RevOps aligns efforts and maximizes revenue opportunities.
The idea of Revenue Operations (RevOps) is continuing to gain momentum with B2B and B2C leaders. And that makes sense because RevOps boasts efficiency, alignment, and success, and at its core, it’s the combination of efforts between marketing, sales, and customer service. This results in maximizing revenue opportunities through the entire funnel.
We’re seeing more and more companies looking to shift their organizational and internal structures towards RevOps. But, to achieve this realignment, it’s important for technology, processes, and reporting to evolve. But, we get it — it can be confusing to know where to start. And we know it can be even more challenging to figure out how to make these kinds of shifts without mutiny across all your departments. We’ll cover both of these ideas in this article to give you a baseline understanding of how you can start working towards RevOps success.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ditch Legacy Systems
We know you’ve invested vast resources — money, time, training — into your processes and systems for marketing, sales, and customer service. But, you have to be willing to throw all concerns around these investments to the side when you start considering what software and systems are the right fit when optimizing for revenue operations.
You must take a hard look at the systems you currently have in place and how they’ll work with your new RevOps tech stack. We often have conversations with business leaders talking through questions like:
- Does this system speak directly with your other systems?
- Can you easily carry attribution or data from one system to the other?
- Do you need a technology expert to ensure this system works properly every day?
It might be necessary to ditch legacy systems if they’re hindering your RevOps efforts.
Don’t Think of RevOps on its Own
When committing to shifts in technology stacks, some brave steps have to be taken. We won’t lie; technology shifts can be painful — especially for people who use it daily. Whenever we’re working on technology implementations or tech process overhauls, we like to remind business and department leaders that empathy and patience are critical during marketing, sales, and customer service process changes.
Remember, you’re possibly looking at making changes for up to three departments — that can ultimately change the day-to-day work for many employees. It’s important to consult employees when making these changes, so they feel included and understand the importance of adopting the new technology and processes for the benefit of the business.
Efficient Integration of Software and Systems is Critical to the Success of These Processes
When looking at core systems within marketing, sales, and service, they must integrate completely, seamlessly, and as efficiently as possible. We know that you can cobble together any kind of integration with enough time. But, we also know that technologies that aren’t designed to speak with other systems can throw even the most expertly designed processes to a screeching halt. You need to confirm the quality of the integration ahead of investing in new technology.
Every Process Needs the Right Goals That Are Clearly Defined and Reported
We can't say this enough — you have to track results for processes and systems to be successful. RevOps is no different. You need to set overarching goals as well as subgoals for every division. Once you have these goals identified, you can work through efforts that help improve these systems, ultimately allowing you to measure success towards the shift you're making to revenue operations.
Revenue Goals
This may seem obvious. But, trust us, this can be a challenge initially. Often we see these goals set but not communicated with the entire team. Remember, marketing, sales, and service teams are responsible for revenue. They need to understand the impact necessary to achieve the business's revenue goals. It's crucial that you make sure all three core departments understand their influence on this number. Often it's easier for marketing or sales to understand their responsibility here, but customer service teams can not be left out. The truth is they are a front line for the revenue team, too. They're responsible for making sure customers are not only satisfied but that they clearly see value in the investment into your company.
Marketing Goals
We talked about having overarching goals for measuring success, but it’s also important to have subgoals that each core department can focus on to make sure they’re supporting their counterparts and overall business goals. However, we’d challenge you to consider these goals past just marketing’s concerns. Think of these goals in terms of how you can measure the success of marketing efforts and how you’re helping other departments reach their goals. How can your marketing team help the customer service team, in addition to the sales team, to meet the increased goal of the business? For example, one goal for marketing could be to increase case studies or testimonials and create ongoing client communications to keep customers engaged.
Customer Service Goals
When you task your customer service team to influence the overall business goals, you’ll often see two things happen: 1. they’ll be paying even closer attention to customer’s concerns about how they are engaging with your company, and 2. they’ll look for ways to increase the value your customers understand through upselling. This focus on the revenue goals for the business helps your customer service team fall into alignment with revenue operations goals.
Sales Goals
I won’t spend too much time on the idea of sales subgoals because, traditionally, this is pretty well understood in connection to revenue goals. The most critical note we want to highlight in this section is to ensure your sales team is consistently communicating with each department, so there is a clear understanding of the opportunities for growth.
Integrated Technology Has a Direct Impact on Reaching Revenue Goals Quicker and More Efficiently
The technology integrations you have set up for your marketing, sales, and service teams make it possible for each department to supplement the other better. With integrated systems, marketers can identify and target upsell opportunities. This gives customer service teams more data and information than ever before, leading to hyper-personalized and deep conversations with clients.
As you plan for RevOps transitions, it's crucial to consider how your tech stack affects your entire team. From there, you have a multitude of other concerns to consider: how they're going to integrate into each other, how you're going to measure success, how you're going to report on that success, and the list could go on. This can start to feel overwhelming. We get it, but don't let that feeling overtake the process. Start small. You can continuously improve and optimize as you go.
Are you ready for an evaluation of where your tech stack currently stands? We know it's a lot to look at, and sometimes an unbiased opinion is helpful in these conversations. We're always ready to help business leaders understand how their processes are fitting together and where they can see improvements to maximize systems.
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