Prelude:
The 16th of August 2021 marked the day I started full-time as Revenue operations (RevOps) Manager at Apify. And as I made that move from a sales career (more on that later), I found myself regularly being asked the same questions by friends & family, current & ex-colleagues, and everyone in between!
- What is Revenue operations?
- I didn't know you had financial skills? (I really don't)
- What do you do on a day-to-day basis?
All of these are reasonable questions. The title RevOps doesn't really give a clear picture of what it entails, and its association with ‘revenue’ makes people assume it’s a part of a finance department.
With that in mind, I decided to write my first Linkedin article, and to give my two-cents on what RevOps is and why this role has become so important for tech companies in the US this year.
In this article I will cover:
- What is RevOps?
- What does my day-to-day look like as RevOps manager?
- Could it be for you?
- In short...
What is RevOps?
The google definition of it (which I find a bit dry) is:
"Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the alignment of sales, marketing and customer success operations across the full customer life cycle to drive growth through operational efficiency and keep all teams accountable to revenue. This holistic approach is designed to break down silos between departments."
And while that’s a solid reply, I like to break RevOps down into two areas: Strategy (business acumen) and Operations (technical acumen).
1. Strategy (business acumen)
To me, the most important part of being an effective RevOps Manager is listening to your stakeholders. Sales, Marketing, Finance, product, engineering, or C-level (you name it) all need specific, strategic solutions to the opportunities or problems that present themself.
Another aspect is being able to look into the data from your CRM, BI, marketing tools, etc. and identify areas of opportunity/challenge and raise them with your stakeholders. The solution might be straightforward, or there might be a need for a more extensive action plan.
Put simply:
Be a strategic consultant that can provide specific solutions.
2. Operational efficiency (technical acumen)
Being able to make life easier for your customer-facing teams, and being able to do it at a fast pace can provide very quick wins for the RevOps team. In most cases (from my experience so far) it's about designing processes that are customer-focused, scalable, and user-friendly.
Another important aspect (which ties back to that dry Google definition of RevOps) is to design processes that can be implemented across departments. Creating siloed processes that only work for one team might be a missed opportunity to create awesome customer experiences! This is one of the things that separates RevOps from SalesOps, Marketing Ops, etc.
It's about designing processes that are customer-focused, scalable, and user-friendly.
A great example, which combined both strategy and operations, is the recent change in our sales process to have more of a POC (proof of concept) focus. This allows our customers the option to start by investing less into the platform with a limited scope, and to discover whether or not our platform provides the value and data quality they need. Additionally, we implemented a new proposal tool, which made our proposals look better and allowed for e-signature.
These changes to strategy and operations have been part of the reason that our team has increased its win rates from 27.69% last quarter to an incredible 44.68% as of today. Knowing that our retention rates are high and that our customers in general expand usage rapidly, makes this a huge win.
What does my day-to-day look like as RevOps manager?
RevOps Managers are necessarily involved in many different areas and across many different departments. Of course, this varies greatly based on the size and stage of the company. Apify is a fast-moving start-up, so the tasks I work on change daily.
To qualify the value my role brings to the company, I categorize my activities by these four topics:
- Revenue Forecasting (overseeing forecasting and sales velocity numbers)
- Amazing customer buying experience
- Frictionless Sales Process
- Automation and insights
I use Toggl plan to keep a roadmap of all these activities:
Examples of things I have been working on so far include: CRM implementation and improvements, diagram of the whole sales process, evaluation and implementation of various tools, forecasting and sales velocity numbers, routing of trials, target setting, training new sales reps, marketing funnel, outbound optimization, process tracking qualified meetings.
Could it be for you?
I’d say you can enter this role from either sales and marketing, or from an operations role. Due to my previous experience, I tend to speak from a sales background perspective. But if you have another background and have entered this role, I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
As a sales rep, I was always interested in the wider sales process. I was also very curious about new tools and how they could make things easier for me and my colleagues. In one of my jobs, I also got Salesforce admin certification, which helped in terms of the operations part of RevOps.
If you come from a sales background and have the following traits, RevOps might be for you:
- Curious to constantly improve your sales process
- Comfortable around using new tools
- Some experience with setting up CRMs and no code integrations
- Have full sales cycle experience
You should be willing to learn:
- Data Science
- cooperate across departments (even more than you are used to in Sales)
In short, this is how I define my role and why RevOps is important:
I help the company with ideas, strategies and solutions that can grow revenue, whilst making sure the processes of our sales, marketing, and customer success departments are fully optimised.
If you read this far, thank you, and would love to hear your thoughts in the comment.
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