To have a successful and efficient business, all divisions need to work and align towards the same goal; generating revenue. That’s why focusing on delivering exceptional customer experience as a core result and aligning processes and systems are essential. Over the few years - before Revenue Operations was coined - a lot of companies are adopting RevOps as a focus within their business.
Let’s dive right into the what & why Revenue Operations.
What Is Revenue Operations?
Revenue Operations, or RevOps, is an important growth function that manages full funnel operations across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success - from Awareness to Decision. It is a framework that aligns operational efficiencies around 1) the customer experience and 2) business revenue.
Whilst it’s not a new phenomenon and technically has been around for a few years, there’s finally a SaaS product (HubSpot) that truly enables RevOps and creates a seamless end-to-end experience.
According to Lean Data, companies that align revenue engines are 34% more profitable and grow 12 to 15 times faster compared to their peers. Its main job is to drive revenue growth through operational efficiency, technology integrations and team alignment.
RevOps = Operations + Enablement + Insights + Tools
"Revenue Operations is the inner ring of that flywheel, reducing friction and providing the lubrication to make sure the three big areas of your business – sales, marketing, and service – are moving smoothly, accelerating your growth flywheel and letting nothing stand in your way. Putting the metaphor aside, Revenue Operations is the combining and aligning of revenue goals throughout marketing, sales, and success teams within a business."
HubSpot
1. Align Teams Goals and KPIs
In order to be aligned to the business revenue and growth goals, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams need to have aligned goals and KPIs - not just to the business revenue but amongst teams. This ensures every initiative - from generating leads, identifying target accounts to managing renewals - impacts revenue.
When everyone’s aligned to the same goal and focused on delighting customers at every step of the customer journey, reduces friction and builds momentum for growth. One of my favourite talks was by Dharmesh Shah about aligning vectors.
When teams have separate goals, there is poorer communication and understanding between teams. Revenue Operations, on the other hand, introduces a level of trust, accountability and support amongst and between teams.
2. Shared Technology Stack For Greater Enablement
One of the most important parts of bringing together teams, communication and accountability is the tech stack.
You NEED a centralised business engine - ahem, HubSpot - to tie the activities together. The tech stack needs to be integrated as much as possible. The systems should be “talking” to each other. The data should be shared. The communication with prospects/customers should be visible to all.
With the right tools, there’s greater enablement and efficiency, which allows teams to expand and adapt fast. This is why I am very passionate about CRM strategy and data integrity. If you’d like to discuss further, connect with us.
Just imagine this: The marketing team sends out an email which then notifies the sales team but without a clear lead allocation process and shared CRM, you may have multiple sales people reach out to the same prospect with the same pre-qualification call.
Not a good experience!
A prospective customer should not be approached by multiple salespeople, salespeople shouldn’t be asking the prospect obvious questions that were already captured by marketing, operations should be able to see conversations the prospect and sales teams had and customer service teams should be able to see how the prospect’s deal progressed from closed won to implementation.
Having a high quality, centralized, accessible CRM data is one of the most important investments your business can make to support the revenue engine. Let us help you get it right the first time!
With the right tech stack, you can also enjoy efficiency gains by leveraging on sales enablement strategies and automations, you can grow the amount of revenue each team member can carry; increasing revenue growth with fewer resources.
3. Stay Agility & Expand
Once you have the first two points above the down pat, you would be in the position to remain agile and grow your business without worrying about systems not growing with you. This means you will be able to respond to business changes in the years to come - from rejigging your CRM strategy, restructuring your teams, territories, and compensation models and expanding into new markets easily.
With the right tech stack, RevOps will be able to bring predictability, repeatable systems and measurability to your business. You’ll have the confidence to expand into new markets, invest in growing the team and deploying strategies.
Example of what this could mean for your business:
- Sales and Finance agree on how to use deal amounts to measure sales rep profitability
- Management team can analyse which partnerships are best for different industries or services
- Marketing and Sales can agree to improve quality of leads
- Marketing and Sales can work together to manage lead volume which impacts the lead growth required to support hiring a new rep.
- Customer Success and Product share customer feedback about product improvements and how to best prioritise them insights
- Customer Success and Marketing team can work together to adjust the messaging to be more relatable to the prospects and customers.
- Sales and Marketing agree on a new market segment to enter, such as a new vertical.
RevOps is key to scaling growth FAST - without burning your business to the ground. By optimising the key levers of growth - volume, value, velocity, and conversion rates - you’ll be able to grow faster in a sustainable way.
The benefits that you can reap from RevOps today and in the future are vast. Let's grow smarter, faster, together! Connect with us here or via the GNG chatbot.