If you’ve been hearing people talk about RevOps (revenue operations) and you happened to look up what it is, perhaps you came across a definition along these lines:
“Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the end-to-end business process of driving predictable revenue, across marketing, sales, renewals and expansion through transparency and execution rigor.”
Or maybe this one:
“RevOps drives full-funnel accountability through the alignment of Marketing, Sales and Service across your organization’s process, platform and people.”
Having consumed my share of RevOps related content, I can report that this type of buzzword-dependent definition is the rule, not the exception. And the longer explanations that speak to “removing experience discontinuity to empower customer delight and optimize the flywheel” don’t exactly make it plain and simple what RevOps actually entails if you’re looking to understand the nuts and bolts.
In this post, we’ll do our best to provide a simple, jargon-free explanation of what revenue operations actually means, who should be thinking about this and how they can take steps to start adopting.
Okay, So What is RevOps?
In simple terms, revenue operations is a structural approach that businesses can take to get their sales, marketing and service/customer success operations departments working better together.
RevOps is a solution to a common problem: as companies scale, maintaining operational efficiency becomes much harder. Rapid growth means data is flowing to and from more places. The tech stack is expanding, so there’s more information to track and analyze.
And there’s just a lot more that can go wrong – which often falls on the operations teams to fix.
As the thinking goes, if the ops teams can work closely together, sync up their systems and take a more proactive approach to improving the overall operations of the business rather than reactively putting out fires in their respective departments, there will be fewer headaches, more consistency between departments and, ultimately, happier leads and customers (more revenue).
Who is RevOps For?
The answer to this question seems to still be evolving, as revenue operations is still a relatively new concept.
That said, there seems to be some general consensus that growing B2B organizations with operations teams that are suffering from a lack of accurate, accessible and centralized data are the most likely candidates to benefit from RevOps adoption.
Some common challenges that can signal a need for revenue operations include:
- Systems and tools aren’t syncing data freely and accurately
- Data is messy, inconsistent and/or hard to access
- The process for handing off customers between marketing, sales and service is clunky
- Teams are not working together or are working from separate data sources
The universe of businesses feeling these pain points appears to be expanding.
According to LeanData, there was an 80% increase in companies building a Revenue Operations team between 2018 and 2019. The same study found that 57% of companies that have not yet adopted a Revenue Operations strategy plan to in the future. Judging by the number of people with Revenue Operations titles on LinkedIn, this movement isn’t slowing down.
How Can Businesses Begin to Adopt a RevOps Framework?
If your business is experiencing the challenges above, you might be wondering where to start. Before you rush out and hire a Chief Revenue Officer, it can be helpful to consider what sort of work needs to be done and who, if anyone, might be suited to lead the charge internally.
One way to develop the plan is by conceptualizing your needs in terms of process, people and platforms.
Process
A primary goal of revenue operations is to improve your processes across the entire organization and every customer touchpoint – from brand awareness to customer success. The first step here is to document your current process now and identify how it could be better.
Of course, easier said than done. The people who can help with this are the ones who already know how the business works, understand your systems and know where the process can be smoother and more scalable.
In most cases, this will be someone in operations. They will have an intimate grasp of how your operations could be better architected. But yes, documenting this will be a big project, not something they’ll likely be able to knock out in an afternoon.
People
Once the current and ideal state processes have been documented, you should have some clarity around what actual work needs to be done to get your business from A to B.
If you already have operations people with the capacity to do this work, adopting RevOps may be a matter of redistributing responsibilities among existing employees. Or, depending on your internal resources, you may be looking at building out the RevOps team through new hires and external help, such as a B2B marketing agency with experience in this area.
Platform
With the process in place and the right people identified for the job, it’s time to assess what platforms you need to get you to your ideal state.
Assessing platforms doesn’t necessarily mean adding new tech for every potential process improvement; it could also mean cutting back, streamlining or better integrating existing systems like your CRM, ERP and marketing automation platforms.
Some platforms, like HubSpot’s new Operations Hub, are being designed specifically with operational efficiency in mind and may be good fits for businesses looking to put RevOps to work.
Ultimately the objective is to have a centralized source of data that flows easily and freely between systems. By making it easy for all teams to track, log and access accurate data, your people can better collaborate, provide analysis and service leads and customers.
If the assessment indicates new platforms need to be integrated, it likely makes sense to hire specialists with experience onboarding the software to ensure your integrations are done properly. For instance, if your team determines that HubSpot’s Operations Hub will make it easier to embrace a revenue operations approach, a HubSpot agency partner can get you up and running quickly and cost-effectively.
Next Steps
Hopefully, this explanation of revenue operations helped clarify if this is an approach your organization should be thinking about now, down the road – or at all.
If you’re still not sure whether revenue operations is a fit for your business but you want to learn more, we’d love to hear from you.
