REVENUE
OPERATIONS
AGENDA
Revenue & Business
Operations:
1. Why
2. What
3. When
4. How
5. Who
6. Resources
WHY REV OPS?
Why is it hard to scale?
• Process complexity increases
• Cross-department alignment weakens
• Resources become constrained and resist change
• Data becomes siloed, more complex, and difficult to use
• Onboarding becomes harder and employee output drops
…while efficiency and decision making become more important
HISTORY OF REVENUE
CRO/COO
 Revenue strategists to
close gap
 Alignment only exists at
strategic level
SALES
 Win customers
 Generate revenue
OTHER TACTICS
 CMTO, Marketing IT
 Focus on tech, not
alignment
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
SALES/MARKETING OPS
 Increase efficiency
 Sales/Marketing gap
grows
MARKETING
 Focus on top of funnel
 Increase volume into
sales
 Sales/Marketing gap
emerges
THE STRUGGLE IS REAL
• Data & process gaps still exist despite strategy alignment
• Fundamental problem:
• No alignment exists at the executional level
• Result in:
• Poor decision making
• Inefficient employees
• Stall revenue growth
• Let’s fix it!
B2B organizations with tightly
aligned marketing and sales
achieved 24% faster revenue growth
and 27% faster profit growth over a
three-year period
~Sirius Decisions
REV OPS OVERVIEW
Centralizes the operational functions of all
revenue focused groups across an org such as
Marketing, Sales, and Customer Experience
Revenue Operations
Take this one step further and encompasses
Product and internal operations groups such as
Human Resources and Finance
Business Operations
Increase alignment and effectiveness of teams across the organization
• Delivering critical insights and business intelligence from across the business and market
• Implementing process improvements to gain efficiency
• Managing and integrating cross-function business technologies and data
• Enabling employees and partners with knowledge and tools to do their jobs better
Goals
REVENUE EVOLUTION
What does Business Operations do?
Keep Everything Aligned
Business Operations
Marketing Sales Customer
Strategy
Product Operations
4 PILLARS OF REVENUE OPERATIONS
INSIGHTS TOOLS OPERATIONS ENABLEMENT
4 PILLARS OF REVENUE OPERATIONS
INSIGHTS
INSIGHTS
 BI and Analytics for
entire organization
 Align to company
strategy
 Identify gaps and
opportunities
 Data management
 Data Management
 Ensure proper collection and data consistency
 Manage data warehouse, data dictionary
 Critical to nail from day 1 – data culture
 Risk if not managed properly:
 Long and expensive clean-up projects
 Slows delivery of insights and decisions
 Missed exit opportunities
 Projects
 Analyze funnel performance
 volume, conversion, velocity, value
 Dashboards for each team
 Company KPI and board deck
 Analysis Tools
 Sources: CRM, MAP, Product, Website, etc.
 Early tools: in-app reporting, Excel
 Mature tools: Data warehouse, BI platform, AI
4 PILLARS OF REVENUE OPERATIONS
INSIGHTS – IMPORTANT METRICS
INSIGHTS
 BI and Analytics for
entire organization
 Align to company
strategy
 Identify gaps and
opportunities
 Data management
Volume Conversion Velocity Value
MQL 1,000 N/A N/A N/A
SQL 50 5% 20 days $500,000
SQO 40 80% 3 days $400,000
Won 10 25% 95 days $100,000
Lost 30 75% 120 days $300,000
 PIPELINE, PIPELINE, PIPELINE!!!
 Pipeline creation rate, quarterly coverage, net
inflow/outflow
 Company metrics:
 ARR growth, Retention, Cash Burn, Magic Number, CAC
 Forecast
 Weighted pipeline, Forecast categories
4 PILLARS OF REVENUE OPERATIONS
TOOLS
TOOLS
 Central management
across all systems
to ensure alignment
of features and
integrations
 Technology selection
and implementation
based on ops
requirements
 Build process first, then wrap in tools
 Run manually before automating
 Track tool cost per employee
 Tools
 $0-1M: CRM (Salesforce), Email (Mailchimp)
 $1-10M: MAP (Pardot, Marketo), web (Optimizely),
Prospecting (Vidyard, SalesLoft, Uberflip), ops
(Wrike/Asana, Slack)
 $10-20M: Sales (Altify, CPQ), Customer Success
(Gainsight)
4 PILLARS OF REVENUE OPERATIONS
OPERATIONS
OPERATIONS
 Develop and
implement solutions
to improve
operations
 Project & change
management
 Promote
experimentation
across all groups
 Provides the businesses skeleton
 Focused on process improvement and change
management
 Key to aligning processes across teams
 $10M inflection point – will need to rebuild
everything to scale
 Sample Projects:
 Implementing new process/tool
 Improve lead scoring
 Ensure info is travelling between teams (e.g. Sales
to Customer Success)
 Develop solution to solve low prospecting
conversion rates
4 PILLARS OF REVENUE OPERATIONS
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
 Training on new
systems and
processes
 On-boarding and on-
going knowledge
distribution
 Support day-to-day
admin needs of
groups
 Monitor performance
and KPIs
 Strengthens the businesses muscle
 Works directly with contributors
 Projects/Programs
 Roll out training for new messaging
 Coordinate Deal desk
 Manage sales territories
 Provide admin support to Customer Success exec
 Setup demo environments for sales
 Monitor KPI’s and engage Insights for analysis
• Monthly/Quarterly meeting for all managers
• Review key company metrics and team
performance
• Drive discussion around solving problems
Ops Meeting
• Weekly/Bi-weekly meeting with department
heads
• Review execution metrics
GTM Meeting
• Weekly/Bi-weekly meeting with individual
teams
• Monitor dashboards, project updates
Marketing, Sales,
Customer Ops
• Weekly/Bi-weekly meeting with all pipeline
contributing teams
• Early identification and resolution of
pipeline challenges
Pipeline Meeting
TEAM INTERFACES
RECURING MEETINGS WITH OPS & ENABLEMENT
TEAM STRUCTURE
ORG STRUCTURE
CEO
CRO/COO
Marketing Sales Customer
Experience
Revenue
Operations
CEO
Product CRO/COO
Marketing Sales Customer
Experience
Finance HR Business
Operations
TEAM STRUCTURE
Rev/Biz
Ops
Insights
Analysts
Data
Scientists
Operations
Cross-
Functional
Ops
Sales Ops
Marketing
Ops
Customer
Ops
Tools
Salesforce
Admin
System
Admin
Enablement
Sales
Enablement
Customer
Enablement
Partner
Enablement
TEAM INTERFACES
INTERFACE POINTS
IMPLEMENTATION
WHEN TO IMPLEMENT
BLOWLING
ALLEY
Crossed the
Chasm
Optimize processes
in advance of
growth
TORNADO
Hyper-Growth
Optimized processes
allow for maximum
revenue collection
SCALE OPS TEAM
Final
Increase high-
performing resources
to drive growth
INSIGHTS
Day 1
Always collect
and analyze data
to drive growth
decisions
SALES
MVP
Start selling your
product
ENABLEMENT
>10+ Sales/CS Reps
Reduce rep ramp time
and increase
effectiveness
TOOLS & OPS
3+ Sales Reps
Optimize reps before
growing team
WHEN TO IMPLEMENT
 Always be focused on the 4 pillars - even
if no one is dedicated to them yet
 Combine roles to start then split later
 Risks of implementing late:
 Data quality issues compound
 Can't backfill data and loose visibility
 Harder to determine what works and what
doesn't
 May develop a culture resistant to change
WHO TO HIRE
INSIGHTS
• Early hire experienced in
research
• Later hire for analysis skills
• Understanding of business
• Natural curiosity
OPERATIONS
• Experience in chosen
discipline
• Project management skills
• Left & right brained
ENABLEMENT
• Experience in chosen discipline
• Teaching/learning background
• Strong communication skills
TOOLS
• Salesforce admin
• Technical background
• Developer
Guiding Principles
1. Data in context: Understand the “how” and “why” of data,
not just the “what”. Tread data as a Data System:
collection, computation, and representation.
2. Action is the new black: Data is useless without insights.
Insights are useless without action.
3. I love BOS: Focus on creating a world-class Business
Operating System that enables the rest of the organization
to create and deliver top-notch products and services.
4. Process over technology: Develop business processes first
then wrap them in technology to enable and automate them.
5. The important wheel gets the grease, not the squeaky one:
Keep calm and focus on core business drivers.
6. It’s all about Scale: Build a BOS that can scale components
up and down as the business changes and evolves.
7. Alignment is King: Cross department alignment is key for
success and Ops is the bridge to join them.
OUTCOMES
Processes are effective and efficient
Departments are aligned on strategy and execution
Change becomes part of the culture
Data is clean, accessible, and drives decisions
Employees ramp quickly and stay effective
Ops resources are sharable across multiple teams
SAAS RESOURCES
Whitepaper: The RevOps
Framework
FunnelCake interviewed over a hundred B2B Marketing, Sales, and CS leaders to create the definitive
framework for Revenue Operations.
Book: Impossible to Inevitable Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin discusses the journey hyper growth SaaS companies go through as they
create predictable revenue.
Whitepaper: 10 Laws of Cloud
Computing
This is the bible of SaaS and how it operates. Written by ‘The Godfather of SaaS’, Byron Deeter of
Bessemer Venture Partners.
Blog: SaaStr Authored by Jason Lemkin, this is one of the best SaaS resources available. It provides important
benchmarks and best practices we should understand and consider.
Blog: Tomasz Tunguz Authored by Tomasz Tunguz of RedPoint (VC), this is another of the best SaaS resources available. He
does analysis of his portfolio companies and public SaaS data to provide important benchmarks and best
practices we should understand and consider..
Blog: David Skok Another top SaaS resource, this blog by David Skok provides great resources to understand SaaS and build
a company. A particularly good article is his post on SaaS Metrics 2.0.
Podcast: The Official SaaStr
Podcasts
Harry Stebbings interviews the most prominent operators and investors to discover their tips, tactics and
strategies to attain success in the fiercely competitive world of SaaS
QUESTIONS ANSWERS

Revenue Operations Overview

  • 1.
  • 2.
    AGENDA Revenue & Business Operations: 1.Why 2. What 3. When 4. How 5. Who 6. Resources
  • 3.
  • 4.
    Why is ithard to scale? • Process complexity increases • Cross-department alignment weakens • Resources become constrained and resist change • Data becomes siloed, more complex, and difficult to use • Onboarding becomes harder and employee output drops …while efficiency and decision making become more important
  • 5.
    HISTORY OF REVENUE CRO/COO Revenue strategists to close gap  Alignment only exists at strategic level SALES  Win customers  Generate revenue OTHER TACTICS  CMTO, Marketing IT  Focus on tech, not alignment PAST PRESENT FUTURE SALES/MARKETING OPS  Increase efficiency  Sales/Marketing gap grows MARKETING  Focus on top of funnel  Increase volume into sales  Sales/Marketing gap emerges
  • 6.
    THE STRUGGLE ISREAL • Data & process gaps still exist despite strategy alignment • Fundamental problem: • No alignment exists at the executional level • Result in: • Poor decision making • Inefficient employees • Stall revenue growth • Let’s fix it!
  • 7.
    B2B organizations withtightly aligned marketing and sales achieved 24% faster revenue growth and 27% faster profit growth over a three-year period ~Sirius Decisions
  • 8.
  • 9.
    Centralizes the operationalfunctions of all revenue focused groups across an org such as Marketing, Sales, and Customer Experience Revenue Operations Take this one step further and encompasses Product and internal operations groups such as Human Resources and Finance Business Operations Increase alignment and effectiveness of teams across the organization • Delivering critical insights and business intelligence from across the business and market • Implementing process improvements to gain efficiency • Managing and integrating cross-function business technologies and data • Enabling employees and partners with knowledge and tools to do their jobs better Goals REVENUE EVOLUTION
  • 10.
    What does BusinessOperations do? Keep Everything Aligned Business Operations Marketing Sales Customer Strategy Product Operations
  • 11.
    4 PILLARS OFREVENUE OPERATIONS INSIGHTS TOOLS OPERATIONS ENABLEMENT
  • 12.
    4 PILLARS OFREVENUE OPERATIONS INSIGHTS INSIGHTS  BI and Analytics for entire organization  Align to company strategy  Identify gaps and opportunities  Data management  Data Management  Ensure proper collection and data consistency  Manage data warehouse, data dictionary  Critical to nail from day 1 – data culture  Risk if not managed properly:  Long and expensive clean-up projects  Slows delivery of insights and decisions  Missed exit opportunities  Projects  Analyze funnel performance  volume, conversion, velocity, value  Dashboards for each team  Company KPI and board deck  Analysis Tools  Sources: CRM, MAP, Product, Website, etc.  Early tools: in-app reporting, Excel  Mature tools: Data warehouse, BI platform, AI
  • 13.
    4 PILLARS OFREVENUE OPERATIONS INSIGHTS – IMPORTANT METRICS INSIGHTS  BI and Analytics for entire organization  Align to company strategy  Identify gaps and opportunities  Data management Volume Conversion Velocity Value MQL 1,000 N/A N/A N/A SQL 50 5% 20 days $500,000 SQO 40 80% 3 days $400,000 Won 10 25% 95 days $100,000 Lost 30 75% 120 days $300,000  PIPELINE, PIPELINE, PIPELINE!!!  Pipeline creation rate, quarterly coverage, net inflow/outflow  Company metrics:  ARR growth, Retention, Cash Burn, Magic Number, CAC  Forecast  Weighted pipeline, Forecast categories
  • 14.
    4 PILLARS OFREVENUE OPERATIONS TOOLS TOOLS  Central management across all systems to ensure alignment of features and integrations  Technology selection and implementation based on ops requirements  Build process first, then wrap in tools  Run manually before automating  Track tool cost per employee  Tools  $0-1M: CRM (Salesforce), Email (Mailchimp)  $1-10M: MAP (Pardot, Marketo), web (Optimizely), Prospecting (Vidyard, SalesLoft, Uberflip), ops (Wrike/Asana, Slack)  $10-20M: Sales (Altify, CPQ), Customer Success (Gainsight)
  • 15.
    4 PILLARS OFREVENUE OPERATIONS OPERATIONS OPERATIONS  Develop and implement solutions to improve operations  Project & change management  Promote experimentation across all groups  Provides the businesses skeleton  Focused on process improvement and change management  Key to aligning processes across teams  $10M inflection point – will need to rebuild everything to scale  Sample Projects:  Implementing new process/tool  Improve lead scoring  Ensure info is travelling between teams (e.g. Sales to Customer Success)  Develop solution to solve low prospecting conversion rates
  • 16.
    4 PILLARS OFREVENUE OPERATIONS ENABLEMENT ENABLEMENT  Training on new systems and processes  On-boarding and on- going knowledge distribution  Support day-to-day admin needs of groups  Monitor performance and KPIs  Strengthens the businesses muscle  Works directly with contributors  Projects/Programs  Roll out training for new messaging  Coordinate Deal desk  Manage sales territories  Provide admin support to Customer Success exec  Setup demo environments for sales  Monitor KPI’s and engage Insights for analysis
  • 17.
    • Monthly/Quarterly meetingfor all managers • Review key company metrics and team performance • Drive discussion around solving problems Ops Meeting • Weekly/Bi-weekly meeting with department heads • Review execution metrics GTM Meeting • Weekly/Bi-weekly meeting with individual teams • Monitor dashboards, project updates Marketing, Sales, Customer Ops • Weekly/Bi-weekly meeting with all pipeline contributing teams • Early identification and resolution of pipeline challenges Pipeline Meeting TEAM INTERFACES RECURING MEETINGS WITH OPS & ENABLEMENT
  • 18.
  • 19.
    ORG STRUCTURE CEO CRO/COO Marketing SalesCustomer Experience Revenue Operations CEO Product CRO/COO Marketing Sales Customer Experience Finance HR Business Operations
  • 20.
  • 21.
  • 22.
  • 23.
    WHEN TO IMPLEMENT BLOWLING ALLEY Crossedthe Chasm Optimize processes in advance of growth TORNADO Hyper-Growth Optimized processes allow for maximum revenue collection SCALE OPS TEAM Final Increase high- performing resources to drive growth INSIGHTS Day 1 Always collect and analyze data to drive growth decisions SALES MVP Start selling your product ENABLEMENT >10+ Sales/CS Reps Reduce rep ramp time and increase effectiveness TOOLS & OPS 3+ Sales Reps Optimize reps before growing team
  • 24.
    WHEN TO IMPLEMENT Always be focused on the 4 pillars - even if no one is dedicated to them yet  Combine roles to start then split later  Risks of implementing late:  Data quality issues compound  Can't backfill data and loose visibility  Harder to determine what works and what doesn't  May develop a culture resistant to change
  • 25.
    WHO TO HIRE INSIGHTS •Early hire experienced in research • Later hire for analysis skills • Understanding of business • Natural curiosity OPERATIONS • Experience in chosen discipline • Project management skills • Left & right brained ENABLEMENT • Experience in chosen discipline • Teaching/learning background • Strong communication skills TOOLS • Salesforce admin • Technical background • Developer
  • 26.
    Guiding Principles 1. Datain context: Understand the “how” and “why” of data, not just the “what”. Tread data as a Data System: collection, computation, and representation. 2. Action is the new black: Data is useless without insights. Insights are useless without action. 3. I love BOS: Focus on creating a world-class Business Operating System that enables the rest of the organization to create and deliver top-notch products and services. 4. Process over technology: Develop business processes first then wrap them in technology to enable and automate them. 5. The important wheel gets the grease, not the squeaky one: Keep calm and focus on core business drivers. 6. It’s all about Scale: Build a BOS that can scale components up and down as the business changes and evolves. 7. Alignment is King: Cross department alignment is key for success and Ops is the bridge to join them.
  • 27.
    OUTCOMES Processes are effectiveand efficient Departments are aligned on strategy and execution Change becomes part of the culture Data is clean, accessible, and drives decisions Employees ramp quickly and stay effective Ops resources are sharable across multiple teams
  • 28.
    SAAS RESOURCES Whitepaper: TheRevOps Framework FunnelCake interviewed over a hundred B2B Marketing, Sales, and CS leaders to create the definitive framework for Revenue Operations. Book: Impossible to Inevitable Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin discusses the journey hyper growth SaaS companies go through as they create predictable revenue. Whitepaper: 10 Laws of Cloud Computing This is the bible of SaaS and how it operates. Written by ‘The Godfather of SaaS’, Byron Deeter of Bessemer Venture Partners. Blog: SaaStr Authored by Jason Lemkin, this is one of the best SaaS resources available. It provides important benchmarks and best practices we should understand and consider. Blog: Tomasz Tunguz Authored by Tomasz Tunguz of RedPoint (VC), this is another of the best SaaS resources available. He does analysis of his portfolio companies and public SaaS data to provide important benchmarks and best practices we should understand and consider.. Blog: David Skok Another top SaaS resource, this blog by David Skok provides great resources to understand SaaS and build a company. A particularly good article is his post on SaaS Metrics 2.0. Podcast: The Official SaaStr Podcasts Harry Stebbings interviews the most prominent operators and investors to discover their tips, tactics and strategies to attain success in the fiercely competitive world of SaaS
  • 29.