RevOps: How to Organize Your Business
for Revenue Growth in 2023 By Dan Freeman,
Chief Revenue Officer

Summary

Given the economic turbulence brought on by the readjustment of the market, it is no wonder that many organizations are exploring RevOps as a business model with a promise that it may bring bigger and more stable revenue growth.

Indeed, research by Revenue.io indicates that 21% of companies have seen an increase in alignment and productivity as a result of RevOps. In addition, teams crafting and implementing go-to-market (GTM) campaigns saw a 100%-200% increase in the ROI of digital marketing initiatives, according to Boston Consulting Group.

The potential of RevOps is as clear as its popularity: As stated in the 2022 Tenbound report, 41% of companies already have a RevOps function, with at least 11% planning to switch to RevOps in 2023.

However, before organizations are able to reap the many benefits promised by RevOps, its implementation presents some challenges, particularly when determining the right structures and tools to achieve the best outcomes.

How to implement RevOps for your business in 2023

Before getting started with RevOps, it is important to first ensure that your processes are empowered by complete alignment across your entire organization.

Alignment is essential for successful RevOps implementation, but it is a complex process that requires careful planning and ongoing maintenance. At the center of synchronizing your teams is a change of mindset. For many, the misconception that RevOps is an approach run by a singular department or small expert team remains prevalent.

However—much like true ABM and ABX—yielding impactful results from RevOps requires an organization-wide approach that unifies teams with shared goals and KPIs. It is this alignment that empowers businesses to achieve up to 19% faster revenue growth (SiriusDecisions) and maximize RevOps outcomes.

Regular meetings between departments can help prevent misalignment by allowing teams to review shared objectives, such as pipeline and revenue performance, and identify areas for improvement. This enables them to quickly adjust their strategies accordingly.

Beyond internal alignment, Gartner’s six-step framework for transitioning to a RevOps structure and combating the complexities of the process is worth considering:

Strategy: A detailed plan that aligns revenue objectives for the organization.
Process: The design, management, and tracking of processes that generate (and measure) revenue.
Workflow: Determining the automation of tasks to sustain an interconnected revenue organization.
Data: Identifying the data necessary to manage revenue tasks.
Analysis: Processes to monitor the revenue life cycle of the organization.
Technology: The tech stack needed to maintain and facilitate RevOps.

As RevOps is a multidisciplinary model that is relatively new for businesses, follow the six steps above to help build and maintain a healthy RevOps ecosystem.

In a time when promoting growth is more important than ever, particularly with the risk of recession in 2023, implementing RevOps can sustain a business for a difficult fiscal year.

4 RevOps trends to boost revenue growth in 2023

Empower your RevOps framework with these trending initiatives:

#1 CX and buyer enablement as tools to drive revenue

Since clients determine revenue streams for the business, RevOps is intrinsically connected to client experience (CX).

CX covers all interactions between a brand and its audience, from attracting leads to offering post-sale support. Clients who have a positive relationship with the brand are more likely to contribute to its growth, such as renewing contracts or recommending services to others. Therefore, CX must be a driving force when implementing a RevOps model.

To ensure seamless customer experience (CX), it is essential to reduce friction points that clients may have with your brand. This includes eliminating information scarcity, providing reliable support, and ensuring timely deliveries. Additionally, having a satisfied and well-trained team is also key to achieving successful RevOps.

Observable data can enable salespeople to efficiently promote solution sets, combining different services into a coherent bundle, as well as to price offers adequately. This ties in with buyer enablement, which empowers your leads with relevant information to guide their complex purchases.

Since 77% of buyers state that purchases have become increasingly difficult (Gartner), buyer enablement becomes a core strategy to drive sales and increase revenue with a brand that stands out for its streamlined purchasing process.

#2 Investing in client obsession

As our INFUSE champion of delivering outcomes and previous Executive Director of Client Success, presently Vice President of Business Operations, Larysa Zakirova shares her thoughts on client obsession:

“When faced with the challenge of driving revenue growth, the knee-jerk reaction is often to focus on expanding one’s client base. Although this is worth pursuing, high acquisition costs brought on by the longer B2B sales cycle are likely to hamper profits.

Therefore it is prudent for organizations, particularly those with a RevOps model in place, to make use of client obsession to drive sustainable revenue and growth as a result.

Essentially, client obsession is the practice of prioritizing existing clients and strategies to foster loyalty and thereby greater levels of retention. Not only does this stand to reduce acquisition costs but it also helps to increase the overall client lifetime value (CLTV) of each account and maximize profits.”

— Larysa Zakirova, VP of Business Operations

3 steps for implementing client obsession:

Include case studies as an extra value proposition in deals: Establishing contact with existing clients is sometimes challenging. Combat this by baking case studies into the sales process. This will both help to reiterate the value clients have received from their partnership with you and build up your library of social proof. Produce case studies for a multitude of clients and industries and you will be more likely to leverage said content in personalized nurture streams.
Build points of feedback into your processes: A key element of achieving client obsession is demonstrating dedication back to clients from the start. Allow and encourage clients to provide you with feedback at various stages of the buyer’s journey and fulfillment process. Once collected, act quickly to action optimizations and solutions to their pain points. Even if clients refrain from feedback until the end of your services, motivating open communication demonstrates confidence and a willingness to meet their needs that builds trust.
Establish brand evangelists: Take the previous strategy to the next level by empowering clients to regularly provide insights and their opinion on your products or services. Facilitate this process with quarterly business review (QBR) meetings and reports on how their feedback had an influence on performance. Be sure to reward brand evangelists with deals on upsells, renewals, or collaborations of thought leadership (as possible). This tactic takes time to implement, however, the rewards could mean long-lasting partnerships.

Essentially, the more you invest in community building, driving regular engagement and empowering clients, the more value you will be able to generate from your existing client pool—all while minimizing additional costs.

#3 RevOps hiring

It comes as no surprise that implementing RevOps as an organizational-wide model requires the right team to yield the results necessary for driving revenue opportunities and growth. With this in mind, it is important to approach hiring and team building with the right strategy.

Here are some tips in line with current RevOps trends to help you get started:

Establish goals: Proper planning is essential for any successful strategy, and this includes assembling the right team. Determine the goals of the RevOps team for your business and create an organized strategy for sourcing team members based on their specific skill set and function. Establish the order in which each member should be sourced to ensure the team is able to meet the goals.
Source knowledge: Given the drivers of RevOps in recent years, it is hugely beneficial to hire individuals who have years of industry experience and know-how, particularly those with change management training and expertise. By forming teams that are aware of the difficulties faced by marketing, sales, and client success departments, you will be able to effectively implement complex initiatives.

Hiring in this way will also support the alignment that delivering a seamless client experience necessitates—including meeting organization-wide goals.
Cultivate the right attitude: While direct skills are essential, hiring with soft skills in mind such as character, curiosity, and a healthy appetite for learning, is also a must. Indeed, the members of the team you build will greatly influence its culture and the quality of its deliverables.

After all, skills can be taught to those with the right mindset, given that established onboarding processes are in place. Support this by encouraging open communication and team discussions, as well as facilitating processes with the right tools (see the stack section below for more information).
Elect an internal champion: While the responsibility of ensuring that RevOps processes run smoothly throughout your organization should not fall down on one individual, it does necessitate finding the right leader to drive it forward. This may be the role of the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO), or a similar span of control, who must leverage an understanding of organization-wide alignment and each department’s role (ideally from hands-on experience). Your leader should also have knowledge of appropriate technology and how to support its integration to aid data flow throughout systems.

Above all, they must be passionate about delivering value and the best outcomes and experience for clients. Be sure to build their presence as an external champion of RevOps with thought leadership content. This will help audiences relate to your content and brand authority, boosting demand outcomes.
Talent retention: Finally, your strategy for building an effective RevOps team should also address how to retain talent. This is particularly pertinent given the state of the job market today, the current skill shortage, and the recent increasing ubiquity of RevOps making it harder to identify true talent. In addition to cultivating a healthy culture in your team and driving open communication, consider providing team members with regular learning opportunities.

Not only will investing in the growth of your team help nurture their interest and motivation, but this will also boost potential outcomes. If successful, you will then be able to empower team members with more responsibility, boosting their career progression and the development of your team as a result.

#4 RevOps data and tech stack

Discover the data sources and tools to empower your RevOps in 2023:

How to leverage RevOps data in 2023

Businesses that wish to effectively drive RevOps will require clean and current data, going beyond analysis on historical data and events.

Relying on old data for analysis and decision making is reactive, limiting the capacity to adapt and preventing the business from driving future revenue. Current data is better for painting a forthcoming picture of the market to guide future decisions.

The need to futureproof RevOps with real-time data has become even greater considering the recession risk of 2023, given fewer opportunities and market readjustment as budgets decrease and buyers become more reluctant to spend.

Building current data systems requires information from multiple sources, which is demonstrated by the top four sources appointed by respondents in the 2022 Database Survey by Demand Gen Report:

Data on a buyer’s timeframe for decision making (54%)
Buying intent signals (52%)
Specific commentary on challenges/pain points (52%)
Budget information (40%)

All four of these sources are related to the buyer’s journey, which demonstrates how RevOps data in 2023 will be mostly focused on optimizing the buying experience, empowered by CX and user experience (UX) best practices.

Therefore, to leverage data for efficient RevOps, it is paramount to combine first-party and third-party data, along with information from partners if possible to evaluate the current market scenario and drive campaigns.

How to build a RevOps tech stack for 2023

The ideal tech stack for RevOps in 2023 is precisely one that is capable of aggregating and interpreting real-time buyer data from the sources mentioned above.

Therefore, it is paramount to move on from legacy programs and implement technology that gains insights from buyers and target accounts timely, to empower agile changes for marketing and sales.

Below is a list of must-haves in a RevOps tech stack for 2023:

CX and UX

As previously mentioned, CX tools analyze the buyer’s journey to glean insights so businesses can build better experiences for clients. This includes tracking client touchpoints as well as measuring KPIs such as churn and CLTV. Many Client Relationship Management (CRM) platforms are currently evolving to include CX functionalities.

CX is also paired with UX, which focuses on improving the brand experience for users, which includes web and product design. There are dedicated UX design tools for developing design systems and prototypes teams can work on collaboratively.

The idea of combining CX and UX is to improve the overall experience by analyzing both client and user activity. Together, they can assess audience behavior and guide adjustments to improve brand promotion and solutions.

guide

Discover the link between RevOps and CX
according to 25+ experts

ABX

Account Based Experience (ABX) is an approach that incorporates UX and CX practices with account based marketing (ABM) to develop a buyer journey-driven campaign to engage buyers at target accounts.

The idea is that by leveraging insights from the tools mentioned above, alongside ABM platforms and activators, brands can better resonate with buyers with timely and personalized experiences.

guide

Outlook 2023

Read The Rise of ABX to learn more about this
buyer-centric account marketing method

Buyer intent

Buyer intent data (first and third-party) will be essential to inform sales readiness of prospects, as well as how to follow up with marketing and sales on their behavior.

While there are many myths surrounding buyer intent, it is important to analyze it as a factor (among many) to personalize messaging as well as the highlighted features of your solutions.

Social listening

Building upon the experience tools above, social listening tracks brand mentions and branded keywords to assess the overall brand perception of your audience.

Evaluating brand perception is important to assess if content is driving its intended messaging, as well as detect issues clients may have with solutions and make adequate adjustments.

Sales enablement

There are many sales enablement platforms available, which recommend content for salespeople to share with prospects based on previous interactions, as well as glean insights from emails and phone calls to make recommendations to improve their future approaches.

Sales enablement tools also generate a wealth of data for RevOps to evaluate the sales practices, content, and events that are driving revenue for the business as well as those draining resources (and should, therefore, be addressed).

Revenue Intelligence

As the need for actionable RevOps data develops, there are now multiple Revenue Intelligence platforms which act as a hub that aggregates data from CRMs to analyze revenue streams and guide decision making.

Depending on the chosen platform, Revenue Intelligence can analyze current deals to recommend approaches for encouraging renewals, as well as pull stats from target accounts for ABM.

The importance of structures that drive performance

Given the economic challenges projected for the next year and those currently being faced, teams are under greater pressure to prioritize the right strategies to generate revenue outcomes that boost growth. Therefore, in addition to data-driven insights, implementing the right structures and processes between teams is essential for ensuring high levels of performance.

Start by building your model based on the roles of each department (you can go more granular later), and how friction can be removed by streamlining workflows. Once this is established, you will be able to implement strategies that provide teams with feedback that drives optimization and innovation—see the model below for an example:

The key to the success of this model is that it has been adjusted to match the longer sales cycle of the current buyer’s journey with clear processes—as well as an emphasis on demand over lead generation. In essence, demand generation teams enable lead nurturing, which in turn supports sales teams to capitalize on opportunities.

Indeed, rather than a sales-first approach, this model centers on empowering buyers with enough information and nurturing to fuel their research (and interest) to guide them toward a purchase.

Any insights gathered from accomplishments and shortcomings are also fed back into the process to inform teams on how to action improvements, leading to optimizations that will ultimately boost performance.

In short, organizations that yield higher levels of performance in 2023 will be those that adapt their internal structures and workflows in line with new strategies based on evolving buyer needs.

guide

Outlook 2023

For more information on how to drive demand performance in 2023, read our Evolution of The Marketer Outlook chapter

Key takeaways

These are the top three considerations to keep in mind when organizing your business for RevOps in 2023:

Generate revenue with experiences

Offering remarkable CX drives high revenue, since positively engaged clients often renew contracts, as well as organically recommend your brand.

Improving CX relies on reducing friction both internally and externally, empowering both sellers and buyers with resources that enable quick purchases. Establishing post-sale client support is equally important to improve CLTV and reduce churn.

Hire for RevOps

Building the right team is essential for RevOps success. Clear goals help define the specific skill set required for each team member, as well as to evaluate their performance.

Hiring seasoned individuals with a clear understanding of RevOps challenges is a plus, but training in-house can be more advantageous considering the skill shortage in the market.

Establishing a leader to act as a RevOps champion, as well as improve the team’s soft skills and foster a healthy culture, will promote the organizational alignment required for efficient RevOps.

Drive performance with the right structure, data, and tools

To enable the tech stack that drives RevOps performance, it is crucial to obtain real-time, observable data from multiple sources (both first and third-party). Data is what drives the success of CX, UX, and ABX initiatives, as well as sales enablement and revenue intelligence platforms.

Building an organizational structure where demand generation, lead nurturing, and sales empower each other with feedback and opportunities will steer performance for RevOps in 2023, as it is better aligned with the current buyer’s journey and its demands.

5-step checklist to organize your business for revenue growth

Tackle the complexities of RevOps implementation by following Gartner's 6-step framework
Invest in CX, buyer enablement, and client obsession
Hire professionals with RevOps expertise
Source RevOps data and build your tech stack
Drive performance with a demand generation, lead nurturing, and sales structure

PLAN YOUR REVOPS STRATEGY FOR LONG-TERM GROWTH

Get in touch with the INFUSE Demand Strategists to structure a RevOps plan that exceeds growth and revenue goals for your organization.

Contact the team at [email protected]

About the Author

For nearly 30 years, Dan Freeman has used his deep expertise in business, technology, and sales processes to help businesses succeed.

As a founding member of INFUSE and its Chief Revenue Officer, he has overseen the company’s growth from a startup to a global organization of 1000+ team members.