RevOps Roundup - September 2022

Brushing aside the terrifying fact it's nearly the end of September like the Autumn/Fall leaves on the pavement/sidewalk; it's time for September's RevOps Roundup: your guide to the goings on in the ever-evolving, rapidly-expanding practice of Revenue Operations.

First of all, congratulations to the MaRS Discovery District for claiming a place in the new 'Featured Snippet' atop Google's Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for the term: "Revenue Operations".

Kudos on a compelling, clear definition of the science we all study:

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the alignment of sales, marketing and customer success operations across the full customer life cycle to drive growth through operational efficiency and keep all teams accountable to revenue. This holistic approach is designed to break down silos between departments.

Enjoy that sweet traffic to your dedicated landing page.

Thanks as well to the Big G themselves, for breaking out the: "Role, Rise, Goals and Future" of our industry (which links to multiple different sources). Nice.

To join in with the search at home: let me Google that for you.

In any case, you're here for my view on things, so let's get stuck into the who, how and what of those in the industry, a.k.a the people, processes and platforms driving us forward.

People

This month, I am delighted to give a hat tip to Jordan Henderson , Director of Revenue Operations at The Riverside Company , as well as consulting and advising on the practice.

Jordan's intelligent insights and actionable advice from the frontline, are always a source of inspiration to me. And his RevOps-related meme game is pretty strong, too...

Give the good man a follow via his profile page.

Processes

Well, I was about to start writing about data cleanliness again...but we did that last month. It's still important though. And yes, it's occupying a lot of my brain space! But let's switch gears for a minute and talk about something else I've been actively implementing a lot recently: CPQ.

Wait, what? Isn't that the shiny robot in Star Wars?

Sadly, it isn't. It stands for: Configure, Price, Quote; which Salesforce defines as:

...a sales tool for companies to quickly and accurately generate quotes for orders...

So far, so simple. But what does that mean, in practice?

To me, it means that in order to create a compelling customer experience (what other goals do you have?) you need to be able to present a quote easily, at the right time and with the right information, in order to maximise your conversion rate from red hot conversations to closed won deals.

Leaning into the methodology of: "freedom within a framework", a CPQ process allows the Revenue team to support Sales with tasks like:

• Selecting the right combination of products for a particular prospect
• Appropriate and timely discounting
• Handling approvals

And a lot more besides.

This is 100% a process that needs to be supported by your people and platforms (alignment, adoption...) and it was exciting therefore to learn about HubSpot's recent (OK, it was in March '22) addition to their native Quote Software, specifically the ability to create and use customized quote templates.

Staying true to HubSpot's "Crafted Not Cobbled" mantra, custom quote templates leverage the same underlying systems as CMS Hub. This means that a suitably experienced developer can now build fully-branded experiences, right in your existing portal.

The further benefit of this is direct alignment with data in your CRM - e.g. Contacts, Deals and Product information.

Thus, my "minimum input, maximum output" permaculture approach to Revenue Operations is alive and well in the process of CPQ!

Platforms

Having egregiously espoused a platform in the process portion, I'll keep this part brief for this month.

I do however, want to go a little bit leftfield.

The fantastic team at UserTesting offers a platform that promises to let you: "experience what your customers experience".

And I think that if we were all to spend just a little more time actually speaking to our customers, researching their perceptions, reactions and responses to our businesses and brands; then just maybe, we could all do a little better.

And we could help make the world a better place.

Well, perhaps I've preached enough for this month's RevOps Roundup. As always, I hope there's been at least one takeaway for you here: be it a new thought leader to follow, a complementary process for your team to review, or a value-adding platform you may wish to explore.

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