Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Management From a RevOps Scope

Let’s say your KPIs are falling down and you realize there is something wrong looking at your metrics dashboard.

Sales reps have started to struggle to convert the leads brought by the marketing team, and customer success is doing a bad job of identifying the proper upsells. Something is going wrong, your left hand doesn't know what your right hand is doing.

B2B buyers nowadays are brighter than ever, in other words, they are doing their own research before even your welcoming email pops into their inbox.

Not to mention the length of the B2B sales cycle. So…

in this article, we are going to walk through one of the popular business frameworks- Revenue operations (RevOps)-that accelerate revenue growth by aligning a customer-focused approach in marketing, sales, and customer success management

What is Revenue Operations?

Simply, RevOps is a business structure that involves customer touchpoints in a manner that allows company people to work collaboratively and utilize processes and tools to enhance the customer lifecycle.

customer touchpoints or revenue drivers are the departments that have a direct relationship with customers. In many businesses, those departments are marketing, sales, and customer success.

RevOps is a transition from decentralized to centralized management that encourages the staff to operate collectively to obtain steady growth, and what is actually meant by steady growth is Revenue and a maximized customer lifetime value.

RevOps VS. Sales OPs

To get rid of the confusion before we dive in, let’s mention the difference between RevOps and Sales Ops.

Sales Operations: focus on driving the highest productivity level from the sales department.

while RevOps leaders care about this matter, they also try to push that level of productivity by aligning departments with each other to maximize overall performance.

Revenue operations can be seen as the merging of sales, marketing and customer success operations; however, I view rev ops more as a natural evolution where organizations are seeing value in merging the strategic aspects of various operation teams while leaving the day-to-day administrative structures of marketing, sales and customer success teams somewhat intact. says Dheer Gupta

What does it mean to have a RevOps function

within an industry that is forecasted to grow up to 591.8 billion in 2023 and is highly competitive, low efficiency and a misalignment between revenue drivers are game-over situations.

and those who adopted a RevOps function seem to be satisfied with the outcomes. According to a study conducted by BCG, top b2b saas companies have reported a 10% to 20% increase in sales productivity, the same study share that

• 100% to 200% increases in digital marketing ROI
• 10% increase in lead acceptance
• 15% to 20% increases in internal customer satisfaction
• 30% reductions in GTM expenses

Those stats are really impressive, so let’s see how to drive these kinds of numbers with a closer look.

Aligning marketing and sales

Marketing brings leads. Sales convert and close. Well, life isn’t that easy. On average, 40% of leads are invalid or incomplete, and at the same time, 27.3% of sales reps’ time is wasted due to inaccurate contact data.

Regardless of the maturity and effectiveness the marketing team has. The one thing that comes to mind looking at these stats is a misalignment between marketing and sales.

Modern days B2B buyers are extremely different as we discussed above. Considering this, marketing and sales shouldn’t operate in their own silos where probably everyone has different processes or even objectives.

Under the RevOps umbrella, aligning marketing and sales is one of the first issues to be taken care of. How? here is how

Evaluating Marketing qualified leads vs Sales qualified leads.

Many companies assess marketing and sales performance separately after looking at the revenue generated at the end of the quarter.

Here is the thing, to see if your marketing and sales teams align and share the same objectives take the ratio of MQL- marketing qualified leads- to sales-qualified leads. If the result falls under 50%, then marketers and sales reps should meet up and try to define what are the high-quality leads for the company’s product.

The marketing team shouldn't be proud of itself for hitting the goal of MQL if sales reps are way much lower than their revenue target.

Here is a perfect example of sales and marketing alignment by Lindsay Rothlisberger, Director of RevOps in Zapier

each week, our RevOps team does a walkthrough of the top high-value, closed-won deals for our colleagues in Product and Marketing. This provides a more detailed glimpse into the customer journey by sharing how the customer came to us and how they engaged with Sales.

to put it in one sentence, marketing must be accountable for revenue targets as well

Having RevOps software as a single source of data.

RevOps software automates and centralizes sources of customer data to a single source where revenue-drivers can use to

• Have actionable insights

• automate data to get rid of repetitive tasks and save time

• Better predictability of market trends and customer behavior

• Track sales and market trends

• ensure the quality of useable data

  
  

It is overwhelming for many decision-makers to attribute customer data from marketing automation software to sales CRM to eventually come up with an interpretation. Having a single source of truth for both sides has been very helpful.

According to Forrester companies that align people, processes, and technology tools across their marketing and sales teams, report 36% more revenue growth and up to 28% more profitability.

The best RevOps software tools should allow you to connect your data source in a single place to have the Eye-bird that helps you see the whole picture and make better decisions.

Here is a list from Setsail of the best 11 RevOps software

Establishing the Chief Revenue Officer structure.

You need to have an intellectual person who oversees whether there is a correlation between sales and marketing or not.

Yes, CMO can do this, but according to BCG, many businesses say that having a CRO that aligns departments and processes has been very effective.

To see it clearly look at the stats from Clari

why is that increase?

It is obvious and we have mentioned it. B2B buyers nowadays can reach alternative pages in seconds, and see the comparison pages that affect their decisions.

What happens after the sale is just as important as what happens before. See…?

Correlation and transparency between customer touchpoints are becoming major issues in the competitive fields, and the best way to deal with them is to have a strong CRO or RevOps director.

Now, let’s see how customer success management operates with the framework.

The Roles of Customer success management in RevOps

Attract, Convert, and maintain. We have now covered the correlation between attracting and converting by discussing marketing and sales alignment. Time to see how CSMs -Customer success managers- go beyond to empower the overall procedure.

Customer success management is the growth engine of any subscription-based saas company. It is about enhancing the customer experience with upsells and delivering the maximum value to ensure the healthiness of the customer's lifetime.

In RevOps things get really exciting with CSMs after jumping on the pathway with folks from marketing and sales to push up revenue metrics.

So, here is the Role of CSMs in the context of Revenue operations.

1. Customer Data

One of the primary roles of CSMs is data, they analyze it the come up with interpretations such as:

• Renewal forecasting: Where they analyze customer behavior and engagement patterns to predict the likelihood of contract renewals. They also create renewal playbooks that outline the steps and touchpoints required to ensure a smooth renewal process.

• Account health: CSMs assess account health by evaluating key metrics and indicators, like effective product usage, customer satisfaction scores, and any potential risk of customer churn.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): This is one of the essential metrics that measure customer loyalty and the likelihood of customers recommending the services of the company to colleagues. CSMs prepare a set of questions as a survey to be scaled from 1-10.

These results are not meant to be stored somewhere in CSM’s drive. For example, a CSM can identify an underutilized feature of a product and reach out to that customer to provide training to sustain the level of engagement.

2. Process tracking.

to enhance customer experience, CSMs should have some proactive approaches like:

• reaching out to customers regularly to check in on their progress.

• address any concerns or offer guidance.

• working collectively with marketing, sales, and product management to align efforts and provide consistent customer experience.

Maybe the customer doesn’t need training for that specific feature of the product, it could a problem from the root of it. CSMs shouldn’t try to figure out conflicts on their own, that’s why, walking the product team through these concerns can eventually show up what is the real issue.

3. Determining opportunities

CSMs should always work on supporting the customer base by setting goals to multiply the value:

• For example, CSMs can set a goal of reducing churn rate by 10% within a timeframe and collaborate with teams to increase engagement levels with risky customer accounts by providing personalized support.

• CSMs also engage in workforce planning to determine any staffing issues, or to show a need for a tool that could be used to benefit the customer lifecycle.

4. leveraging systems and tools

CSMs are responsible for managing and implementing the tools that support customer success efforts. This includes CSM-specific tools for managing customer interactions and workflows, as well as taking ownership of customer-related data in the CRM system used by other departments.

A CSM might configure and customize a CSM tool to track customer health scores, automate notifications for high-risk accounts, and streamline the workflow for customer touchpoints.

To sum it up, customer success management seems to be the backbone of the marketing and sales alignment.

CSMs support sales reps by taking care of the converted customers, and provide the seamless value marketing team used to attract those prospects

The Bottom line.

Revenue Operations emerge as a powerful framework that brings together marketing, sales, and customer success management under a unified goal. by aligning these three departments with each other, you can streamline your operations and have a clear vision.

But here is the thing, you won’t be able to proceed with RevOps if you didn’t choose the right people who work collaboratively to achieve organizational goals.

And if you have a perfect crew who can operate with high morale and work collectively, RevOps framework could be your B plan to accelerate revenue growth and move up your KPIs needles.

Cheers