How to drive change and get what you need as a revenue operator (yearly planning edition)
Revenue Growth Guide - Sept '23
Ah, September.
When company leaders start thinking about what the upcoming year will look like for their teams, their strategies, and the organization as a whole.
As the end of the year inches closer, what are the conversations you’re having about RevOps at your organization?
RevOps hasn’t always had an easy time getting a seat at the proverbial table, so once you get there, how can you make convincing arguments for what you need?
On my frequent journeys through the RevOps corners of the internet, I’ve taken note of some of the types of questions I see most often. In particular, when it comes to driving change, getting buy-in, and demonstrating impact as a newer RevOps leader/team.
Here are the top 4 categories of things operators are bringing to the table and how to talk about them in a way that helps drive change in your organization.
RevOps/GTM Ops Headcount
When a company first starting their transition to a RevOps model, we often see one of three things happen:
Folks from existing GTM ops teams get thrown together and everyone starts calling them RevOps
One leader is hired or repositioned to run the entire RevOps function without any additional headcount
All the work that’s deemed ‘RevOps work’ is funneled to Marketing/Sales/CS teams without any move toward centralization
In all these scenarios, it can be difficult to convince company leadership to invest more into the RevOps function by way of additional headcount. To make an effective argument that the investment is worth it, you’ll need to do 3 main things:
Align on what RevOps is
If the function and charter of RevOps isn’t clearly defined and agreed upon, there are likely to be mismatched expectations that will turn into significant friction down the line. When standing up a RevOps team, you can get ahead of this by getting all RevOps’ stakeholders together to discuss what RevOps is, what the team is responsible for, and how it should work with other functions across the business.
Define how the scope of work has changed
Particularly when you’re coming into a RevOps role from Sales or Marketing Ops, you’ll need to make a case for why additional headcount is needed to support both the function you’re leaving behind and your new one. Being able to break down exactly how the scope of your work has or will change based on the new definition of success will help illustrate why the additional investment is necessary.Communicate predicted revenue impact
Taking the two previous points into consideration, make sure you communicate to leadership exactly how and when they’ll see a return on the investment into RevOps. When trying to get buy-in for anything, demonstrating true revenue impact will always be your best leverage.
Tech Stack Design & Architecture
Whether you’re leading a newer RevOps team or just looking to optimize the way your tools and systems work together, these conversations are tricky for a few reasons.
First, people often have feelings when it comes to core tools like the CRM or MAP. Maybe they’ve worked in one particular platform in past roles and are hesitant to step outside that comfort zone, or maybe they just don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze, financially. So, how do you make your argument here?
Do a tech stack audit
Before you start having conversations about adding to your tech stack, make sure you have a full picture of what it looks like in its current form. Are you paying for tools you aren’t really seeing value from? Are your integrations all working as they should?Track your tools and how they’re used
As you’re doing that audit, take the opportunity to create a system for tracking the tools being used across your GTM org. As it happens, we have a template for just this purpose. Having this information on hand will help make these conversations a lot easier.Identify gaps and how a given tool would address them
Shiny object syndrome is real. There are a lot of cool new tools and platforms out there, with more popping up every month. Resist the temptation to adopt new tools just for the sake of it. You should be able to make a case for why you need any tool you invest in, and that case should be rooted in how it will help address gaps that impact your customer.
Processes
As a company scales, processes break. Things that worked well for a 10 person organization often won’t work for a 50 person one. The same factors that lead to silos (higher degrees of specialization, more business units, etc.) are also what makes it difficult to drive this type of widespread operational change.
But where there’s a will, there’s a way!
Do an impact analysis
Why is this process no longer working and what impact is it having on internal efficiency and/or the customer experience you’re able to deliver? The greater the impact is on your customer, the more urgent it is to fix.
Don’t over-engineer
Bringing a process from a simple V1 to something complex and multi-step is a good way to ensure it won’t get adopted org-wide in any kind of expeditious way. The goal is to drive efficient, meaningful change and make processes more scalable–creating confusion and complexity won’t help you do that.Find your champions
It’s usually not enough to announce a process change and hope everyone adapts. Having people throughout your org that understand the new process and its benefits will help streamline adoption and make it easier to gather feedback on how the process could be improved.
Strategy & Prioritization
We’ve all seen what happens when teams aren’t aligned on what needs to be done and why. If you don’t have clear, open lines of communication between your go-to-market functions, it’s unlikely there’s any real strategy behind the work being done day-to-day.
This will lead not only to a lack of meaningful progress towards big picture goals, but will also end up creating significant friction between teams that blame each other for the lack of direction. Here’s how to fix that:
Examine your customer journey
Your strategy should be based on the experience your customers are having and how you can improve it. That’s how you’ll increase LTV and drive more predictable revenue. If you haven’t mapped out your customer journey recently, that’s where you should start. Get a sense of where blind spots exist, where customers are feeling friction, and where buying behavior isn’t what you want it to be.Analyze your funnel metrics
Once you’ve mapped your customer journey, take a look at those funnel metrics. What does your lead volume look like? How about the length of your sales cycles and conversion rates? Have your average deal sizes increased or decreased? Usually, these numbers will have a direct correlation to the customer journey. Paying special attention to handoff points, determine where there are gaps that need addressing and exactly how they’re impacting revenue.Build a strategic roadmap
Having a roadmap that serves as a source of truth for your go-to-market org will keep teams aligned not just on the work that’s being done, but how it’s contributing towards shared company goals. Your roadmap will help unify your GTM teams and alleviate friction that comes with lack of clarity around what should be prioritized.
As always, feel free to email me with any comments, questions, etc.
You can also find me on Linkedin here, and Go Nimbly here.