Racing Ahead: Nailing Your First 30 Days in RevOps

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When I started in RevOps in 2016, the function was pretty new. Not many people really knew what it was all about, and onboarding was a real challenge.

So, in today’s Closing Thoughts, I thought I’d cover something important that I wish I had known at the beginning of my RevOps career: how to start off strong. You’ll have all the answers in the next section!?

Plus, our GTM mixers are making a comeback. More about this in Everstage’s Corner!

That’s it in today’s edition. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks!

In Depth ??

Racing Ahead: Nailing Your First 30 Days in RevOps

Among all the drivers taking part in an F1 race, there's one who typically holds a distinct advantage - can you guess who?

?Yes, it's the one in pole position.

Consider this statistic: Historically, the pole-sitter has won 43% of all races since the inception of F1 in the 1940s. Clearly, starting in pole position provides a significant edge over the competition!

Now, as you embark on your new RevOps journey, how can you secure a similar head start? The key is in nailing your first 30 days of onboarding.?

RevOps has seen a meteoric rise recently, and its importance is only set to grow.

Stepping into RevOps can be thrilling, yet it comes with its own set of challenges. RevOps is a complex, ever-evolving function, and without a clear plan, you might find yourself lost at the start of your new role.?

This underscores the importance of the first 30 days in the function. This initial period is your opportunity to lay a solid foundation that will pave the way for long-term success.?

Let’s explore how you can achieve this.

Understand the Company, Product, and Market:

Alright, it's Day 1 in your new role, and you're eager to hit the ground running. So, where do you start? Begin with the basics. First up, you need to answer this key question: What's the company's mission?

Outside of C-Suite, RevOps is the only function that requires you to have a complete understanding of the business. Get a full picture of why the company does what it does, why the product exists,? why the market wants your product, your market positioning, and about your competitors. It's important to cover these bases early on because as you start dealing with day-to-day operations, you might not have time to step back and get these insights.

Here’s a checklist to help you through this process:

• Request for a meeting with the leaders at C-Level to understand the company's mission and vision.
• Schedule a brief session with the Product Leader to delve into the product's intricacies, including its features and benefits.
• Connect with the Marketing Manager to uncover messaging strategies and market positioning.
• Listen to customer call recordings and understand the customer needs and preferences?
• Take part in sales and support discussions to gain insights into prospects and customers.?
• Study compiled information about key competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, and market strategies.
• Examine the current sales compensation plans, including pay mix, KPIs, quotas, and additional components like SPIFs.??
• Develop a competitive matrix to compare your company's products or services with those of competitors.?

Build Relationships:?

Another key factor in your success in RevOps is the relationships you build in this period of onboarding. The benefits of cultivating strong relationships with your stakeholders are aplenty. Not only will this make future collaboration smoother, but it will also ensure their support when you most need it.

So, how do you go about building solid relationships? Here’s how:?

• Speak to the below roles and gather context on current processes, operating style and their current challenges.?

1. VP of Sales

2. Director, Sales and Sales Managers?

3. 1 AE/BDR per region

4. Head of Sales Engineering/Senior Sales Engineer?

5. Customer Success Leaders/Managers?

6. Finance Leaders/Managers?

7. HR Leaders/Managers?

8. Marketing Leaders/Managers

• Learn about their roles, daily priorities, and get a glimpse of their typical workday.?
• Establish communication cadences and strategies that will ensure a cohesive and effective working relationship with stakeholders. Think about how often you want to meet them to get context about their problems.

List Down the Pain Points:

At this point, you should have spoken with all the key stakeholders and members from various teams. Through these discussions, you'll gain a clear understanding of the main challenges they face. Make sure to note these down and spot any trends or common concerns. It's true that you might not be able to fix every issue immediately, but this will help you understand where your organization is struggling.

Also, talk to sales teams to see if deal closures need to be accelerated for complex deals. If yes, one effective way to do this is by building a deals desk team. They can help accelerate deal closure time by working with legal teams, IT teams and Infosec teams on policy negotiations. The deals desk team can also set up operating cadence for discounting and approvals, ensuring contracts signed are compliant with the company policies.

Checklist:?

• Maintain a detailed record of the pain points raised during discussions.
• Classify the pain points into buckets such as strategic issues, process issues, tech-stack issues, data/transparency issues, alignment issues etc., so that you can come to them at the right time.
• Product Pain Point

1. Unable to track lost reasons - Process issue

2. Unable to track competitors involved in deal - Process issues

3. No recurring meetings setup with sales managers - Alignment issues

• Sales Pain Point

1. Marketing leads are inefficiently routed - Strategic issue

2. No visibility into incentive pay - Tech stack issue

3. CRM hygiene is not good enough - Process issue

Familiarize Yourself with KPIs:

Your first 30 days are also the perfect time to really get to know the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of different teams, their dashboards, and other important metrics. Take a deep dive into the historical data to better understand the challenges the company is facing. Don’t hold back, dig deep into the details to find out which records from CRM or billing systems are used to calculate specific metrics. Being thorough is crucial in Ops; you need to know what exactly to interpret from the data and? what not to interpret.

• Plot down the important KPIs as a SaaS business. For example: Customer Churn and Revenue Churn, Customer Lifetime Value, Customer Acquisition Cost, Payback Period, etc.
• Find out how they are aligned with organization goals.?
• Benchmark against industry metrics to calculate how efficient they are today.?
• Get access to all relevant reports (Customer report, Sales reports, Marketing reports, Order booking, Customer health reports) for trends.

By now, you should have a good understanding of what you need to do in your first 30 days in the RevOps role. To really know your progress, set up a 30-minute call with the leadership to share what you've learned and get their feedback. This will let you know if you're on the right track and what adjustments might be needed.

Also, it's vital to plan out what you'll be doing in your second and third months of onboarding. We've put together this detailed guide with a handy checklist to help you monitor your progress. Make sure to check it out!

Everstage’s Corner ?

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