by Tiffany Egan 

June 21, 2022

 

Sometimes, a real-world example is the best way to describe the value of revenue operations (RevOps). Let’s use a story to talk through how and why to get started with RevOps.  

 

Marketing finds a lead so hot the inbox is smoking.

Once upon a time, Val, a marketing manager at a fast-growing mid-market company found a lead so hot her inbox was smoking. The lead wasn’t from a target account, but it met all the criteria for a quick sales qualification call. The lead identified themselves as the decision-maker, included contact details, confirmed budget approval, and mentioned the business needed to implement the project by the end of the financial year. Magical, right? 

Val manually copied the details of the lead from her inbox into the CRM system and launched the lead to the local sales team less than an hour after it arrived in the marketing queue.

Insight: With a RevOps framework, sales and marketing use the same system for lead management. Lead scoring, prioritisation, routing, and action is captured in real-time, enabling accurate, on-demand pipeline insights.

 

Uh-oh. Sales is distracted with an existing customer and the lead falls through the cracks. 

Ted, the area sales rep saw the lead in his qualification queue later that day but didn’t recognise the organisation name. He was busy anyway, meeting that afternoon with a long-time customer he planned to up-sell. Unfortunately, that meeting didn’t go as planned. The customer revealed they were talking to a competitor. Ted was on action stations trying to save the account for a week.

Insight: In a RevOps model, sales, and marketing share visibility to lead queues. That data-driven insight gives Val the chance to route the lead to someone who isn’t as busy as Ted. The shared system also alerts Ted to the priority importance of this lead so he can make time for a follow up call or pull in help from a colleague.

 

Tension builds between sales and marketing.

Ten days later, at the bi-weekly Sales and Marketing meeting, Val asked what had happened with the hot lead. Ted looked blank.

What lead?

Ted’s boss asked about the lead status in front of the combined team. Ted had to admit he’d dropped the ball because he’d not realised how important it was, and the system didn’t send him an alert or any reminders. 

Val was mad because she’d spent $100k that quarter on lead generation and needed to show ROI. Ted fired up by saying Marketing rarely sent him good leads anyway. Ted’s boss was frustrated by the growing tension between sales and marketing, two teams who should work together!

Insight: A core principle of the RevOps framework is to align technology, processes, and people around a set of shared customer and company goals to accelerate revenue, profit, and value growth.

 

Finance voices concerns about pipeline.

To top it all off, Vijay, from Finance, chimed in wanting an updated forecast because his spreadsheet showed the team would miss their quarterly goal. That really iced the cake for Ted’s boss, who asked why the … umm, HECK … Finance used spreadsheets for forecasting instead of pulling data from the CRM Sales used to manage pipeline?! 

Insight: When RevOps delivers teams a shared, single view of a customer, revenue generation becomes easier and more effective. Marketing can guide high-quality leads to the right Sales owner. Data-driven insights equip Sales teams to prioritise and action leads. Executives have real-time visibility into every part of the pipeline to run the business effectively. Finance has the right data to build strategic models to optimise profitability.

 

A summary of what RevOps is not. 

Like Val, Ted, and Vijay in the above story, many of us work, or have worked, in organisations created around functional departments. Traditional business models built around divisions operate as, well, divisions. Divisional structures challenge the business of revenue generation. Siloed skills, budgets, databases, systems, technology, goals, and processes are almost unavoidable in divisional organisations. The bigger the organisation, the greater the complexity. Inefficiency, growing cost, and team tension is inevitable. 

Sound familiar?

We all know there are no silver bullets to achieving revenue generation and close, but having the right organisational model is a proven foundation to accelerate sustained commercial success.