What do you get when you cross RevOps and roadmaps?
Revenue Growth Guide - April '23
Greetings, fellow travelers! As promised, in this letter, we’ll be talking about roadmapping for RevOps. Specifically, how to get started and how to combat some of the most common challenges we see companies face as they implement a roadmapping process.
First, though:
We launched a RevOps course! It starts at $500 for a seat, and you’ll get 5 weeks of content, live trainings, group working sessions, and coursework. You’ll also get to work alongside other revenue operators as you apply what you learn to your own business and take ideas and solutions back to your team.
WARNING:
The #1 reason companies fail when they try to implement a roadmapping process is poor utility. Roadmaps are in no way a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing; if you’re going to do all the work upfront to put a roadmap in place, you need to also commit to being consistent in the way you maintain it.
Storytelling through roadmapping
I did a keyword search for RevOps roadmapping, and the results were…fairly disappointing. It seems like it hasn’t quite made its way into the zeitgeist yet, and that the term ‘roadmap’ is still assumed to be referring to product.
Regardless of whether we’re talking about product or RevOps, a roadmap is meant to be a statement of intent and a way to keep teams aligned as to what work is being done and why.
Roadmapping is how you turn your strategy into a tangible source of truth; to tell an engaging visual story about what work you plan to do and how it will impact revenue over time.
There’s plenty of tactical guidance I can (and will) give here, but if you can’t look to your roadmap for a compelling narrative, you’ve already lost the battle.
How to get started
In the interest of not going too far down another rabbit hole, let’s assume here that you’ve already done the work of identifying gaps and coming up with initiatives you want to tackle.
I’m willing to bet there are a lot of items on that list, so first, you’ll need to prioritize based on the predicted impact on the business. You want to focus the team on the highest-impact work first.
The way we do this at Go Nimbly is we convene as a leadership team to talk about our big-picture strategic goals for the year–those are the themes all individual initiatives need to fall under. This is important because it’s what really drives home the idea of unifying around a common goal.
Next, we generate initiatives that fall under each theme. This is how you tell the story of how the work you’ve planned will drive the organization toward its goals.
Avoiding common challenges
Leveling: When you’re creating your roadmap, particularly when you’re first starting out, it can be tempting to turn it into a list of tasks, rather than basing each item on a specific outcome and milestones. To avoid this, make sure your roadmap items are all similarly leveled. For example, don’t have one item that’s super broad and will need to be measured over an extended period of time (increase brand awareness) and one that’s task-level (create a lead sourcing workflow in Hubspot).
Definition of Done: It’s easy to skip over this step, especially when you’re working in a fast-paced environment. Establishing a clear definition of done for each roadmap item helps keep everyone on the team accountable and makes it much easier to gauge overall progress toward your high-level goal.
Pivots: Roadmaps aren’t meant to be set in stone. There will be times when you need to pivot away from one thing and focus on something that wasn’t originally part of the plan. When this happens, you can adjust your roadmap. Just make sure to add the new item(s) and move or backlog the items you’re deprioritizing. If you’re not keeping your roadmap up-to-date and it doesn’t reflect the work that’s actually being done, it’s no longer valuable as a source of truth.
Milestones: Make sure your roadmap items are time-bound by breaking them down into milestones. This will help you pace your work more effectively and keep momentum, especially if you’re driving multiple roadmap items and have to do a lot of context-switching.
Let me know what challenges you’ve faced at your organization when it comes to strategic planning. I’d love to dig deeper into how to get the most out of the roadmapping process, with a focus on some real-world problems.
In the meantime, for next month’s letter, I’m thinking….RevOps’ role in product-led growth? See you there!
P.S. Because things tend to get lost in the great swirling sea of content on Linkedin: Our friends at Calixa (a PLS platform that uses your data to turn your self-serve funnel into a source of predictable revenue) are doing a survey to gather insights on how companies are tackling product-led sales. If that sounds like you, go take their 2-minute survey!