Anchor Your GTM Success with RevOps: An Approach for Driving Revenue Across Your Organization

Summary

An organization is only ever as strong as its core structures, processes, and data flows.

The prevalence of buyer scrutiny, pipeline slowdown, and the long sales cycles of today’s B2B organizations present marketers with a formidable storm to weather.

Therefore, it is understandable that executives are reflecting on the most fundamental elements of their organizations to identify the root of their success and determine the right way forward. This includes evaluating products and solutions against company legacy, as well as ensuring that strategies are targeting ideal clients that will resonate with both.

This introspection commonly involves adopting a new go-to-market (GTM) model for the organization (or pivoting an existing model) to anchor its future. Indeed, many GTM models have been developed in recent years:

While differing in popularity, these GTM motions primarily center on categorizing the core focus of an organization, and by proxy, its identity as well. As a result, GTM models serve as a guide for the building or shaping of an organization’s structures, as well as the distribution of vital resources, to make a meaningful change and establish the best next steps to take in optimizing its strategy and operations.

Why focus on GTM

Although each model has its strengths, the speed of their development, adoption, and abandonment, highlight that there is still room for improvement—particularly where interdepartmental collaboration is concerned.

This certainly rang true in our latest INFUSE Insights, where more than 300 senior marketers across all regions and company sizes indicated that, while their KPIs have not changed much in 2023, their challenges have evolved.

Indeed, while delivering SQLs (30%) and securing sales meetings (21%) ranked 5th and 6th respectively in terms of KPIs that marketers are measured on, generating SQLs ranked number one (34%) in the top three challenges demand marketers are currently facing.

“These findings are indicative of an organizational imbalance in GTM strategies as pressure mounts on marketers to support sales, and prioritize their needs over top performance metrics. This is the result of a difficult economic climate that is sparking change in buyer behavior and priorities, including less time spent with sales teams. Such a challenge demands a meaningful shift in the sales approach.

Organizations must look to develop and adopt GTM models that not only allow for collaboration between core functions but also support the ability to remain agile ahead of rapidly evolving buyer needs. Success in establishing a strong foundation will be critical for achieving objectives in such an exigent marketplace.”

In this Outlook chapter, we explore the three core elements of implementing a GTM model suited to tackling the top challenges of 2024:

How to develop the right GTM model

How to execute GTM strategies

How to fuel GTM strategies for the demand outcomes you need

The rise of RevOps

Since its inception, revenue operations, commonly known as RevOps, has grown in popularity. 48% of companies have now implemented a revenue operations function (up from 33% in 2021), and an additional 11% plan to invest in RevOps by 2024 (Revenue.io). This forecast is echoed by Gartner, which predicts a staggering 75% of the highest-growth companies to have adopted a RevOps model by 2025.

It is not hard to see why RevOps has begun to dominate the B2B space, especially considering its numerous benefits:

Interdepartmental alignment (across sales, marketing, client success, and revenue teams)
Centralization of data, flows, and processes (by abolishing silos)
KPI and metrics unification across departments
Improved data reports and insights
Streamlined organizational processes

In addition, effective RevOps models have been found to drive revenue growth (13%), performance (15%), alignment (21%), and revenue productivity (21%) for many organizations after implementation (Revenue.io). As a result of the performance it supports, RevOps is unlikely to decrease in popularity. However, the potential of RevOps is yet to be fully realized, as it becomes an increasingly important component in the next wave of GTM models.

The role of RevOps in GTM strategies

The logic of including RevOps in the DNA of GTM models becomes clear when analyzing the current environment and GTM imbalance in line with evolving buyer behavior and expectations.

Today’s buyers are not only scrutinous but also enabled by the vast range of content options to self-educate and research their options independently. As the number of buyer committee members (five to eleven, Gartner 2023) and average touchpoints also continue to increase (up to 27, Forrester 2021), so does the importance of providing the seamless, buyer-centric experiences prospects have come to expect. This is particularly true when faced with the challenge of tackling pipeline velocity as a result of The Great Tech Stall.

The nature of these new realities positions RevOps as a natural solution for structuring (or restructuring) GTM models. For many GTM leaders, the inclusion of RevOps in GTM models is not a new concept. In fact, in their breakdown of GTM motions, GTM Partners categorize RevOps as one of the eight key pillars of GTM strategies. Listed as a function that allows for a single source of truth, unified and automated data systems and workflows, and centralized organization charts, RevOps holds a key role in GTM motion.

Indeed, the most fundamental elements of RevOps strategies align with the processes organizations should execute when developing, implementing, and maintaining GTM motions and models.

The joint goals and needs of GTM and RevOps initiatives:

Determining target buyer personas and the total relevant market
Establishing interdepartmental data flows and processes
Leveraging data insights to determine the direction of key strategies
Coordinating efforts across teams to ensure a seamless revenue cycle

Another key element of navigating the current environment that is enabled by RevOps is maintaining growth. Given the challenges faced with acquisition, maximizing the cost of acquisition to client lifetime value (CAC to CLTV) is essential for driving sustainable ROI.

“Full funnel, client-centric approaches that span the entirety of the client lifecycle are crucial to encourage renewals, upsells, and cross-sells. However, activating and managing this strategy is not possible without data-driven insights and seamless interdepartmental processes. Consequently, RevOps is integral in establishing the necessary structures to support the burden of developing and maintaining a strategy that maximizes client value.”

If implemented correctly, RevOps has the potential to bolster GTM models with the core elements necessary for achieving success. After all, despite the range of challenges organizations are currently facing or those likely to arise in the future, the overall goal remains constant: driving revenue to fuel growth.

3 strategies for setting up a successful RevOps organization

While the critical role of RevOps as a driver of demand outcomes is clear, its implementation and ongoing support depend on the right approach to achieve optimal performance. RevOps strategies require careful consideration, given their breadth across the entire organization.

Below are three key strategies for establishing a strong base for RevOps that will allow the flexibility necessary for your teams to remain agile to your Ideal Client Profiles (ICPs) and objectives as they evolve:

How to implement RevOps to support your GTM strategies

The fundamentals of establishing a RevOps function are already strongly aligned with the processes involved in developing a GTM strategy. However, there are some key elements to consider when implementing RevOps to ensure the best outcomes for your GTM model.

Create your Proof of Value (POV)

RevOps and GTM are both strategies that hinge on the strong alignment of all teams on well-defined objectives. A core element of setting goals that will orientate your teams is defining your POV: a four-point assessment of your current standing and the steps needed to ensure strategies are on track.

Clarifying your unique value proposition (UVP): Begin by defining the core problem that your offerings are solving for your clients, from the clients’ perspective. This will enable you to determine how meaningful this pain point is, and how likely it is to motivate action and conversions. As the foundation of your position in the market, aligning your UVP with the perception of your brand and offerings will allow you to pinpoint fundamental pivots.
Identify obstacles: The second half of assessing the current state of your organization is determining potential obstacles that stand in the way. This should include internal factors that span all areas, such as the capabilities of your current tech stack, your philosophy, and any outdated processes, as well as external influences such as main competitors, new markets, etc. This process will help to create objectives that are both realistic and focused on solving these challenges.
Anchor your purpose: Solidifying your main purpose comes from your analysis of the challenges your organization is known for solving. This is an opportunity to pivot the direction of your organization or reinforce your legacy vision in the event that it has become neglected. In either case, defining your guiding principles and the main reason your prospective buyers should invest in you is an integral element of aligning your teams toward a unified goal.
Set your goals: The final element of your POV is securing objectives that will guide your teams to develop strategies that will empower your growth. These should be specific, both in terms of scope and timeline, as well as aligned to your capabilities as they scale. While objectives should be well-defined, allow for flexibility to make adjustments based on the performance of your GTM motions and their associated strategies.

Define your ICPs

Crafting a new GTM model, or building specific integrated GTM motions for your organization, also requires a reassessment of the accuracy of your ICPs to account for the natural evolution of your target buyers and their committees, your organization, and market conditions. However, this process is particularly relevant given the current environment and defensive positioning of buyers which has prompted a shift in their needs toward value, risk reduction, and overall experiences with brands.

Indeed, according to the latest G2 data (featured in the 2023 Software Buyer Behavior Report), the top concerns of buyers include:

Ease of implementation and integration
ROI within 6 months
Scalability
User adoption

Support
Features
Price and security

Considering these new priorities, analyze your ICPs using the findings from the first two steps of creating your POV to optimize or fully redefine your ICPs to guarantee precision and promote revenue growth. Be sure to share definitions across the breadth of your organization to align your teams on how to shape your GTM motions and strategies.

guide

Learn more about developing detailed ICPs and buyer personas to fuel your strategies in our definitive guide

Consider your buyer’s journey

Given the emphasis buyers place on experiences, crafting a buyer’s journey that supports the delivery of high-quality, seamless engagement should form an integral part of your RevOps model. Below are the key considerations for building a golden buyer’s journey:

Activating the right channels: The pressure to optimize budgets will require your strategies to prioritize the marketing channels that your ICPs most commonly frequent. If you have made significant updates to your ICPs, determining the right channel mix will be a longer process that should be supported with data insights and the latest lead intelligence available.
Interdepartmental processes: A key RevOps function and crucial element of crafting a seamless buyer’s journey is ensuring that internal processes are set up accordingly. This can be achieved by establishing handover processes and data flows between departments. Doing so will allow teams to make data-driven decisions necessary to enhance the buyer experience with optimization and personalization.
Feedback loops and assessment: Evolve your buyer’s journey as necessary by establishing processes for collecting feedback from clients. This will help you to identify sticking points or gaps in your current buyer’s journey, as well as the most successful touchpoints. Combine these findings with the latest data insights at your disposal to inform investment decisions in new channels and strategy optimizations.

“Buyer’s journeys must not be built from a prescriptive standpoint, but instead activated across all available channels. Prospects should be empowered to navigate channels at their own pace as they see fit. Enable this free movement between channels by ensuring consistency and precision across all touchpoints.“

guide

Discover the 5 foundations of effective
B2B market segmentation

How to structure your RevOps teams

Whether you are creating your first RevOps process or reshaping an existing one, the blueprint for your team should directly align with the size of your organization, your budget, and most importantly, your buyers’ needs. With this in mind and the breadth of the roles your RevOps team is likely to span, it is highly beneficial to build your team with professionals who have a wealth of experience in revenue-generating functions.

The roles within your RevOps team can then be distributed in two distinct ways with respect to skill sets and responsibilities:

By core function:

This approach involves aligning members to key functional elements of your RevOps model depending on their skill set. For example, one individual can specialize in establishing and supporting your systems, while others can focus on the processes necessary to implement cross-departmental strategies or specific alignment projects. While this structure requires each member to handle more areas, it can be ideal for smaller organizations with less available headcount.

Source: Pavilion

By department:

In contrast, another approach is to structure your RevOps teams based on departmental skills. This involves building a team with members who have sales and marketing ops experience, as well as those familiar with other departments within your organization, such as client success. Individuals who have experience in multiple departments (for example, progressing from sales to marketing or vice versa) are particularly well-suited to this structure.

However, a key consideration of this approach is to ensure that aligning to departmental roles does not result in data silos. Be sure to support this initiative with data flows and communication processes in place.

Source: Pavilion

Aligning the creation of your RevOps team with your GTM model development is a great opportunity to establish the core structures across your organization that will enable the memorable and seamless experiences buyers are looking for.

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Download a one-pager of how to structure
your RevOps teams

Leadership principles to empower your growth

Beyond the organizational structures and processes you set in place with your GTM strategy are the leadership principles you can adopt to encourage collaboration and enable innovation across your RevOps organization. Below are three practices to empower your teams to achieve your ambitious targets:

#1 Support alignment

Naturally, alignment is at the heart of high-performance RevOps motions. However, successful execution and, most importantly, maintenance require the right support structures and processes. As a leader, there are a few key areas you can focus on to contribute to alignment and, therefore, better outcomes:

Manage your mission statement and language: Defining a shared vision for your teams is a core element of developing your POV (as explored in step one). However, this must also evolve in line with your top challenges and opportunities as they arise. As a result, your mission statement, when combined with internal language that inspires collaboration and innovation in your teams, can be leveraged as a powerful tool for motivation and alignment.
Set and adapt workflows: While abolishing silos is critical for RevOps performance, clarifying workflows is an important consideration for alignment and ensuring that all teams understand their roles. Regularly evaluate workflows to identify necessary optimizations that will boost performance.
Share successes: Effectively communicating and celebrating the progression of strategies in meeting goals is not only a strong motivator but another driver of alignment. Access to the outcomes of campaigns and initiatives also enables team members to share new ideas that can contribute to brainstorming iterative strategies.

#2 Diffuse internal struggles

Your teams are likely to encounter a variety of challenges and obstacles as they pursue the goals you set to drive revenue across the organization. Here are a few key tactics to adopt to enable your teams to resolve them:

Tackle misalignment: Given the emphasis on seamless workflows between teams to enable consistent client experiences, issues with alignment can be a substantial obstacle to overcome. Counteract misalignment by establishing regular structured meetings that focus on aligning teams on cross-departmental strategies. Common KPIs driven by business strategies are an important first step, followed by integrated communication channels across the organization.
Allocate resources where needed: Resource allocation is a critical challenge, particularly in a year of restricted budgets. Encourage team members to compare potential solutions and to supply brief proposals for the resources they need. These can then be evaluated by your RevOps leaders for feasibility and revenue attainment. In the case of smaller needs, consider empowering key team members with the ability to prioritize the resources they require.
Identify and manage obstacles: Although a principal element of building your POV, determining and addressing issues, internal or otherwise, is an essential practice to maintain. Guide your teams to address risks and resolve issues as they arise in order of priority. This will not only enable you to focus your strategies with greater efficiency but also to achieve better outcomes as a result.

For all three of these strategies to solve the challenges that your team faces, communication is key. Encourage regular team communication and an open culture that allows for honest feedback to flow up the organization hierarchy to decision makers and team leaders.

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best practices

#3 Empower your teams

As a leader and principal enabler of change at your organization, it is important to consider how best you can empower your teams to act with the agility and precision necessary to align experiences with buyer expectations.

Share granular data insights: Beyond reporting success, counteract silos by orchestrating consistent sharing of relevant and timely data insights across your RevOps teams and encourage your team leaders to do the same. Data points from core functions such as marketing, sales, or client success can help enable teams to strategize on initiatives that align more closely, and therefore, contribute to better prospect experience.
Create learning opportunities: Supply your teams with holistic learning journeys that add to their skill sets. As RevOps teams thrive on collaboration, broadening the knowledge of individuals can help to support better performance. This is also a fantastic opportunity to educate teams on the latest findings and trends in the marketplace that you are observing, allowing them to optimize or develop new, refined strategies.
Empower team members: Maintaining a consistent level of quality as well as brand voice and identity across initiatives is essential. As a result, many organizations rely on stringent, and often multi-layered review processes to mitigate as much risk as possible. However, an important element of enabling your teams to move swiftly is identifying core team members who are well-suited to driving decisions.

While this process should not be taken lightly, there is a trend, with 40% of growth leaders in North America currently empowering frontline and middle managers with decision making (McKinsey). Not only does this enable agility but it also contributes to a culture of innovation and forward thinking that supports RevOps motions well.

How to fuel your GTM motions

Once you have implemented your RevOps strategies and tactics with a solid foundation of processes and workflows, it is important to consider how you will maintain your GTM model. This is essential for shaping it to empower your organization to effectively navigate change as the marketplace and your positioning within it continue to evolve.

Below is a critical guiding principle for achieving success with GTM motions in the year ahead, along with a method of practice for developing iterative strategies to drive your growth.

Principle: Invest in mastering the full funnel client lifecycle

“At the core of enabling and maintaining growth in the face of today’s defensive buyer is providing a buyer’s journey and client lifecycle that is personalized and seamless. As subscription-based service agreements continue to dominate the market, this becomes a necessary initiative for tackling churn as buyers rapidly switch between services.”

As our INFUSE Insights research demonstrates, going into 2024 the top three motivations for tech purchases are:

New business opportunity requirements (68%)
Tech stack integration (50%)
Current vendors not meeting business needs (50%)

Client satisfaction and adaptability to buyer needs are therefore critical to securing higher client lifetime value (CLTV)—a top priority for many, as buying committees and sales cycles continue to expand.

Delivering full funnel lifecycles that meet buyer expectations demands client-centricity across the organization, with an emphasis on tracking performance with metrics that account for the entirety of the client lifecycle.

Key metrics

Full funnel GTM motions should be anchored by the most important KPIs: client lifetime value vs cost of acquisition (CLTV vs CAC). Even so, below are recommendations for additional metrics that apply across all GTM models:

Sales velocity
Conversion rate
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) & Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Market share
Sales and marketing contribution to pipeline and revenue

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Drive ROI by collecting, analyzing, and sharing lead intelligence across your organization

Post-sales nurturing

Lead nurturing, while a powerful strategy, is often neglected. Omnichannel nurturing is growing in popularity, up from 13% to 36% from 2022 to 2023, respectively (according to INFUSE Insights), however, it is far from becoming a common practice. Organizations that develop and implement highly focused lead nurturing streams that extend beyond the bottom of the funnel to the post-sales stage stand to gain a competitive advantage through displacement and securing a higher average CLTV.

“Nurturing should focus on keeping clients up to date on the latest developments of your solutions to empower them to drive the best outcomes. Investing in your client success function and establishing regular communication channels with clients can also help to build and maintain relationships. Not only will this demonstrate your dedication to providing value, but it also serves as a source of valuable feedback for shaping your solutions or making optimizations.”

In short, nurturing strategies at this point should be focused on enabling clients to solve their most pressing issues and ensuring that solutions remain adaptive to their business needs as they arise. This will help to contribute to your competitive positioning and directly tackle client churn.

Brand and demand

The relationship between building a brand and generating demand with prospective clients has long stood as a popular topic of debate—with brand often seen as the start of the journey toward achieving demand. What is clear, however, is the importance of the role that both brand and demand play within GTM models built to withstand the current environment.

With a full funnel approach that spans the entire client lifecycle, brand and demand must be considered as parallel and interconnected processes, rather than sequential, starting as soon as leads enter the funnel. This is particularly true as buying decisions continue to be heavily influenced by risk aversion and uncertainty (fear of messing up—FOMU), creating a greater emphasis on the need to establish trust and credibility with buyers from the offset.

Practice: Develop adaptive and agile strategies

Precision and personalization remain paramount to driving meaningful outcomes. However, long development cycles can lead to stagnation, over-planning, and valuable opportunities being missed. As the B2B marketplace and buyer expectations continue to rapidly evolve, success in the year ahead will come from strategies that lean on your RevOps structures to remain agile—while mitigating as much risk as possible.

Below are the four core elements of developing and implementing adaptive strategies to capitalize on timely opportunities:

Enable rapid execution

A key leadership principle explored earlier in this chapter, identifying obstacles in the way of launching strategies is an essential element of your development cycle. Whether external or internal, resolving these issues avoids strategies becoming outdated. In addition, launching strategies quickly can help to identify potential flaws and how they can be resolved. While an approach that involves more risk, this can be a way of streamlining the process of achieving the best possible version of your strategies.

Optimize in real time

At the core of agility is access to real-time data insights into the performance of campaigns. Establish a regular cadence of performing reviews to inform optimizations to be made while programs are still live. This can include assessing the timeline of campaigns and whether they should be extended or immediately renewed.

However, it is important to note that while an agile approach to making these changes can be hugely beneficial, updates should refrain from deviating initiatives from their main goal. After all, drastic changes will harm your ability to glean insights from campaign performance to inform the next iteration of your strategy.

Encourage input from all teams

Creativity and innovative ideas can be invaluable for developing strategies that break through the noise and engage target buyers. As such, leverage your RevOps infrastructure to field open discussions and encourage the input of multiple teams based on the sharing of ideas and insights. Doing so will help to uncover new approaches, and increase the quality of your strategies.

Create an insights loop

The true strength of developing agile strategies is enabling organizations to rapidly collect data insights on performance. These data points should then be leveraged to inform optimizations and the development of subsequent iterations. Below is an overarching flow to guide this process and ensure that new strategies are based on the latest insights available.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

When approaching your GTM strategies for 2024, be sure to consider these key takeaways:

RevOps performs a critical role in GTM success as an enabler of functions that support the development of experiences that buyers have come to expect.
Support your RevOps function with the right implementation process, including structuring your teams according to your needs and adopting supportive leadership principles.
Invest in full-funnel client lifecycles to deliver high-quality buyer experiences beyond the purchase stage to tackle churn and drive CLTV.
Develop practices and processes for fueling your GTM motions with iterative strategies that build on data insights to continuously optimize efforts.