Venkat Viswanathan is Founder and Chairman of LatentView Analytics , a marketing analytics and decision science company.
Anyone who has worked in sales, marketing or customer service over the past decade understands just how much these functions continue to overlap. As competition increases and companies expand their digital footprints even further into the globalized marketplace, individual departments are getting flooded with customer information from more touchpoints than ever before. This explosion of data has led to the emergence of a critical new team—revenue operations.
Revenue operations (RevOps) is the strategic integration of sales, marketing and customer service into a single powerhouse designed to drive revenue growth. By creating this centralized operational view, management can break down silos between departments, learn unique insights and gain a better understanding of customer behavior. This way, each department can manage its day-to-day processes while relying on RevOps teams to align their data, analyze interdepartmental trends and report on profitable new strategies.
RevOps Best Practices
According to BCG analysts , companies that invest in RevOps report a 10% to 20% increase in sales productivity and a 30% reduction in go-to-market (GTM) expenses. Although building a RevOps framework requires a good amount of internal cooperation and collaboration, the results can be game-changing. Here are some best practices that should help maximize long-term impact and sidestep early pitfalls.
1. Rethink the customer decision-making journey.
Nowadays, customers expect positive experiences—both online and offline. Buyer personas are changing, and the customer journey isn’t always linear, meaning that companies must now engage in real time with real-time contextual data. By connecting sales, marketing and service teams through a centralized RevOps framework, companies can gain visibility into a customer’s entire history, adjust their journey and better meet their expectations. For example, Starbucks can send a push notification to a shopper letting them know they’re close to a Starbucks location (customer service), suggest popular drink options (marketing) and then offer a 10% discount (sales).
2. Develop a data-driven operating model.
The main goal of RevOps is to connect data from the sales, marketing and service departments to create a better view of the customer. But what happens when that data is different or the perception of success is subjective? RevOps won’t work unless sales, marketing and service are all working toward the same goals—meaning that every function must be responsible for the quality of their data, ensure their data is democratized and shared across departments and align all leaders on purpose.
In terms of how to develop this data-driven culture, here are a few best practices.
• Use a top-down/bottom-up analysis to choose metrics that matter.
• Fix basic data access issues.
• Offer teams specialized training and support.
If a company achieves this clear, cross-functional alignment, a data-driven operating model should emerge and provide the RevOps team with a comprehensive operational overview.
3. Implement service-level agreements (SLAs).
An SLA is a formal contract between two parties that outlines each team’s responsibilities, objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). In the case of RevOps, aligning marketing and sales can significantly impact an organization’s growth and revenue. By identifying “North Star” metrics along the customer journey (such as net revenue retention , customer retention rate and other critical data that influences outcomes) and assigning specific groups to own those metrics, teams can gain a renewed sense of purpose and control.
With measurable targets and objectives, SLAs facilitate better communication between teams, create a culture of accountability and build a foundation for tracking performance against established goals. The earlier a company implements an SLA, the faster it can establish a scalable framework that positions them for consistent growth.
4. Don’t take on too much tech.
As businesses continue to digitize, thousands of SaaS companies have emerged with solutions for just about any issue that arises—from marketing (e.g., email marketing and social media) and sales (e.g., CRM and sales intelligence) to customer service (e.g., call center software and chatbots). Although it can be tempting for a CIO to solve a software problem with more software, this can quickly bloat a company’s technology portfolio. So, what’s the “right” tech? It depends on the company, but the aim should be to unify data and make it available and actionable for everyone across marketing, sales and customer experience.
Many companies are now turning to SaaS management platforms (SMPs) to gain a clearer picture of all the applications in their tech stack and decide which are most critical. SMPs can also reduce the risk from unmanaged tools, improve the value of purchased software and (in the case of RevOps teams) help ensure only the most relevant customer data is being analyzed.
5. Don’t use outdated insights.
The best customer experience happens when a company is closely aligned with the unique needs of its audiences—and those needs are changing all the time. Rather than crafting marketing and sales messages around old, outdated customer decision-making journeys, companies are turning to RevOps to centralize all operations into a single function. By doing so, it becomes easier to consolidate end-to-end purchase funnel activities and standardize any resulting metrics or reporting.
Although RevOps centralization can streamline certain key decision-making activities, it also requires organizational change that can impact responsibilities and relationships. Remember, this process is about breaking down silos, not creating more. Successful transformations begin with an open dialogue about objectives to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Change That Matters
RevOps isn’t a trend—rather, it’s an essential function for companies that want to remain agile in uncertain times. Leaders that are still skeptical about RevOps should take the time to peruse their competitors’ “About Us” pages, where they’ll undoubtedly see more titles like “Director of RevOps” and “Head of RevOps” among the C-suite. That’s because, although nobody can predict the future, leaders understand two things are certain: First, the pace of change will only increase, and second, as technology evolves, companies can expect much more customer data. Given those realities, now’s the time for leaders to weave RevOps into their operations to enhance the buying experience of their customers and maximize future growth.
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