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I am nearing the end of my first year here at OpenEnvoy, a company providing the market with a focused AP automation solution featuring extraction for all data formats and N-way match (any way match). As I reflect on my first three quarters at this company, I am grateful for their forethought in investing in Revenue Operations (RevOps).
My background is working at agencies fixing broken CRM instances for companies ramping up to IPO, projects best described in one word: pricey. I was a RevOps professional with a Marketing Ops job title. And when I officially went for a RevOps job title, I was surprised to continue hearing a similar theme: "your experience is impressive, but we're looking for someone with Revenue Operations experience."
When I had my first conversation with our CEO and Co-Founder, Matthew Tillman, I asked him a question, and his answer assured me I had found the right company. The question was, "With all the impressive titles in the go-to-market (GTM) space, why invest in RevOps at such an early stage?"
His answer was, "Because I'll never know if my GTM function is any good without Revenue Operations." I had the skills they wanted and because they understood the value RevOps can bring to an organization, I knew OpenEnvoy was where I wanted to be.
Revenue Ops streamlines communication and efficiency for all revenue-generating teams by introducing new tools and processes. Before OpenEnvoy, during my time fixing CRMs, I regularly saw companies spend over $100K on a CRM clean-up that could have been avoided by implementing best practices from the beginning.
Companies with strong RevOps teams are ahead of their competition as recent data provided by Forrester finds that those with a RevOps function saw a 71% better stock performance than their peers. They also benefited from increased sales productivity and customer satisfaction, 30% reductions in GTM expenses, and 19% faster growth.
In this article, I plan to help you understand why RevOps is an essential hire, how you hire for a RevOps role, and how you can evaluate your RevOps team once you hire them. We will also highlight how investing in RevOps can save your organization money.
What does RevOps do?
Reporting
Revenue Operations can be defined as the reporting arm of the GTM function. The primary goal of any RevOps team should be to ensure the seamless flow of clean and accurate data from one department of the GTM function to another, above to leadership and beyond to the entire company.
GTM Consultants
Being so close to the data of various departments of the GTM function enables the RevOps team to see how each part functions separately and together. As well as allowing them to identify what is not working and what you are not doing.
Strategic consulting requires more than just looking at reports on a dashboard. Your RevOps team should listen to sales calls, interview prospects and customers, read every marketing email, and conduct surveys of your subscribers.
Operational Support
RevOps works closely with Marketing, Sales, and Service ops to ensure the solutions serve their intended purposes and document all processes appropriately. In the case of a smaller company, Revenue Operations may be fulfilling the role of Marketing, Sales, and Service Ops until the other roles are in place.
CRM Administration
IT and Engineering are great at setting systems up, ensuring systems are secure, and creating rules for users to follow. However, in terms of providing visibility and easy access to data, RevOps has a closer relationship with pain points along with the skills and knowledge to create a data flow that can be understood at the user level.
They have a close relationship with the Marketing, Sales, and Service teams, so they understand the audience, challenges, and priorities. As a result, RevOps is the best team to manage Lifecycle Stages, Deal Pipelines, Lead Scoring, ICP, default object views, and field names.
Why is RevOps important?
GTM leaders make strategic decisions based on data. The individual departments, marketing sales, and service are focused on doing the best work they can to serve the company. Unfortunately, the individuals on those teams can be too close to the issue to conduct unbiased, objective reporting. Those teams can also work in silos and fall behind in prioritizing and ensuring data is easily accessible to other departments.
Revenue Operations focuses on the growth of revenue. These professionals want to see all pipelines grow and close deals at or above expected rates. Therefore, the RevOps team will not complain about junk MQLs, MQLs not turning into opportunities, or the lack of data in the handoff from Sales to Service. Instead, RevOps will identify these problems as bottlenecks in the process with a holistic reporting approach and propose strategic course corrections to alleviate those bottlenecks.
Messy data costs money. It is not the priority of your sales team to log all calls, meetings, and emails. Marketing is not going to prioritize subtracting disqualified leads from the MQL count. Service has no interest in telling Sales about upsold features clients would have bought net new. Revenue Operations cares about these data points and will prioritize accurately capturing and reporting them.
How do you hire for a RevOps role?
Revenue Operations require a wide variety of skills and knowledge. For example, someone with relevant Sales and Service experience with a passion for Marketing operations would be ideal. On the other hand, someone with relevant experience in Marketing, Sales, and Service and a functional understanding of object relationships and fields is a great place to start.
How to evaluate a RevOps team?
The goal is in the name. Evaluating your Revenue Operations team should be the same as assessing the operational efficiency of your revenue engine. Is revenue growing at or beyond the rate you expected? If not, can your RevOps team accurately explain why and provide solutions to get you there?
The other part is qualitative. Do your departments feel Revenue Operations is a valuable partner to their department? Do they actively contribute strategic guidance and reliable reporting to each team?
How to save money by investing in Revenue Operations?
Revenue Operations' function is to identify where your organization can boost revenue. Whether it be identifying the most beneficial tools or partners, finding new revenue streams, or tweaking your Sales Pipeline to reduce the average deal to close time.
You will save money by having reliable data. A study conducted by Experian found that 27% of revenue is wasted because of inaccurate or incomplete data. In my time fixing CRMs, I regularly saw companies spend over $100K on a CRM clean-up that could have been entirely avoided by implementing best practices from the beginning.
OpenEnvoy recently conducted a study that found $42M in duplicate billings out of a study of $500M in spend. That is 8.5% over 12 months. To see how you can save money and see a 32X ROI with OpenEnvoy, contact us today.
