Susan Rothwell has run a $1B revenue organization at Epsilon and a $2.5B business at Vericast. Then she walked into a fifteen-year-old company that had grown enormously without a forecast of its own, a RevOps function, or a CRM anyone actually used.

What she found wasn't a bad forecast. It was a blind one — built by finance, with no bottoms-up roll-up from the field, and no way to answer the questions a CRO has to answer. "I had a lot of questions and not a lot of answers, and no place to go find them."

In this conversation with LeanScale co-founder Anthony Enrico, Susan walks through the whole rebuild: the first hire she made, the CRM that was really an order-entry system, the consultant-led reorg she inherited and then publicly reversed, the AI test she now applies to every process, and the single thing she says you can never hand to an outside firm. If you have ever been handed a transformation somebody else started, this one is for you.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Why a finance-built forecast isn't wrong — it's blind, and what that costs you

How to tell a CRM that's forecasting from one that's just taking orders

The test for AI transformation: how would AI do this, not how would AI fix this

How to reverse a decision publicly without destroying your team's trust

Exactly where outside consultants fit — and the one thing you can never outsource

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Cold open + intro

01:46 — Week one: a fifteen-year-old company with no forecast of its own

03:30 — The first hire: RevOps as the interpreter between sales and finance

05:54 — The CRM she inherited: "more of an order system than a forecasting system"

11:20 — The consultant-led reorg that created the angst

12:35 — Going back: "that decision was not the right decision"

17:29 — "I don't have all the answers" — and the question she always asks

19:22 — What a real feedback loop looks like — and why she stayed out of it

26:04 — AI: strategy, training and governance before tools

28:58 — "How would AI do this?" vs "How would AI fix this?"

34:25 — Getting alignment on what a new logo actually is

40:29 — Where consultants fit — and where they can't

47:22 — Wrap

ABOUT THE GUEST

Susan Rothwell is Chief Revenue Officer at Simpli.fi, the Blackstone- and GTCR-backed advertising platform serving media teams, agencies and brands. She brings more than 27 years in sales and marketing leadership. Before Simpli.fi she was Chief Revenue Officer at Epsilon, where she led more than $1 billion in revenue and ran a go-to-market transformation that pulled three separate selling organizations into one customer-facing team. Before that she was Chief Revenue Officer at Vericast, where she drove a roughly $2.5 billion business to consistent double-digit growth by aligning strategy, performance and revenue operations.

ABOUT THE LEANSCALE PODCAST

The LeanScale Podcast is the show for GTM operators building the next generation of revenue infrastructure. Hosted by Anthony Enrico, co-founder of LeanScale, we go deep with the operators, founders, and executives shaping how modern go-to-market teams are designed, scaled, and transformed.

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KEYWORDS / TAGS

RevOps, Revenue Operations, GTM, Change Management, GTM Transformation, AI Transformation, AI Strategy, AI Governance, Sales Operations, Sales Enablement, Pipeline Forecasting, Sales Forecasting, Forecast Accuracy, Data Model, Data Lake, CRM Adoption, Salesforce, CRO, Chief Revenue Officer, Territory Design, Private Equity, Blackstone, GTCR, Simpli.fi, Epsilon, Vericast, AdTech, Programmatic, B2B SaaS, Management Consultants, LeanScale, Anthony Enrico, Susan Rothwell

HASHTAGS

#RevOps #GTM #AI #ChangeManagement #RevenueOperations #SalesOperations #CRO #AITransformation #AdTech #Programmatic #B2BSaaS #Salesforce #PrivateEquity #LeanScale #LeanScalePodcast

The Change Management Playbook You Can't Outsource | Susan Rothwell, CRO at Simpli.fi

The LeanScale Podcast with Anthony Enrico

The Change Management Playbook You Can't Outsource | Susan Rothwell, CRO at Simpli.fi