Is revenue operations the new key to unlocking growth?

Disclaimer: this article was originally posted on our sister community site, Sales Enablement Collective (SEC). Daniel O'Dowd summarises an insightful conversation he had with Leore Spira, Head of Revenue Operations at Buildots.

There's an ever-growing buzz surrounding revenue operations (RevOps) and how it fits into the enablement landscape.

People like Leore Spira, Head of Revenue Operations at Buildots, are right in the middle of it all. So who better to talk to about enablement, operations, and the rapidly changing organizational structures of today, than Leore herself?

She discusses:

Separating revenue leadership from sales operations and sales enablement

"Usually sales enablement is a small part of either the marketing team or the revenue operations team because it allows the sales team or even the business units to work smoothly.

"Sales operations is usually a position that works with sales leaders, or sales development leaders, because [they're] focused on the sales process from the beginning of the deal, until closing it.

"In B2B and SaaS model companies, the revenue operations rose up because of the needs of other departments that are related to the sales process.

"We can see that SaaS companies [are] transitioning to revenue operations functions because they need help, and they need these leaders and experts in revenue operations to break the silos, to make sure that every department works together, aligned with one another.

"We are handing over each data information from one department to the other to create full transparency and a 360 customer overview."

Revenue operations looks at the full funnel

"I think revenue operations leaders become experts and see the full picture from the macro-level, instead of the micro because sales operations are just one step in the process, one milestone.

"We can help sales to arrive at their demo to pitch their sales pitch in a much more effective, focused, and professional way. And we can help customer success create not just success, but also measure the customer experience, to measure the customer relationship, to prevent customers from becoming a risk account.

"Sales is now just one piece of the puzzle, and revenue operations is the full puzzle."

Ensuring retentions, renewals, and expansions

"The customer cycle is driving the rise of revenue operations and enablement in B2B relationships.

"With a business, it's a work in progress. We have to make sure that we are selling the right features, the right use case, we are solving the right problem.

"We help them and are there for them because we want to ensure the retention, the renewals; we want to make sure we can help them more and then ensure upsells, expansions, or cross-sells.

"It's super important, because there are a lot of aspects in the customer journey process and revenue operations can help each department to again be more productive and efficient and see the full picture in a way that helps them to bring more upsells, to convert more leads, to close more deals, or prevent them from being lost."

Revenue leadership going forward - an essential function

"I think COVID-19 really helped our position and really helped RevOps to show their value.

"A lot of companies were so sure that they'd succeed, they're making money. [They felt like] they didn't need internal help from another function.

"Today, we see that we need someone to manage, to build the process, to work on strategy, to implement it in a CRM platform.

"Not just to bring and capture the data, but also analyze it in a way that gives insights and sheds some light on very critical and important issues that will allow management to agree on the best solution, or make sure that they are taking the best decision they can in order to grow."

The challenges in revenue operations

"My biggest challenge is that not all companies really see the advantage or understand why revenue operations are super important to drive scale, to drive growth, to help the revenue teams become better at what they do, or help them bring more value to the company.

"We're all fighting and we're trying so hard to spread the word about the value and how central RevOps is, not just for SaaS B2B companies, but for every startup that starts building the revenue machine."

Organising a revenue operations team

"I divided this department into two [at Syte]. We have the strategic part and we have the technical part; I come from the more strategic approach.

"My first hires were technical experts. I prefer them to take responsibility and make sure we're using Salesforce, so I have a Salesforce admin and a Salesforce developer that provides services in regards to any technical issue or bug, or develops new features and new processes in the system.

"This gives me the time to be more focused on the strategy and I believe that in the future once the revenue teams grow, my team will have to grow as well.

"[Expansion] will give me the opportunity to share my knowledge with them, to help the next generation in sales, marketing, or even the revenue operations department."

How to develop a career in revenue operations

"For revenue operations, first of all, we can see that Salesforce is an essential skill. I would advise people to learn a bit about Salesforce, even from a technical perspective, because this is what I did. I taught myself Salesforce because I had to move forward and move fast in order to show value at first, before taking the side of strategy.

"Follow some leaders on LinkedIn to read more about the role, about the responsibilities, about the day to day tasks, and understand essential SaaS terms like forecast and MQL, SQL, customer journey.

"I would start by looking for junior positions, because this is a wonderful way to learn and become an expert. I do believe that companies will hire more and more RevOps experts and leaders and this department will be a very exclusive and very hot position in the future."

Want to learn more about RevOps? Join our growing community of revenue professionals on Slack. 👇