How to Structure a Revenue Operations Team
If your team is ready to take on Revenue Operations or RevOps, you might wonder what team members you need to get it going. Where do you put everyone? How do you know you have the right people to implement your new RevOps strategy effectively?
The good news is there's a lot of flexibility when it comes to structuring a RevOps team. The bad news is that flexibility can feel overwhelming when you're starting something new.
That's where we come in! We'll walk you through some common guidelines that teams use when implementing a new RevOps structure. While it's true that every team is different, there are a few commonalities and RevOps best practices to know that will help you structure a revenue operations team that helps you reach your goals.
Let's start with the most pressing question:
Do I Need to Hire Someone New for my RevOps Team?
As you might expect, the best answer we can offer here is "it depends."
It depends on the existing structure of your team, and it depends on your company's revenue goals.
If you have the staff and capacity to implement RevOps with the team members you already have, you might not need to hire someone new.
But, if your team is already stretched thin and you're grasping at straws trying to figure out where to get started, it might be worth it to bring in a new RevOps leader.
Whether you bring in new team members or you're planning to start with the team you have, structuring a Revenue Operations team requires a fundamental shift in how your team is set up and how your team thinks about the purpose of the work they do.
Let's dive into four essential roles that will dictate the structure of your revenue operations team.
01. A RevOps Leader
The fundamental starting point of any RevOps strategy is breaking down silos. Even if you're not changing a single position, you still need to create a new framework focused on collaboration and communication.
Most teams accomplish this by bringing marketing, sales, and customer service teams all under one RevOps leader.
This is the first step in removing those barriers and silos that traditionally exist between the three major go-to-market (GTM) teams.
When you have every customer-facing member of your team sitting in the same room and reporting to the same person on the same goals, your RevOps journey really begins.
What Does a Good RevOps Leader Look Like?
Your RevOps leader doesn't have to be the ultimate expert on RevOps. They should be the person on your team who will own RevOps efforts going forward. While it's possible to hire a RevOps expert to take on this role in your team, you may also find that you have an intelligent, ambitious generalist ready to step into this role.
No matter who you choose, your RevOps leader should be focused on RevOps alone. It's not helpful to have someone leading RevOps but also working in SalesOps, or leading another specific department silo (like sales or marketing). It's easy to become biased towards the team you work most closely with, and a RevOps leader needs to be able to treat all teams equally.
Key Qualities for a Great RevOps Leader:
RevOps Point of Contact
They are the go-to person for the RevOps team.
Facilitates Dialog
They are eager to hear all opinions and weigh advice from all sides.
Holds All Teams Accountable to Shared Metrics
All teams should work towards shared metrics, and the RevOps leader should know how to hold each team accountable to their end of the bargain.
Unbiased
They know that RevOps only works when all teams are working together. No one team is more important than the rest, though some teams may have more pressing needs than others.
Collaborative
They are always looking for ways to bring the right people together and remove communication barriers.
Tech Stack Expert
They understand your tools and tech like no one else.
Deliver Analytics to Executive Teams
They can distill the work your RevOps team is doing into a compelling story and accurately represent progress to your C-Suite.
Focused on the Right Things
They know your company's goals, and they are focused on the RevOps efforts that will get you there.
Once you have established a RevOps leader, you can look more closely at the roles you need to support that person and build out your revenue operation team's structure.
After Breaking Down Silos, Build Out Your Revenue Operations Team Structure by Filling Essential Roles
With a leader in place, the rest of your revenue operations team structure relies on critical functions rather than specific roles.
Maybe your team has four people they'd like to hire — then you can dedicate one person to each of these roles. But, if you're working with a smaller team or need to conserve resources, there are many ways to double-up these revenue operations roles.
Some roles, your RevOps leader may be able to handle. Other roles might make up small additional tasks for existing team members' current roles. In the end, RevOps is a team effort, and each of these roles should be fulfilled by someone who understands the purpose of RevOps, and who is excited to support your company and your RevOps leader.
The point we're making here is this: How your revenue operations team is structured matters less than simply ensuring that there is someone on your team who can fill each of these essential roles.
02. Project Management
Implementing RevOps is about shifting your team's mindset. Once they shift how they think about how the business operates, they'll probably start seeing opportunities for improvement across departments.
This is a great sign. It means your team is engaged and actively working towards efficiencies. But it can also mean a lot of unexpected projects pop up. All of these opportunities for improvement make it easy for your team to get distracted.
A RevOps project manager can filter and prioritize these requests to avoid hurting your RevOps team's productivity.
It's worth mentioning this — your RevOps project manager and RevOps leader can be the same person, especially if you have a small team. But, if your RevOps leader has enough on their plate already, it might be worth it to shift this specific responsibility to another party.
Key Qualities for a RevOps Project Manager:
Understands Your Team's RevOps Goals
With those goals in mind, they can effectively prioritize projects and requests as they come in.
Expert at Prioritizing Tasks
This goes hand-in-hand with the first role. A project manager should know how to filter and prioritize tasks and requests to ensure that the RevOps team's productivity is untouched.
Ability to Get to the Heart of a Problem
Great project managers can tell when multiple team pain points are coming from the same core issue. They'll be able to identify those high-value RevOps opportunities and prioritize them first.
Excellent Delegators
They can clearly break down projects into individual tasks and assign each part to the team members who can complete them.
A project manager is a key role in any revenue operations team structure. Keeping the team focused and productive ensures you move even faster toward your goals.
03. Data Monitoring & Analytics
Any RevOps strategy relies on data and metrics to guide progress. Your team should measure the data that matters to your goals. To do that, you need someone who understands those metrics and can interpret data for the team.
A RevOps analytics expert owns all roles associated with measuring, tracking, analyzing, and reporting on metrics.
Sometimes this means building reports, and sometimes it means aggregating data across multiple systems. This role is flexible, and it's worth noting that many RevOps teams choose to break analytics into dedicated teams to improve efficiency.
While this is certainly a role that a RevOps leader could handle, it is often more helpful to delegate tasks like data visualization and performance metric compilation to other team members.
Most teams already have someone who understands where their data lives and how to collect it, so if those team members have the capacity, they're likely the best fits to handle this role.
Key Qualities for a RevOps Data Analyst:
Building Reports & Tracking Metrics
This person should understand which data matters most for your RevOps initiatives and should be able to build reports that track and present that data in a meaningful way.
Technical Mind
This role requires a technical understanding not just of the data but also of the systems that house the data. This person should be able to navigate multiple systems and filter down to just the information points that are relevant to your goals.
Ability to Present Data
In addition to data collection and analysis, your RevOps analytics expert should also be able to present data, at least to the rest of the RevOps team, if not to your executive team as well. Understanding the connection between the data they're tracking and the success of the RevOps strategy is a must.
Performance metrics are how you track what works, so it's important to have a person on your team who is dedicated to measuring what truly matters to your team.
04. Platform Management
Your tech stack is essential to your RevOps strategy. Most RevOps teams will tell you that it's not buying new additions to your tech stack that makes a difference but rather understanding your current tools and getting the most out of them.
For this, you need a tech stack and platform management expert.
This is another RevOps role that can easily be split across a few team members. Your RevOps leader should understand and stay on top of technology developments, but day-to-day software ownership can be delegated to other team members.
For small teams, you might have one person assigned to each software, where it only takes a few minutes a day to keep up on any changes or updates. For larger teams, it might make more sense to have one platform management expert who can implement any changes or updates needed as the team brings them up across all platforms.
Key Qualities for a Platform Management Expert:
A Deep Understanding of Company Software
This person has an innate knowledge of your team's software platforms. They understand how each software functions and what kind of data it's best at delivering.
Constantly Learning
They keep up on and understand new platform updates and new product launches.
Happy to Help the Team
They understand that the team works best when they understand the software, too. This person is great at working with the team to understand best practices, and establish a standard operating procedure.
Willing to Make Changes
As your RevOps team takes off, you'll find you need to change how you're currently using existing software. This person is willing to make changes and adapt how tools are used across the team.
Platform management requires a deep understanding of your software, as well as a big-picture understanding of how that software fits into your RevOps goals.
Okay, You Have a Revenue Operations Team Structure, Now What?
Now you know how to structure a Revenue Operations team, you know what key roles need to be taken care of, and based on the size of your team, you know whether you need to hire new talent or retrain or shift existing team members.
But what do you do with them once you have them?
Stay tuned! We have a "How to Implement Revenue Operations" blog coming out soon that will answer all of your burning questions here.
Just can't wait for that? Here are a few key next steps:
- Get your team in the same room. Establish a meeting that puts everyone on your RevOps team in the same room on a regular cadence.
- Prioritize collaboration & communication. Even if your regular RevOps meeting feels boring or unnecessary, keep that cadence. Communication and collaboration are what break down silos and keep teams moving forward.
- Analyze and optimize. As you implement RevOps efforts, work as a team to identify what's working and what's not. Where can you continue to improve?
When Do I Need a Revenue Operations Team?
This is the last big question for most companies — how do you know when it's time to pull the trigger and implement that new Revenue Operations structure?
Here are a few key signs:
- You're looking to scale, now. If you're ready to make significant revenue growth and you want to scale your business to new levels, fast, then a revenue operations team is a must.
- Constant inter-team conflict. If your team is constantly running into problems, whether it's finding ways to share information across disparate platforms, allocating resources, or collaborating on shared tasks, then RevOps will be a helpful tool.
- You're noticing issues with efficiency, productivity, or customer satisfaction. Maybe your sales process simply takes forever. Maybe your clients are suddenly moving to a competitor. Maybe your team just can't seem to get work done. All are key signs that your teams aren't moving in the same direction. RevOps can definitely help.
Revenue operations can deliver a wealth of benefits. It's designed to improve productivity, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction. We love some of these stats from Fit Small Business that really highlight the cross-functional benefits that RevOps can bring to your entire company:
- Companies with RevOps teams can decrease up to 4 hours of time spent on each sales opportunity
- Aligned companies can grow their business 19% faster than those without RevOps teams
- Companies that implement RevOps can see a 15-20% increase in customer satisfaction.
Looking for results like those? Evenbound can help. Implementing RevOps can feel like a Herculean task, but you don't have to do it alone. We are proven experts with a RevOps implementation process that gets all of your teams on the same page and moving toward the same goals. Have more questions? We're here to answer them!
