In today's economy, which is driven by digitalisation, it is more important than ever to keep an eye on sales and not just focus on acquiring new customers. RevOps teams are essential to growing your business today - and yet you only find them in a few companies.
Photo: Brodie Vissers
For Speed Readers:
What's RevOps?
In a RevOps world, companies focus on revenue to grow their business. RevOps brings together the revenue-relevant insights from marketing, sales and customer success to help your business sustainably grow and thrive in this ever-changing environment.
In short, RevOps is...
the function that designs, manages and tracks non-product experiences across the customer lifecycle.
The goal of RevOps teams is to be able to make data-driven decisions for the further development of the company. Thus, not only the efficiency of the entire value creation process should be increased, but also the predictability of turnover, as well as the turnover itself.
The Main Advantages of a RevOps Team
The RevOps approach has become increasingly popular because it helps companies build long-term relationships with their customers. This results in increased customer lifetime value (CLV) and thus the basis for sustainable growth. However, revenue operations not only help companies to increase sales, but often also save costs by optimising go-to-market processes.
Breaking Down Silos and Putting the Customer Experience at the Centre
With a RevOps team, a new level is created in the company that unites marketing, sales and customer success. In this way, the long-standing silos can finally be broken down and common KPIs, milestones and goals can be defined. One of the main goals of all RevOps teams is to improve the customer experience.
Making Data-Based Decisions
Companies that rely on RevOps finally manage to get away from x-different data sources and data sets and create a comprehensive customer database. This way, all team members can access all data across the entire revenue process at any time and draw the right conclusions from it. This not only saves time in consolidating different data sources and analyses, but can also avoid a lot of wrong decisions and "blind shots".
Growing sustainably
A study by the Boston Consulting Group shows that companies in the B2B sector have been able to significantly accelerate their growth by aligning their marketing, sales and customer success teams thanks to RevOps. The following results were achieved:
Customer satisfaction increased by 15% to 20%.
Improved lead acceptance rate by 10%.
Increased digital marketing ROI by 100% to 200
Savings of 30% for go-to-market measures
4 Tips to Drive Your Growth with Revenue Operations
While companies are beginning to realise the opportunities of RevOps, many are struggling to make the transition successfully. While the benefits are obvious, change is difficult and there can be a lot of uncertainty and scepticism. Especially when it comes to getting sales and marketing teams to work more closely together.
So to get started with RevOps, organisational alignment is not enough. In order to really benefit from the many advantages of revenue operations in your company, you should take the following four pieces of advice to heart:
1. Get All Stakeholders on Board and Appoint a RevOps Leader
Internal marketing for RevOps is not a plus but a must. Because it doesn't work without the buy-in of the management. However, your future revenue operations team is just as important as the commitment of the board. So get Marketing, Sales and Customer Success on board in good time and identify a RevOps leader from each department.
This is where many companies fail. Even if some stakeholders can be convinced, there will always be people who will not or only with difficulty commit to the new strategy. Therefore, you must also be prepared to let employees go if they do not want to support the new mindset.
2. Review all Processes Across the Functions
As with any new project, you should also invest enough time in analysing the initial situation when introducing RevOps. Therefore, first check all existing processes in the different departments. You may also discover gaps in the process.
In order to create a new, cross-functional and efficient structure from the many different sub-steps and processes, you should collect the individual work steps, the relevant key figures, people, interfaces, tools, requirements and goals.
By mapping all work steps and their input and output, you can then create new processes without relying too much on the old workflows.
When restructuring your revenue processes, keep an eye on the tools and have the courage to reduce or expand your existing tool stack.
3. Define a Focus Area for Transformation
Depending on where you are, you will need to focus on a different goal. If you are at the very beginning and do not yet have an alignment between marketing, sales and customer success, your focus should be on building trust and a common understanding between the departments.
Basically, however, you should focus on one of the following 3 factors when implementing revenue operation:
Focus on Data:
Data is gold in the digital age and the fuel for many revenue-relevant processes. A good data foundation not only helps you increase transparency and better alignment between marketing, sales and customer success, but is also a key factor in increasing efficiency.
So when all signals, from CRM to email to meetings to marketing automation, are tracked in one place, the entire Revenue Operations team can work in sync. This level of accuracy and transparency reduces the blame and impact associated with isolated and opaque information.
Focus on Processes:
In marketing, sales and customer success, there are countless simple and complex workflows. Today, processes are often closely linked with tools. The goal is always to channel several workflows and make them more efficient.
By not only looking at the workflows of one department in isolation, but as an organisation, many opportunities for savings and optimisation usually open up. For organisations that do not yet have RevOps teams, the focus is usually first on the handover processes so that on the one hand a common understanding of the goals and KPIs can be created and on the other hand silos and thus lost opportunities can be reduced.
Focus on People:
In all discussions about the perfect organisation, structuring and processing of revenue operations, one of the most important success factors is often ignored: the people.
No matter how good and clean your data, how intelligent your processes are - without the involvement and consideration of people, nothing is of use. So the inclusion of people should always be on the agenda. No matter whether it is about hiring a revenue officer, promoting exchange within or between teams, focusing on customers and their needs or even involving partners - people are at the centre of all activities and therefore deserve the focus.
4. Don't Overdo It
Successful revenue operations teams don't happen overnight. Therefore, prepare for a marathon - a good sprint is not enough.
To ensure you have enough energy until the end, you must always weigh the benefits against the costs of the planned change. Although it can be liberating to break away from inefficient processes, the investment in establishing new ways of doing things can often outweigh the short-term benefits.
RevOps Isn't the Future
RevOps is the present! Now is the time to focus and align your business with what matters most: your customers and your sales. Because no matter how good your product is and how well it sells at the moment, competition will increase and customer loyalty will become more and more important.
This article first appeared on 17.11.2021 as a guest post on marketing.ch.
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