Hi Jo,
I’m hoping you can help me.
My executives tasked me with building out the Revenue Operations function at our company, and I’m not quite sure where to start.
Should I be talking to my peers across sales and marketing? Or should I be doing a lot of external research?
I’m not even sure that all my colleagues know what RevOps is—and I really want to make sure they’re bought into the changes that will come down the line.
What should I do first?
Thank you,
Directionless Dana
Hi, Dana. This is really exciting!
You’ve got the chance to define what RevOps looks like at your company and build out the capabilities that make the most sense for your teams.
How cool is that?
But you’re right, being successful will require thoughtful engagement and planning before you can make any changes. Checking in and asking for advice is already a great first step.
To help you make the most of that momentum, here are three other strategies you can use to set a solid foundation for your RevOps team.
1. Define RevOps
You mentioned that your executive team has tasked you with this initiative—but are you all on the same page regarding what RevOps is and what it looks like?
Setting a definition that everyone can agree on will help ensure alignment and prevent any confusion (and headaches!) down the road.
Let’s define RevOps: Revenue operations is a business function that’s built to maximize an organization’s revenue potential across the funnel. Instead of having your revenue operations capabilities live under sales, marketing, and customer success, you can have them operate as a single cohesive unit with accountability throughout the full customer journey. This centralized approach helps build a culture that’s intentionally focused on operationalizing revenue—rather than having it be a byproduct of other important work.
Once you’ve defined RevOps within the context of your organization, you can move on to the next step in the planning process. Read our post ‘How to Explain RevOps to Your MOPs Team‘ for more advice.
2. Identify your capabilities
Identify where your RevOps capabilities are—and where they aren’t.
It’s more than likely that your company already has some revenue operations capabilities distributed across your sales, marketing, and customer success teams.
Your job will be to:
- look at these teams
- identify where the work is happening, and
- create a roadmap for how those siloed functions can move into your new RevOps structure.
This is also an opportunity to understand how tasks are currently completed. Our posts on finding the right reporting tools for your RevOps team and how to optimize content can help.
Ask questions like these to get started:
- What tools are your teams using?
- Are two teams using different tools for the same tasks?
- How are your peers talking about revenue operations in each vertical?
- What data are they looking at and how are they using it to make decisions?
With a clear picture of the current state, you’ll have an easier time mapping out the necessary changes to centralize your activities and align incentives across the board.
3. Build your RevOps network
Like with any big initiative that requires a lot of change, you will need stakeholders on your side.
My advice? Have one-on-one conversations with leaders across sales, marketing, and customer success to talk about the value of RevOps.
Talk to them about what they’ll get out of this new team, and paint them a picture of what the organization could look like over the next one to five years.
Don’t forget: you’re running a very strategic project.
You’re reshaping how your company thinks about revenue and creating a resource for making the data you collect more impactful.
So don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it and have important conversations with other leaders at your organization.
You’ve got this,
Jo Pulse
