Decoding the RevOps Vocabulary for your Business: Part One
Revenue Operations is a rapidly becoming a widely adopted operational methodology, especially for SaaS companies. As you might expect, RevOps has a vocabulary all its own. Understanding the language and terminology of RevOps is an important stepping stone to actually putting the practice to work within your organization. Here is Part One of our handy RevOps dictionary.
Revenue Impact
There are plenty of different ways to impact your business, depending on how you define ‘impact’ in the first place. This is the idea behind attribution models; a way to measure the success of every event, webinar, or piece of written content, based on how they move the needle in the context of your KPIs.
In RevOps, the only true impact is what we call Revenue Impact. This means that
In RevOps, the only true impact is what we call Revenue Impact. This means that whichever KPIs you’re focusing on should ultimately result in an increase in revenue, whether it’s by:
– increasing LTV (value)
– generating more qualified leads (volume)
– shortening your sales cycle (velocity) or
– driving more conversions
Any other metric likely falls into one of two categories: Momentum or Vanity.
Even if profit isn’t your company’s top priority, focusing on initiatives that generate Revenue Impact will put you on the right path to make your business more valuable over time.
Alignment
This particular term is commonly misinterpreted and we’ve written about it more here. It’s part and parcel of the RevOps discussion, and something that we believe is subjective depending on your business and its goals. The most common way of talking about alignment is when referring to your GoTo Market (GTM) teams and their ability to communicate, share data, and collaborate effectively.
While we agree that these are extremely important to the overall health of your revenue team, the most important function of alignment is to create a leak-free customer experience. Instead of being the end goal of Revenue Operations, it is a natural consequence of your GTM teams being focused on the metrics that positively impact your customers, first and foremost.
Personalization
As B2B companies, we’re rapidly approaching the point at which ABM will just be called “Sales and Marketing”. With customers demanding more and more from the companies they buy from, providing an experience that feels genuinely personalized is no longer optional.
Some confusion exists, however, when it comes to what constitutes personalization. For example, there is a lot more to effective personalization than just putting a prospect or customer’s name on something. Rather, it’s using key data to build an accurate “profile” for everyone your company engages with in order to craft an experience that meets their specific needs and expectations.
In ABM, this means knowing the actual, real-life pains of the people you’re targeting and keeping in mind the fact that they are, indeed, people. Focusing on establishing relationships before jumping into the sale will increase the likelihood of not only conversion, but also a greater LTV.
Silo Syndrome
The origin story of Silo Syndrome involves Phil Ensor, who worked in organizational development and employee relations for Goodyear Tire back in 1988. Essentially, the same problems that exist in legacy operations today, also existed then (no surprise there!). The problems arise when teams within the same organisation have different goals. The misalignment that occurs as a result of not sharing a common incentive is the core of Silo Syndrome.
As companies scale, internal hierarchies form, and people naturally settle into silos. It’s a kind of tunnel vision – everyone working to fulfill their specific role within the organization, and not focusing on the revenue goals that ultimately matter to the company as a whole.
When information and responsibilities are siloed, the person who is ultimately impacted the most is your customer, who expects a seamless experience at every stage in their journey, regardless of which team they’re interacting with. If they feel the friction in your internal handoffs, they are likely to lose trust in your company, which can result in decreased LTV or churn – both of which mean less revenue.