#02 The People Element of RevOps

It is another Tuesday and another edition of Demystifying RevOps 101. This week, we will look at one of the three core pillars of RevOps: the People.

A little context before we start

Though the challenge RevOps addresses is decades old, the official existence of the function is nascent. While more than 85% of executives agree that revenue operations is important to meet their goals, just 41% are very confident they understand what it is.

This quote from Nani Shaffer in Forbes is the perfect start to this article. There isn’t enough understanding of what RevOps actually does. But the vast majority agree that it is critical to business moving forward.?

So the burning question is, what is RevOps? RevOps exists at the intersection of people, processes and technology, specifically in the marketing, sales and customer experience departments. An additional department often overlooked in RevOps is the product department. They are critical in RevOps as they are the boots-on-the-ground teams. Without them, there is nothing to market, to sell; ipso facto, there is no revenue.?

However, RevOps uses the operations (people, processes and technology) of each department (MOps, SalesOps and CXOps) and pulls all of that into a unified, hybrid team.?

RevOps takes it further because the Venn diagram has a second layer. The above chart shows that the People diagram takes in all departments and creates an intersection for the final view. However, this intersection is made up of a secondary Venn diagram. It brings together all the critical players who boost revenue. Only some people in each department are core to RevOps, although everyone contributes somehow. This intersection is then used in our primary Venn diagram. The same principle will be used when we cover Processes and Technology.

This edition focuses on the People element of RevOps.

The Marketing People

Everyone knows marketing. They are the people who, at their root, get the message of the company’s core offering into the hands of the ideal customer profile (ICP).?

I went into Marketing as a graduate. At that time, everything was still traditional marketing; digital marketing was yet to be as developed as where we are as an industry. I remember people saying, “Oh, you are in marketing. I guess that means you had nothing else to do with your degree,” or “Oh, marketing is so easy; you must not have other business skills.” I took this and brushed it off. These people didn’t understand the nuances of marketing and what it takes to run successful campaigns.

Fast forward two decades, and suddenly, people perk up when they hear you are in marketing. Gone are the days of straightforward marketing, and now everyone knows that marketing is the company's front line. Or is it? Yes, marketing gets the message of the product out to the market. They choose how to create this message, what type of assets will resonate with the audience, create deep segmentation of the lists, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Now, marketing has become complex and yet easier due to the tools and technologies we have on hand.?

{put up your hand if you worked in Microsoft Great Plains}        

To digress a little on this, this is a thought that I have been looking for an answer to, and no one can answer it. In universities and colleges, does the marketing curriculum still include traditional marketing principles or are students being pushed into digital marketing? I hold a certificate from the American Marketing Association in Marketing Management. This 3-hour exam took me back to the early 2000s and tested my knowledge of the core principles of marketing.?

Marketing is a crucial part of the revenue stream. How will you drive demand without a unified core message across the company? Marketing is the department that creates the ICP, the scoring of prospects into leads in the CRM and creates account-based marketing practices. But the burning question is, and I will leave this section here, can marketing do it alone?

The Sales People

We all know that traditionally, the onus of generating revenue has landed squarely on the shoulders of sales. If the sales team missed their targets, they were blamed entirely. Having worked in sales, I know this to be true. We had little context from the other departments and were fully responsible for finding our clients. We had no ICP set up and zero engagement with the marketing and CX teams.?

Another variable to consider is that most sales positions still work on commission. This means that BDR and SDR may chase unrealistic customers to meet and convince them to meet their target quota, and by the time the AE takes over, they are passed a poor lead to convert. If this is the case, the AE may miss their target, but the BDR smashes it.?

As an aside, and digression, interestingly, I have seen more agencies promote themselves as BDR/SDR partners, saying the teams will only be paid for high-quality leads.?

This brings me to the potential toxicity in the sales department. The whole People element is at risk if there is a fracture within the sales team. Competition, sometimes seen as a good thing to drive performance, can create negativity. Scenario: if one SDR performs over their monthly targets, other SDRs may be disheartened and leave. This means that companies will need to train and onboard a new SDR. This will cost the company valuable time and money. What needs to happen in the sales department is that the team leaders, directors, VPs and ultimately the C-Suite individual overseeing the sales department must instill a culture and ethos of collaboration. Managers and leaders must nurture and understand the issue if a sales team member needs to perform better. This may uncover a much larger issue at hand. The days of ABC and company culture like Wolf of Wall Street are done.

Another point to briefly consider is who the BDR should report to: sales or marketing. I will leave this as an open point, and I urge you to do some reading on this matter.?

Based on my analysis of the People element, many will say that sales are still the most crucial segment when generating revenue. We need to adjust our thinking to succeed in the current market landscape.

The Customer Experience People

Customer Success (CS) is typically included in the RevOps ecosystem in everyday practice, but the thought of including customer experience (CX) is a dark horse. Many don’t believe that CX should form part of RevOps. I will highlight why they are part of the trifecta in building a strong RevOps department.

For some context, this quote shows the difference between the CS and CX departments from Zendeck.

Customer success (CS) teams focus on understanding customers’ goals and helping clients achieve their desired outcomes with a purchased product or service. Meanwhile, customer experience (CX) teams work hard to provide great experiences at every single touchpoint, from discovery to purchase and beyond.

They continue further in the post to say that CS is one part of CX. I choose to include CX instead of CS in the RevOps hybrid team as they have touchpoints throughout the journey, which is critical for marketing and sales to optimize their strategies. CS is great, but they are at the end-point and often don’t create many revenue opportunities. But when you add CS in the overall CX department, the revenue opportunities will flow suddenly.

The goal of CX is to wow and delight the customer. This can be through a follow-up to a discovery meeting or understanding how customers enjoy the product or service. If you have a robust CX strategy, the team will be able to feed valuable qualitative and qualitative insights into how the ICP is reacting to the product. They form the pivot in optimizing the messaging from marketing and how sales can adjust their pitch. In some senses, CX is the most essential part of the RevOps hybrid team. They are your eyes and ears with your customers. Always listen to your customers; they are why you have your product or service. The primary way of hearing them is through your CX team.

The Product People

While this team is not part of the RevOps hybrid department, they are critical for the RevOps department to succeed. The team at Delegate has given a great rundown of the role of product in the RevOps team. Product is becoming increasingly important in our digital world, and most companies now have a PM in place.

RevOps teams must know what is on the roadmap for the coming months. Without this, marketing cannot formulate their messaging, sales won’t know what they are selling, and CX needs to know what features are coming to excite customers. The product team should brief the RevOps team at least weekly, and the lead project manager should be a part of the RevOps leadership team.?

Something that isn’t considered often enough is the feedback loop from the RevOps team to the product team. RevOps are constantly engaging with prospects, leads and customers. The information gathered, qualitative and quantitative, needs to be fed back to the product team. With this information, they can optimize the product to meet marketing demand. You can create what you think is the perfect product to address the market's friction points, but if you are not listening to your customers, you will fail as a company. This feedback loop will ensure that your customers get exactly what they want and that your RevOps team can communicate what is coming effectively.

This product team is most often seen in SaaS, software development, retail and manufacturing companies, to name a few. Service-based companies don’t always have this department in their company.

The Key Individuals That Form The Hybrid Team

The big question is who actually sits in this revenue hybrid team. While all team members from the three primary departments will contribute to revenue, it is unrealistic to think there will no longer be each department. The structure of the revenue team needs to be made up of decision-makers from each department. This doesn’t mean that only the VPs sit in a room and dictate everything. Representatives from each division within a department in this team must be represented.?

Having multiple voices from different functions is critical to a thriving revenue team. For this team to succeed, those members must communicate effectively with their departments. While this may seem like a whole new department rather than a team, I invite you to read the next point.

I call this a hybrid team because there isn’t a traditional structure that a department has. The purpose of this team is to create champions from each department to help build the mindset of revenue as the core driving force in the company.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t all about the money. I don’t want my view to come across as money is the root of success and only money. As I have highlighted throughout this article, the customer always comes first; it is about the company solving friction points in their lives. But realistically, it is a little about the money. Without a reliable revenue stream, companies will have to close their doors.?

This brings me to my final point on who the key individuals are. And in this case, it is the key individual. There needs to be a head that is driving all the elements. All companies differ in terms of who this head is. Sometimes, it is a C-Suite executive or a VP. Some companies hire a RevOps specialist to oversee this team.

Many may think that the CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) should be the head, but more often than not, the CRO is a sales head and may need more marketing and CX expertise to be the actual head of the team. This is no knock on the CRO; sometimes, it is misleading as to what the role of a CRO is. Yes, it is to optimize revenue and ensure the highest profits. But they may only be looking at the sales team. This thinking needs to change in companies if they truly want to become a powerhouse in the market.

Bridging The Gap Between Departments

By creating this team, there will be transparency between departments, and the traditional silos between departments will start to break down. RevOps’ prime directive is getting all the departments directly influencing revenue generation, marketing, sales and CX to work seamlessly together. Only when cross-departmental collaboration occurs can the complete revenue picture be seen.?

In the current business environment, companies must constantly adapt for many reasons. Technologies are changing daily, especially with the rise of AI, new competitors who are more agile and run leaner (likely with a RevOps department), consumer behaviour changing and the threat of a recession on the horizon are a few examples.

By creating a strong RevOps strategy, you can mitigate many of these threats. But it is only through true collaboration between the revenue departments that will make this possible. It is the role of your RevOps leaders to bridge the gap between departments. If you don’t already have a RevOps department, consider hiring an expert consultant to put you on the right track and keep the ship sailing to your North Star.

The Key Metrics Reported By RevOpsnbsp;

This is a discussion for another day. That day is in exactly two weeks at the same time. #04 of this newsletter will cover all the key metrics, calculations and formulae used by the RevOps team. I’m particularly excited for this one to go live.

To Summarize

These are the steps you will want to take in your People element of RevOps.

• Find your market and ICP
• Craft and release your message into the wild
• Start prospecting and generating leads
• Close deals
• Listen to your customer and their experience with your product through your CX department as they touch each of these journey points

Then enter the feedback loop. At any point where there is a pain point in this process, find out why and how it can be solved. It may be marketing communicating with sales to use the messaging they have created or sales saying that the message does not completely mislead prospects. CX can give feedback to marketing and sales, and marketing can feed new messaging into CX. As you can see, this becomes an intricate web of feedback.

Conclusion

As you can see from this essay, the People element that makes up the RevOps team is complex and sometimes confusing. But with a strong strategy, clear communication and transparency between departments, managing a unified hybrid team is possible and necessary for a company’s long-term success.?

I would love to hear your thoughts on how the People of the teams form a crucial part of the RevOps strategy and where in your organization you feel there is a gap.

For next week's newsletter, I had a fantastic interview with one of my peers, Dana Daskalova ?? . Dana is a trained data scientist who has turned her attention to another side of business. I am excited to present this one to you as our discussion was enlightening and gives a whole new look at data and how we can all use it.