when we when we met in our in our prep call and how, we're in a world where buyers aren't always sure that like they're even dealing with a real person anymore, right? that someone actually wrote a human actually wrote their email. that It's even a real person on the phone that's calling them. And so how does that show up in your world and what do you do about it? Lance Haffner (12:46) Yeah, you all had a podcast on this a month or two ago that was really good that I listened to and kind of informed and influenced some of my thinking. Yeah, I made a call the other day. I won't give you the company I call, but I'm a customer and and it was a small company by the way, local to me. So service provider for my home. We'll just say, mechanical stuff in your home. And I needed to get the tech back out and I call and I hear this voice, it's like, Hey, Lance, thanks for calling. And I said, yes, thanks. Yep, lights after calling from da da da da da and about da da da. And then there's like the four second pause. Great, thanks for calling in about that today. I'm like, Mark Petruzzi (13:22) Ha ha ha ha. Lance Haffner (13:23) I was so excited. I got a call almost immediately. It sounded real. And then I'm like, you're not real. You're not real. So it's showing up everywhere in our lives. And and then bring it apply it in our business. you had said on this last podcast, we've had automations out for a while, marketing automations that see the signals and they respond. And so this isn't new, but it is it is exponentially. My opinion is this. I think I think we we need to be we should be using the technology. It makes us more efficient, and if we can get it right, it will improve the customer's life. It will, it absolutely will. I believe that. Had that system, in my example, me calling the tech back out, been as responsive and and conversational as a human being and ultimately got me through the process efficiently, I just I wouldn't have cared. I wouldn't have, as long as the outcome was what it needed to be. So that's my opinion. The outcomes need to get to where they are. I think we've got to be smart about how we apply AI and the automations within our business. Again, automations have been around a long time, all through the funnel, even in the sales process. We set up sequences that are automated, that are managed by our CRMs and our outreach systems for our sellers that are not a seller necessarily, right? And so so they've existed for a long time. They've just become very dynamic and agentic. Because the agents can can work. So I think we've got to perfect the processes. I don't think we resist. I think we bring them in, we perfect the processes. I also, this is an interesting thing. I don
