The idea that marketing, sales, and customer success should align to support your buyer / customer journey makes sense to most people. The trouble comes in implementing it. In this article, we’ll discuss the top five challenges Rev Ops teams face in bridging the gap between go to market planning and execution.
1. Customer Relationship Management Platforms
CRMs are their own special kind of RevOps Roadblock. CRMs are great tools for structuring and maintaining data. They enable the important work of keeping tabs on where opportunities are in the pipeline. What they can not do, however, is capture and analyze data in complex ways.
RevOps leaders require a more robust way of viewing and digesting that information. They need data on territories, products, teams, capacity, and targets. They also need to view and manipulate this data in multiple ways: correlated, combined, and balanced. They need to understand the impact of industry taxonomies and account hierarchies. They also need the ability to examine data from a distance as well as at an account level.
Given the importance of having multiple views on customer data, many organizations resort to writing custom code in their CRMs to gain these views. In fact, for many companies, the Salesforce Admin becomes the de facto RevOps person. This seldom gets the desired results. Salesforce Admins are trained in managing the database system, not in translating go-to-market strategy into that system. When you have custom code, every time there is a change in a small detail such as a new rep for routing, that custom code has to be manually updated. The more complex the go to market (GTM) strategy, the more convoluted this updated process becomes.
As a result, RevOps leaders increasingly acknowledge that while information from their CRM informs go-to-market strategy, the CRM itself does not have the versatility required to manage that strategy.
Writing custom code in a CRM to execute your GTM means you will have to manually update that code for every single change you want to make.
What are the other top challenges RevOps teams face in planning and executing their GTM?
In addition to the inadequacy of the CRM as a tool to link strategy and execution, RevOps teams face several other specific challenges.
2. Heavy reliance on spreadsheets
Using spreadsheets as the sole medium for planning and managing your GTM leads to inefficiency and errors. For one, it takes a lot of time to manually maintain data in spreadsheets. On top of that, sending spreadsheets back and forth via email leads to versioning issues and confusion. Plus, all ops pros know the //unique // limitations of cloud-based spreadsheet tools.
3. Lack of streamlined collaboration
GTM planning involves many moving parts and many people focusing on their specific roles. Because of this, RevOps teams often struggle to collaborate effectively. Furthermore, there may be impinged collaboration with other parts of the organization, where only relevant information may need to be visible. When CS, for example, assigns account management, they may want to give partial visibility to sales. But if they aren’t able to do that, they obscure pivotal information into the overall customer support methods.
4. No single source of truth
When data exists in multiple systems, there is no single source of truth. This data disbursement often causes silos between departments, creating issues when it comes to making data-driven decisions. Additionally, data changes constantly, which causes frequent discrepancies in the plan.
5. Policy clarity and enforcement are neglected
Ideally, the GTM plan moves to execution through the creation and enforcement of “rules of engagement” or policies. However, with the proliferation of point tools and disparate data sources, execution policies become ill-defined and disjointed. This leaves Ops teams without the necessary knowledge required to perform their jobs effectively. This results in ops teams spending time on ad hoc decision making rather than executing GTM strategy in a systematic manner.
When companies are small, these issues, though annoying, don’t seriously inhibit RevOps teams. However, as soon as an organization grows past a certain point, usually when the number of sales and CS team members approaches 50+ people, these issues become serious blockers to the planning and execution of revenue goals.
How can Fullcast help?
Even the best thought-out strategy can fail if you don’t have the tools you need to get the job done. Fullcast’s platform allows you to quickly and easily get the information you need to integrate planning and execution and support your sales reps and managers.
For CROs
- Model what-if scenarios so you can review the impact of alternate strategies and gain valuable insight into your market
- Codify your best practices so you can rest assured that all of your sales managers and sales reps are on the same page.
For Sales Managers
- Self-serve means no more waiting, so you can quickly add and make changes to accounts, territories, coverage models, and quotas and stay agile.
- Quickly and easily set up territories and quotas for new hires so they can hit the ground running.
- Quickly and easily model the impact of changes, including territory moves, role changes, and quota changes on KPIs, without having to wade through piles of dense spreadsheets.
- Track productivity and performance at an individual, team, territory, or product level.
For Sales Strategists
- Quickly and easily build complex territory and segmentation models using our AI-powered engine.
- Design selling roles and coverage models easily, and push those models to Salesforce with a single click.
- Setup and collaborate on quota planning across your entire organization and evaluate MBOs and KSOs from a territory, team, or product perspective.
- Evaluate your workforce plan by building out your proposed organizational chart and easily comparing your current and future states.
Are you ready to take RevOps to the next level? Book your Fullcast demo today!
