A very successful Chief Revenue Officer said this to me about his job:
“There are three things that I have to pay attention to: How to generate more leads, how to lead my sales team, and everything else. I HATE the ‘everything else’.”
I have made the case for expanding the term Sales Enablement into something called “Revenue Operations”. The comment from my CRO friend gave me another insight. Revenue Operations is really the “everything else” that he was talking about.
If you think about the responsibilities of today’s CRO, it encompasses everything that happens at a company that leads to revenue – from generating interest in the market to securing new clients to ensuring that clients stick around. And making sure that all those elements work together to ensure that revenue is flowing is what revenue operations does.
Most CROs and CSOs have a natural affinity for one of these four. Leaders who rose through the marketing function may gravitate towards making sure the lead generation engine is humming. Leaders who started out as sales hunters will likely spend most of their focus on managing their team of new logo sellers. And leaders with a background in customer success will naturally lean into back-to-base selling and the renewal process.
But who focuses on the “everything else” of Revenue Operations? Given the rate of change that all companies and industries are seeing today, having your revenue operations running smoothly can be the difference between success and failure for the overall revenue function. In general, there are 6 major areas to focus on to ensure your revenue operations are working properly.
Six Areas of Focus for Revenue Operations
Metrics that Matter: Do you have the right metrics and dashboards to provide you with a clear-eyed analysis of how each revenue function is performing? Do you get that data regularly? Is it both accurate AND actionable?
Revenue Tech Stack: What technology is being leveraged by your marketing, sales and customer success teams? Do they integrate with one another? Are your teams leveraging these tools to the fullest?
Messaging Alignment: You communicate with your clients and prospects in far more ways than a sales pitch or a face-to-face meeting. Do all of your customer-facing touchpoints, from your on-line presence to your sales collateral to your client newsletter, give a consistent message?
Process and Methodologies: Regardless of the size of your company, you have processes and methodologies that are used by your team in the generation of bookings and revenue. Are yours efficient? Do they ensure a positive experience for your clients and prospects?
Hiring and Onboarding: Failure to have a coordinated hiring and onboarding program can create massive discrepancies in the quality of the interaction between the revenue functions, and it can create a very unhealthy customer experience. How effective are you at hiring great people to speak to your clients? And how fast are you getting them up to speed and effective?
Revenue Improvement Initiatives: This is the area that many revenue generating organizations neglect. What is the process by which your company examines the overall health and effectiveness of your revenue generation functions? More importantly, what is your process for improving them?
At TechCXO, we have deep expertise in all aspects of Revenue Generation and Revenue Growth. We work with companies of all sizes – from start ups to publicly traded multi-nationals – to assess and improve their revenue operations function.
