RevOps’ Role in Scaling SaaS ARR

Kait: “It’s been a real evolution at my company.” Her organization has a marketing department, where Marketing Ops resides, then a Revenue Department which includes the revenue operations, sales, and customer success teams.  There is an extremely close relationship between the marketing ops and RevOps teams.

Justin: “There is not a specified RevOps department but our teams are working closer and closer together.” Justin works in tandem with three teams; Enterprise applications, analytics engineering, and IT systems. There is also a Revenue department that houses sales ops, marketing ops, B2B enablement, and sales enablement. Bringing all these functions together amplifies their business impact.

Justin: “Even if you don’t necessarily have the RevOps role articulated, there is such a clear need for it.” He describes 3 functions, Sales Opps, Marketing Opps, and Systems as overlapping circles in a Ven Diagram. RevOps role is to inject itself into the overlap and articulate, establish and put together repeatable processes that connect these functions. Driving the cohesion between these departments is extremely important.

Kait: “We have a wide visibility and we help connect the dots in between other departments.” Her team brings everyone together and provides insight on how each initiative impacts other parts of the business. They also identify gaps in the process and opportunities to further scale their ARR.

Justin: RevOps is not the primary function of his team, but instead, he supports the RevOps function. Providing product-minded managers that link arms with other parts of the Revenue Operation drives department cohesion.

Kait: Her team historically included an analyst and manager of Sales Operations that handle all the reporting. Recently, however, they’ve added people to manage both Sales Enablement and systems. These additions enable her to stay on top of all upgrades and changes to the tech stack. The global team also includes a sales operations position in every office.

Start with Google. Searching “Revenue Operations” reveals a treasure-trove of stats to use when speaking with your CFO. Salesforce also publishes the number of Salesforce System Admins you should have based on your number of users. Companies like OPEXEngine offer a benchmark for SaaS companies.. 

Heidi: Although she has a 6 month and 1-year roadmap, Heidi focuses on her 9-month calendar which is often the clearest and most defined. Projects like CPQ or integrating with a platform, are prioritized. Her team then determines how difficult each initiative will be and builds a roadmap from there. A helpful tip for creating a roadmap is to look at your current revenue goal. Use this as an endpoint to move towards.

Heidi: “If it’s a fire now, you have to address it now.” Once that fire is out, ensure it won’t happen again. You have to be agile and identify the outcomes you want to reach.

Kait: Don’t put duct tape on something, do it right the first time. Addressing an issue correctly saves time in the long run and avoids the need to constantly revisit the problem. 

Justin: In order to prioritize tasks, his team stresses clear communication. They also reserve a certain portion of the teams’ bandwidth to address the tech dept or issues that arise. This enables them to make necessary adjustments as they come up. 

Heidi: Establishing universal definitions is important in keeping everyone at the organization aligned. Even in the same organizations, different departments have different definitions for certain objects. “Creating that common ground is just vital.”

Justin: Communication around what teams are not doing is just as important as what they are doing. “Being clear about the in’s and out’s is also crucial.” The CarGurus team also embraces a communication checklist to ensure information is communicated to the right people. 

Kait: RevOps is being brought into more and more conversations and their role in the organization is expanding. Historically, her teams had to fight for a spot in meetings. Now, her team needs to write off on them. It’s a trend that makes her job so much easier and she hopes to see continue.         

Heidi: There is a larger focus on the cohesion between departments. A higher emphasis is also being placed on creating a 360º view of the customer. Learning how clients use your system and who’s using it is extremely important in creating this deeper understanding of your clients.

Heidi: Her team has many scripts that use data science and predictive analytics to reach a level of insight that BI is unable to provide. Especially when anomalies like Covid hit, analytics are vital. Her team uses these scripts for customer churn and product usage analytics.       

Kait: AI is embedded in some of the software her team uses such as Gong. Her customer success team relies on the insights this provides to improve their performance. Other platforms they use like Insight Squared include AI as well. 

Heidi: It’s important to remember the role your team’s signed up for. Ask questions like, “has it changed?” and “does that charter still remain?” Identify what the role needs to accomplish for the business; the responsibilities of the role should meet this need. The responsibilities of a specific role should also align with its title.

 Kait: It can be difficult when working closely with people from another organization. You’ll want to work closely with the hiring manager to make sure the roles on each team are clearly defined. Figure out how all the departments and employees will work together. Ideally, there will not be an overlap in these roles but if there is, you’ll need to determine the relationship they’ll have with one another. 

This has actually moved slower than expected, David describes how departments are often hesitant to let go of their projects. Heidi agrees with this when it comes to Marketing Ops but finds the responsibilities of Sales Ops and CS Ops are much more willing to move.