8 Tips for Getting Started with a Revenue Operations Approach

According to SiriusDecision research, organizations that align their go-to-market functions report no less than 15% more revenue and 19% faster growth, up to 20% enhance in their sales efficiency and customer satisfaction, and up to 200% enhance in digital marketing ROI. Now, we’re going to share with you 8 proven tips for implementing an approach to revenue operations.

Start deciding on the software tools you’ll need to accomplish RevOps processes

Before you start building your ideal tech stack, analyze the existing one and try to understand what it provides you with. The Revenue Operations approach involves the use of technologies that offer:

• a single platform for marketing, sales, and customer service teams;
• a solution that allows you to simplify the customer’s experience;
• a system that gives a clear idea of how one department’s actions are affecting another.

You may need a lot of tools to make things work: project management tools, spreadsheets, revenue intelligence software, automation tools, but keep in mind that it’s not the quantity, but the quality that matters.

The advanced Revenue Operations platforms are a sort of next step in the evolution of sales forecasting, predictive sales analytics, marketing analytics, and other tools combined. One of such advanced solutions is Revenue Grid, the revenue operations and intelligence platform that works natively with Salesforce (as well as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft’s CRMs) and has the potential to improve your sales team’s performance and shift your CRM from the “view mode” to the “do mode”.

Revenue Grid offers multiple features such as:

• Revenue Signals (notifies your reps about the next step to take and in case if anything goes wrong);
• Pipeline Visibility (allows you to gain absolute visibility into every deal in your pipeline here and now);
• CRM and Email Integration (offers automated data capturing and the ability to access CRM data right from the inbox);
• Team Analytics (allows coaching your sales reps digitally and scale the winning sales activities);
• Sales Sequences (provides you with automated, multi-channel outreach for multiplying your meetings and replies);
• Forecasting (helps you build accurate sales forecasts on the realistic odds of deals closing);
• Deal Guidance (guides your reps to take the right actions to push the deals forward).

Perform an audit of your current processes

You will need to analyze your current processes — work this out with a reputable RevOps leader. This step will help you identify gaps and problems that you currently have in your processes and between departments.

Try to reveal the following issues:

• inconsistent processes between your departments;
• areas lacking the necessary processes, when team members should create their own processes to fill this gap;
• intersection of processes, when several departments are responsible for the same thing.

It is not necessary to strictly divide responsibilities between teams; it is important to separate the layers of each process and evaluate how to make things consistent across all departments. An audit like this will provide you with valuable insight into areas that need to be prioritized when implementing Revenue Operations methods.

Access a proven framework

Remember that there is no universal formula for implementing RevOps: each organization creates its own path and acquires its own unique experience depending on the type and size of the business, its characteristics, and requirements.

But you can still structure your Revenue Operations team and try using successful implementation models as a guide. Keep in mind that choosing the right RevOps model depends a lot on the organization: for example, if most of the company’s business is generated by internal leads, then the marketing team should have its Revenue Operations.

Develop right RevOps practices

Revenue Operations practices are a collection of processes, metrics, and goals for your RevOps approach. You will need to create verified tactics and track your daily progress to achieve your goals.

The processes you develop should:

• improve collaboration between sales, marketing, and customer success teams;
• provide a data exchange process to create transparency of understanding for each department;
• establish a feedback cycle for each department that will help to discuss goals of processes and communication improvements, business growth, and increasing revenue.

Here are some questions to help you shape these processes:

• What are the best ways to implement the process with all the teams that meet your revenue goals?
• How to effectively connect departments to ensure maximum collaboration to achieve your goals?
• What data is required to ensure consistency?
• What metrics will you need to measure to assess the effectiveness of the processes?

At this stage, you will need to choose and add new software tools to your technology stack. Therefore, make sure your processes and goals are clearly defined and aligned before you start implementing new systems.

Choose an operations leader that has a RevOps mindset

To successfully implement Revenue Operations, you need to consider RevOps as a mindset, not just a business practice. The person in your organization that will take over the implementation of RevOps approach, should be aware that the key to success is aligning core operational functions with revenue data.

By the way, you don’t necessarily have to outsource the Revenue Operations team or hire new people or even create new departments: there must be a leader in your company that has the right mindset. This expert may understand the peculiarities of your company and its needs better than anyone else.

Later, this leader will be able to create a Revenue Operations team, having planned what processes and methods this team should follow.

Build an enthusiastic Revenue Operations team

Once you have implemented the necessary processes with your RevOps leader, you will need to build upon this value by creating a RevOps team.

You will most likely need to reorganize the company to make room for another team. But it’s not as difficult as it seems to be.

In smaller companies, the Revenue Operations leader will be responsible for strategic planning and coordination of sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Larger organizations may need to create a more complete RevOps department. Remember that Revenue Operations is not a team that stands above everyone else: it ensures that all teams effectively work together to achieve the company’s goals.

Align your teams, data, and processes across the organization

One facet of RevOps focuses on how organizations perceive their growth. Revenue Operations is committed to bridging the gap between revenue generation and teams instead of bifurcating between different departments. To bring business and data together, you need to create an efficient Revenue Operations system.

Create SLAs and metrics to evaluate your success

When implementing RevOps, it is important not only to have a strategy but also to understand how effective this strategy is, as well as track the effectiveness of all your actions. Performance metrics will help you understand this and keep both the RevOps team and your business on track.

One of the most effective ways to align your sales and marketing goals is through SLAs (or Service Level Agreements). These are ideal resources for delineating your organization’s goals and making agreements between departments. It helps identify the metrics used to determine the quality of service provided to the company’s customers.

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