It is easy to see the revenue operations functions of a company as cost centers. Yet, by thinking more strategically about these functions, firms can begin to leverage them in ways that drive real value into their businesses.
Revenue operations describes the process of managing customer accounts across the revenue lifecycle. Revenue operations includes sales, service, and support functions that deal with customers from prospect to retiree.
Here are some steps you should take to ensure that your revenue operations are fully integrated into your business.
- Build a Proven RevOps Framework
There are many patterns in how companies structure their revenue operations. We call these patterns “RevOps Frameworks.” RevOps frameworks play an important role for customer-facing organizations and can help you optimize your enterprise value stream. If you’re not sure what a “value stream” is, it’s simply the path that a customer account takes as it progresses through the different stages of your revenue life cycle.
A good revenue operations framework should include both strategic and tactical elements.
- Ensure That All Teams and Data Are Aligned with Your Framework
The crux of a RevOps framework lies in the shared identity, value, and mindset that people bring to revenue operations. The best frameworks integrate processes with roles and skill sets.
This is especially important because different teams’ functional capabilities and business models are constantly shifting, sometimes dramatically, as technology and market conditions change.
- Unite with Your Sales Team
With your framework in place and your systems aligned, you need to work with your Sales Team to ensure that they’re working in tandem with revenue operations.
Both teams need to be able to view how the work of each impacts the other. This includes financial measures, customer satisfaction scores, and operational metrics like average time-to-close or value stream cycle.
- Put Marketing in Place to Capture Leads
You also need to ensure that your marketing team is aligned with Revenue Operations. Then, you need to clearly define how you’re going to capture leads through marketing initiatives before they end up being handled by your sales team.
And of course, you need to ensure that marketing, sales, and your revenue operations teams are all accountable for the performance of these leads through shared metrics.