Revenue Operations (RevOps): Best Practices to Grow Your Business

The term “revenue operations” (RevOps) has had multiple definitions. Some organizations view it as a title change, others as an organizational structure or a software category. None of these quite capture its impact. 

Revenue operations is an end-to-end model that unifies customer engagement across functions and integrates people, processes and technology across the business to:  

• Operate more predictably and efficiently

• Collect data across the entire revenue process

• View the data through a trusted, communal source

The goal of revenue operations is to fuel data-led decisions and automate workflows to optimize and increase revenue production. RevOps succeeds in this by gathering a coalition of GTM stakeholders whose functions remain separate but whose operations are integrated and aligned to perform their specific revenue-related tasks. 

The revenue operations model delivers the following benefits:

• Efficiency. An interconnected, fully visible revenue process supports the full customer life cycle, allowing you to pinpoint and address any roadblocks throughout the process.

• Predictability. Key milestones that drive the revenue models are assigned ownership, benchmarked and monitored to ensure consistent performance.

• Elasticity. Revenue operations supports multiple routes to market. These routes can be dynamically scaled up or down as needed in response to shifting priorities.

• Resiliency. Revenue operations allows you to proactively identify potential revenue disruptions and make early adjustments to avoid them.

Sales leaders play a pivotal leadership role in revenue operations. To prepare your organization for the revenue operations journey, focus on the following steps to streamline RevOps:

• Map buyer journeys and customer life cycles with a focus on customer awareness and empathy.

• Identify routes to market that will support these customers and their journeys.

• Align GTM stakeholders on key revenue-generating milestones and metrics (i.e., the customer life cycle).

• Identify internal workflows required to support the customer life cycle.

• Establish data and analytics governance to deliver on the promise of revenue-influencing decisions.

• Improve data literacy among stakeholders who use analytics.

Companies with advanced-maturity RevOps functions are twice as likely to exceed revenue goals and 2.3 times as likely to exceed profit goals compared to companies with intermediate or developing maturity.

A mature RevOps function enables better GTM operational alignment and integration to ensure customer centricity and seamless supplier support. It secures GTM teams’ visibility into the entire sales pipeline and equips them with insights and tools to address issues in real time. This allows the front-end sales team to focus on core selling tasks — such as engaging new prospects and closing new business. 

Mature RevOps also equips marketing with key data and insights across revenue-generating functions. This helps marketing create consistent, high-quality messaging and a value-driven brand perception, run successful customer experience initiatives and improve overall customer engagement. 

Mature RevOps also benefits customer service, with better focus on customer needs and channel strategy, which improves the likelihood of upselling and retention.

The RevOps maturity model consists of three stages:

The developing maturity stage consists of end-to-end revenue processes defined with functional processes and platforms still in use and growing cross-functional alignment.

The intermediate maturity stage consists of well-defined revenue processes with moderate levels of data sharing and customer understanding. This stage provides broad cross-functional support or sophisticated customer understanding but limited cross-functional support.

The advanced maturity stage consists of end-to-end revenue processes mapped to the customer buying journey and supported by sophisticated levels of data centralization and customer understanding. This stage provides broad cross-functional support.

If your organization already has a RevOps model in place, carefully determine where you are on the RevOps maturity journey to determine how to move forward. By ensuring a smooth transition between RevOps maturity stages, you can reduce the risk of disrupting revenue-generating activities and wasting precious resources as business conditions evolve. 

Some questions to consider as you determine your next steps include: 

• Does my RevOps vision align with GTM strategy?

• What key actions and resources can ensure alignment among sales, marketing and customer success?

• What is the level of quality and availability of RevOps data across the customer life cycle?

• Which teams will make up RevOps, and what will each team be responsible for?

• What are the highest-priority use cases for RevOps?