Solving the Right Problems: Gap-First Thinking for RevOps Teams
What are “the Right Problems”?
When operating a business, the problems you should always be focused on are the ones directly impacting your revenue.
That means you’ll need to analyze your funnel to identify your gaps before moving into the solutioning stage. This is known as gap-first thinking.
Gap-first thinking is a way to keep your team focused on the right work and avoid doing things for the wrong reasons. Instead of having a list of project initiatives that can’t necessarily be mapped to gaps, you can be strategic in deciding which things to work on in order to improve your customer experience.
3VC: The Revenue Levers
In Revenue Operations, there is a framework we use to find gaps and prioritize work. The framework is called 3VC, which stands for volume, value, velocity, and conversion. These are the four revenue levers you should always be looking to move.
Using 3VC, you can classify the problems facing your business and understand how they’re negatively impacting your customer experience. Looking at operational gaps in this context, you can frame them in a more productive way.
For example, “We need additional head count to solve this problem,” versus, “Nobody’s following up the right way.”
Smart Solutions
One thing we’ve seen operators do is attempt to solve every problem within their business at once, whether it’s by adopting a bunch of new tools or putting process after process in place to deal with every one-off situation. Neither of these things will help your organization become intentional. In fact, they’re likely to hinder your growth.
If you make sure any tool you implement helps move one of the four revenue levers by fixing a gap, you’ll avoid overloading your tech stack with tools you don’t really need. With that, we’ll leave you with some wise words from our RevOps Evangelist, Jason:
“The most important thing to understand about a tool is the vocabulary of it. If you’re going to do ABM, what does ‘engagement’ mean and how does that work?
You don’t actually need the tool first. If you understand the vocabulary, you can then figure out what’s right for your organization. I’m a big believer that businesses are inflection points. Tools serve the inflection point, not the business. So what is the right tool for you right now?”