Aligning For Success: Using RevOps To Scale Your Business

"RevOps is the glue that brings go-to-market functions together."

Michael Ewing is an expert in using data and technology to make informed business decisions and accelerate growth. He was a key player in the launch of HubSpot’s first international office and was responsible for forming its renewal management department and scaling it to over 100 employees.

We interviewed him on the RevOps Champions podcast about the role of revenue operations in creating alignment between sales, marketing, and customer service to scale more efficiently.

"Where RevOps really starts to shine is when you put a roof over sales ops, marketing ops, and services ops, and you put it all under one umbrella of revenue operations…"

The Danger Of Siloed Data

Why are some companies able to scale faster than others when they have similar headcount and funding, and access to the same tools?

A look at the companies’ data and processes can tell the story.

Many companies focus on sales operations when setting goals for growth: sourcing prospects, forecasting, and utilizing CRM.

They don't typically think about connecting the commercial engine with the billing engine. Even fewer companies think about connecting customer data - interactions with sales and marketing, email campaigns, support calls, renewal dates, etc. - before investing in strategic initiatives.

And when companies try to scale, it quickly becomes clear that data alignment is the differentiating factor.

The Importance Of Alignment

“It's not how much data you have, because you could have trillions of data points …it’s about being able to align them.”

When data remains confined within separate software systems for each department, it leads to a siloed structure where sales, customer, and billing data are not synchronized.

This lack of alignment creates a source of customer frustration, and a roadblock to company growth.

Michael highlighted how quickly this misalignment can cause customer dissatisfaction:

“Let’s say the leaders all agree they’re going to launch this new product. The sales team is going to call our customers, and the marketing team is going to email customers. They all agree, right? They're all aligned.

But if they're all in different systems, then the sales teams may call a customer who just finished telling the account manager how upset they are with the products they're using because there are some bugs in them. The customer's going to think ‘I cannot believe you're trying to sell me something right now. Your product isn't working!’

And then the next day, that same customer receives a marketing email about this new product. Now the customer is thinking ‘This company doesn't know what they're doing! They're totally not aligned.’“

If these departments were using the RevOps framework to align all business functions and data under one umbrella, the sales team would have pulled up the customer and become aware of the complaint - including the status of problem resolution - before making the call. And the marketing department could have excluded any customer currently having issues from the new product email blast.

The Role Of RevOps In Aligning And Scaling Your Business

Lack of data alignment between departments also affects a business’s ability to scale.

“If three different departments are using three different technologies, it becomes incredibly inefficient: the marketing team is using Marketo, the sales team is using Salesforce, and the customer success team is using Gainsight or ZenDesk – but none of these systems are connected. If you don't connect all those together, then it becomes really difficult to scale.

The data is not flowing from one to the next and there's not one single source of truth – plus the cost of maintaining each of those systems can become exorbitant.”

RevOps transforms your customer-facing teams from siloed departments using disconnected systems into one unified revenue engine, creating an integrated competitive advantage.

Michael witnessed this during his time at Hubspot:

“HubSpot is extremely good at forecasting. They know down to the penny where their forecast is going and where their sales are going to be in one quarter, two quarters, or three quarters. It's scary how accurate it is. And a lot of it is because of that really tight integration between sales, marketing, and customer success.”

Leading With A RevOps Mindset

In addition to data alignment, it’s important that those in leadership roles lead with a RevOps mindset.

When leaders embrace a RevOps mindset, they proactively monitor their departments, gaining insight into challenges their employees encounter, how they’re using technology and any deficiencies that arise.

They also need to work hand-in-hand with the CFO to ensure he or she has access to accurate data in real-time for data-driven decision-making.

If sales, marketing, and customer service leaders work together to achieve cross-functional alignment, agree on technology that will support their teams' processes and goals, and share data across departments, the company as a whole will be better prepared to scale efficiently.

The Power Of Integrated Data Across Departments

The revenue operations framework not only contributes to data alignment but also helps identify which data points to measure and what inputs are needed to measure them.

Michael gave an example of the power of connected databases in identifying and gathering strategic data points:

“[If someone asks] ‘What is driving gross dollar retention rate?’ or ‘What are the activities that are leading customers to downgrade or churn?’ This is where having another database connected - like your customer success database where you can see the interactions that are happening with customers - pays off. 

You could now use contextual notes or ratings that the customer success managers are entering - customer health scores. If you have all that in a database, you can sync that up to the commercial and billing engine.

Now you can start to answer questions like ‘What are the early indicators that are driving churns or downgrades?’ Which then helps you to answer ‘What is driving gross dollar retention rate?’“

Even though sales and customer service will each be focused on their specific data, the flow of the data has to make sense from an organizational perspective based on the overall objectives of the business.

“You have to speak to data…if you can point to the data and say ‘Here's the revenue that's being leaked and here's why I think it's leaking, and here are some solutions to address that leak,’ that's a much more powerful argument than ‘I really think we should X, Y, and Z.’”

RevOps: The Key to Sustainable Business Growth

Today’s corporate leaders are tasked with finding new avenues to generate revenue and propel their company above the competition in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Could RevOps be the competitive edge that you need?

Companies using RevOps build a culture centered on strategic, accurate, and real-time data, facilitating better decision-making that is aligned with business objectives.

Without aligned data, businesses struggle to integrate and align core operational functions, wasting resources and falling behind the competition.