What is RevOps and should you be doing it?

A little while ago I was at an event and speaking to a couple of people that had RevOps roles in their team. RevOps is still not widely used, so I was keen to hear what their talent were actually doing. A little bit of data analysis was the response, so I guess even people using RevOps still aren’t really sure what to do with it.?

For an approach that Gartner predicts 75% of the highest growth companies in the world will deploy by 2025, it’s got some work to do in the next three years.?

What is RevOps?

RevOps, or revenue operations is the latest iteration of how B2B businesses are using their commercial teams. RevOps is designed to break down the silos between sales, marketing and customer success to create a unified commercial engine.?

There are both internal and external benefits to this approach. Internally it means data is better used, there’s less friction between the varying teams, and above all, there’s a coordinated and collaborative responsibility for revenues. From an external perspective, the client or customer experiences a much more seamless customer journey and consistency of message.?

Why has this approach emerged? Businesses have much more data than previously, and although businesses have questioned the effectiveness of marketing and sales since the dawn of time, it’s now much more possible for teams to really understand what is working and what’s not. The ingredients are in many ways the same as they were before, but the process and approach to generating revenues have shifted significantly.

Structure of the team

RevOps is still a misunderstood role in my opinion. Its pathway was through sales operations and sales enablement, and doesn’t replace the Chief Revenue Officer, but rather often sits alongside this role, or if not, the CFO.?

The role needs to be across a lot. RevOps needs to have sight of marketing, sales, customer success, talent and finance to be able to really coherently drive revenues. It’s a role that will need to be enabled by tools which help with data analysis and data-led decision making. Ultimately revenue operations will be reliant on the recruitment, retention and empowerment of brilliant talent, so your RevOps role(s) will need a strong focus on people.?

Should you be moving towards a revenue operations model? The short answer to this question is yes. It doesn’t need to look the same way for every business, but the idea of having a single revenue strategy across the business with sales, marketing and customer success underpinning it will no doubt bring joy to founders of scaling businesses.