Getting started with Revenue Operations (RevOps)

What is RevOps?

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the alignment of sales, marketing and customer success operations across the full customer life cycle to drive growth through operational efficiency and keep all teams accountable to revenue. This holistic approach is designed to break down silos between departments.

What’s needed to align all three departments?

  1. Agreement on metrics
  2. Credibility and trust between teams
  3. Defined ownership of the tech stack
  4. Change management

How does RevOps create focus?

RevOps has the following four areas of responsibility.

1. Operations Management
The operations management team works on managing resources to ensure every outcome aligns with the business’s needs. Here are some of the roles and responsibilities this part of the team would take care of.

Roles:

  • Sales operations
  • Marketing operations
  • Project management

Responsibilities:

  • Business process innovation
  • Cross-functional collaboration
  • Project and change management
  • Sales planning and compensation

2. Enablement
As you know, sales enablement focuses on empowering a sales team to sell efficiently at a higher velocity. In RevOps, the enablement team brings enablement practices to marketing and customer success. Each enablement effort has compounding effects on your whole business, so you’ll quickly start to see reps operating more efficiently throughout your venture.

Roles:

  • Sales enablement
  • Learning management
  • Performance management

Responsibilities:

  • Onboarding
  • Coaching
  • Professional development
  • Continuous training

3. Insights
The insights team uses the gathered data to give you confidence in the decisions you’re making.

Roles:

  • Business analyst
  • Data scientist
  • Database developer

Responsibilities:

  • Data quality and management
  • Data access
  • Operational insights
  • Strategic insights

4. Tools
The tools team will be responsible for all the technology used by sales, marketing and customer success. In addition to technical capabilities, this team should have a strong understanding of CRM and business processes.

Roles:

  • Software developer
  • Systems administrator

Responsibilities:

  • Evaluation, procurement and vision of the tech stack
  • Integration
  • Systems administration

Getting Started with RevOps

There are two ways RevOps can be started, and the right way largely depends on the size of your venture and your business model.

  1. Distributed capabilities throughout your team: In this case, RevOps starts out with one person doing multiple roles. For example, Sales Ops would also be responsible for Enablement and Insights. As you scale, these responsibilities will become dedicated roles that can be brought under the RevOps umbrella.
  2. Specialized roles in a department: The second approach involves hiring a leader who can bring the Ops roles together and consolidate reporting relationships. This approach is usually best if you have more than 100 employees, because it’s likely that you’ll already have siloed Ops in your business.

So, how do you know if you need RevOps?

When you don’t have a RevOps function, common symptoms start to show up. If any of the following statements sound familiar, get started with bringing on RevOps!

  1. “We have too many tools!” RevOps solves this problem by consolidating the acquisition, implementation and management of tools under one team. This helps your venture save costs and uses training and enablement to increase adoption.
  2. “Our process is broken!” In today’s fast-paced environment, businesses constantly evolve, so processes should be regularly updated. RevOps solves this by involving all teams when it comes to creating new processes and training materials.
  3. “We don’t know what’s working and what’s not…” It’s challenging to understand issues around churn and marketing ROI. Establishing a RevOps team solves this, because it will look holistically across the business.

RevOps Benefits

Now that you know more about RevOps, what it entails and how to get it started in your venture, what are some of the benefits? Since RevOps has compounding effects on every part of your business, you will notice several improvements once it’s implemented. Here are a few of the benefits you can expect to see.

  1. Predictable Business Growth: Being able to predict your business’s growth is critical, as it allows you to confidently invest in new strategies and new markets. You will also be able to quickly realize whether your strategies are working. RevOps brings this predictability to your growth through accurate and consistent measurements.
  2. Revenue Growth: The efficiency gains we expect as a result of implementing RevOps will allow each rep to generate more revenue, resulting in overall revenue growth without increasing the needed resources.
  3. Adapting to Market Changes: As your business grows, it requires some major changes. Whether the transition is CRM re-implementation or introducing and launching new products, you will need to support your team throughout it. RevOps provides communication, training and project management, making internal transitions seamless. Smooth transitions reduce the risk of losing deals and wasting time as markets change.

Reflection Exercise

Getting Started with RevOps

  1. What are the four teams that make up RevOps, and what is each team responsible for?
  2. What are the four things needed to ensure alignment among the sales, marketing and customer success departments?
  3. Consider your venture: Do you have any of the symptoms we mentioned? If so, have you implemented RevOps as a response?

External Resources


By Mohamed Yazeed