RevOps is on the rise. In fact, LeanData and SalesHacker’s just released “State of Revenue Operations” shows a 55% year-over-year increase in companies that have established a dedicated RevOps group—a positive sign that companies believe in the importance of aligning strategy and operations.
However, despite the growth, there are still many challenges facing RevOps teams. The same study reported the three most common barriers to adoption are “Inconsistent and Silo’ed Data”, “Culture” and “Resources.”
These are all critical areas to address. In fact, while Culture absolutely matters when it comes to reducing friction, our experience in working with customers shows Data, as the foundation of any successful RevOps journey—should be the highest priority. Without trusted sales data to assess the issues in the customer lifecycle, the analysis and ultimately the decisions will be flawed. (Assess the quality of your RevOps Data with the free RevOps Readiness Checklist.)
4 Pillars of a Successful RevOps Strategy
Many companies are taking a four-step approach to RevOps. This includes:
1. Data: Know exactly what is going on in your business?
RevOps requires an end-to-end view of customer experience, grounded on comprehensive, common data and KPIs. To do this effectively, you’ll want to understand all touchpoints, which is best accomplished by automating Activity Capture to reduce the burden of manual entry (more time for reps to sell!) and remove rep bias in activity reporting. Activity Capture automatically syncs sales activity and engagement so you can finally trust the data in your CRM. It’s a sales reps’ best friend.
2. Insights: Know exactly what to do about it.
High quality data will allow you to generate deep insights. With a complete view of what is happening across the customer journey and how each department is contributing, sales leaders can assess the health of your pipeline. How does this deal progression compare to similar deals? Have the top subject matter experts been brought in? Is the champion identified and engaged properly? These are all the questions you should be able to answer and assess the findings before taking action.
Activity data can help you go beyond funnel progression and goal mapping to tie activities to outcomes. It allows you to evaluate decisions across revenue functions and understand the entire customer journey, including key activities, processes, behavior, and results.
3. Actions: Know exactly how to make that happen.
Insights alone will not help move deals forward, speed up the sales cycle, eliminate risks or fix broken processes. They show you where the problems are, not the solutions to those problems.
Being able to take quick Actions on your Insights helps turn your organization from reactive to proactive mode. Say goodbye to the “weekly” monotonous Pipeline Review Groundhog Day where reps scramble to collect data the night before and managers spend so much time validating deals, coaching is left behind. With AI-powered recommended Actions, managers can spend quality time coaching reps, scaling best practices, tracking progress and making adjustments to improve deals outcomes well before it’s too late.
4. Optimization: Know exactly what to try next.
Building a RevOps culture does not stop at the end of a quarter when you meet or exceed your goals. The B2B customer journey is always changing, which means your sales strategy needs to be ready to adapt just as quickly.
With RevOps, don’t assume you have to create an organization overnight and deploy a big bang. Rather focus on smaller changes that can be easily replicated and drive continuous process improvements.
Looking back at the common barriers you can see why Data is so important. Simply put, activity data doesn’t lie. It’s the most effective indicator of sales performance, which ultimately influences performance reviews, reps coaching, forecasting and more. With the right data at the right time, and the ability to track the impacts of individual changes on the customer journey, RevOps leaders can make cross-functional data-driven decisions to not only move a deal forward but drive process improvements. That’s how you can optimize your operations for a culture of continuous improvements.
If you’re building your RevOps function, it’s critical to identify the gaps in your business and build from there. Our RevOps Readiness Checklist provides you with detailed questions to assess your company’s RevOps maturity and the steps to take to advance your RevOps journey. Download it here, or tune in to our webinar series to get direct advice from our RevOps pros.