Everyone is talking about Revenue Operations (or #RevOps for short).
But what IS RevOps?
If you ask 100 Marketing, Sales, Marketing/Sales Operations professionals, it's likely you’ll get many different answers. Some of these answers are future-oriented (spoiler alert: this blog is one of them!), and some reflect the current focus that companies have when it comes to the Revenue Operations focus and function.
I conducted a couple of surveys to garner a pulse on professionals’ point of view, and the survey results reflect this view. The prevailing thought is that while RevOps is heavily biased toward SDR Operations and Sales Operations, there is an understanding that the value to organizations is around the process of connecting a company’s revenue functions into a predictable, measurable, and reportable single flow that gets marketing, sales, customer support, and their connected teams aligned and working together.
The first survey asked “What is RevOps?” - 154 people responded and largely agreed with the premise that it exists to connect Marketing Operations (MOPs), Sales Operations (SOPs), and Customer Success Operations (CSOps)
The second survey asked “what technical (or hard) skills are required to be successful in the field of revenue operations? Based on a survey of job posting for Revenue Operations roles, I would have expected that expertise in the current “Revenue Operations technology stack” would have topped the list, but it did not. Instead, to my happy surprise, the most critical “hard skills” voted on related to process design and management and data storytelling. Only 31% reported saying that CRM and
However, most pillar charts of Revenue Operations aren’t as focused on the processes and functions that need to be aligned by Revenue Operations, but more so by the roles and responsibilities that they envision exist within Revenue Operations. They tend to look at “what does Revenue Operations own?” over “what does Revenue Operations connect?”
If the most critical requirement of Revenue Operations is the aligning of process across revenue teams (the second survey) and a holistic “whole revenue approach” to the scope of Revenue Operations should be considered (the first survey), then we must answer the question: “What functional operations must we align to be successful?”
It starts with process: The process of connecting the revenue teams and their core operations into a measurable flow oriented around the customer.
Let’s attempt to answer this question, shall we?
I propose to you that functionally aligning revenue is like building links in a chain of the customer journey, and that each link in the customer journey represents a functional pillar that must be attended to by expertise and skill, but also (with expertise and skill) connected to its next stage in the revenue cycle.
Below is a visualization of this flow, removing the traditional names for our departments and describing our functional role in the customer journey. I make this distinction because for many organizations, more than one of these functional roles may be considered “Marketing Operations” or “Sales Operations” or may not have an operational focus, depending on the level of maturity of the organization.
This functional pillar owns the anonymous buyer experience, which is managed through the design and flow of your company’s digital storefront (website), social media channels, paid digital ads, SEO, and inbound content. The focus of this operational pillar is on generating a growing and measurable audience of potential customers and providing compelling opportunities to convert to a known audience that the company can engage in conversations with. This measurable conversion from anonymous browser to known lead is the handoff to the Demand Operations link in the chain, as well as the predictable delivery of engagement data for content and web-based channels.
This functional pillar would be what many of us call Marketing Operations. This pillar represents the known audience that you are acquiring and engaging through your MarTech stack and orchestrating through your Marketing Automation Platform (MAP). This team ensures that your known prospect (and customer) pipeline is engaged effectively, measurably, and that your lead team (the next pillar) is provided with leads that can be prioritized, actioned upon, and create a good lead/company experience. This team also owns the management of your lifecycle model, lead scoring, engagement functionality, and the marketing/sales agreements that define “lead” versus “not lead.” The delivery of actionable leads for SDR follow-up in the CRM is the handoff from Demand Operations to Lead operations.
This functional pillar owns the lead management process used by your Sales Development Reps (SDR), which includes managing routing rules (through your CRM or a routing platform like LeanData), Lead to Account Matching rules for ABM, and enabling Sales to use prospecting, intelligence, and prioritization tools effectively. This team monitors the lead flow between Marketing and Sales and the process and rules that ensure that leads are being worked most effectively to facilitate a great prospect experience. The conversion from lead operations to “Pipeline Operations” is when leads are “converted” into monetizable opportunities (or pipeline).
This functional pillar owns sales effectiveness and sales forecast management. They ensure that sales territories are designed to meet the Sales organization’s revenue goals and maximize rep attainment. They also empower and provide data to enable Sales reps to manage the sales process and maintain a healthy pipeline. Last but not least, they are heavily involved in the Sales forecast cadence and may facilitate forecast calls (this was one of my responsibilities when I was in this role). They are also the team that provides support to quota-carrying sellers on best practice use of the selling tools, especially the CRM and the CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) systems, although quoting support could be shared by Deal Operations, who covers the critical quote-to-order phase of the deal cycle. The “handoff” to Deal Operations results when quotes are going through the company’s approval process and require pricing, credit, and legal assistance.
This functional pillar may be perhaps called the “Deals Desk” as they get involved in the opportunity process, especially for complex sales, when the “nuts and bolts” of an opportunity need to work through the machine of approvals, configurations, and legal reviews. A well-humming deal operations function is critical to ensure that the seller is able to engage effectively with the customer and is meeting all of the deal compliance requirements for your company. The handoff from Deal Operations to Customer Operations is when an executable contract and order has been agreed to and is in force. =
Customer Operations (or “Customer Success Operations” as it’s been referred to in other places) is, once a prospect converts to a customer, the owner of the matrixed “flywheel” owned by Customer Success and Support. They are focused on the processes that enable customers to adopt your product, expand their use cases, identify new opportunities (and thus collaborate with Demand, Lead, and Pipeline Operations stakeholders), and facilitate the process for customers to become advocates (or the term I like best is “Raving Fans.”). Customer Operations is focused on customer health. They handoff to the Content and Demand Operations team to provide insights, case studies, and data that can enable marketing to be more effective, and handoff to Sales (Pipeline Operations) as opportunities for expansion are expressed by the customer as they want to adopt new and expanded uses of your company’s solutions.
Each of these functions are incredibly important, and each of them must be connected.
Revenue Operations is essentially the connecting tissue that enables each of these functional pillars, through the alignment of people, process, and technology, to operate as a consistent process with feedback loops to enable the customer to have the best possible experience across their journey.