Adreana | January 10, 2023 | RevOps
You've likely heard the term "RevOps" thrown around quite a bit lately, and it seems like many companies are finding success implementing it. Could you be the next?
Of course you could! But taking on RevOps can be a bit of a lift, so it’s important to make sure you’ve done your research and are setting yourself up for success in the process.
You’re on the right track by reading this article, as I’m going to break down exactly what RevOps is, what it can do for your business, and, most importantly, how you can implement it successfully. Let’s dive in.
RevOps, short for “revenue operations,” is an organizational strategy designed to operationalize revenue. It aligns all of your customer-facing departments (marketing, sales, customer service, even finance) around one common goal (usually a revenue goal).
It’s similar to Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, and most of the other “Ops” you’ve heard about — but there’s one key differentiating factor that makes RevOps especially powerful: all the “Ops” are in one place, which means they’re aligned for growth.
Need a little more clarity from that definition? Check out this previous post, where our team dives more into specifics.
Believe it or not, there are only three fundamental components of a RevOps strategy: process, platform, and people.
More good news: these principles are nothing crazy, and you might already have started using some of them daily without even realizing it! Let's take a look.
For your business to achieve the strategic growth you want, you need to have the right processes in place. A good place to start is with your company’s goals. Then try to break those goals into smaller processes with simple, actionable, and clearly outlined steps.
Repeatable processes help your customers know what to expect, but they're also crucial for your team. With transparent processes in place, your team can quickly tell when they are doing well and where they might be off track. Your processes act as a control against which you can measure your data.
Here’s an example:
Service-level agreements (SLAs) between sales and marketing teams should specify what they would want from the other department to assist them meet their goals. Marketing, for example, may want weekly pipeline status updates from Sales so that marketers can alter their lead-generation initiatives accordingly.
The more comfortable your team is with your processes, the more benefits you'll see. Better customer retention, a shorter sales cycle, and more upsells are all great signs that RevOps is working for you.
RevOps strategy, like most other successful business strategies, is based on data. For RevOps to work, you need to have a single source of truth that can help you collect your data and figure out precisely what that data means. This is usually a CRM, like HubSpot or Salesforce, for most companies.
Whether you choose one of these options or something else, your solution should be able to track all of your company's marketing, sales, customer service, and financial data, as well as display it in a way that’s easy for your team to understand. Any member of your team should be able to sign in and see how their work affects your business’ pipeline, performance, and growth.
That brings us to people. Here’s the kicker:
Your team is the most important part of your RevOps Strategy.
Every single team member is important in implementing and maintaining a successful RevOps strategy. However, it's also important to have people on your team who are focused solely on RevOps. If you work for a larger organization, that might be a RevOps team. If you have a small business, it's a good idea to have a few people who can divide up RevOps tasks among the rest of the team.
Now that you have a full understanding of what RevOps entails, it’s time to actually do the work.
I’ll break the RevOps implementation down into four steps: alignment, goal-setting, communication cadence, and continuous improvement.
As I mentioned above, RevOps is all about alignment. Your marketing, sales, service, and operations teams should be aligned around business goals.
Sales will be successful if they can identify the right customers for your products.
Marketing needs to make sure that customers know about the product, and that the product is kept top of mind.
Service needs to focus on providing excellent customer service so customers feel happy about choosing your product or service.
Operations needs to ensure you have the tools, systems, and resources needed to make the above happen.
By developing alignment and feedback loops between sales, marketing, service, and operations teams, you have the potential to be become a true hero for your organization.
Performance metrics can help keep your RevOps team and organization on target, but making and keeping track of these performance metrics is a lot of work. This is why it's more important than ever to use the right metrics and the right approach to defining and measuring success.
SLAs are a good way to get your sales and marketing goals to work together. These SLAs are great tools for laying out your company's goals and coming to an agreement between the marketing and sales teams. It specifies the metric used to assess the quality of service delivered to clients.
Setting goals is crucial for success — not just when you first launch, but all the way through your company’s lifetime RevOps is one piece of a complicated puzzle that, when operating well, is what separates high-performing organizations from average ones.
In addition to RevOps being used as an indicator for past performance, goal-setting also helps improve future performance by helping employees set realistic objectives, as well as motivate them to meet those goals and expectations.
Opportunities will be lost and business growth will be stifled unless an internal RevOps team meets on a regular basis. RevOps meetings not only guarantee that transparency and visibility flow easily across all departments, but also that each team understands how they can assist each other in achieving the revenue growth that everyone desires.
However, time wasted in unnecessary or unproductive meetings adds up, resulting in lower productivity and, ultimately, hindered corporate growth. That’s why it’s vital to find a happy medium and design a good meeting cadence that makes the most of your team’s limited time by keeping everyone focused on information and activities that drive revenue.
When it comes to RevOps, there are various key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider. You should have established which are most important to your business in Step 2 (goal setting). Now it’s time to analyze tracked data and see where there’s room for improvement.
Is the pipeline's pace too slow? You may need to eliminate friction in your quote send and approval process.
Is your renewal rate low? Upsell data may need to be shared with Sales earlier in the process.
Is your NPS score low? Perhaps there has to be more emphasis on client satisfaction at the beginning of the sales process.
These are only three examples, but they illustrate how data points are more than cold, hard numbers. Instead, they provide insights into how a company may enhance the customer experience by adjusting the way it interacts with a customer.
RevOps isn’t a “set it and forget it” strategy. It’s an ongoing cycle of tracking, analyzing, and problem solving. This not only makes RevOps powerful; it also makes it fun.
When implementing a new process, it can be difficult to predict what will happen, and it can be easy to trash your efforts if you don’t see results in a few days or weeks.
However, it’s important to understand that big strategies like RevOps take a while to settle in and gain traction. Your team isn’t going to be experts on this right away, and you might need to invest in some new tools. It may take a few months or years to start seeing true results, and that’s okay. Even after that, there will always be changes to the industry or your company that require you to take a step back and realign.
What’s important is that you remain patient and focused on the goals in front of you. It’s paid off for many organizations already, and it could for you too.
If you need help getting started with RevOps? We recommend you start with strategy, and we’re here to help you with it! If your business doesn’t have a sales or marketing plan in place, we can help you create one that’s aligned with your business goals. Consider that one step of the RevOps process complete!
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