RevOps Alignment: 5 Powerful Strategies to Change the Game
Do you ever wonder how well your sales team is performing? Are they doing enough with their leads? Or are they closing deals as often as possible to increase revenue for the company?
If you're asking yourself these questions, consider implementing a RevOps system. What is it? And why should you care? Allow me to explain.
One of the modern business's biggest challenges is aligning sales and marketing. This can be a considerable challenge, especially when management is unclear on what they want from their teams. Teams need to be on the same page to work together to achieve the same goals.
Many businesses think that sales will come in organically if they have a great product. In reality, this isn't always true. Even if you have a great product, it must be marketed effectively before selling itself. This is where RevOps comes into play: It helps companies align their sales and marketing teams by creating a process that allows them to work together more effectively and efficiently to drive revenue.
In this blog post, we will explore ways RevOps can help align sales and marketing teams.
What is RevOps and What Are its Benefits?
RevOps is a term that stands for revenue operations. It's aligning sales and marketing teams to drive revenue growth by creating greater efficiency, collaboration, and transparency between the two groups. RevOps achieves this by creating a bridge between marketing, sales, and customer success teams, thus jumpstarting the process of creating a unified front to drive revenue growth.
What is Sales & Marketing Alignment?
Sales & marketing alignment brings together sales and marketing teams to ensure they work together towards common goals. You can achieve this by creating a unified strategy, training team members on new processes and tools, and implementing regular communication between teams.
RevOps is an integral part of sales & marketing alignment, as it creates a bridge between teams to ensure that they work together towards common goals.
By combining the strengths of sales and marketing teams, RevOps helps companies increase revenue by identifying new leads, nurturing them through the sales funnel, and converting them into customers. In addition to driving growth, it helps improve the overall customer experience and reduce churn rates.
Best Practices for Implementing a Successful RevOps Strategy
To implement a successful rev ops strategy, companies need to ensure that both sales and marketing teams align on the goals and objectives of the initiative. The two groups should also collaborate closely throughout the process to ensure that all stakeholders are on board with each program step. But how do you go about it?
Here are a few best practices that can help you get started:
1. Define What "Success" Looks Like for Your Company and Your RevOps Strategy
It all starts with defining what success looks like for your company and your RevOps strategy. You can think of this as a "north star" metric that you can use to measure progress. Still, it's also imperative to define why a certain number is essential (i.e., why does an increase in revenue or pipeline matter?).
Once you have your desired outcomes defined, the next step is determining how to achieve them. This is where the strategy comes into play—and it's also where you can get creative with how you define success.
For example, if one of your goals is to increase revenue by 10%, this doesn't necessarily mean that you need to grow every month by a specific amount. Instead, think about what would be considered a meaningful increase that is still achievable within an acceptable timeframe (i.e., within three months).
If you need more clarification on defining your desired outcomes, a good first step is to look at your annual goals. These are the most important objectives that will help you move the needle on your business over time—and they should serve as a guidepost for any short-term plans. Once you've defined your goals, write them down. This might seem like a simple step, but it can be very effective in helping you visualize your objectives and ensure they are clearly defined.
The next step is to determine what success means for each goal. What results do you want to achieve within the given timeframe? How will you measure progress? These questions should help guide your short-term planning efforts so that you have a clear view of what success looks like for each objective.
2. Assess Your Team's Current Capabilities and Resources
The next step is to assess what resources you need to achieve your goals. This can include both human and financial resources. In addition, consider the time and skill level required for each task.
Is there an employee on your team who can handle these responsibilities? If not, do you have the budget to hire someone new? Does the job require specialized training or experience, making it more cost-effective to outsource rather than perform in-house?
It's also important to consider whether your current employees are underperforming. If so, consider evaluating whether to reassign or terminate them and hire new talent.
After assessing your resources, identify any gaps that need filling. For example, if you need someone on staff with specific experience with digital marketing or project management tasks, it might be best to hire an outside expert to take on those roles. Or perhaps one of your current employees has the necessary experience but isn't getting enough work from their current position—if so, consider reallocating some responsibilities to free up time for them to work on other projects.
3. Create a Plan for Training and Onboarding New Team Members
As you're bringing on new team members, creating a plan for their training and onboarding is essential. This is especially important because sales and marketing teams often need more experience working together.
Training is the backbone to ensuring that your RevOps alignment strategy is successful. The training should include how to work together as a team, communicate and collaborate effectively, strategies for aligning sales with marketing's goals, and how each team member can contribute. Consider sending new team members on a "customer journey mapping" field trip to ensure that they understand the current buyer behavior. The goal is to ensure that each team member has an equal voice and understands how their role fits into the broader picture.
Training should also include an overview of the goals and objectives of each team member's role. Create a team charter outlining what you expect from each person, how they will work together, and what deliverables to meet at certain milestones.
It's also essential to ensure that your team understands the importance of their role in the overall process. If you have a sales cycle, ensure each person knows how long it takes and what makes up each stage. The more clearly you can communicate this information, the less likely team members will feel overwhelmed or confused about what they need to do.
Lastly (and perhaps most importantly), this is also a good time for you as a leader to assess how well your teams are working together and what can help improve the situation. If you find that there are problems, try asking these questions:
- What are the most common roadblocks?
- How do we solve them?
- Who needs training on how to work better with each other?
- How can we improve communication between teams?
This step is crucial because, without it, your team will be spinning its wheels, working harder and harder but not getting any results.
4. Implement a Process for Tracking Progress and Measuring Results
When it comes to RevOps alignment, one of the most significant issues is that organizations often work in silos. The sales team is doing its thing, the marketing team is doing theirs, and the customer success team has its process. There's no way for teams to communicate with each other in real-time to make sure they're all on the same page.
For RevOps alignment to work, you must have a process for tracking progress and measuring results. This is important for the following reasons:
- It allows you to see what's working and what isn't.
- It helps you identify issues causing friction across teams or preventing them from reaching their goals.
- It gives you a clear picture of how each team contributes to revenue and customer satisfaction.
- It allows you to make changes and improvements based on what you learn.
- It enables you to measure ROI on initiatives, which is critical in a business where it's difficult to quantify results.
The good news is there are many different ways of doing this; some companies use manual spreadsheets or even Excel macros while others use custom-built programs like Salesforce or Hubspot to keep track of their progress with RevOps. Whatever method you choose will depend on the resources available within your organization and how comfortable everyone is with technology usage (and if they have access to specific software).
5. Celebrate Successes (And Learn From Failures) Along the Way!
Once you've aligned your efforts with your organization's broader goals and are successfully scaling, it's time to celebrate! Take time to pat yourself and your team on the back for accomplishing something great. And don't be afraid to make mistakes along the way.
Your failures can be learning opportunities if you're willing to learn from them. Don't let mistakes discourage you from trying new things; they only strengthen us.
Keep at it! If something doesn't work out as expected, keep trying new things until you find what works best for your company and team members.
And don't be afraid to ask for help when needed; many resources are available online that can assist with everything from improving workflow efficiency or managing stress levels among employees to improving team morale and productivity.
Conclusion
RevOps isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. It requires careful planning, thoughtful execution, and ongoing measurement to ensure that your sales team gets the most out of their time and efforts. But with the right resources and a little bit of elbow grease (and training!), you can implement this strategy successfully—and reap the rewards of improved customer retention rates and higher revenues.
If you want to keep your sales team on the right track, then taking advantage of powerful marketing tools like HubSpot is a critical first step — and enlisting the aid of a HubSpot administrator is often the best way to do that. Reach out to our sales and marketing experts today to learn more and get started with a free consultation.