How to Support RevOps So They Can Support You

“When revenue operations is done right, they can provide insights and the actions to foundationally change your sales process.”

If you’re like me, when you hear “operations,” you almost immediately tune out, or your eyes roll to the back of your head.

So why am I talking about it? 

Many Sales leaders and executives don’t often appreciate the revenue operations side of the business, and a lot of that has to do with not understanding what Revenue Operations can do for them and how it applies to the business on a larger scale.

There are two things RevOps does really well. The first is surface insights that make the organization better – aka more productive and profitable. As Sales leaders and execs, we usually look to RevOps as report generators and somewhat of a recommendation group, but they should be providing insights that look across the data of the entire revenue org and the process from marketing to sales to renewal. 

The second thing they do really well is not “recommendations” based on these cross-organization insights but the strategy that will make an impact.

If you’re thinking about why should I care about Revenue Operations? Why is it such a big deal? It’s because when done right, they can provide insights and the actions to foundationally change your sales process.

You may be thinking, isn’t this Sales leadership’s job? Sort of. Sales leadership should be a part of making sure the action plan gets carried through. But they should be spending more time with people and the people and business strategy whenever possible. 

So, my Sales leaders and execs, how can you support RevOps so they can better support you? By understanding these two things are what RevOps is best at, and working with them on the below step-by-step strategy to fixing the way you run your RevOps org today.

1. 1. Working from top down, then back to top
   2. The RevOps roadmap
   3. Managing requests
   4. The revision process

Related Content: Top 2 Ways to Increase Revenue Without Increasing Headcount in 2023

Recap: Revamp Your RevOps Strategy

The important bits:

• • 1:27 – There are two things that Revenue Operations does really well to make the organization better
  • 2:18 – When revenue operations is done right, they can provide insights and then the actions to foundationally change your sales process.
  • 3:45 – I’m going to give you a step-by-step process for fixing your RevOps org. Step one is do a deep dive from top down and then back to top.
  • 4:52 – There can only be one bottleneck.
  • 5:42 – Having a revenue operations roadmap to meticulously attack the bottleneck (and then the next) and requests from the frontline is absolutely critical.
  • 7:04 – The best-in-class revenue operations teams run their roadmap like a product.
  • 9:09 – You have to have a constant revision process. Steps to reset and revamp. At least every 60 days.
  • 10:19 – Most of us in Sales think of things in sprints, and then they’re fixed. The reality is that most of these processes are never truly done.

The step-by-step process for fixing your RevOps org

Step 1: Deep dive from top-down, then back to top

Step one is restart, revamp, revise your current strategy, or if you just have a list of to-dos, by doing a deep dive check-in from top down and then back to the top. 

What does that mean?

You need to be able to track what happens at every step of the process involving buyers and customers. This sounds obvious, but we’ve worked with companies that have hundreds of salespeople and companies that have two salespeople, and everyone has this issue. They can’t tell you exactly where they’re losing the majority of their business or potential business. So step one is really looking at the sales process. Start with senior people to identify their challenges and pain points and then go talk to frontline. What is being missed?

One of my favorite things to tell organizations is that there can only be one bottleneck or one priority. The rest are other projects to be done. Going top down, you should look at the holistic process, identify where you think the major bottleneck is, and then maybe some of the other culprits by looking bottoms-up. 

Related Content: 5 Reasons to Bring in Fractional Revenue Leadership

Step 2: The RevOps roadmap

After you’ve done these interviews, step two is to formalize the roadmap. It will keep you on track and allow you to meticulously attack the bottleneck, and when that bottleneck moves, you know what’s next.

Many RevOps organizations we talk to and work with are just taking inbound requests and doing, doing, doing, without evaluating the impact first. And then, they never really see the impact they want because they’re too busy dealing with one-off requests. 

A good revenue operations roadmap looks like a product development roadmap. The Head of RevOps should be seen as a Head of Product. They won’t decide every change that happens, and there will be little tweaks and bugs that need to be fixed, for sure, but they’re also saying no. They won’t derail the entire product to take on X when they have four other things that will have a greater impact. They may also say, if you can wait longer, they’ll solve seven other things with one solution. 

RevOps has to have a roadmap. I don’t care if you’re using Excel to start; you can use some basic product principles like LIFT on a scale from high to low and IMPACT on a scale from high to low to begin to triage. Or you can just Jira or Asana or the like. But best-in-class Revenue Operations teams run their roadmap like a product.

Step 3: Managing requests – stop saying yes

This brings me to step three. Stop saying yes and manage your requests. You can say, “Great idea. Let’s get that in a few weeks,” or next quarter. RevOps should never just take orders and not balance requests against the roadmap – a roadmap you’ve built with leadership.

It is very, very difficult to have a big impact or see the impact of a finished product if you keep saying yes to the wrong things. 

This is definitely a spot where I see where leadership can support RevOps as well. If you’re a larger organization where visibility is difficult but important, service agreements across groups can also help keep you working on the big picture, taking smaller requests, and keeping communication open. 

Step 4: The revision process 

Last but not least, step four is building in a revision process or multiple check-ins to the roadmap. You did the interviews, you built the roadmap, you said no and stayed on pace, but things are going to change, the bottleneck may not have been the bottleneck, or the bottleneck moved. 

Every 60 days is a good place to start, but if you can be more agile, look at the data and strategy in real-time, and make informed decisions, that’s even better. We often run into trouble in sales because we think of things in sprints, fix them, and think we’re done. The reality is, when it comes to the sales process, buyer behavior, and the technology behind these things, the work is never done. B2B sales is always evolving.

So step four is really repeating steps one through three and then repeating them again. This is how you’re going to revamp your RevOps strategy in 2023 and ensure you’re always ahead moving forward.

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