Breaking Down Silos: The Critical Role of Revenue Operations

Recap of ?? Jen Igartua and I's conversation during GTM Innovators podcast series in 2023. Huge thanks to Jen for sharing her expertise that made this post possible. Check out Jen's business, Go Nimbly, if you need RevOps help!

Introduction

Silo Syndrome - we've all experienced it. Teams that function perfectly well within their own department, but as soon as cross-team collaboration is needed, everything grinds to a halt. Misalignment, friction, and competitiveness creep in between teams. While silo thinking is normal, as a company scales it can quickly become a major impediment to growth. So how can we actively combat silo syndrome? This is where the emerging field of Revenue Operations comes in.

The Role of Revenue Operations in Breaking Down Silos

First, Jen and I are purposeful in saying RevOps and not Sales Ops. Sales Ops continues to be a thing but, to me, RevOps is the bigger remit team that a Sales Ops function may sit within as that Sales Ops team drives the core functions of Forecasting, TechStack needs, Reporting, etc. RevOps should be thinking and operating bigger than the legacy of Sales Ops.

Revenue Operations (RevOps) exists to connect the typically siloed sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Rather than dictating strategy to each department, RevOps facilitates productive strategy discussions and brings data-driven insights to align the teams around shared goals. With a bird's eye view across the full, global revenue organization, RevOps identifies process and technology improvements that will enable scalable growth. A key part of the RevOps mission is integrating technology to power seamless collaboration. Promising AI capabilities like automated note-taking can help standardize repetitive cross-team tasks. But a platform approach works better than trying to push all data into the CRM. With a good underlying data architecture, RevOps can then layer on solutions to unify data and systems across revenue teams.

How to Enable RevOps to Break Down Silos

To break down silos, planning and communication habits need an overhaul in most companies. RevOps should be at the table and likely in a drivers seat for the annual planning process (definitely for the GTM POV on growth targets, contribution across divisions/segments/products, Productivity metrics and expected productivity gains from process improvements in development).

A RevOps team driving planning helps the Revenue teams communicate plans early and often to spot potential friction points with Marketing, Product, Finance, etc. Marketing especially needs to be intrinsically tied to the Revenue planning process to align their goals to teh most important metrics of the business... Revenue (aka ARR, YoY Growth), Efficiency (aka meeting financial expectations with high productivity per role / team) and Consideration (aka how are you growing the amount of companies willing to consider you in future). I've loved joint planning with Marketing & Revenue around pipeline production to reach ARR targets. RevOps helps us all see the current conversion rates across the funnel, what % of pipeline each department (Marketing, BD, Sales) contributes today and challenges each of us on future contribution % based on productivity gains & new investments being allocated. It helps us proactively work through disagreements and lock in a set of targets per team that each leadership team can stand behind. But, departments like Finance and Product need a seat at the table too for their unique perspectives and to meet their departmental requirements so ensure your RevOps team has those teams built into the Revenue annual planning AND ongoing business review processes. However, it's best to have a strong POV from Revenue on the starting point of the annual plan to get reactions from each department (maybe that's last statement is biased by my history as a Revenue Leader but it's proven highly useful for me).

Once Plan is locked, the execution should be balanced with strategic prioritization based on company goals and RevOps sits in the middle of teams to arbitrate and push for the greater good priorities over allowing each person or team to only do what's best for them. While RevOps actively participates in the business operations, they will monitor if current processes can scale given growth targets for rest of year and beyond.

The dual role of RevOps is to keep the lights on for sales, marketing and customer success, while also driving strategy and pushing for needed change. RevOps won't succeed by abandoning the day-to-day work required to support other teams. But with a solid foundation, RevOps can start layering on strategic initiatives to optimize the revenue engine over time.

Conclusion

With some thoughtful planning, technology integration, and process re-design, Revenue Operations can play a pivotal role in breaking down silos and aligning teams for scalable growth. By actively combating silo syndrome, companies can transform disjointed teams into a unified revenue machine capable of accelerating your growth and improving the productivity across your GTM teams.

To listen to our full conversation, watch here https://youtu.be/TwElK67V3l4?si=uLmyMeCjEbpSfoUu

To listen to more #GTM Innovators podcasts, https://www.gtminnovators.com/