Revenue Operations Guidebook & Resource Hub

Table of Contents

Overview

According to Boston Consulting Group, marketing and sales inefficiencies cumulatively cost companies $2 trillion a year. Fixing this waste is a key reason companies invest in Revenue Operations.

What Is Revenue Operations?

Revenue operations, or RevOps, is the coordination of marketing, sales, and customer success activities to maximize operational effectiveness and promote growth.

RevOps unites four departments: IT, marketing operations, sales operations, and customer service operations.

The Key Differences Between Revenue Operations vs. Sales Operations

When a business adopts a revenue operations framework, the RevOps team handles the data collection and management tasks, freeing the sales team to concentrate on closing deals. 

And while salespeople put all of their effort into getting the product or service into the hands of customers, revenue operations teams engage with the customer long after the sale is completed.

What Is the Common Revenue Operations Team Structure?

A revenue operations team is in charge of managing every part of an organization’s income-generating efforts.

Generally, its duties fall into one of four categories:

  1. Operations management
  2. Marketing operations
  3. Research and predictive analytics
  4. Operations technology

Three major roles make up the typical revenue operations team structure:

Revenue Operations Analyst 

  • Reports data-driven insights to reduce expenses
  • Identifies new streams of income

Revenue Operations Manager

  • Gathers and analyzes sales data to improve efficiency and revenue
  • Develops and implements solutions and procedures for all revenue teams

Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)

  • Coordinates the operations of all divisions that generate revenue
  • Cultivates cross-divisional strategic alliances

Top Five Revenue Operations Metrics

A revenue operations strategy should incorporate the following five KPIs:

1. Deal Velocity

Deal velocity measures how quickly your sales team converts leads into customers. If leads are moving slowly, there may be issues at the root of the sales cycle that RevOps professionals can identify and address.

2. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the proportion of leads that proceed through the sales process and convert to actual paying customers. A low conversion rate can indicate a misaligned target audience, weak marketing strategies, subpar sales tactics, or a poor buying experience, all of which RevOps can help improve.

3. Deal Size

Average deal value means concentrating on qualified leads with the highest revenue potential, which can significantly increase transaction size and boost revenue. RevOps’ data-driven focus can help teams keep an eye on deal size in target account selection.

4. Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the expense of attracting a new client. Inconsistent branding, subpar positioning, and inefficient marketing techniques can contribute to a high CAC. 

RevOps team members should collaborate closely with marketing teams to identify ways to improve ROI, and with sales to understand when opportunities fall out of the pipeline and why.

5. Pipeline Accuracy

Pipeline forecasting aims to estimate how much each salesperson and the entire sales department will sell over a specific period. As the link between sales, marketing, and customer service, your revenue operations team can:

  • Develop more accurate sales predictions
  • Monitor progress
  • Make necessary course corrections

The Right Technology Platform for Revenue Operations

Because RevOps has multiple responsibilities, the team relies on a MarTech and RevTech stack to support all of their responsibilities. A platform that uses AI and machine learning to harness and organize data and achieve predictable revenue growth will streamline their processes.

Some features of a platform that will especially benefit RevOps include:

  • Data Enrichment: Detailed technographics, firmographics, and psychographic data on customers and accounts create deeper profiles of current and future consumers. 
  • Orchestration: Orchestrations automatically perform functions like contact acquisition, list building, and segmentation. This helps your teams personalize outreach — and drive higher engagement — at scale. 
  • Lead Management: Identify accounts and purchasers who are most likely to make a purchase, making it simpler to prioritize advertising and outreach.
  • Scale Data Operations: AI and automation consolidate and sanitize data, reducing tedious data management chores. Instead, revenue operations can focus on keeping teams aligned and improving strategy and tactics.
  • Pipeline Intelligence: Monitor pipeline health in real time, alerting you to issues that threaten revenue targets and offering problem-solving to get your team back on track.