RevOps Implementation (Full Guide)

What is RevOps?

RevOps is the science of sustainable revenue growth (RevPartners). 

From a strategic perspective, it's a decision from leadership to optimize all revenue-related processes. 

RevOps seeks to accomplish that by focusing on the following areas:

• Measurement & Forecasting - asking the right questions based on go-to-market motions and data measurement model.

• Technology - recommending, integrating, and managing the technology stack.

• Strategy & Planning - defining crucial elements for running go-to-market strategies.

• Process & Workflows - workflow mapping and cross-department alignment.

• Enablement - enabling and empowering human engagements across the customer journey.

• Data Governance - collecting all customer and revenue process-related data with high quality and accuracy.

• Change Management - embracing change in the organization and ensuring processes and tools adoption.

Why do B2B companies need RevOps?

1. Companies need to find profitability to thrive.

RevOps reduces operational costs by removing friction in go-to-market processes. Additionally, it identifies non-ROI programs to shut them down and save money.

2. Companies cannot afford inefficiency in the go-to-market teams. 

RevOps enables go-to-market teams to increase input and efficiency transforming the chaos of daily tasks into step-by-step playbooks. 

3. Companies need to fine-tune their EXISTING pipeline.

RevOps finds gaps in the lead conversion rates at every stage of the customer journey and prescribes solutions to increase win rates and sales velocity. 

4. Due to less market demand, companies need to focus more on the existing customer base and drive growth from retention and x-sell.

RevOps secures and increases recurring revenue by identifying customer churn risks and cross-sell & up-sell opportunities.

5. Companies lost control over the buyer journey due to broadband access to the internet (dark social).

RevOps helps companies to see the entire funnel and use data to tell a competitive story.

6. Before investing in a company, VCs evaluate its efficiency based on how it collects, analyzes, and uses data.

RevOps allows companies to collect all customer and revenue data with high quality and accuracy so they can easily report to investors. 

Revenue Operations (RevOps) team structure/org chart

Org chart without RevOps

Mid-sized companies typically add roles like operations, enablement, insights, and tools to their go-to-market teams for better collaboration and focus.

While not all roles may be feasible, they're a good starting point for RevOps alignment.

Yet, without a dedicated RevOps leader, there is less collective accountability. Consequently, functions and RevOps-specific roles might lose direction without central oversight.

Org chart with RevOps

Companies that want to introduce RevOps need to reorganize the whole org. structure under its umbrella. But... there is one objective to make it work.

RevOps needs to be an independent function sitting next to sales, marketing, and customer success leaders, not behind them.

Otherwise, the Revenue Operations team becomes an order-taker and system admin, not a strategic advisor, and business partner.

As you can see, an independent Revenue Operations team centralizes all RevOps responsibilities under one leader, promoting maximal alignment.

Revenue Operations Implementation

To successfully implement RevOps you need a roadmap guiding your actions step-by-step in specific time frames. 

1. Revenue Diagnostics

1.1 Data Model and measurement

At this step, the RevOps team collects information on what data you're tracking in your CRM & tools and how you're doing it. For example:

What revenue performance metrics are you tracking?

Can you easily measure your leads & conversion rates?

Do you know your sales cycle length?

1.2 Process mapping with current and future state

RevOps process mapping is the visual way of identifying, documenting, and analyzing all the processes and workflows involved in generating revenue.

It includes sales, marketing, and customer success.

1.3 Current state process mapping

RevOps team maps your current processes for 3 reasons:

• Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies
• Highlight opportunities for optimization and new initiatives
• Understand customer journey for sales, marketing, and customer success

Check the example of current process state mapping in Miro here:

(Click the image to open the Miro board)

Based on that RevOps creates recommendation and build a plan to streamline your processes and reduce friction.

1.4 Future state process mapping

RevOps creates a future state process map to align all your teams on what a new or improved future will look like. It does that by answering questions like:

• How would things look if all the problems were solved? 
• If all the things were tracked? 
• If all the manual work was automated? 
• If everything happened in HubSpot!?

Check the example of future process state mapping in Miro here:

(Click the image to open the Miro boards)

2. Opportunities analysis

Once the process mapping is complete, the RevOps team identifies key initiatives aligned with the company's objectives.

(example of RevOps initiatives aligned with OKRs)

3. RevOps Roadmap

With strategic initiatives identified, the RevOps team builds a roadmap and sets milestones.

It serves as a visual guide that provides transparency, clarity, and accountability to all stakeholders. 

(RevOps Roadmap sample)

Check here how to build a RevOps Roadmap.

3.1 Quick wins

Based on the roadmap RevOps team identifies quick wins to capitalize on low-hanging fruits and demonstrate the value quickly. It can be for example:

• Boost lead response with a calendar in a website form that automatically books a meeting with sales
  
  
• Reduce deal cycle with the automated contracting tool for Account Executives
  
  
• Streamline lead nurture with buyer personas automatically assigned to MDRs with contextualized reasons to talk

4. KPIs for RevOps

Finally, the RevOps team establishes KPIs to measure the success of its initiatives.

They should be always aligned with the specific goals of each project. 

For example, a KPI for the "boosting lead response" can be reducing contact time from 3 days to 24 hours.

Regular tracking and analysis of these metrics enable all stakeholders to:

1. Assess the RevOps business value
2. Identify areas for improvement
3. Make data-driven decisions to drive optimization

The good standard is to review the progress of RevOps initiatives quarterly and prioritize new ones based on updated business requirements.