Do you want better growth throughout your organization?

Today, most companies that want to build success have different departments working separately with only a few interconnections that will lead to that success. These departments probably also have their own needs and limitations. The marketing, sales, and customer service departments probably all have their own managers and leaders who rely on their own KPIs and approach to success. Revenue Operations, also known as RevOps, makes it easier to integrate these departments and their functions to promote better growth for the entire company. RevOps involves the creation of a role to review the departments and their processes and practices to find ways to work more in harmony.

The challenge with organizational silos is that it creates various friction points in the customer journey, which can lead to dissatisfaction or even churn. RevOps offers a framework that connects technology, processes and strategies to increase revenue for the company. This means fewer lost customers and higher customer satisfaction at every stage of the buying journey. Through improved operational efficiency, gaps in data, processes, technology and accountability are closed. This leads to a more cohesive business where everyone in the organization works towards common goals and shares information that helps the organization move forward. 

How do you start?

Before a lead even enters a CRM system, it is important that all three departments (marketing/sales/customer service) are given the right conditions to understand how and why a RevOps strategy works. It requires an in-depth investigation of the entire business where you look at the current situation, what works well and what is missing.

Here are some points to consider and evaluate:

• Customer losses
• Revenue per employee
• Points for customer relations

These three are data points that a RevOps can understand and use to improve the customer journey, speed up onboarding, and reduce friction points. RevOps do this by knowing exactly where, when, and how customer handoffs will occur, as well as how they intersect as the customer moves between departments in the organization. If you're willing to put in the work, there's a huge financial benefit to starting to work with RevOps... 

But what are the benefits of appointing a RevOps role?

On Linkedin we can see that RevOps has made an increase of about 300% in related roles, as well as an increase of 57% in companies that build RevOps teams and develop strategies based on this.

According to a recent blog from HubSpot, companies implementing RevOps have seen the following effects:

10-20% increase in sales productivity.

15% increase in profitability.

19% increase in the growth rate.

71% improvement of the stock exchange index.

100-200% increase in digital marketing ROI.

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In short, RevOps can give you these benefits:

• Making better decisions faster
• Get the right data to make decisions. 
• Building trust and a predictable pipeline

It's important to note that the RevOps role does not sit above existing managers, but instead unifies departments. The RevOps role should help ensure that each department uses their tools and processes in the best possible way to achieve maximum results.

As RevOps is a relatively new concept, there are of course some challenges to be faced.

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Below we list some of them and briefly discuss how to solve them.

• Lack of commitment from business leaders

Identify the grounds on which stakeholders object. Does the board object for financial, operational or cultural reasons? Do stakeholders feel threatened by change? Only with a clear objection can you structure a data-driven, logical response.

• Lack of alignment of the customer journey

Before implementing a RevOps program, take the time to do the hard work and make sure that basic improvements to the customer journey can even be made.

• Lack of internal expertise or ownership

A sure path to failure is that no one person has the necessary skills or time to expand, implement and monitor the project. As soon as you know it can be done, you should start mapping out who will drive the work at macro and micro level.

• Lack of budget

It can be a challenge to justify the investment required to succeed with your RevOps strategy. So before you ask, make sure you've built a strong, data-driven business case for RevOps.

• Too much technology

Most companies use more technology than they need. A thorough technology audit gives you a clear picture of the technological landscape so you can avoid technology-based logistical nightmares.

• Lack of processes/resources 

Do you have the necessary internal resources to restructure? As with any project, you should make sure you have the right pieces on the table before making a change. 

• Covering the cracks

If you start a RevOps function without addressing any of the above points, you will encounter problems later.  

Summary

RevOps is about maximizing the efficiency of marketing, sales and customer service. This is done by making the organization better at aligning tools and processes to reduce conversion friction and delight the customer at every stage of the customer journey. 

Finally, here are some good points to take away:

• Map the customer journey and the ideal customer profile

Map out the steps the customer goes through in your customer journey, from the first time they come into contact with your brand until they become a customer and what happens after. With a good insight into where and when marketing, sales and customer service come into contact with the customer, you can reduce friction points and provide a better customer experience. This could be anything from avoiding duplicate messages to the customer by gathering all information in one place, to using information collected by sales to qualify better leads faster from MQL to SQL. Make sure your employees have access to data at the right time to reduce and standardize the sales cycle. 

• Getting everyone on board

Make sure everyone is aware of each department's business goals and where they are encountering friction today to better understand how RevOps will help them achieve those goals and reduce their friction points. Bring this information to the start of the RevOps process. Build feedback loops for rapid knowledge sharing and optimization. Don't be afraid to make changes in your organization, such as changes to your technical stack or to documentation and procedures. Ensure openness and transparency to get everyone on board and make feedback a natural part of the process. Then use the feedback and address issues as soon as possible to increase success in both the short and long term. The important thing is that any changes promote efficiency and unity in your organization.

• Include tools that provide faster insights or act as power boosters. 

A major challenge to creating an integrated approach to RevOps is technology solutions that are not integrated. Make sure the person leading RevOps makes an assessment of what technologies are being used, and whether parts of your technology stack need to be replaced or replaced. Sure, the process of evaluating and implementing new technologies can be daunting, and it's certainly not appealing when you have to take into account the skepticism of some people on your team. That's why having a dedicated person or team implementing tool selection is important to create efficiencies (and probably result in more money being made), and it will be easier to push the technology adoption agenda forward. The idea is not that you have to rebuild the technology stack from scratch but to be objective and afraid to replace and redesign to optimize and ensure that the entire organization gains value and delivers better results.