Tag: Sales Ops

Lead Scoring: What Marketing & Sales Need to Know

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TLDR: Lead scoring can help Sales focus only on the most valuable or receptive prospects, but the project stands or falls based on the quality of Sales-Marketing collaboration.

What is lead scoring? Lead scoring is the process of evaluating the interest of a prospect and their readiness to engage with the sales process.

The problem lead scoring solves: Lead scoring helps Sales and Marketing concentrate efforts on leads that have demonstrated a higher level of interest or engagement with your brand, increasing the chances of closing deals and generating revenue.

What’s in it for you? In this Tough Talks Made Easy, we’ll cover how to explain the value and reality of lead scoring to Sales – what it is and is not, what it offers and requires. You can incentivize Sales to work together with Marketing with realistic expectations on a project that’s vital for both teams to grow the business.

 

Methods and data points

Companies can score leads in a variety of ways. You can ascribe numeric values, letter rankings, or descriptive terms like “warm” and “cold.” However you choose to score leads, there are several key data points that should factor into the analysis:

👉 Demographics (relevant individual characteristics, e.g. job title)
👉 Firmographics (organization profile, e.g. industry, vertical, size, location, annual revenue)
👉 Behavior (how the lead engages with your brand, e.g. visiting the webpage, interacting on social, requesting a demo)
👉 BANT qualification (the lead’s budget, authority, need, and timeline)
👉 Completeness of the data you have for each lead

There’s no objectively superior method of scoring leads and accrediting weight to different data types. Instead, your Sales team needs to work with Marketing to define the scoring methodology and establish what a “qualified” lead looks like.

An accurate view of lead quality helps Sales to focus on engaging only with the most receptive and valuable prospects. Neither team can make a complete assessment of this without ideas, data, and feedback from the other.

 

Qualify or nurture

Naturally, some leads will show a higher likelihood to buy than others. The task for Marketing and Sales is to determine how to identify and treat leads that fall into one of two groups:

1️ shows an optimal level of interest for Sales to act, or
2️ requires further nurturing by Marketing.

For this process to yield results, Sales needs to agree with Marketing on the benchmark for qualification.

Sales might expect the leads they receive from Marketing to be ready to sign, but there’s only so much your Marketing team can do in advance. As long as Marketing can unearth opportunities with a high likelihood of closure, it’s on Sales to identify where in the process to step in and how to approach each lead.

On the other hand, Sales shouldn’t encourage Marketing to pass leads over who show just enough of a pulse to open an email or click a link. Qualifying leads this way undermines the evaluative power of Marketing’s nurture process. Sales might get a couple of lucky bites, but it won’t translate to sustainable success.

 

Building lead profiles

Marketing’s nurture programs build insightful lead profiles through rich data collection, which allows Sales to approach the highest quality leads in the most engaging ways, showing awareness of their interests and the situational context. Without that basis, Sales risks burning effort on premature leads and failing to hit targets.

The point to make is that lead scoring best allows Sales to identify and win business from the highest value leads when two things are in place:

✅ clearly defined and realistic models for scoring and qualification, and
✅ time for Marketing to nurture developed engagement data from their campaigns.

 

Fuel your growth machine

To get started with lead scoring, Sales needs a good grasp of their past successes. Your reps should dig into historical data about past deals and lead journeys until they can answer these key questions:

👉 What makes a person qualified enough?
👉 What behaviors and traits did closed-won leads show?

 

The quality of collaboration

From there, lead scoring stands or falls based on the quality of your collaboration. Sales and Marketing should participate in healthy, ongoing discussions until you agree on a scoring methodology and handover process that both teams can comfortably deliver.

With that agreement in place, you stand the highest chance of seeing the benefits of lead scoring—the ability for Sales to prioritize quality leads, better insight for Marketing into the most valuable lead characteristics, and increased alignment and revenue that both halves of your growth machine can enjoy.

Want more guidance on lead scoring? Revenue Pulse is here to help.

How Can Sales Succeed With Limited Resources?

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Hi Joe,

I’ve just been put in charge of the Sales team at a relatively small company. So far, things have been great – but there are definitely some limitations.

Compared to the last company I was with, we don’t have nearly as many resources for the Sales team to use.

We’re hitting a plateau right now, and I’m unsure how to break through it. Any advice on how Sales can work more efficiently and effectively with what we have?

Thanks,
Efficient Emma

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Hi Emma, thank you for the question – I’ve been in your shoes before.

Helping your company grow past a plateau, especially with very limited resources, is a serious challenge.

Here’s some advice I think will go a very long way in helping you get through this.

 

Understand your tools

I can’t emphasize this one enough.

If your company has a dedicated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform that is integrated with a marketing automation platform like Hubspot, it’s crucial that you know how it operates and how you can get the most out of it.

These are essential tools that will guide your sales process, allowing you to track and define the different stages of leads as they progress from lead to contact to opportunity closed and so on.

After that, see if your company has any other tools like Outreach or Salesloft that will optimize outreach campaigns and communication. You can learn more about the 4 pillars of a Sales tech stack here.

 

Sync with marketing

Alignment between sales and marketing is key. Especially when resources are low, every dollar must be used as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Keep direct lines of communication open with your marketing team, so sales can stay up to date with relevant campaigns, inbound and outbound programs, and other materials that marketing has put in place. These are materials sales can leverage, including:

  • whitepapers
  • product comparisons
  • product demos
  • case studies, and
  • customer success stories.

Ideally, marketing sees what happens before prospects get to sales, so make sure to leverage any intel you can get to increase your understanding of clients – which brings us to our next point.

 

Personalize communication

Having limited resources doesn’t mean you can’t personalize your emails, phone calls, or any other communication channel. In fact, it’s even more reason to ensure every reach-out is as effective as possible.

Doing this will require using tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator to get detailed insights into the pain points of possible leads, which will help you tailor your messaging and create effective, targeted communication points that can increase conversion rates.

If you don’t have access to software that can help with this, or you’re at a stage where you simply can’t afford to invest in a data enhancement tool, then I encourage you to do as much manual research on your leads as possible. Depending on your business, even 2 to 3 hours of extra research on a single lead is worth it if it means closing on a sale.

Once you’ve collected enough data on leads, you can work with marketing to create an ideal customer profile (ICP), as well as key personas that will aid communication strategies going forward.

 

Automation is your friend

If your team is hitting a plateau, one way to accelerate productivity is to automate anything you can. Find yourself entering the same pitch, message, CTA, or value offer more than once? Make it into a template!

And if you’re working closely with marketing, you should have a good understanding of what each persona in your ICP needs to hear at different stages. This will allow you to create templates with reusable content for every scenario, so you can spend more time personalizing your message.

You’ll find yourself sending higher-quality messages to more prospects this way.

 

Stay patient

If a certain approach or sales strategy isn’t working right away, it’s okay to persevere and see it through for a longer time.

I’ve seen far too many sales teams give up on a strategy after a single week if the email open rates weren’t ideal, only to realize later that their strategy needed more time and a larger sample size to produce meaningful feedback that can guide future decisions.

Of course, it’s good to persevere – but do so within reason. If you’ve been following the same sales strategy for months without success, it’s time to experiment with new approaches.

And when you’re trying something new, KPIs and deadlines are your friends. Adding specific numbers to benchmark against (such as reaching a minimum of 1,000 prospects in 3 months, for example) will make the process easier to control, measure, and replicate.

Follow the points above, and your sales team will certainly be getting more out of the limited resources that you currently have.

If you still need more help to push past this plateau, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

You’ve got this,

Joe

What Your Leadership Should Know About SLAs

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TLDR: Internal SLAs in RevOps define your policies and contingency plans regarding the lead lifecycle. Logical, well-understood SLAs allow you to monitor the impact of your lifecycle structure and activities, and make it easier to improve processes and resolve issues. But SLAs only work when people are incentivized to follow them. Seek feedback from people in your RevOps team when developing processes, and gamify the fulfillment of SLAs to encourage participation.

 

Service level agreements (SLAs) define a business’s deliverables and services to customers and prospects. They also serve an important purpose between internal teams. SLAs lay out your policies regarding the lead lifecycle—the actions Sales, Marketing, and RevOps should take in response to customer activities and the contingency plans in case things don’t happen as expected.

Service level agreements standardize your timelines to respond to customers and prospects at each stage of the lifecycle. Establishing and optimizing these processes is essential to move prospects along their buying journeys and prevent leads from going cold.

In other words: the quality of your SLA processes can make or break your revenue function. In this Tough Talks Made Easy, you’ll learn to explain the impact of SLAs to your RevOps leader. You’ll help them to grasp why processes succeed or fail and encourage the implementation of strategies and initiatives with SLAs that lead to a healthy RevOps team.

 

The impact of SLAs

SLAs encourage clarity of policymaking in your business. They help people in your RevOps team to understand your default processes and corrective measures. Crucially, they give people a reference point to improve processes and resolve issues based on realistic expectations.

For each stage of the lifecycle, your team has measures to engage prospects within certain conditions. For example, if someone fills in a contact form, Sales might receive an alert minutes later alerting them to respond within 2 hours.

But if the Sales rep responsible for a particular account is away, what’s the handover process? If there’s no handover, why not? How do you escalate the situation? Given the data-crunching and people involved in responding to an inquiry, is the 2-hour turnaround time for a responsible feasible?

Effective SLAs allow your RevOps team to:

  • monitor the impact of their lifecycle structure and activities
  • rectify flawed processes, and
  • double down on what works.

For example, if your conversion rate from sign-ups to MQLs is below a certain threshold within a particular timeframe, an SLA to insert a new nurture campaign to the relevant subset of prospects can galvanize engagement. Likewise, if you’re experiencing an exceptionally high rate of closed lost opportunities, an SLA to investigate your processes can help to identify why sales aren’t flowing (are SDRs opening opportunities prematurely? Are Sales reps not following up in time?)

Crucially, SLAs can increase the pace at which the most promising leads progress through the lifecycle.

Let’s say your sign-up page receives 1k sign-ups per day. By inserting an SLA for RevOps to review all sign-ups and measure each prospect’s fit for the business, Sales can easily identify which sign-ups to prioritize in their outreach. This responsiveness shortens your time to revenue and prevents the most compatible leads from going cold.

 

Implementing SLAs

For all the clarity and improvement opportunities that SLAs offer RevOps, they only work when people are incentivized to follow the processes—otherwise, they risk falling apart. With ineffective or absent SLAs, your RevOps team will struggle to monitor behavior and make tweaks that boost ROI. Therefore, your CRO needs to consider how to educate and encourage people to stick by them.

Firstly, involving people in your RevOps team with the development of processes will help to encourage adoption. Your CRO should consult internally when conducting a process audit, inviting people from MOPs, Sales Ops, and Customer Success to share their perspectives on what works and what doesn’t. The more your CRO engages the team, the greater insight they’ll gain about SLAs to add, improve, or eliminate, and having team feedback guide these processes will make evident the value of following them.

For devising SLAs that involve multiple departments, get people together from each team to raise issues and strategize approaches. Your CMO, for instance, might analyze the results from your NPS surveys and report back. If client satisfaction is revealed to be low, then your Customer Success team can take the lead with approaching customers to mitigate and resolve any problems while your Product team stays in the loop.

For SLAs pertaining to processes that involve just one team (e.g. web conversions in Marketing), cross-departmental counsel can be useful to focus group any proposed SLA, but only the team following and impacted by the process needs to be involved.

Once an SLA is implemented, gamification helps motivate people to fulfill the process’ objectives. Establishing weekly or monthly targets and celebrating the wins of your team reinforces the value of following SLAs and usually comes at no significant cost—considering the uplift of processes that work, the ROI of rewarding people for meeting or exceeding their SLA fulfilment targets makes sense.

 

The bottom line

SLAs in RevOps spell out how your revenue function works and why. This helps your team to coalesce around logical, cohesive processes and makes it easier to measure, refine, and improve them.

Vitally, they support your team to take timely actions that progress your leads through the lifecycle and keep the dollars coming in.

Get in touch for any guidance you need with SLAs.

Can I Re-Engage Closed Lost Opportunities?

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Hi Joe,

I’m curious if there’s ever a time when it makes sense to reach out to closed lost opportunities.

Our team just launched some new features, and it seems like a waste not to reach out to people that we’ve engaged with in the past.

What do you think?

Thank you,

Intrigued Ivan

pink seperator

Ivan, you hit the nail on the head.

Sales and marketing teams put a lot of effort into acquiring leads and this isn’t a cheap process.

Collecting all that information, categorizing it, and maintaining those records takes time and resources.

The main thing to remember with closed lost opportunities: just because a prospect isn’t interested today doesn’t mean they won’t need your product down the line.

Ignoring your closed lost opportunities means leaving out a big part of your audience when you have a new feature or flash sale to promote.

 

Categorize your opportunities

There are many reasons a prospect might drop out of the sales process:

  • no need for your product/service at the time
  • budget limitations, or
  • a desire for features you don’t offer yet.

A good practice is to sort these closed lost opps based on the constraints that stop them from making a purchase.

Once you have your subcategories, you create a customized re-engagement approach for each type.

With more focused communications and programming, you’ll have a more meaningful way to reach your prospects, which can go a long way to closing the deal.

 

Dos and don’ts

When re-engaging a closed lost opportunity, you want to ensure they have a net new experience with your brand.

Don’t do this:

You do not want them ending up in the same campaigns, reading the same materials, or hearing the same sales pitch they didn’t respond to the first time.

Do this:

There was a reason they were closed lost before. Make sure that the content and information they’re receiving are fresh and new (to them).

  • Make sure the marketing team knows how to treat these returning leads. They should have distinct nurture campaigns with content focused on a recent product feature or the low-cost nature of the product.
  • Make sure the sales team knows that the lead has been a closed lost in the past. Learn why they dropped off and what could bring them back. This information should be available on your CRM system.

Don’t do this:

Rely on only one channel to re-engage a closed lost opportunity.

Do this:

Some people prefer email because it is less intrusive. Other people prefer phone calls for efficiency.

The benefit of phone calls is that you create a human connection, which can go a long way.

The benefit of email is that you can take a customized approach and incorporate insights from past engagements.

You can also pair email with a paid media strategy. Run social or search ads that reach people who have engaged with your brand without converting.

 

Bottom line: Re-engage

These tactics will take some time to set up properly. Once you have them in place, your team will be proactive and targetted as they reach out to closed lost opportunity.

Need some help setting up the groundwork? Give us a call or email (whichever you prefer).

And remember, you’ve got this,

Joe Pulse

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I Need to Build a RevOps Function—Where Do I Start?

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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

pink separator line

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

How to Develop a New Process with Your MOPs Team

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TLDR: Developing a new process and incentivising your team to follow it takes two conversations. First, learn how your colleagues experience processes and why they perform tasks in certain ways. Once you understand why certain issues arise, you’re in a good position to make constructive suggestions that benefit the team. To get leadership’s backing, forecast the impact that implementing your process will have and suggest running a proof of concept. Keep an open mind to feedback after implementing the new process, and you’ll help to encourage better collaboration and results.

 

MOPs is often about delivering on requests and building things for teams around the business. Every webinar, report, or lead handover system you produce takes considerable planning and time-sensitive work behind the scenes. From gathering information to scheduling deadlines and approvals, processes that encourage efficiency and good communication are key to making your projects succeed.

If problems frequently hold back your team from getting things done—whether it’s missing data, poorly-paced deadlines, or low visibility into who’s responsible for what—a flawed or lack of process is likely the culprit. You might have a good sense of how to smooth things over, but suggesting changes to how your team works requires a sensitive approach, particularly in environments where people have been long attached to how they work.

In this Tough Talks Made Easy, you’ll learn how to pitch a new process to leadership and incentivise your team to follow it.

 

Listen and learn

The first stage of developing a new process: get to know how your team works and why. People naturally feel a great sense of ownership and personal responsibility with their work, so sudden criticism is likely to make your colleagues defensive and resistant to change. Even if you think you’ve identified a problem and have some ideas to suggest, watch and learn from your team first. 

Ask people to show you how they perform tasks, why they do things in certain ways, what their challenges and priorities are. When you’ve experienced a process from a broader set of perspectives and you understand why issues come up, you’re in a good spot to make constructive suggestions. Do your request forms give the MOPs team all the information they need? Where could a new checkpoint or approval flow help with visibility? Is there a more efficient way to order certain steps? Are your deadlines realistic and attainable?

Listen to your colleagues, take an interest in how they work, and you’ll convey that this new process comes from a place of empathy; a desire to make work easier and more efficient for the whole team. To embed a new idea into a team’s culture, you need advocates to champion the process, share knowledge, and encourage more people to participate; a human touch is the best way to accomplish this.

 

Make the case

Cementing a process in the team means getting the backing of your boss, whether that’s your CMO, CRO, or direct manager. Your CRO or CMO will be less sensitive to hearing about flaws, but they ultimately care about solutions that positively impact the business. Be direct in your assessment of the problems at hand, but focus on the outcome that your process will deliver, whether it’ll help people to work faster and more productively, attract more leads and opportunities, or make reporting and requests more transparent.

Numbers play a significant role in this conversation. For one, C-Suite wants to know if a process is going to incur costs for training or additional tools, so it’s reassuring news if you can use your current software to introduce new forms, flow builders, and any other technical pieces. Even more persuasive? Forecast the ROI of your proposal. 

If you’re pitching a process for the likes of webinars, with lots of dependencies to manage, you’ll have plenty of data points on hand to substantiate your case. Explain how your process will change aspects of the webinar such as spending per channel, time spent confirming speakers, building infrastructure, creating promotional campaigns, the lead handover process—and project how these changes will cut costs, increase efficiency, allow enough time for promotion, or result in more leads and opportunities.

Short on data points to do a forecast? Suggest trialling the process with a specific campaign, workflow, team, geography, or in another relevant context. A proof of concept gives you an opportunity to gather data and show your boss how the process performs in action. Run leadership through the before vs. after to illustrate how your proof of concept saves time, improves the measurement of leads, lifts ROI, or otherwise makes work easier over the ways of old, and your boss will highly appreciate that you spoke up.

Continuous improvement

Many processes connect or impact each other in some way, and the beauty of this conversation is how it can spur continuous improvement. If you’ve made some changes to your webinar process, for example, talk with your team about lead handovers. How can you measure or qualify leads differently? Will that change get leads to Sales faster, or surface more opportunities against your webinars? After you’ve got in the groove of a new process, follow up with your team regularly to gauge how it’s working and see where you can make things better.

Developing a new process and making it part of team culture starts with an open mind—speak to your colleagues and get to know how things work to discover where changes can really benefit the team. Project the impact your process can make before talking to leadership and suggest a proof of concept—if the process makes lives easier or gets results, consider your boss and team on board. Keep an open ear to feedback while the process is underway, and you’ll help to encourage better collaboration and results.

Get in touch for more on improving processes in MOPs.

 

Sales Ops and Sales Enablement, How to Bring Them Together

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Hi Joe,

My Sales Ops team has been growing rapidly over the past year or so. With that growth, we’ve also added a Sales Enablement team. But the problem is, I feel like our two teams just aren’t on the same page lately. There seems to be a lot of confusion about which team is responsible for what and things aren’t getting done.

How can I turn this around and make sure everyone is collaborating smoothly again?

Thanks,

Team-Player Taylor

 

 

Hi Taylor,

I’m happy to hear about your company’s recent growth! It’s always exciting when things are looking up and I want to congratulate you and your team on this success.

But with growth comes, well, growing pains. What works for smaller teams won’t necessarily work as you scale up your organization. Things can break along the way. So how do we prevent this from happening? Here are a few key points that will help.


Organizational Structure

As your teams grow, it’s important that at all stages of expansion (whether you have a sales team of 3, 30, or 300), there is a clearly defined vertical hierarchy or chain of command.

Of course, it is essential for teams to collaborate cohesively and support each other, as you know. But if your company lacks this vertical structure and the hierarchy is “flatter”, there will often be problems where team members don’t know whose job it is to do a certain task.

I’d also recommend the use of stakeholder maps to help all team members gain a clearer understanding of who is depending on them and what they’re accountable for. Stakeholder maps are not only very practical for refining and communicating the responsibilities of everyone involved in each project, but they’re also a great tool for guiding new hires on who can offer them support, who to approach with queries, and who can approve decisions to keep projects moving forward. 

 

Clearly Define Roles & Responsibilities

There can be a lot of confusion in a company – especially a growing one like yours – between Sales Ops and Sales Enablement. Many members may not fully understand the difference: Where does Sales Ops end and where does Sales Enablement begin?

This is common in my experience so don’t worry, you’re not alone. The two teams are closely related, but they differ in important ways. I would start by laying out a clear definition of the roles, responsibilities, and parameters of the Sales Enablement team in comparison to Sales Ops. If everyone can agree on this, you’re already halfway there!

One way I like to communicate this is to look at Sales Enablement as the “execution arm” of Sales Ops.

 

Here’s a quick example to illustrate what I mean by this:

Let’s say Sales Enablement realizes many leads become closed lost during the middle of the funnel. The buyer had the initial introduction and pitch, but then the proposal is sent a few days later and things fall through. Sales Ops receives this information and takes a closer look at the operational level – where they discover their sales reps don’t have enough content (case studies, whitepapers, etc.) to send proposals sooner.

This is where Sales Enablement comes back in and goes about producing that needed content (which could mean acquiring collateral from marketing, content creation, etc.). They are effectively enabling the execution of Sales Ops by making sure the buyer experience is everything that it can be – hence the “execution arm”.

 

Calibrate Expectations

Once everyone in Sales Ops and Sales Enablement is on the same page about their roles and responsibilities, it is crucial to set up continuous points of communication between the two teams to calibrate expectations.

At all times: Sales Ops must know what data they’re expected to report to Sales Enablement, and Sales Enablement must know the type of support they’re expected to provide so Sales Ops can execute at their highest potential.

At first, it might take some time for members to fit into their new teams, and that’s okay. With clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations defined through active communication, I’m confident that you and your teams will be more productive together than ever.

 

You’ve got this,

Joe Pulse

 

What’s My Role in the Shift to RevOps? 

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Hi Joe,

I’m a marketing ops professional and I’ve just been told that my company is moving towards adopting a RevOps model. I actually think it’s a great idea—I’ve read about the approach and think there are a lot of benefits to bringing typically siloed teams together under a combined goal. However, I’m not quite sure how to help make it happen. Do you have any advice?

Thanks,

Helpful Harriet

Hi, Harriet. Let me just say: it’s so great that you’re asking this question. As things keep changing in the marketing ops world, we need people that are willing to put their hands up and be enablers. Thank you.

You’re right that, while still a relatively new concept, RevOps has a lot to offer. It’s the notion that marketing, sales, and customer success teams can operate better when they’re working towards a collective goal—helping their clients and prospects succeed—rather than as disparate silos. Plus, it relies on an integrated tech stack that easily shares customer data and lets prospects flow through the customer lifecycle with a personalized experience. Sounds great, doesn’t it? 

While it might sound easy, getting to this integrated place is a long-term project. First off, you need to do a lot of work to ensure alignment between these three teams. That means a lot of conversations around goals, metrics, and performance to get rid of any discrepancies. There’s also a technology and data aspect here. To build a RevOps tech stack, you need to look into where there are gaps or redundancies, and make decisions accordingly. 

All that said, there are also things you (as a MOPs team member) can do at an individual level that will make a big difference, and help things move faster. 

 

Expand your knowledge 

If you want your sales, marketing, and customer success teams to be fully aligned, it can’t just happen at the executive level—you need alignment on the ground as well. Start this off by learning more about how things are done in those teams, including how they communicate, what their metrics are, and how they measure performance. Talk to a colleague and ask if you can shadow them for a couple of days; you can observe them as they go through their daily tasks and join them in team meetings. 

 

Become a champion for the RevOps approach

You know it, we know it: Marketing and Sales aren’t always best friends. In fact, we often find ourselves in a rather antagonistic relationship. So, once you’ve taken the time to learn more about what your sales team does, and why they do it, share that knowledge within your team. These insights should help build comradery and make it easier to collaborate better down the line. 

You’ve already done the work to learn about the benefits of the RevOps model—so make sure you share that as well. People tend to be wary of change, but a lot of the time that comes down to a lack of understanding. Empower your team with the knowledge they need and it might make for an easier transition when the time comes.

 

Keep putting your hand up

As I mentioned before, rolling out RevOps is going to be a long process—and your leaders are going to need help. Talk to your manager about how you can actively contribute to the project. You never know, they might need someone to bring the MOPs perspective to the decision-making table, or they may be looking for someone to champion the project and help communicate it’s value. Good thing you’re likely already doing that last one!

You’ve got this, 

Joe Pulse

How Do I Show My Boss My Value?

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Hi Joe,

I’m not sure what to do. As a MOPs professional, I do so much for the company and am always juggling a ton of things on any given day. My boss thinks I only work in Marketo, but I actually take care of so much more! What can I do to show them my contributions and how I’m actually spending my time?

Thank you,
Undervalued Uriel

Hi, Uriel. I wish this weren’t a common problem, but it is. So often, MOPs “teams” are made up of a small group of people that sit under Marketing or Sales, reporting into leaders that don’t fully understand what MOPs is and how much effort it takes to get it right. It’s a challenge, particularly for small teams that are left to manage multiple tasks and projects without much investment or support.

There’s hope on the horizon, though. The talent pool of MOPs professionals and leaders is growing every day, and that means that companies are far more likely to hire managers and directors that understand how many plates you have to spin in a role like yours. In the meantime, here are some of the things you can do to improve your current situation.

Have a transparent conversation with your leaders. Your manager doesn’t know what they don’t know. And while it’s not your job to educate them, what you can do is have a frank conversation about the different things you’re doing, and how you can’t do them all. Going into this conversation, take the time to list out tasks you do, how much time you spend on them, and prioritize them based on how much value you feel they add to the marketing team. If you feel that you need another person on the team, share your advice around how you would divide the tasks to make the most impact. At the end of the day, you’ll be the MOPs expert in that conversation, so make sure you show that expertise.

Take a forward-looking approach. Another important conversation to have with your manager is about the direction you want your career to take. As you know, there are so many paths and specializations to follow in MOPs. Choosing a path and communicating that to your manager will help them understand that you can’t be the “catch-all” for MOPs, and it will give them the opportunity to support you with the training and mentorship you need. Pair this with strategic thinking around where your organization can take MOPs moving forward, and a good manager will be even more inclined to crafting a role that is right for you.

Don’t be afraid to make a change. If none of that works, then it might be time to move on to greener pastures. You deserve to work for a team that gets how important your role is—so start looking for one. Companies that have built a strong MOPs culture will have various people in MOPs roles, including a director or VP that has years of experience in the space. The job descriptions will also be telling. If the hiring manager has written down a laundry list of tasks they want a specific MOPs role to fill, you can bet they don’t fully grasp what MOPs is all about.

Your future is in your hands—and it’s bright. As MOPs continues to grow as a space, there are going to be so many more solid opportunities for you to build your career with. Just wait and see.

You’ve got this,
Joe Pulse

Show Sales the Value of MOPs in a Constructive Way

Posted on by admin

 

Hey Joe,

I’m really frustrated with Sales right now! They just aren’t understanding what we do and how MOPs can really help them.

How do I express my frustration without getting emotional?

I want to share my thoughts but I need to do it in a constructive manner. How do I go about that?

Thanks,

Frustrated Frank

pink seperator line

Frank, this is a great question.

The fact that you’re looking for a constructive solution to this challenge speaks volumes.

So often, we see Sales and MOPs teams at odds with each other, even though they’re meant to be working towards the same goal: bringing in more qualified leads and new customers.

Taking the time to ensure your teams are on the same page and understand the value each of you bring to the table is a great first step.

 

Overcome the obstacle

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had conversations with Sales team members who don’t have any insight into what we do and how we do it.

Just trying to get them to input data in a consistent way so that our marketing automation tools can work properly can feel like pulling teeth. This is particularly frustrating when you feel it’s your role to connect the dots between Sales and Marketing, and it doesn’t feel like you’re being heard.

There are a couple of ways you can share these thoughts with Sales in a constructive way.

1. Understand Sales’ challenges

1. Remember that your Sales team is likely dealing with their own frustrations and challenges. It’s worth knowing what these are before having a conversation with them.

They may be facing pressure from their director or have KPIs that run against your team’s, although that shouldn’t be the case.

All Sales and Marketing metrics should ladder up to a joint revenue goal, and if you feel that’s not happening or that your KPIs are at odds, then that’s an important conversation you should be having with your leadership.

2. Align your processes

2. Talk to Sales about your processes and how they align with theirs, but be careful how you address this.

One thing I’ve learned in my years working with different teams is that any time you question a process, people are bound to get a little defensive.

So, instead of asking ‘why aren’t we doing XYZ?’, you can reframe the question to ‘are we able to do XYZ?’.

This will open the door to a much more constructive and collaborative conversation—and it’ll inspire your Sales team to ask your team questions in the same way.

3. Show your value

Remember that sometimes actions speak louder than words. You know that MOPs can be a valuable partner to your Sales team, so show them:

  • Consider building out scoring models where Sales can identify prioritized personas and automatically receive the leads that are the most likely to convert.
  • Establish an automated system for passing on the right content at the right time to leads that are already engaged.
  • Develop processes that help MOPs and Marketing bridge the gap for MQLs during the nurture stage, without overwhelming them with information.
  • Showcase the different tools (e.g. social, targeted ads, event invites) that MOPs can deploy for engaged leads.

These are all things that will help build the partnership across the customer journey. If you need help implementing any of these tactics, let’s chat.

At the end of the day, it’s all about teamwork.

You’ve got this,
Joe Pulse.