Dissention to Collaboration: Bridging Sales and Marketing KRAs

Are you tired of seeing your sales and marketing teams work in silos, with little communication or alignment?

If so, you're not alone. Many organizations struggle to coordinate their sales and marketing efforts, resulting in missed opportunities and lower revenue.

But what if I told you that it's possible to achieve higher sales by breaking down those barriers and fostering collaboration between your sales and marketing teams? That's exactly what HubSpot did, and the results speak for themselves.

By implementing organization-wide sales and marketing collaboration, HubSpot was able to streamline their lead generation and nurturing processes, ensuring that prospects received a consistent message and experience throughout their buyer's journey. This resulted in higher-quality leads and faster sales cycles.

But how did they do it? HubSpot used a combination of technology, processes, and culture to bring their sales and marketing teams closer together. The process they called, Revenue Operations. They implemented a unified CRM system, which allowed both teams to access the same data and insights. They also established regular meetings and communication channels, where sales and marketing could share feedback and ideas.

But perhaps most importantly, HubSpot created a culture of collaboration and shared goals and they incentivized both teams to work together towards that common objective.

The results? HubSpot achieved a 35% increase in revenue per customer, and a 38% increase in deal size. They saw over 70% increase in MQLs and 60% increase in overall sales.

So if you're struggling with sales and marketing alignment, you probably need to consider establishing Revenue Operations at your org. This practice is widely adopted in the IT industry. Can be extended to other B2B industries such as exports, components manufacturing, cement, electrical automation etc which adopt consultative selling practices and B2C industries such as interior designing, real estate as well.

Read on to know more on how you can establish RevOps practice in your firm.

Establish a Revenue Operations as a practice in your firm

The first step to establish RevOps is to define your objective. Setting a clear objective will steer the function's KRAs and help identifying the right technology and hires. How do you set your RevOps objective? How do you identify specific needs and goals to define the objective?

1. Begin with your overall business goals: It could be that you are looking to increase revenue, improve customer retention, or optimize your sales processes. Beginning with a clear objective in mind can take you a long way.
2. Set specific RevOps objectives: Break down your business goals into specific RevOps objectives. If your goal is to increase revenue, your RevOps objectives might include optimizing your sales processes, improving lead generation, or enhancing your customer experience.
3. Determine KPIs: Once you have identified your RevOps objectives, you need to determine the KPIs that will help you measure progress towards those objectives. For example, if your RevOps objective is to optimize your sales processes, your KPIs might include conversion rates, sales cycle length, or deal size.
4. Assign ownership and accountability: Assign ownership for each objective to specific individuals or teams within your organization. This will help ensure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals.
5. Establish a plan for tracking and reporting progress: Finally, you need to establish a plan for tracking and reporting progress towards your RevOps objectives. This might include regular check-ins, dashboards or reports to track KPIs, or other methods for monitoring progress and making adjustments as needed.

By following these steps, you can ensure that your RevOps function is aligned with your overall business objectives and is driving towards the outcomes you desire.

Now that you know how to establish the practice, it's time to look at how to choose the right tool to implement to take the next leap in terms of data visibility.

Factors to consider before you choose a Revenue Operations Software

Before you approach the market to identify the best fit, it is generally a great idea to begin with jotting down the following as requirements for your org.

1. Integration: What are your current Marketing, Sales and Customer Success platforms. Is there any other tech stack requirements that the tool should comply to.
2. Scalability: What is your volumetric and scale projection. How much should the tool be able to handle over a horizon of 3 years.
3. Data Management: what are the data insights you need to make informed decisions and optimize your revenue operations.
4. Cost: What is the total cost of ownership you are looking a including initial investment and ongoing costs, including licensing fees, implementation costs, and ongoing support and maintenance.
5. Customization: Though this is a very case by case factor, it will be good to list down if your business is an atypical one and there are specific work flows to cater to.
6. Security: Are there any sensitive information that demands security compliance, thereby reducing the RFP application pool, good to mention that in your scoping.
7. Usability: If there is any specific training required for personnel, add it to your lead time and scoping
8. Implementation: What is the typical lead time that you can invest in the process? The other variables that plays out for implementation is customisation requirement, complexity of data structure, integrations (if standard or specific)

Top 10 RevOps Software Bank: Their Pros & Cons

1. HubSpot: Pros: Comprehensive, User-friendly, Offers wide variety of integrations. Cons: Expensive, Standard - not customizable
2. Salesforce: Pros: Wide range of features and integrations, large user community for support. Cons: Complex to set up, Expensive
3. Outreach: Pros: Sales engagement platform- communication with prospects made easy, strong analytics, good reporting features. Cons: Less effective for for complex sales cycles, Expensive for large teams.
4. Marketo: Pros: Multi-channel marketing automation platform, strong reporting and analytics. Cons: Complex, Expensive (in comparison to other MA tools)
5. Gong: Pros: Revenue intelligence platform, Analyses sales conversations for sales effectiveness, strong coaching and collaboration features. Cons: Less effective for organizations with less phone-based sales activity, Expensive for large organisations
6. Drift: Pros: Conversational marketing platform (Chatbot) to engage website visitors for real-time lead generation, strong analytics and reporting. Cons: Less effective for more complex sales cycles.
7. Pipedrive: Pros: CRM platform for visual pipeline management, customizable, Sales forecasting, reporting. Cons: Less effective for large orgs with complex sales processes, not full-stack
8. Zendesk Sell: Pros: Sales automation platform, user-friendly interface and strong integrations. Cons: Less customizable, not full-stack
9. Clearbit: Pros: Customer data platform, strong data enrichment and segmentation features. Cons: Expensive for larger orgs, not full-stack
10. SalesLoft: Pros: Sales engagement platform, Streamlines sales processes, improves communication with prospects, with a user-friendly interface and strong integrations. Cons: Less effective for orgs with complex sales cycles, Expensive for large team sizes.

Overall, each of these tools has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the key to choosing the right tool is to identify your specific needs and goals, and evaluate each tool based on those criteria.