Time to Hire For RevOps?

Zoe Hartsfield

February 13, 2023
you notice your sales data is out of date
you feel like you lack clarity on current pipeline
you want to see reports on booked and forecasted revenue but can’t
you missed an important action item for a potential customer
you expanded your sales team and it’s hard to see who owns what account
you’re seeing duplicates in the data
What does “CRM set up” mean/involve?
When is the best time to set up your CRM and why?
What are the costs if you wait?
What are the benefits if you move quickly?
How do most companies implement their CRM?
Should you get Salesforce or another CRM?

Time to hire for RevOps?

There’s a lot of information and opinion from well known thought leaders about the ideal time to bring RevOps into your business. Jason Lemkin, CEO of SaaStr posted this video on Twitter just a few weeks ago emphasizing that RevOps should be introduced as early as when your Sales team hits 4-5 reps. 

Some questions to consider:

Are you a founder or sales leader that’s overwhelmed with tools and processes? Are you losing track of things? How are you staying on top of all your GTM initiatives and experiments? Are you confident you know what’s working and what’s falling short? If you are asking yourself these questions, it just might be time to introduce RevOps to your business.

Let’s break down the basics of Revenue Operations, including how to implement it in your GTM motion, and the benefits you can expect once it's fully operational.

What is RevOps?

Plain and simple, RevOps is the connective tissue between your Go-To-Market teams, tools and processes. RevOps, short for Revenue Operations, is a business function that focuses on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your revenue generation efforts. The goal of RevOps is to align the various teams such as sales, marketing, customer success, (and sometimes finance), and to ensure that all the moving pieces are working seamlessly together.

Getting Started with RevOps

There are two main approaches to starting RevOps in your business, and ultimately it comes down to your business model and the size of your company. 

Approach #1: Distribute the responsibilities of RevOps across your team. So instead of having a dedicated RevOps team, you have RevOps operators scattered throughout the business. Whether in title or function they are owning things that align their team’s efforts to the efforts of the rest of the GTM motion. This could look like one person doing several roles, such as Sales Ops, Enablement, and Insights. As your business scales, these responsibilities can become dedicated positions that ultimately fall under the RevOps category, which is effectively approach #2..

Approach #2: Hire a leader who can bring the Ops roles together and consolidate reporting relationships. This route is typically best for larger businesses with more than 100 employees, as they are likely to already have siloed Ops in their organization. And it’s important to un-silo those functions.

Benefits of RevOps

Whether you bring on a tool, consultant or in-house hire here are some benefits you can expect:

  • Predictable Growth: Predictability in your business's growth is critical, as it allows you to confidently invest in new strategies. RevOps drives predictability to your growth through accurate data.
  • Adaptability: RevOps provides communication, training, and project management to make necessary business transitions seamless and reduce the risk of losing deals or wasting time during market changes as your company scales
  • Efficient Revenue: The efficiency RevOps drives will allow each rep to generate more revenue, resulting in overall revenue growth without increasing spend.

Do you need RevOps?

Yes. 

The short answer is, yes. The secondary question is; what area needs the most attention?

If you're not already utilizing RevOps in your business, you’re probably facing some common challenges. If any of the following statements sound familiar, it might be time to start bringing on RevOps help:

  • Too many tools: Consolidating the acquisition, implementation, and management of tools under one team, saving costs and increasing adoption through training and enablement. Alternatively, having the right tools can replace the need for additional headcount.
  • Can’t tell what’s working: Understanding issues like churn and ROI can be challenging, but RevOps can evaluate key indicators across your business and identify where you need to double down and where you need to walk away.
  • Broken processes: In an ever changing business environment, processes need to be revisited regularly. RevOps aligns all GTM teams in the creation of new processes and training materials.

TL;DR:

RevOps is a mission-critical business function that can bring efficiency and effectiveness to your revenue generation process. Whether run by a tool, a team or a singular person, having alignment across the GTM motion is absolutely essential for scale. These efficiencies can help you save costs, increase adoption, and grow your business. 

Whether you're just getting started with RevOps or are looking to create a foundation within your GTM tech stack Swantide is here to help. Think of us as RevOps in a box. If you have a full team dedicated to RevOps or no one to own the function, our platform fills the gaps to establish RevOps best practices within your tech stack so nothing can hold you back from scaling. If you want to talk shop and see how we can help, get in touch with our team today!