RevOps: expectation vs. reality
Revenue Growth Guide - Nov '23
Hey, look, it’s November.
I, myself, have just returned from 2 weeks of PTO, refreshed and ready to talk about RevOps some more. In particular, the gaping chasm that often exists between what the executive suite expects RevOps to be and what it realistically is within a given organization.
And don’t worry, this isn’t going to be some long-winded definition of RevOps because…
This isn’t 2018.
Here’s a fun fact:
Go Nimbly was actually the first consultancy to talk about the idea of RevOps for SaaS and other high-growth companies.
Perhaps this sounds vaguely hipster (before it was cool and all that), but as someone who joined Go Nimbly in 2018 to write RevOps content, I can attest to the fact that the landscape back then was starkly different.
No communities to post questions in; no ubiquitous LinkedIn thought leaders to follow. It was early days, friends, and it was lonely out there.
But I digress.
The reason I’m saying any of this is actually because I want to talk about how far RevOps and the SaaS industry have come since then and, ultimately, where we need to go next.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have buy-in.
At least generally speaking.
I touched on this in last month’s letter, but we’ve come a really long way since the days of having to explain why silos are bad and that RevOps and Sales Ops are not the same thing.
For the most part, leaders and executives in the SaaS and wider tech spaces have come to understand the value of Revenue Operations…and it’s not hard to understand why.
Here are some fast facts from research done over the past 1-2 years:
LinkedIn’s 2023 jobs analysis report identified "Head of Revenue Operations" as the fastest growing role in the US. [via Insightly]
As of September 2023, there were more than 14,000 open roles in the US with “revenue operations” in the title. [via Insightly]
Public companies with RevOps experienced a 71% higher stock performance [via MarketSplash]
Companies with RevOps achieved 58% faster revenue growth and were 72% more profitable. [via MarketSplash]
But while these numbers speak for themselves, there is still plenty of misalignment around what, realistically, RevOps teams can do; particularly, if they’re not given the space to build a strong, scalable foundation of technology and processes to support the work that needs to be done.
We can’t innovate if we’re constantly fighting fires.
When RevOps teams are stood up quickly and expected to just start magically increasing revenue, it can be a recipe for disappointment.
While speed is definitely important, it won’t mean anything if you don’t have the right workflows and tech/data infrastructure in place.
We’ve had conversations with RevOps leaders at mid and enterprise-level SaaS companies where the effectiveness of their team is being scrutinized not because of skill gaps or lack of talent, but because they’re drowning in ad hoc work that makes it impossible to do the high-impact stuff that actually moves the needle.
In these cases, a critical part of RevOps’ role has been overlooked.
If we want to start seeing those bigger revenue numbers, we have to make sure our go-to-market teams are set up to deliver the kind of customer experience that closes larger deals, primes customers for upsells, and makes sure they want to renew.
As revenue operators, our job is to make it easier for marketing, sales, and CS to delight the customer.
This is what we refer to as the GTM engine.
If you caught the webinar our CEO, Jen, did recently with Erol Toker and RevOps Co-Op, you heard them talk about the power of applying product management fundamentals to leading RevOps teams.
When we look at the work RevOps does as product design and development, it makes it easier to prioritize the right things and say no to the ones that aren’t making the product better.
Every project we do with our customers is in service of a common goal: helping their teams build the best GTM engine possible.
Because that’s the competitive advantage.
Things like dashboards and tool implementations and strategic roadmaps are all integral pieces of the engine, but don’t mean much on their own.
By looking at every project we do and every solution we build as a step towards a better engine, we can communicate their impact more effectively and make getting buy-in a lot easier.
Okay, so now what?
Now, we start talking about the work. The features that every team needs to implement to make their engine better.
We’re kicking off with something we’ve implemented for a few of our customers lately: Automated Upsell Opportunities.
December’s letter will be all about why this feature is important, the role upsells and cross-sells play in revenue generation, and how to implement it.
As always, feel free to email me with any questions, feedback, or topics you’d like to see us cover in the coming months.
Until then,
Kristi