RevOps Roundup - August 2022

It's Thursday, we're 3/4 of the way through the month, so it's time to take a moment to step back from all those goals you're panicking about not having achieved yet and feast your eyes on something that'll help you get there - faster and easier - next month: the RevOps Roundup.

Meredith Schmidt , EVP Revenue Cloud at Salesforce , explains simply:

When I joined Salesforce, my first big challenge was to make sales and finance love each other. Sixteen years later, I’m still working on it. This challenge didn’t have a name when I started, but now it does: RevOps.

According to Salesforce's The Rise of RevOps Report from Forrester Consulting, 86% of executives said that revenue operations is important to reaching their goals, but less than half (41%) are very confident they understand what it is.

Furthermore, just to really emphasise why we should all care more about this, an existing 32% of companies surveyed said they have a role where one person is responsible for revenue growth across every channel and hugely, almost 3 times that number (89%) plan to have such a role within the next two years.

Building on Meredith's point, I'd suggest that Revenue Operations is not just about getting sales and finance teams to fall in love; but getting the whole company to fall in love with the people who matter most to their bottom line: their customers.

So without further ado, here are the people, processes and platforms that have been front-of-mind for me, this month.

People

This month's people shoutout goes to the incredible Leore Spira, Adv. , Head of Revenue Operations at Buildots .

You've got to follow Leore's #revopsconfessions hashtag for insights from the coalface of implementing our practice in the super-competitive software development space.

Thanks for your continuing inspiration, Leore!

Processes

This month's process portion is focused on data cleanliness. Maybe it's been taking up quite a lot of my time, you can decide...

So first of all, why is it important?

You know the expression...?? in, ?? out?

It's never more apparent than when it comes to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

Your database represents the collective insights about the people who already are, or could be; giving you money.

Think about it...why wouldn't you want that data to be as up-to-date and...as accurate...as possible? So that if Prospect Pat or Lead Lesley came knocking on your door, your team would have every single bit of information at their fingertips and the insights they need to seal the deal?

Sadly, this so often isn't the case. And, unless it's your day-to-day, you might not know the best way around the situation.

The thing is, the data quality is what matters. The system is actually secondary.

Whether your single-source-of-truth is HubSpot , Salesforce, Adobe Marketo , an Excel spreadsheet, or anything else...the "cleanliness" of the information is the most important factor.

So, what needs to be cleaned and what's the process behind going from where you are today, to where you need to be?

Let's break it down:

• Access your data

Wherever it starts, get your data together and in a place where you can work on it. That could be natively within your existing system, by exporting to a spreadsheet or using any one of a number of third party tools (more below...)

• Align your information

To begin with, focus on filling in the gaps. It helps to start with an element of "standardisation", such as naming conventions and a hierarchy of properties you'd like to complete (essentially a map showing what "types" of information live in various "objects" or "entities" in your platform of choice).

• Augment your insights

Better insights start with better data so, once everything's organised, look into strategies to both growth the volume of your database and enrich the data within it. Got plenty of relevant email addresses? How about phone numbers? Know what company they work for? How about their career progression plans? This is where data, account-based marketing and sales enablement comes to life.

It's just that now we call it Revenue Operations...

Platforms

Inspiring my diatribe against bad data above and, providing an effective solution; the platform shoutout this month goes to Insycle .

Their promise? "Spend less time on mundane data work."

Yes. Yes, please.

And best of all, they already have solutions for all of the top places your existing data might be hanging out.

If you missed "Spring" to clean your data, the second best time to start is now. (And obviously, it's an ongoing process!)

Well, that's it for another RevOps Roundup. I hope there've been a few nuggets of information that will be of use to you this month, or at least some avenues for further reading.

See you all in September!

Should you have any questions, thoughts or ideas - I'd love to read them in the comments.