Revenue operations (RevOps) is an organizational model created to unify operations for all revenue generating teams under one umbrella. This includes sales ops, marketing ops, customer success ops, and systems administration. By consolidating data, processes, and tools, companies have the power to align goals and success metrics across the entire organization.
RevOps can help organizations perform at maximum efficiency by breaking down traditional silos between marketing, sales, and customer success operations teams. In fact, it’s so effective at increasing revenue that almost half of companies today have a RevOps function in place to support their revenue generating teams.
RevOps reservations
What about the other half? Many organizations remain reluctant to embrace what they may still consider a new-fangled approach. In truth, many of the processes aren’t yet well defined or understood, and integrating new processes into an organization’s existing workflows is challenging.
Without a well-defined framework, it can be difficult to know where to start, so you need to put careful thought into how you’ll structure your team before hiring. Whether you have one specialist or a team of RevOps experts, this function should always be about optimizing the customer journey, making reps and managers more effective, and leaning on data insights to increase revenue.
Performance metrics, not vanity metrics
Tracking metrics help us understand which activities are paying off. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get sidetracked with vanity metrics. Vanity metrics showcase results that look good on paper but don’t actually help you understand revenue performance or guide your future planning. Metrics like pageviews, opens, and clicks don’t necessarily translate into sales.
In RevOps, teams use revenue performance metrics that provide actionable data. These metrics typically rely on SMART–specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-related – goals. These results are repeatable and can be improved upon over time.
Instead of tracking increases in total users, track increases in paid accounts/users and their engagement. While 10,000 customer sales may look good on paper, the reality may fall short of that. If 5,000 of them never activate a purchase, you don’t have a source of secure and scalable revenue.
The 4 pillars of RevOps
The responsibilities of your RevOps function are supported by four main pillars. Regardless of whether you have just one RevOps generalist or dedicated teams for each pillar, each plays a vital role in achieving go-to-market (GTM) success.
1. Operations
Your operations experts oversee high level strategy and ensure that GTM teams have the right tools, insights, processes, and access to enablement. This pillar’s responsibilities include everything from product messaging and quarterly planning to specific processes and tool customizations.
2. Enablement
In a non-RevOps environment, your enablement manager is only focused on sales performance and preparedness. Under the RevOps model, their purview is expanded to include marketing and customer success performance as well. They’re responsible for training GTM teams on correct messaging about existing and upcoming product features, use cases, and more.
3. Insights
Your data analysts are in charge of crunching data from every GTM tool and database in order to understand revenue performance, including which activities are effective or can be improved upon. They use consistent, centralized data to create metrics that keep everyone working towards the same goals.
4. Tools management
This team member is the technical owner of all software tools, from CRM to CPQ, and even email service providers. They make decisions about which tools to use, remove, or consolidate. They’re also responsible for training GTM teams on how to use these tools properly. On a smaller team, they may also oversee any APIs and ensure that integrations are functioning correctly.
Identify your RevOps talent and gaps
Before hiring and growing your RevOps team, take a look at your internal staff and identify your existing talent. Ask yourself these questions:
- Do I already have operations specialists for sales, marketing, and customer success?
- Do I already have a sales enablement person?
- Is there a technical expert on the team that can manage a RevOps tech stack that includes CRM, collaboration tools, and sales engagement platforms?
- Do I have a data analyst who knows how to take disparate data and turn them into insights that will improve marketing plans, design sales cadences, and grow my customer base?
You’ll typically have a few of these skills in-house already. To address any gaps, you’ll need to hire RevOps experts. Whether you’re hiring full time employees or bringing on external specialists, make sure that everyone on the team can empathize with the day-to-day life and stresses of the GTM teams they’ll be supporting.
The must-have roles for your RevOps team
If your company is small, you probably don’t need a RevOps team yet. Instead, hire a RevOps generalist with the high level skills for tool management, strategy, and data insights. You’ll also need a dedicated enablement manager who can handle new hire onboarding and training on products and use cases.
If your company is larger, you’ll probably need to build out and structure a RevOps function under its own management umbrella. A dedicated leader should be overseeing the department and supporting cohesion and effectiveness.
Here are the key, must-have RevOps roles for your organization:
- Chief Revenue Officer or Head of RevOps
This executive should report directly to the CEO and work alongside the heads of sales, marketing, and customer success as an equal. They’ll supervise the unified strategy of the revenue business. Sales ops, marketing ops, and customer success ops will all roll up under the CRO, along with tech stack admins.
- Sales enablement manager
This person will help create email templates, sequences, and call cadences for sales reps. They’ll put together and teach customer use cases and create content for sales to share with prospects and customers. They’re priority is keeping everyone on message.
- Systems administrator
Your systems admin is the subject matter expert for all systems used by revenue generating teams. They need to know the ins and outs of each tool, manage integrations, build out new processes, and migrate data when needed.
- Business analyst or sales analyst
A key player on any RevOps team is a data analyst who understands revenue KPIs and benchmarks. They are adept at manipulating data to identify ways to improve the productivity and efficiency of revenue teams.
This person will also track tool adoption, marketing and sales assets performance, A/B testing, and overall progress towards company goals. They are the go-to person to answer questions regarding revenue metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC), annual recurring revenue (ARR), customer lifetime value (CLV), customer churn, and more.
Fractional hiring can help
Growing companies often go through waves of systems admin work during RevOps projects. This puts in-house admins in a precarious position. When design and maintenance needs are low, they’re let go or reassigned to another role in the company.
Fractional hiring is an effective way to take care of all of your systems admin needs. Instead of finding the budget to hire three or four RevOps systems specialists, and then worrying about how to keep them onboard, you can outsource the work to qualified administrators.
These fractional workers come onboard for short term, decentralized projects that require dedicated experts that can complete projects quickly while also providing fresh perspectives on how to tackle difficult problems. These remote, flexible specialists help RevOps leaders skip long hiring and training procedures and get straight to work.
RevOps is key to GTM success
Companies are embracing the RevOps model but it can be hard to get started. If finding the right talent to oversee RevOps at your organization seems daunting, take advantage of fractional hiring to work with experts who can help you improve your processes and increase revenue.
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