How RevOps best practices unify, amplify and transform the revenue game for businesses

RevOps best practices unify scattered revenue generation actions and customer facing functions and make them fire in the same direction, compounding strengths and revolutionizing outcomes.

We bring you a compact, 360 degree guide on revops and revops best practices explaining:

• The rewards hack that can 10X RevOps outcomes
• Clarification of confusing terms in revenue 
• What are some of the big RevOps best practices
• Why is RevOps important in modern business
• What is RevOps

RevOps, short for Revenue Operations, is the organizational practice of strategically aligning people, processes and technologies that directly impact customer experience and revenue in business. The goal of RevOps is to create an integrated and cohesive revenue framework that optimizes departmental strengths, closes gaps and flywheels growth momentum. RevOps brings multiple GTM (Go-To-Market) stakeholders on a common plank to view data through a common, trusted source – baking speed, predictability and resilience into the company’s revenue models. Every employee carries valuable insights and opinions to offer around the customer, and RevOps makes sure each is recorded and heard. Hubspot defines RevOps as the mindset, practice, and manifestation of unifying an organization’s internal operations. 

While some companies have separate RevOps departments with altogether distinct teams, RevOps can also be an inferred, notional construct, and serve as an ‘interpretive lens’ for decision makers. Which means employees in sales, operations, customer service and marketing continue to discharge their regular duties in their respective roles round the year – while are, simultaneously, examined collectively when the company needs to understand revenue generation as a whole.

What is the difference between RevOps and Sales Ops?

Both SalesOps (Sales Operations) and RevOps focus on fine tuning revenue generation as a tactic or process. However, while SalesOps has a limited scope restricted to the performance and dynamics of the sales team only, RevOps takes a broader, more holistic view that spans several departments and functions.

What is the difference between RevOps and CRM?

CRM is a tech platform used to centralize, control and manage customer data. RevOps, on the other hand, is a framework that may utilize CRM data (along with other marketing tools and platforms) to perform its primary task, which is to optimize revenue growth via strategic cross-connection of all customer impacting departments. In summary, CRM is a tool that supports and empowers effective implementation of RevOps.  

Why is RevOps important?

The backstory

The need for RevOps in business arises from the growing unpredictability of customer behavior, the rise of business models like SaaS where the customer relationship starts instead of ending with every new subscription (a shift from won-and-done to win-and-retain), and the increasing complexity in operations and calculations resulting from the emergence of new technologies, tools and practices.

The solution

RevOps begins with the premise that there needs to be better sharing of information within the organization. RevOps best practices acknowledge that data systems, tech stacks, platforms, people and processes are far more effective when they fire in lockstep instead of operating in ‘Lonewolf Mode’. RevOps best practices solve for the bottleneck by aligning marketing, support, customer success and sales (and, depending on the organization, even operations, product and finance) on a single, uninterrupted, end-to-end process that is

1. Based on a holistic, big picture view of the customer journey and provides a single source of truth.
2. Captures the company’s true North – Revenue Generation –with unambiguous clarity and an actionable code.
3. Creates a common ground for teams and resources to combine strengths and develop growth paths symbiotically.

Why keep them separate when they are stronger and smarter together?

That’s the simple question RevOps, as a discipline, was born to answer. RevOps best practices play on the fundamental interconnectedness of different revenue generating functions to build interoperability between the moving parts, turn handoffs between customer centric departments seamless, and unlock powerful synergies along the value chain.  

Following RevOps best practices enables organizations to create a silo-free culture of  cross-functional collaboration that greases friction, minimizes guesswork and ensures everyone is speaking the same language of revenue. Consistency in KPIs, technology and messaging at every step puts an end to fragmented customer experiences and missed opportunities. With every initiative now pulling in the same direction, the organization’s revenue flywheel gets a co-ordinated thrust.

It’s no coincidence that public companies with a dedicated RevOps function have witnessed 71% higher stock performance relative to counterparts without one.

When is the right time to implement RevOps in your organization?

As a template, gameplan and mindset that simplifies revenue analysis for leaders by helping them understand the activities that directly and indirectly influence it, RevOps can be beneficial for any organization in any industry at any stage of growth. That said, here are some situations where following RevOps best practices can pay particularly rich dividends.

1. When investments, targets and results across functions like sales, marketing, customer service, operations, finance and others don’t match up - and you can’t quite explain why.
2. When departments don’t see eye to eye, transparency and accountability is in freefall, and organizational culture is taking a beating.
3. When data confirms what your instincts have been yelling for a while: That your existing teams and resources are capable of much more.

Impact of RevOps best practices

RevOps best practices ensures RevOps – a relatively new function with potentially opaque mandates and confusing responsibilities - is done right. Directly and indirectly, it can lift key business ‘health parameters’ like productivity, profitability, culture, resilience, stakeholder confidence, brand equity and reputation. Here are some telling stats.

• Companies deploying RevOps best practices experienced 3x faster revenue growth than those that didn’t. (Forrester)
• Businesses that aligned technology, process and people achieved up to 28% more profitability. (Forrester)
• Organizations that invest in RevOps best practices show a 10-20% growth in sales productivity. (Boston Consulting Group)
• Organizations that pivoted to a RevOps framework experienced a 15 to 20% spike in internal customer satisfaction. (Boston Consulting Group)
• Businesses prioritizing RevOps best practices have 30% lower GTM (Go-To-Market) related expenses.
• Tighter synchronicity across GTM functions allows organizations to enjoy a 100-200% increase in ROI on digital marketing investments and initiatives. (Boston Consulting Group)
• 21% of organizations witnessed a perceptible enhancement in alignment and productivity across their GTM teams after setting up a RevOps function. (Revenue.io)

Benefits of following RevOps best practices in modern business

Adopting RevOps best practices offers refreshing new opportunities for businesses to readjust their sails, supercharge profit strategies, and create room for continuous evolution. RevOps best practices:

1. Ensure all customer facing departments are facing the same direction.
2. Unlock the full potential of existing systems, tech and processes.
3. Add efficiency and predictability to sales planning and revenue forecasting through finer control, enhanced transparency and smarter decision making.
4. Fill gaps in GTM with a better understanding of an increasingly entwined and complex business landscape.
5. Help create scientific KPIs, suitable compliances and outcome-first processes for customer facing functions.
6. Help respond to change in real time, thanks to agile data monitoring, a fluid structure and swift inter-departmental communication.
7. Take sales enablement to the next level with high quality customer data, competitor information and market insights.
8. Make improvements easy with a modular, assembled structure that allows isolation and inspection of different parts separately.
9. Build happier customers with a unified customer journey and a consistent customer experience (CX) from start to end. Research shows 86% of buyers are open to shelling out more dough for superior customer experience, while 81% of organizations point to CX as their true competitive edge.
10. Enable better financial outcomes across the entire business cycle via end-to-end optimization.

Fulfilled customer journeys, a 360 degree  approach and predictable growth leads to more sales, revenue and profit. 

How to implement revops in your business?

Here are some RevOps best practices for deploying an effective revenue generation model in your own organization.

Create a common vision, a shared roadmap and a synergized system.

• RevOps is a team sport. It may be necessary to impress upon members who are set in their ‘separate ways’ that the playground has changed.
• Articulate the shared goals and strategies to scale brand new peaks, and build conviction and trust by explaining the rationale behind each of them.
• Make sure goals are S.M.A.R.T: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound.
• Clearly communicate the benefits of the new approach.
• Involve teams in the planning process if possible to add transparency, earn allegiance and make participation spontaneous.
• Build foundational bridges and channels that make it easy for departments to communicate, collaborate and contribute.
• Develop your own RevOps Best Practices Playbook by documenting best practices.
• Review manpower capabilities, plug skill gaps and restructure teams based on functional demands and strategic needs.
• Hire new blood if necessary as you clearly define responsibilities and roles.
• Regularly monitor progress to address grievances and accelerate  outcomes.  

Track the customer lifecycle.

Done right, RevOps connects data from marketing, service and sales to generate a 360-degree view of the customer before, during and after the transaction. This facilitates an unbroken buyer path that’s organically joined from touchpoint to touchpoint, and hitchlessly transitions from department to department. To arrive at this ideal situation though, teams need to be right on top of the consumer journey. Every habit must be noted, every emotion coded, every mood measured. The task is to establish a holistic picture of the target demographic, decode personas and behaviors, identify big and small touchpoints, forge bidirectional feedback loops, optimize interactions iteratively and build an always-on stream of data.

Make data the hero.

Data, and in particular customer data, is the life blood of business. For RevOps, it is everything. According to McKinsey Global Institute experts, data driven organizations are 23 times more likely to win new customers than counterpeers. 65% of B2B sales organizations plan to transition from intuition driven to data based decision making by 2026, as per Gartner.

• The whole idea of RevOps rests on ‘information alliances’ between organizational rank and file. This includes data around customers, as well as on products, quotes, contracts, orders, invoices, payments and so on.
• If you want your RevOps initiative to be successful from the get-go therefore, turn data into the cornerstone of your culture.
• Start by institutionalizing robust data governance frameworks that instruct on how data must be curated, benchmarked, stored, accessed, reported, leveraged and harnessed across functions, while staying mindful of ethical considerations and legal compliance.
• Link underlying systems, processes, platforms, records, assets and protocols to facilitate seamless interdepartmental collaboration and visibility of data.
• Ensure data flow and reciprocity across departments.
• Build data literacy by training members towards effective data management methodologies to ensure the recency, accuracy and integrity of data.
• Empower teams with relevant tools and stacks so that they can become effective data custodians.  
• Encourage a habit of fail-fast experimentation; Break things, understand what’s working (and what isn’t), and move on.
• Finally, remember that all change begins messy; Convert possible initial resistance into wilful acceptance by driving adoption top-down with active and empathetic participation of the leadership.
• Don’t forget to recognize and reward the efforts of employees who are quick adopters and act as change influencers in the company.

 Reward revops needle-movers with XOXODAY

Optimizing for RevOps is a lot simpler when you optimize for the folks who are leading change, first. Incentive teams across sales, marketing, operations, finance and customer support towards achieving excellence in areas that are critical to the success of your RevOps program, like co-operation, collaboration or contribution. Not just teams - XOXODAY’s comprehensive incentive and rewards suite covers launch promos, marketing campaigns and customer facing ideas too. Spanning 10 Mn+ options across 1 Mn+ merchants, XOXODAY’S secure, scalable and enterprise grade solutions have been moving the needle for global names like Pepsi, VISA, Shell, HP, Siemens and others. To know how it can work for your company, book a demo at LINK or simply write in at EMAIL. 

 Pick a powerful RevOps platform to amplify and automate.

The right digital platform can be a game changer for your RevOps program. It can revolutionize the way you centralize, streamline and optimize activities, and rally GTM teams seamlessly around common insights, KPIs and strategies. Honeywell leverages the opportunity-scoring and forecasting solutions of intuitive platforms for faster benefit realization. A great platform provides vital support to key RevOps tasks like alignment, collaboration, customer understanding,  analytics, forecasting and automation. Consider the priorities, limitations and opportunities of various departments – while adding market research on various options - to arrive at a consensus on the kind of platform that will work for everyone. 

Leverage AI

Dell engaged more deeply with high value prospects by switching to automating lead prioritization with Artificial Intelligence.  Balancing (A) ahead-of-the-curve technologies like AI for functions like analysis, automation and scaling, with (B) human competencies in areas like strategy innovation, creative problem solving and customer empathy, can ensure an optimal approach to RevOps and facilitate adoption of RevOps best practices.

Measure success with strategic KPIs

KPIs and milestones are essential for driving accuracy, sustainability and effectiveness in RevOps, and are a key cog in RevOps best practices. KPIs create a universal lingo for RevOps teams, help spot deficiencies and weak links, enable re-adjustments and ensure targets are being hit at the desired frequency.

• As you build your KPIs, stay aligned to the overarching business objectives and organizational journey.
• Make sure to have key revenue drivers of your business firmly in the cross-hairs as you design each step and phase.
• Refer to the customer journey map whenever in doubt.
• Articulate your chosen KPIs with the right targets and benchmarks to ensure assessment is legit and accurate.
• Enable cross-departmental access to reports and dashboards so that they can review the relevance of every KPI, and also stay in line.
• Use a blend of leading (next) and lagging (previous) indicators to keep a tab over both future performance and on-going initiatives with roots in the past.
• Monitor progress, measure outcomes and tweak the nuts and bolts to keep improving your RevOps framework continuously.

What are some of the important KPIs in RevOps best practices?

The success of your RevOps program depends on how closely performance is analyzed and evaluated. Wedging in the right KPIs at the right places and stages can help you unlock the true power of RevOps best practices.

Some metrics to consider for your organization’s RevOps program are: 

• Sales cycle time
• Forecast accuracy
• Sales pipeline velocity
• Click through rate
• Average lead response time
• MQLs generated
• Taxa de conversão
• Operational efficiency
• Adoption rate
• Dimensão média das transacções
• Customer acquisition rate
• Customer churn
• Renewals, referrals and upsells
• Customer satisfaction
• Net promoter score
• Customer acquisition cost

LTV:CAC - A measure of overall profitability of customer acquisition; the ratio between average customer lifetime value and customer acquisition cost.

CAC Payback : The time it takes for the business to recover the cost of acquiring a new customer. 

Customer lifetime value.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

Net Revenue Retention Rate.

What are some of the key challenges to adopting RevOps best practices in an organization?

• Silos structures and ‘lone wolf’ mindset.
• Legacy processes, systems and practices.
• Absence of management buy-in or leadership support.
• Inability to prudently design effective, frictionless workflows and communication networks.
• Lack of quality data management.
• Lack of the right platform, tools and stacks.
• Flawed measurement, analysis and judgment of performance.
• Not enough knowledgeable minds or trained hands.
• Inability to hit the balance between machines & AI on one hand, and intuition & experience on the other.

***10X YOUR REVOPS CHAIN WITH XOXODAY’S DOMINO EFFECT.

SIMPLIFY COMMISSIONS WITH COMPASS

While RevOps represents a motley crew that’s drawn across multiple roles and departments, Sales – as its most customer facing function – remains the key piece in the jigsaw. XOXODAY Compass is designed to elevate sales teams to a whole new level of performance with a holistic approach to commissions management that significantly bumps up sales velocity, productivity and revenue. That’s not all. Compass fundamentally fine tunes other functions as well. Here’s how.

OPERATIONS can replace manual labor – such as complex commissions and incentive calculations - with purpose built frameworks and automation.

FINANCE teams can stay on top of latest tax laws, fiscal regulations and other compliances, while effortlessly managing disparate revenue recognition models like ASC 606 and IFRS 15.  

HR can build, launch and manage strategic compensation and commissions plans in days, instead of weeks, with pre-built templates, top-notch transparency and on-time payouts.   

And finally, folks in SALES can up their game by monitoring personal progress in real time, accessing high quality insights on markets and customers, and crystal clear visibility into performance metrics, quota attainment rates and future earnings.

CLOSE MORE DEALS WITH PLUM

Everyone – be it customers, sales or channels – needs an extra motivation push to jump over the finish line. XOXODAY PLUM – the world’s largest AI enabled rewards marketplace - helps businesses bridge that all important last mile with personalized, innovative and automated rewards experiences. 

With thoughtful advantages like real time customization, deep localization, easy sync with tech systems and sticky gamification, XOXODAY PLUM powers consumer promotions, loyalty programs, channel incentives and payouts by delivering delight at scale in over 100 countries. With 10M+ reward options across 30+ categories to choose from, closing transactions can be a cinch. 

To deep dive into how XOXODAY’S strategic approach to RevOps can unlock unprecedented value for your company’s revenue initiatives, book a demo at LINK or simply write in at EMAIL.

***Take your revenue game higher by making smarter use of people, assets and processes. A combination of collaboration mindset, holistic systems and continuous rewards can drive transformational revenue outcomes for your business. The time to pivot, was yesterday.