The 8-Step checklist to evaluating your 2022 RevOps strategy, Tim Hughes

I've written a few times about RevOps, if you haven't seen those articles then you can grab them here

What is RevOps?

RevOps or Revenue Operations is a way to organise your revenue generating parts of the business.

Marketing, Sales, Business Development, lead generation, SDRs, BDRs, renewals, customer success all under one strategy, leadership, objectives and governance.

Whichever way you wish to set up the RevOps team in your organization, at the core of its success lies the alignment of the three primary supporting divisions – sales, marketing, and customer success.

So how do you make the transition?

1. Stand back you need a strategy

Don't rush into this, we would suggest you bring the team together to form a strategy. Doing anything else is like buying the furniture, before you build the house.

The strategy session will enable you to understand the "as is" position as well as crowdsource the "to be" position. As many staff as you can, should be involved, it's critical that no stone is left unturned.

One output from this strategy will be a goal to create a culture of continuous improvement.

Let's get into more of the outputs.

2. People

The second thing you need to do is get your people on-board. If you got them involved in the strategy session above, they should be ready and bought into the future.

This is where you need to make sure you communicate, communicate and communicate.

In a recent report, Hubspot asked the 4 following questions.

Does each team know what the other teams are doing and how it impacts their performance and goals?

Do you receive proactive alerts on deals moving across stages?

Are you able to hold department leaders accountable for the strategy and execution of their teams?

Are your managers collaborative coaches?

All of these questions should be covered in the strategy, of course it goes without saying we can help you with both of these points.

3. Process

As part of the RevOps strategy a business should be looking to strip out cost and duplication from the current revenue creation process. It would be our suggestion that if there is any duplication of people, you de-deploy them. They after all, understand your business and will be able to contribute elsewhere.

Do you have a complete view of all the touchpoints within the prospect and customer journey?

Do you have visibility into the points at which a lead becomes a customer?

Do you measure deal progress trends regularly and iterate based on data?

Is all the lead and account data consistently recorded and tracked in your CRM?

Is the business measuring leading indicators so you have visibility to the business BEFORE it hits the CRM?

4. Platform

Too many people head for a tool, it seems today to be a safe place. RevOps is about your business process and the people, not a tool. Now would be a good time (see the strategy session above) to do a review of tools. I'm sure a tool will be useful, but let's look at the "to be" business and let's not make decision on tools based on "as is" requirements.

5. Metrics

The RevOps framework can align an organization’s top-line goals to drive revenue growth effectively. As part of the strategy session, the business needs to understand how it will be measured and a common language and framework. As mentioned above, the business must look to digital efficiencies and measurements in this modern world.

6. Insights

Understanding and aligning on key business and departmental metrics is essential, but one other key function of RevOps teams is to help provide strategic insights.

I've worked in teams were there was somebody who would present the figures and they would say, "this month the figures went up and the next month the figures went down", that was useless, as a leadership team we want to know why the figures went up and down, or at least the person's opinion. Insight is critical for continuous improvement and business insight.

7. Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Yes, sales and marketing has changed, that said, many things stay the same.

You "obviously" need to track what is in the CRM and look at win / loss rates, etc, but many people will suggest measures like "new leads per week". This old analogue thinking, there are now in digital far more leading indicators which will enable you get far more control of your business as well as seeing far earlier who is contributing and who isn't.

Which leads onto forecasting.

8. Forecasting

I have written before about how social is now part of a digital businesses forecast process. From QBRs, see this article here

Can I run QBRs with social selling?

to how to de-risk your forecast and pipeline with using digital

How to Protect Your Sales Pipeline from Sudden Change

Your RevOps advantage

You have two options here with RevOps, take what you have, change things around a bit and call it RevOps. Some people will call this shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, some will call it putting lipstick on a pig.

Take the advantage now to transform how sell and market in the digital age. This will allow you to strip out cost, avoid duplication and get revenue generation under one strategy, set of objectives, one set of measures and one governance structure. Today, you cannot keep hoping you are going to make your number, you have to find every deal and win every deal, RevOps through change will give you this. This is where you get RevOps to give you the full competitive advantage.

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project