• Settling the RevOps definition debate
• How RevOps can help your business
• Is a “RevOps professional” really a thing?

What is RevOps?

Missing a Common Framework

Some tasks are very challenging: splitting an atom and climbing Mount Everest are good examples. A third addition to this list could be describing what Revenue Operations (RevOps) is to someone outside of the field. For many RevOps professionals, answering the inevitable “so what do you do for a living?” can be an exercise in futility akin to describing calculus to a Kindergartner.

Lack of Common Definition/Language=Problems

While defining and describing RevOps accurately is important, understanding why there’s a need to define and describe it correctly is also highly beneficial. The mission of RevPartners, for example, is to democratize revenue operations. When RevOps is accessible to everyone, more people will understand and execute it well. For this to happen, it is necessary to have a common framework and language. It is also crucial to have a universally accepted and adopted definition of RevOps.

Due to the lack of a common framework/language/definition, the following problems have emerged:

• Widespread definitions of RevOps that are far too theoretical in nature
• With the current guides that exist, we don’t have a way to make decisions
• There is not a way to connect strategy and models with tactics
• Can’t prioritize what’s important and not important
• Without a common language, it is difficult to communicate value (e.g. the example above regarding how to explain RevOps to someone outside of the industry)
• It is very hard to upskill as a RevOps pro

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Assessing the Problem

Many people think revenue operations is a new thing, and, as a result, there has been a rush to define it. As an industry, we’ve done a poor job of it, which has led to confusion. So let’s first start out by defining what revenue operations is.

RevOps Ain’t New

Before defining RevOps, it’s important to understand that while the term “RevOps” may be new, the actual process of revenue operations is not. Before “RevOps” became a hashtag on LinkedIn, companies were still making billions of dollars. The industry created the term, the term didn’t create the industry.

Poor RevOps Definitions

Here’s a fun exercise: Type “RevOps'' into Google and continue clicking each search hit until you find a repeated definition.

You might want to pop a bag or two of popcorn for this one. You’re going to see lots of “alignment”, “silos are bad”, “it’s a business function” and “getting marketing and sales on the same page”, just never in the same order and often worded in an increasingly intricate manner.

When you crown SEO as the king, these are the rules you live under. Although many of these definitions touch on common pain points in the trade, and therefore have a tendency to resonate positively in one way or another with many RevOps professionals, they are simply not accurate.

The problem with nearly every one of these “definitions” is that they are describing a desired outcome; they are explaining what revenue operations done well looks like. The actual meaning of the term RevOps is never fully fleshed out in these interpretations of the word.

A Desired Outcome is Not a Definition

As an example of how these proposed definitions fall short, consider what a good response would be to the question, “what is hockey?” The correct response is not “scoring goals.” Scoring goals is an in-state objective; scoring goals is what hockey done well looks like.

“Scoring goals” does not explain, in any way, what hockey actually is to someone completely unfamiliar with the sport. In a similar fashion, proclaiming RevOps as “the unifying of your internal operations” does not actually convey the meaning of the term, but rather a desired outcome.

A Definition that Works

Sometimes, the best way to define a word is to define what it is not. RevOps is NOT:

• New
• Alignment
• A methodology
• A mindset or “way of thinking”
• Something a person/company can start or stop (any company attempting to create revenue is “doing RevOps”...the only question is whether you’re doing it well or poorly)

So what is RevOps, then? Very simply, RevOps is the science of sustainable revenue growth. RevOps seeks to accomplish the following:

• Replicate and repeat revenue growth
• Uncover the process of how revenue teams can teach, measure, repeat, improve, explain and apply growth strategies to the full revenue cycle
• Identify tools and behaviors that show how you’re collecting, synthesizing, and disseminating revenue data

The above definition works because it:

• Is rooted in science, not jargon
• Treats RevOps as something that can be studied, repeated, and properly leveraged
• Can take RevOps from theory to action

This is RevOps.

So What Does a RevOps Pro Do?

When the dreaded, “So what do you do for a living?” comes up, you can confidently respond with, “I am a student of revenue data and I help companies win more revenue through studying and applying statistical analysis where I can help them replicate and repeat revenue growth.” Simple.

The Rise of RevOps

The Promise of RevOps

Why is RevOps the New “Thing”?

RevOps. Almost no one used this word 5 years ago. Why and how has it become so popular? Although organizations have been doing revenue operations for countless numbers of years, the term itself, “revenue operations”, sounds like something your grandfather did while wearing a business suit and shiny shoes. No one really cared about “revenue operations.”

RevOps, on the other hand, sounds cool. It sounds fresh. It sounds like something you can do in fashionably ripped skinny jeans and a graphic tee while wearing custom earbuds.

Beyond that, though, it is the promise of RevOps that explains how it came to prominence. Studies have shown that RevOps produces the following:

• 15% increase in profitability
• 15% increase in sales productivity
• 19% increase in speed of growth
• 71% increase in stock performance
• 100% increase in digital marketing ROI

The Growth of RevOps: Search and Job Listings

When a Word Isn't Just a Word Anymore

“RevOps'' is definitely hot right now. It’s so hot, in fact, that it has even made “revenue” cool. It’s one thing for a term to become popular; it’s quite another thing for a term to become so influential as to cause a change in the titles of company executives:

• No one wants to be a Chief Sales Officer; they want to be a Chief Revenue Officer
• VP Sales Operations? Nah. VP Revenue Operations
• Good luck finding a Director of Sales Operations. Overwhelmingly, they are now Directors of Revenue Operations

Customer = Good; Post-Customer = Great

Why all the name changes? The rise of RevOps has caused people to realize there is more to think about than just the selling motion of closed won contracts. There is also the revenue that happens post-customer because that is where profitability occurs with renewals, cross sells, and upsells.

RevOps: A Product of Change

The idea of executing RevOps well has increased in demand due to both the promise of increased profitability/productivity/performance and the awareness that revenue is generated from more than just the initial sale.

Furthermore, though, the rise of RevOps can be attributed to changes in society and how the preferences of customers have evolved. What are those changes and customer evolutions?

Internet Access = BIG Changes

The Internet has changed everything. With specific respect to consumers, it has altered consumption patterns and affected how information is gathered and digested. As a result, companies have lost control of the buyer journey and are no longer involved from beginning to end in the process.

With more broadband access available, customer self-education is on the rise. By some estimates, 71% of the buyer journey is completed before a company reaches out to an individual.

The NEW Buyer Journey

It has become borderline impossible for companies to understand where the buyer is in their journey. Where there once was once a straight line, there is now a squiggly hexagon. For example, the downloading of an ebook may have, at one point, automatically signified the transition of a stranger into an MQL. Not anymore.

Today, those if/then actions are not as reliable. Non-attributable marketing activity (dark funnels) have muddied the waters to the point where someone may listen to a podcast, but not request a service or product for years after.

Data Overload = A More Complicated Business World

Data has become heavily democratized and there is a ton of it:

• Every email is a data point
• Every phone call is a data point
• Every everything is a data point

This has led to an increased amount of tools in the marketplace that are capturing people’s data. In turn, business has become more difficult to do. Businesses have had to shift from a make-big-purchases-key type of ownership model, to a subscription (and even consumption) model.

This requires an intricate understanding of the full funnel, which is something many businesses are not prepared for. One of the promises of RevOps is an ability to see, understand, and synthesize this increase in data.

SaaS has Been the Gas in the Engine of the RevOps Machine

RevOps has also gained an additional boost from SaaS companies. SaaS companies need TAM’s and so they have been able to dramatically increase their sales by helping businesses navigate this new, more complicated world by promising to help them employ revenue operations strategies. Businesses are creating departments en masse for RevOps and they need revenue stacks, which SaaS companies of course can provide.

RevOps is seen as a one-stop solution to all of these intricate problems that companies must solve. RevOps has benefited from confusion surrounding the buyer journey, massive amounts of data that companies must be able organize and leverage, and the ability of SaaS companies to proffer RevOps as the solution to an ever-changing business world.

RevOps Framework

What Does a RevOps Professional Do?

Firefighter. Teacher. Nurse. RevOps professional. Almost everyone in society would be able to describe in detail what the job description of the first three professions listed would entail. Very, very few people would be able to describe the fourth. So what does a RevOps professional actually do?

A RevOps professional is one who can forecast and build a G2M (go-to-market). This means:

• Creating the TAM (total addressable market)
• Creating buyer (marketing) personas
• Creating the messaging
• Creating Excel documents to determine what you’re hiring in sales, what you're hiring in marketing, and what your budget is
• Ability to read a P & L
• Knowing what accounts payable are
• Knowing what accounts receivable are

In short, a RevOps professional is one who can affect the success or failure of companies in a more repeatable fashion.

The Problematic Proliferation of Pillars and the Bad News About Best Practices

Mo’ Pillars, Mo’ Problems

RevOps can get very theoretical, very quickly. Case in point: Google is flush with endless information on “The 3 Pillars of RevOps”, “The 4 Pillars of RevOps”, “The 5 Areas of RevOps”, and “The 6 Pillars of RevOps”. While the information contained within these “pillars methodologies” may be valuable to understand within a given circumstance, they are much more useful in thinking about revenue operations, than actually creating or doing revenue operations.

Best Practices Aren’t Always…Best

In conjunction with this, “best practices” and “rules of thumb” recommendations can also be useful in specifically applied circumstances, but without a deep understanding of the model that you’re working in, these recommendations can be destructive and wreak havoc on your CRM.

As an example, autocreate renewal deals are not inherently bad, but without having all the answers to specific questions (When do you create it? What are you capturing? Who owns renewals and upsells? Is it affecting a lifecycle post-customer? etc…) applying it to your specific instance is difficult at best and impossible (and destructive) at worst.

What is needed is a new framework. A framework that allows us to systematically begin to create a repeatable process for RevOps.

A Complete Framework

Foundation. Structure. Guide. A framework is all of these things. It offers an outline for how to do things in a reliable and repeatable way. For that to occur, there are certain attributes that must be in place each time. A RevOps framework is no exception.

4 Concepts of a RevOps Framework

• Specific ingredients
  • Present every single time
  • Models (business, GTM, data, mathematical, growth) and tools (tech stack)
• A specific order
  • A deviation from this order means a result you will not like
• Repeatable results
  • ID the business model
  • ID the GTM
  • ID the data model
  • Select tool stack
  • Configure CRM
  • ID exponential and compound levers
  • Prioritize and iterate
• A common language, here’s when we’re hiring them
  • We can all talk the same way

Who Does RevOps?

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

In recent years, analytics has taken over baseball (and other sports as well). The movie Moneyball is a true story! The Director of Analytics (Sabermetrics) for a baseball team is not, however, the general manager. The role of the analyst is to help the GM make informed decisions regarding which players to acquire. In a similar fashion, the RevOps professional(s) in a company will help influence the prioritization of initiatives and spend.

Does Your Name Tag Say RevOps on it?

The new popularity of RevOps has given rise to the mythical “RevOps professional”. Who is this person exactly? The RevOps professionals in a company may or may not have the words RevOps or revenue in their job title (title independent), but they will:

• Own the forecasting model
• Be the one saying, “here’s what revenue we’re hitting and based on that, here’s who we’re hiring and when we’re hiring them”
• Be the one who knows the money being spent
• Know the models
• Know the GTM motions
• Help prioritize initiatives

This could be the CFO, the CEO, the VP of Sales, anyone really. The title is not important. Anyone who is doing the above items is doing RevOps and worth their weight in gold.

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