Why Revenue Collective? Why Chicago?

First things first, what is Revenue Collective?

Revenue Collective is a private, curated community of senior commercial executives (e.g., VP+) across Sales, Business Development, Marketing, and Customer Success at high-growth companies around the world. Founded in 2016 by Sam Jacobs (host of Sales Hacker ...more about Sam later), the community has quickly grown to include over 1,000 members around the world with 12 chapters in 40 cities.

The mission is simple. To help members realize their professional objectives: job, money, career. 

There is a ton of great content on the Revenue Collective website that reinforces the group’s core values:

• PROTECT: Back up for every professional circumstance.
• DIRECT: Guidance for when the best way forward is unclear.
• ENHANCE: Best practices and processes to apply in your role.
• ADVANCE: Support to achieve financial and professional success.

I wanted to take a minute here to share my experience with Revenue Collective and explain why I think this group is so critical for revenue leaders at high growth companies at this time. 

As we all know, we’re in a game that moves fast and furious.  If we want to succeed, we must be students of the game; adjusting, improving, and leveraging absolute best practices in near real time. As leaders at high growth companies, it’s our job to bring with us as much “experience” as we can; real, learned, or curated.

You might be thinking “real experience” is far superior to learned or curated experience. But think about it - if you ran a BDR team four years ago, and just took it on again today, your “previous experience” is not only outdated and needing a refresh, it might actually work against you in today’s B2B selling environment. This is exactly what happened to me in April. Thank you Revenue Collective for quickly providing me with benchmarks, sample compensation plans, ratios, the works.

How about learned experience? I love a good business book as much as the next gal. They look particularly impressive in my laptop bag and help tone the old biceps lugging them around from flight to flight. BUT the reality is, there is no standard playbook for what we do, so as soon as the book or method is published it’s likely out of date. Add to that the fact that most business books are mostly theory, lacking the necessary frameworks and details we need to actually apply the concepts to our businesses quickly and effectively. 

So, what about curated experience? I’m thinking about the “phone-a-friend” kind that you can rely on from your trusted  network. I’m a working mom, so I haven’t done the best job of building “a go-to” network, and LinkedIn is often just way too random. Revenue Collective gives me an instantly accessible network of vetted, high caliber professionals with an incredible range of experience. And, while Revenue Collective includes many “in-person experiences” (all of which include high value content, great connections, and lots of fun), sometimes I simply don’t want to go to another event. 

It’s 11:00 PM, I’ve finally got some time to focus and I need answers. Guess who is there for me? Revenue Collective. The Slack channel is nothing short of amazing, an instant connection to experience and answers 24/7. Revenue Collective allows me to connect, validate, and benchmark what I’m doing in real time, which means I can more confidently deliver the best possible ideas and solutions to my company and team. 

So, that’s why Revenue Collective. Now, let’s talk about why Chicago.

I grew up in Northern Virginia and went to the University of Virginia. Ironically, in parallel with the one-and-only Sam Jacobs. We both graduated in 1999 from the McIntire School of Commerce, so Sam can back me up on this one...NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE from Virginia goes to Chicago. Isn’t it cold there? My parents and friends thought I was NUTS when I moved here. 

 Yes it’s really f’ing cold, so buy a hat for God’s sake.  But there is so much more to Chicago than just the wind and cold. Chicago has 26 miles of public beach, a super clean vibrant downtown, and some of the best restaurants in the world. And the PEOPLE! Yes, the people are really amazing. Well, we have to be it’s so darn cold, we have no choice but to stay positive and be kind to one another.

 I love my city, and I’m proud of my city. It has all the makings of a perfect high growth city hub; great surrounding feeder schools (especially business schools), centrally located (including two major airline hubs), hard working people, diversity, public transportation, and a reasonable cost of living. Alas, we are are number 36 on Inc’s list of best places to start a business. 

 For all you competitive revenue leaders, number 36 kinda sucks. No one reading this article needs a lesson on startups and their impact on economics. Startups create jobs, and drive innovation and wealth. I have no desire to influence tax codes, learn to code, or start my own business, but what I CAN do, and what we can do together, is grow a community of baller revenue leaders that startups need to succeed. And if we enjoy each other and get to hold some events at great restaurants along the way, well I’d call that a win-win.

 So we are giving it a go. Our kick off event is January 14th and we are looking for a few GREAT revenue leaders who want to help us build the Chicago chapter. We’ve got a motley crew so far Sam Jacobs, our fearless leader (who I tick off all the time by breaking rules - it’s a Chicago thing, we do it our way) EJ Oeling, a kick ass marketing leader who happens to have the inside track on EVERY great venue in the city (have I mentioned the restaurant scene!), and Maura Brady, my Austin transplant amazing WOMAN sales leader. 

 So, I’m asking you to join us, and let’s do this!

 To learn more and get involved send me a LinkedIn message or check out https://www.revenuecollective.com/about-us