There’s an old business metaphor that illustrates making decisions and fixes as you go rather than fully planning ahead: It’s “building the plane while you’re flying.”
Many leaders approach Go to Market with the idea that they will build their Go-to-Market teams, get off the ground by hitting their initial revenue targets, and then invest in people, processes, and technology to ensure that it all works well together. Unfortunately, the speed of business and the rate of change and innovation today no longer allow for this approach. Just to get the GTM engine to “fly” at the minimum speed to compete in the marketplace requires a core set of GTM technologies and operational expertise from day one.
The new metaphor that I want to offer that illustrates the Go-to-Market pace is that we are now trying to retrofit a spaceship while traveling at the speed of light. No matter where you are on the Go-to-Market team—sales, marketing, customer success, or even the CEO—you’re experiencing the same thing: a Go-to-Market climate that requires a different level of leadership, a different level of customer engagement, a different level of systems and processes that support teams, and a new level of critical decision-making. That’s the impetus and why we’re having this conversation.
Who is driving this shift? The customer. Almost 90 percent (86 percent) of B2B customers expect companies to know everything about them during interactions. This familiarity should guide personalized engagement and solutions so customers feel appreciated and understood. Satisfying customer expectations relies on the front-line GTM teams in sales, marketing, and customer care, which piles on workload and decreases productivity.
GTM teams are increasingly turning to RevOps with demands for more automation, enhanced and accelerated insights, and more assistance with solving direct customer needs. This is all while RevOps supplies a core set of services to quickly fix issues when they arise and keep the GTM engine running smoothly.
The challenges and needs are continuously increasing for RevOps. Examining the true purpose and addressing the matter of “why now?” for RevOps is an important step toward adopting an empowering engagement model that delivers greater impact for an organization.
Adopt the RevOps Mindset
My background was originally in sales. As I worked closely with customers and partners, my consistent approach as a salesperson and then sales leader was to always ask, “How can I solve your business problems?” Sometimes, the challenges were within my own company to deliver for the customer.
Solving these internal problems became part of the solution. It’s how I shifted and evolved into a broader, fully operational role over time. This is the mindset of revenue operations.
Instead of limiting my scope with questions that focus on one department, I look at operations as one interconnected system. How do I solve problems that . . .
- . . . drive revenue?
- . . . deliver value propositions?
- . . . deliver services?
- . . . keep the GTM engine running smoothly?
- . . . maximize GTM productivity?
That is the magic. If you have that mindset, then you’re ready to excel in revenue operations. If it feels natural to solve one complex GTM problem and then pivot to the next issue immediately, then you have the core leadership chops for this role. However, when today’s speed of business exacerbates support, overwhelming or delaying critical services, how do you set up constructive engagement? How do you structure properly to reinforce collaboration? How do you execute?
Your “Why” will ultimately keep you grounded and focused. Here’s how.
Respond to the “Why” with Principled Purpose
Ultimately, both the “Why” and the purpose usually come down to three core elements: delivery, trust, and truth.
1. Deliver Services That Enable and Support Revenue Growth across Teams
Your “Why” is to provide the services needed for the Go-to-Market organization to generate revenue. Those services are complex as they are assigned to various groups and teams. But the path you use to deliver those resources is the core of a finely tuned RevOps function.
If you’re doing it well, the GTM teams often don’t even know you’re working to deliver those services—it just happens! When revenue operations work well, those services flow among different teams to drive collective business outcomes. Boston Consulting Group data of B2B Technology companies show a 100–200 percent increase in digital marketing ROI, and sales productivity jumped by up to 20 percent simply by aligning RevOps functions among teams and making sure that they understood the collective goal.
If you’re not doing it well, teams will feel the pain, and they’ll be coming to you with concerns like the following:
- “This is not working.”
- “Help me solve that problem.”
- “I’m not able to see this pipeline or this visibility into this element of the business.”
- “I’m not able to quote an order.”
- “I’m having customer issues or customer satisfaction challenges.”
- “I’m not able to get my leads.”
The best day on the job is when no one says, “This is not working,” because you’ve already thought two steps ahead of that, or you executed a complex systems upgrade or process redesign cutover without downtime.
Embracing RevOps-critical services is just as impactful as focusing on sales, marketing, and customer success, but it requires a broader end-to-end perspective. While sales, marketing, and customer success each target specific aspects of the revenue cycle, RevOps integrates and optimizes all these functions to drive cohesive growth.
By aligning strategies, managing data and analytics, and ensuring seamless process optimization, RevOps delivers enhanced and accelerated insights that elevate the entire revenue operation. This comprehensive approach not only boosts efficiency and effectiveness but also fosters a more holistic understanding of the customer journey, ultimately leading to sustained revenue growth and success.
2. Be a Trusted Advisor
In RevOps, you are neutral by nature. You aren’t accountable for a specific quota or target, but you are tied to the revenue number by supporting the entire RevOps team. There are often competing priorities from the different leaders in the GTM organization—whether it’s marketing, sales, customer care, or the different sales teams; the different GTM motions; or the cross-selling to engage—but you’re the neutral party, i.e., the “Switzerland” of revenue operations, where teams can come together and get a voice.
Building trust is one thing I’ve spent a lot of time doing in my career—first with the customer and then with my internal stakeholders. As a previous sales leader, I have experienced low sales performance, so I know that pain and can empathize. I also know what it feels like when you’re off your number and trying to drive that quota at the end of the quarter. I know what it’s like to miss marketing and customer success goals that drive revenue. I’ve been on the front lines with all of these teams.
When those things happen, I respond with, “Okay, now let’s look at the broader picture for the organization and discuss why we’re doing this and how to go about it optimally.” Remember, you have a stake in these revenue numbers, too, which ties you directly to the CRO and executive team. However, you can have these discussions about priorities, strategies, and decision-making with the leadership team from a neutral but critical leadership role.
A landmark study found that Fortune 100 organizations with a CRO-like role show 1.8 times higher revenue growth than their peers. When paired with a neutral management style, it allows you to provide better business guidance, insights, and objective wisdom to the organization to make the right calls in real time because business is moving so quickly.
3. Enforce Governance
According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, a corporate governance framework “should support transparent and fair markets and the efficient allocation of resources. It should be consistent with the rule of law and support effective supervision and enforcement.”
You have to be able to tell the truth. Policies and procedures require an objective voice to deliver on numbers and revenue. This is one of the reasons why RevOps leaders don’t have a quota. There are times when people will want to do something; for instance, a big deal comes in, and it doesn’t meet all the parameters for revenue recognition. At this point, it is critical that you follow the policy and stay on point. Ultimately, this role will give credibility to the other functions of being the service delivery provider and trusted advisor.
Sometimes, truth-telling means enforcing policy or managing a process or procedure to specifications. Other times, truth-telling requires saying “No” even when the GTM organization is begging for a “Yes.”
I see many organizations in this situation; if they override the governance mechanism, they run a risk. If they empower this governance mechanism, they find it will deliver more revenue without taking unnecessary risks.
It’s like an engine. If you let it run too hot, it will ultimately blow out. There’s a governor on that engine to slow it down. In saying “No” and being the governance, it saves the journey, the ship, and the revenue number.
Delivery, trust, and truth are the fundamental legs of the stool of RevOps empowerment. If you’re not delivering services that drive revenue growth as a trusted advisor and truth teller, you are simply functioning in an administrative role, and you won’t be effective and relevant in the current business climate.
AI Is Your Superpower
Let’s talk about what everybody else is talking about right now: AI.
According to Salesforce data, 83 percent of sales teams with AI saw revenue growth this year compared to 66 percent without AI.
If your power as a RevOps leader is elevated by expertise in driving collaborative, revenue-focused GTM strategies with delivery, trust, and truth, then AI is your superpower. Eighty-one percent of sales teams are either experimenting with or fully implementing AI. Many recognize that partnering AI with professional experience to analyze data that supports practical insight is a powerful duo.
As this technology handles the repetitive heavy lifting, RevOps leaders should leverage this available time to focus on the strategic, communicative, and very human side of leadership duties. For instance, what strategies does this information support? Do we have available resources? Which team should drive it? What are the concerns? Advantages?
Over 80 percent of sales leaders believe that AI can reduce the time spent on manual tasks, allowing for a greater focus on strategic initiatives. Consider AI as the computer that keeps the ship on course, correcting for errors along the way. AI-driven analytics may show where we’ve been and the direction in which we are heading, but the RevOps leader still needs to steer the ship.
There’s little doubt that artificial intelligence’s potential is mind-boggling. GenAI capabilities will transform the customer experience in ways not possible just a decade ago. However, as experts continue learning how AI behaves, currently, AI performs best in a supportive role, enabling RevOps to be more effective and efficient. We’ll discuss this in depth in a later chapter.
Ring In the Sound of Success
The most stressful time for sales and sales leaders is the end of the quarter. Waiting for those last, critical orders to come in during the final closing days, hours, and minutes when you are in down-to-the-wire negotiations or competitive bids is what makes the job challenging and fun but also anxiety-ridden!
Ringing the bell for my sales team, a colleague, or myself when that order came in was one of the highlights of being in sales. For RevOps leaders, the equivalent version of ringing the bell is much more “behind the scenes” but just as rewarding. This is the art of cutting over from one core operating technology or process to another new and improved one—without downtime.
Usually, this happens over a weekend, after business hours, or late at night, but it is rarely at the end of the quarter to minimize risks to bookings and revenue. Instead of a bell ringing, calls coming in, or emails flying, you aim to hear the quiet, continued hum of the GTM engine as it keeps flying without a dip in power or performance.
I have designed many Go-to-Market functions over the years, and the success of these models relies on taking proactive ownership to navigate this process with proven strategies to guide teams as they think about it, structure it, set it up, and engage as they incrementally move forward.
In addition to implementing a technology stack with architecture, preparation, planning, and testing (yes, LOTS of testing), the other key element has been reinforcing people’s preparedness. The human experience often interferes with tech functions. Typical behavior—such as employee churn, capacity planning, territories, billing and invoicing, sales quotas, and product functionality—impacts system alignment and how it interprets these outcomes.
As the expression goes, “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.” That is where the people really matter. Having primary and secondary backup plans supported by RevOps leadership is even more critical, especially on that Monday morning when the GTM teams first start accessing the core systems.
Working with people who care about processes and systems, external and internal customers, teamwork–life balance, and the masterful execution of strategies despite challenges truly matters, especially when the stakes are high.
While teams may feel like they have a one-way ticket on that spaceship moving at the speed of light, there are ways to master and succeed at revenue operations. I will discuss the optimized RevOps structure in the next chapter in this series, as we look at the model of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek!
Why Now?
Alignment between sales, marketing, and customer success is more critical than ever. RevOps leaders are uniquely positioned to bridge gaps and drive cohesive strategies. Supplemented with AI, these leaders can harness data-driven insights to make informed decisions, optimize processes, and predict trends with unprecedented accuracy.
It is the speed of business, the demands of customers, and the rate of change in technology and innovation that ultimately drives RevOps to take a seat at the table of the GTM leadership team. Without this key function in place to assist with critical real-time decisions that are dependent on an array of services supported by an ever-expanding complex technology stack, the GTM organization risks making decisions that can negatively impact revenue, productivity, and business performance.
By embodying trust and integrity, RevOps leaders can foster a culture of transparency and collaboration, ensuring that all teams are united under common goals. As the business landscape continues to evolve, the importance of principled RevOps leadership cannot be overstated—this is the moment for RevOps to lead the charge into a future of sustained growth and innovation.
