Design and implementation of Revenue Operations function

BACKGROUND.This B2B SaaS company with a 25-year history, had changed business model several times and was steering towards becoming a pure SaaS play, including migrating an installed base of 2,000 customers to the cloud. Sales and revenue infra and processes had been developed ad hoc over time and lacked end to end perspective. There was no common sales methodology making onboarding of both customers and new Sales reps difficult. Sales effectiveness, retention and customer health was not followed up consistently and CAC was high compared to SaaS benchmarks.

THE PROJECT. The first step was a current state assessment based on 30 key capabilities for a state-of-the-art Revenue Operations function. The data was collected via an internal survey where each capability was graded on current maturity and relative importance, resulting in a data driven view on what to fix first.

The results were then paired with an assessment of the effort needed to improve each area, resulting in an impact/effort matrix, which was used to make a detailed activity plan.

In this case, it was apparent that the lack of a good CRM system was the most urgent pain point, hence implementing a new CRM was chosen as the main activity to improve end-to-end sales efficiency.

The CRM project was used as the vessel to hold together most of the activities in building the Revenue Operations function.

At the centre was setting stringent sales processes throughout the sales funnel and over the full customer journey from lead to retention. In addition, a new sales organisation was put into place with a clear division between New logo sales and Customer success.

Building and improving other key capabilities (such as territory and sales planning, CPQ and billing, feedback loops and customer health scoring, follow-up and commission structures) was done in parallel streams sequenced logically around the CRM initiative.

BENEFITS. Better revenue growth at lower CAC:

• A sales organisation with clear roles and responsibilities over the full customer journey leading to measurable efficiency gains, more leads, higher conversion, stronger upsell and happier customers.
• Easier customer onboardings as sales became more stringent with fewer ad hoc and one-off solutions.
• Quicker onboarding of new sales reps due to clear roles and better support tools.
• More accurate sales planning, leading to improved resource planning (staff and marketing).
• Full sales funnel transparency with a clear baseline for each step in the funnel allowing for easy follow-up and identifying and fixing inefficiencies.

DON’T FORGET. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of assigning dedicated resources with clear roles to uphold and further develop the RevOps function in line operations. Even the best, simplest and most intuitive structures and processes will deteriorate quickly without clear champions, and the created value will vanish.

One of the most important task for RevOps is continuous sales enablement. You will always want to calibrate and improve sales processes, and each tweak will involve an element of enablement. Secure that the sales staff understands why this is important, follow-up and incentivize process compliance – it can even be fun!