Let’s face it, although many companies fail, many others excel during the early years. And if you grow the company to a mature business, it could seem like growth will never end. Your team’s got killer ideas, and you’ve got products that people want to buy.
However, seasoned professionals know that every day is the first day. Most people don’t know about revenue operations and why it’s the singular best thing you could do for your company.
Problem: You've been in business for a while, and now you've hit a wall. Your tech stack is big and complicated, and you plateaued on revenue growth.
Opportunity: Even if you have a great product, an effective revenue model, and a marketing plan, without an effective revenue operation, it can all fall apart.
Resolution: Companies that shift their processes to a model centered on revenue operations (RevOps) experience significant growth. The reason is simple. RevOps simplifies everything. And that’s especially vital in the information age.
Companies that reorient to RevOps realize how smoothly things run in a complicated business environment. The reality is that your company won't be able to grow and thrive without a solid foundation. And if you want to see real growth in your business, you should implement revenue operations.
1. You Need to have a Solid Revenue Model
As you know, your company needs a solid revenue model. It's how your company makes money, and there are many different ways to do it. Many companies shifted to a subscription model where customers pay you every month for using your product.
The revenue model you choose is up to you and your product. But it's essential to select a profitable and scalable model. RevOps centralizes and provides leaders with the full management view (without siloed views). So, you make informed decisions about the success of your revenue model and could make informed adjustments.
2. You Need to Have a Plan for Marketing
You might not like marketing, but it's crucial to the growth of your business. In most cases, the definition of marketing boils down to the promotion of your brand, products, or services. But you can also define the processes used to promote as marketing. As a result, if you want to see growth in your business, RevOps is vital to marketing.
Revenue operations give you a comprehensive ecosystem that integrates all divisions (including marketing). In short, everyone's informed with wholistic data that's not fragmented. So, you know your customer base, average order value, and opportunities to expand your marketing base to new markets.
3. You Need to have a Solid Customer Support and Experience Infrastructure
Another vital part people don’t know about revenue operations is its alignment with the customer support infrastructure. In a sales-based business, you'll have customers who aren't satisfied with your product. Some will be angry, while others might just need advice.
With RevOps, all customer support issues get managed in a way that informs all essential areas. In turn, you build your reputation as a reliable provider of products. When it comes to retaining customers, support and experience issues are the equivalent of kryptonite. RevOps ensures you meet expectations.
4. You Need to Track Everything You Do Online
As a c-suite executive, you need to keep track of the critical metrics in your business. Unfortunately, these metrics often get presented in fragments. But you need the whole picture. For instance, someone will track key sales numbers but won't track the cost of sales or gross profit.
And when it comes to customer support issues, someone’s not monitoring response time. RevOps does away with slivers of information. The whole point is to use data for informed decision-making through a singular process filter (e.g., your RevOps team).
5. You Need to Have an Effective Sales Process (RevOps Gives You The Whole Picture)
Sales are a critical part of any business. And they're generally determined by three metrics: deals closed, deals value, and deals rejected. The first two metrics define by how well you sell. And the third metric determines how badly you want to sell. In many cases, the sales process gets neglected and taken for granted.
But it's fundamental to have an effective sales process in place. Without an effective sales process, you won't be able to hit your numbers. Because of the centralization of RevOps, your sales team knows everything they need to know. Again, your managers and company leaders don't get incomplete information.
6. You Need to Have a Clear Line of Sight with Accounting
Unless you have a clear line of sight with your financial division, you might not realize the extent of any ‘miss’ in performance. And while it's essential to use good judgment, it's also important to understand your numbers. So, you need to have a clear line of sight with your financial team so they can help you track all of your financial data.
Mistakes can result in big problems for your business. For example, you may discount your products too much, leading to cancellations, lower revenue, and an inefficient sales process. RevOps data doesn’t allow it to happen because the processes become fully integrated with a single spine data architecture.
7. You Need Discipline About Tweaking Your Revenue Model
As mentioned, a crucial part of your business is being mindful of the revenue model you choose. It's essential to make sure the revenue model you select is profitable and scalable. It's also vital to know the costs of adding additional revenue streams, so you can make adjustments as your business grows.
Revenue operations are flexible enough to help ensure profitability. Further, the singular flow of information in totality allows you to make intelligent decisions for scaling. You can’t scale if you don’t have all the data and variables.
8. You Need to Make Sure You Price Your Product Correctly
As a leader, you realize you need to price your product correctly. But what does that even mean? Correctly pricing your product means you accounted for all the expenses related to producing and selling it. Of course, that includes salaries, operation budgets, and production costs.
But it's also essential to make sure your price is fair as you balance price matching against competitors. The integrated business processes and technology ensure you have the best information to price products with informed data.
9. You Need to Make Sure You Don’t Waste Money on Non-Value-Added Activities
Perhaps your team buzzes with ideas. That’s great, of course. But you can’t waste time (and money) on non-value-added activities. For instance, if you give away a lot of freebies, but it doesn't materialize into sales, that's of no value. Revenue operations help you avoid this waste because it's about data at its core.
Think of RevOps as the hub of a hub-and-spoke company where data and information flows in and out of a center point. As you know, you need to avoid burning through funds necessary for growth. RevOps crystalizes the right activities to do.
10. You Need a Single and Integrated Technology Architecture
The final thing most people don't know about revenue operations is its data integration. As mentioned, companies have ever-more complicated tech stacks. It's frustrating because it also leads to complex business operations and processes.
Fully implementing RevOps means a single spine technology architecture. Meaning that everything's integrated! And what does that mean? It means you get comprehensive data into a central hub. It’s like a central nervous system.
In short, you can’t beat a systemic and integrated approach to data. Moreover, it’s the singular way to beat the competition.
Ben Stroup is Chief Growth Architect and President at Velocity Strategy Solutions where he helps leaders design, develop, and deploy smarter business growth strategies. Ben is a futurist, disruptor, and data champion. He leads a team that takes a structured learning approach to business challenges, which allows them to assist leaders in bridging the gap between ideas, innovation, and revenue—taking ideas from mind to market.
Velocity Strategy Solutions is an on-demand, next-generation business strategy and management consulting firm which provides clients with a relentless focus on data, execution, and results that positively impact the bottom line. Velocity delivers integrated people and revenue strategies combined with a disciplined approach to growth architecture that elevates the capacity of leaders, teams, and organizations to succeed and win more.
Topics: Change