Revenue Operations: Secrets to Generating Sales and Growing Revenue

What is Rev Ops?

Revenue operations are the behind-the-scenes happenings in a sales org. Operations (ops) define processes, implement strategies, enable sales teams to do their work, and ultimately drive results. The systematic element of sales allows sales teams to track progress and repeat successes with the knowledge of what activities are working with customers and what activities are wasting reps’ time. Without a revenue operations role, marketing and sales teams would have no strategy and no process. 

The Value of Rev Ops

Operations makes an organization’s actions intentional—meaning there is data, strategy, and process backing everything up. Rev ops ideally cover all revenue-facing processes including the the full sales cycle from the top to the bottom of the funnel. They follow leads through to close and sometimes cover customer renewals in CS.

Many operations suffer from issues related to the all-too-common disconnect between marketing and sales. If these two aren’t working together, they are significantly less powerful. Rev ops marries marketing and sales for a cohesive and efficient experience for buyers. 

Buyers are in control of the modern sales industry—they are increasingly gaining power and they care about consistent, value-adding experiences. Customer experience has quickly a top priority in the sales world. In 2020, consumers notably valued experience over pricing. 

86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience and 93% of consumers say that online reviews influence their decision to buy or not buy. The same trends are found in B2B sales—92% of B2B buyers say they are more likely to purchase after reading a positive review. Providing an easy and enjoyable process for customers is vital for retention and growth. 

Operations should have a thorough understanding of the customer journey, where they are falling off, and what’s working—this gives them the power to master all touchpoints of an account and optimize the whole customer journey as a centralized owner of the process. 

The Issues Rev Ops Teams are Facing 

The enemy of operations is a poor definition or poor execution of process. Operations need to not only define and strategize an effective process but execute and often adapt that process to ensure it is always working for the organization. Coordination is key. 

There are several teams that work directly with sales—sales enablement, customer success, and marketing. Likewise, there are multiple teams that directly support revenue growth and maintenance. The overall mission of each of these teams is to set up customers for long-term success. With that, there often comes some overlap, confusion, and miscommunication when it comes to responsibilities. 

Part of the job of rev ops is to ensure that every department has clear and specific tasks and deliverables. These groups need to plan and coordinate together to avoid overlap. When process starts to break apart and become a Frankenstein, created by different teams only focusing on their team, overlap happens. Rev ops coordinates between teams and departments to streamline and execute process and ultimately avoid overlap so that the whole organization can win and not just one team. 

Where there is no process or methodology, there is no strategy. And what is sales without strategy? Guessing. Random outreach. Hoping for the best.

But as previously mentioned, ill-defined process and randomness is the nightmare of an operations professional. 

Rev Ops: Sales Success is Our Success

A strong revenue operations team creates a clear process, with defined measures of success, and holds teams accountable. When they’re enabled to effectively execute their mandates, it creates a domino effect that leads to consistent revenue, more satisfied customers, and predictable growth. 

Rev ops measures team success with performance-centric goals. Go-to-market teams should be hitting 60% attainment consistently as a baseline. If attainment is lower than this, ops should determine if they are supporting the right channels, modeling the ideal customer profiles, and implementing an effective strategy. The ideal machine that rev ops runs through process is based on volume on the right activity—the more volume or greater sample size, the more predictable it becomes. 

Both sales enablement and revenue operations are measured through revenue attainments. Tying them together can help to close communication gaps and ultimately lead to the success of the sales team. 

Ops teams traditionally rely on basic territory planning and account planning for an initial prioritization, but there isn’t really much prioritization strategy beyond that initial plan for more organizations. Certain tools, like Playbooks, use data and buyer intelligence to help you know what to prioritize for the best planning. 

Rev Ops Tools 

Consistency of the sales motion is key. There are several tools that can enable operations to consistently track progress, implement processes, and execute strategy—the top one being CRM. Everyone who is successful in a rev ops role capitalizes on the CRM. CRM adoption and data integrity are vital, they create a common source of truth that everyone in the company can rely on.

Visibility into the entire revenue funnel to understand the customer journey is a must for operations strategy. Rev ops need to know what happens as a lead progresses the funnel.   

Tracking is also extremely important for operations. To perfect their sales process, they need to know what’s working, what’s not, and where people are dropping out. Reps are often tasked with logging activity in the CRM, and when that logged information is incorrect or unreadable—any decisions made off of it are unreliable. Too many teams shoot themselves in the foot this way. Reliable CRM integrations ensure that nothing goes unlogged or incorrectly tracked. No more bad, siloed or duplicated data. The CRM becomes a one-stop source of truth. 

Be Elite With Playbooks

Playbooks was built with operational effectiveness in mind. Leaders get more visibility into reps’ performance and outcomes. They can easily enhance workflows with automation and compliance, track progress, make decisions backed by data from native CRM reporting packages. 

Standardize and structured workflows through PLaybooks ensure that process is not forgotten and that work is done in a consistent manner.  

Playbooks gives them a better window into the weak points of a process, the black holes, and the areas in which to double down. You don’t have to worry about the waste of random acts of selling the risks of operating without clear processes and controls. Reps are guided to the next best activity and the next best contact through a guided sales experience.

RevOps Summit

Looking to become a rev ops expert? XANT is hosting an upcoming RevOps Summit featuring several industry experts and operations professionals. This event is virtual and completely free. Tune in on July 14th from 9 AM to 12 PM PT to hear more about the behind-the-scenes work of operations and how they can dramatically impact your results. Register for the summit here.