Why RevOps may or may not thrive in difficult economies: Book excerpt

As much as we try to predict the future using our operations superpowers of seeing around corners, spotting early trends, and relating cause and effect scenarios, no one can be 100% sure what will happen in the future. But we can hope, dream, and use our skills to make the best guess in this chapter about the future of RevOps.

Though there is debate about whether RevOps is new or not, there appears to be consensus that RevOps has a lot of future possibilities ahead of it. We hope this research and analysis helps contribute to a future where RevOps is more understood, aligned, and elevated and a future where the voices of operations people are heard more often.

The questions analyzed for this future of RevOps chapter:

1. Can you talk about how RevOps may or may not thrive in the current economic conditions? (this blog)
2. Where do you see RevOps headed in the next year? Next 5 years? 
3. What is RevOps content you wish existed that could help people?

Disclaimer for book draft excerpts:

• This is a draft, which is not exceptionally clean, clear, and concise writing yet.
• Everything may change between now and publishing. 
• The job titles are from the time the experts were interviewed (otherwise, I'd be changing them constantly)
• If you were interviewed and your quote feels out of context, please contact me now while there is time to correct it. 
• I am not adding new research or new quotes to the book. I had to stop the research to finish editing and publishing. 

How will or won't RevOps thrive in the current economic conditions?

The experts interviewed overwhelmingly agreed that RevOps as a practice would thrive in the late 2020-2021 economic climate. 

Common themes about why RevOps will or won't thrive: 

Why it may thrive:

The need for greater efficiency:

• In this economy, everyone needs RevOps in order to do more with fewer people and less money: 12 people
• RevOps will reduce operational debt
• It boosts sales productivity

The need for current data and quick changes in this economy:

• Historical data is not useful right now for forecasting, you need recent real-time data; predictability is even more difficult, with little margin for error: 8 people
• Companies need to pivot quickly, leadership needs to work together to solve huge issues quickly, and RevOps is essential for change: 6 people

The increase in remote work and its relation to RevOps:

• More companies being remote is creating more digital insights (less analog) and creating a need for new tools: 4 people
• Working remotely makes alignment even more important and difficult

The increase of subscription models and the focus on the entire customer journey:

• RevOps will help with revenue retention, which is very important right now: 2 people
• The economy forces the company to focus on the entire customer journey, not the product
• More companies are moving toward a subscription model and need to measure the whole journey
• Good customer experience is more important now

Additional answers:

• The economy’s state will help move RevOps away from support and more towards data and strategy: 2 people
• Revenue and scalability are more important
• It will thrive since it is about amplifying/optimizing
• Relationship-based strategies and processes are more valued now
• Only the people who are meeting measured quantifiable goals keep their jobs, and RevOps helps with that
  
  

Why it may not thrive:

• The perception of RevOps as a cost center is hard to overcome, and could lose headcount: 6 people
• A sales ops person may be promoted to lead true RevOps but without more headcount because of the recession budget – where it is impossible to get all categories of work done 
• Working remotely makes alignment even more important and difficult (a reason why it may thrive or not thrive)

Several people talked about how the companies that already embraced RevOps were financially doing their best in 2020, especially compared to those who had not yet adopted RevOps when the pandemic started. These case studies could help promote the adoption of RevOps in the future.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the responses.

Why RevOps may thrive during an economic downturn

The majority of responses were hopeful and positive about RevOps in the pandemic economy, with some experts using their problem solving and analysis skills to also consider all possibilities on both sides of the debate. 

Matthew Volm, CEO and Co-Founder at Funnel IQ and Co-Founder of the RevOps Co-op community, had a positive outlook. “Companies that adopt RevOps see greater revenue growth; the lines are constantly getting blurrier around marketing and sales, and sales and customer success, as well. RevOps is here to stay, and I think we are going to see it take over every industry in the next few years and also spark a wave of new companies building tools to support RevOps teams,” Matthew said.

The need for greater efficiency

The most common answers about the success of RevOps thriving in a not-so-good economy related to how revenue operations increases efficiency and allows you to do more with less money, a common theme in this era of mass layoffs. RevOps professionals can prove their value and keep and expand their team through measurable efficiency and alignment improvements. “If you understand what RevOps can do for you and you hire the right person, you can actually implement a lot of efficiencies in your business,” said Virinchi Duvvuri, Senior VP of Sales and Revenue Operations at UST Global. 

Alana Zimmer, Senior Manager of Customer Ops at GoSite, spoke about these reasons why RevOp may thrive. “I do think that RevOps has real potential, and it's all about trimming the fat from the meat, taking the things that work well and amplifying them, and leading with data. Focusing on the bottom line numbers while you have the qualitative insights to back up your stress strategy or your direction in general,” Alana said.

Another way of framing the efficiency benefits of RevOps in a down economy relates to no longer overlooking costly inefficiencies that were less of a concern when budgets were high and flexible. Dana Therrien, Senior Sales Specialist of Sales Performance Management at Anaplan, said that RevOps is “going to accelerate in the current economic conditions because you can't afford the inefficiencies that have continued to exist between sales, marketing, and customer success.”

Mike Rizzo, Manager of the Community and Loyalty Programs at Mavenlink and founder of the Marketing Ops community, also spoke about efficiency as a reason RevOps could thrive. “I think it'll thrive because I do believe that a function like that is constantly looking at efficiencies in process, and ensuring that the data, information, and all that gets to where it needs to be in order to help the business stay afloat. You might not have as many team members, but you'll still always have some,” Mike said.

Julia Herman, VP Head of Global Sales Operations at ABBYY, spoke about the differences in the mindset and goals of companies in different economic conditions. Efficiency is more top-of-mind in downturns, but the negative side of that mindset can view team headcount reduction as an ‘efficiency’ similar to what Mike said. “It's great when the economy's good, and you're actually able to help your team grow at a higher cash rate burn. While now you're in a little bit of cash preservation mode, you're still finding out the most efficient way to do things. So this way, perhaps you can do them with fewer people. In the current economic conditions, I think the only [negative] thing that I heard is that perception of [RevOps as a] cost center. That's one of the first rules [for] indirect revenue-impacted roles, for the most part. So I think that's the downside, but if you position it in the right way, then [RevOps] actually can help during these times,” Julia said.

The need for current data and quick changes in an unstable economy

Another reason RevOps may thrive in an unstable economy is the ability of RevOps to help companies with pivoting and change, providing current data to make decisions when historical data is not useful, and providing change management to make these quick changes more successful.

Change management at a fast pace was something Spencer Parikh, founder of ioAudio, spoke about.  “I think RevOps is essential during change. Especially in the current economic conditions, it should be the go-to person for a lot of people on the team to make sense of all the craziness,” Spencer said.

Pivoting and gathering data is a thriving reason that Rosalyn Santa Elena, Head of Revenue Operations at Clari, discussed. Rosalyn said, “I think the key differentiator in a lot of organizations is going to be their ability to pivot quickly, and actually be able to pull together the information they need to quickly make decisions, and then go and execute upon them, actually implement any of those changes. That's where your operations function comes in because when you're changing the operating plan, you're looking at the data. That's operations, when you're actually deciding to change targets, change the quota, doing all these ‘what if’ scenarios and analyses based on different hypotheses. That is going to be your ops team. And then once you've actually made those decisions to rule things out, changing comp structures, changing quotas, changing territories, that's all operational as well.”

Lauren Nickels, Director of GTM Operations at Blackline, spoke about the need for RevOps since they can determine what changes to make and then gain alignment on the changes to be successful in these difficult conditions. “I think it's more important than ever, I think it is totally going to thrive. And the reason is a pandemic or any other kind of economic crisis… directly impacts a company's ability to sell the way they have been selling successfully. They had to literally try to very quickly figure out how they're going to be successful in whatever this new challenge is, and being able to have a leadership team that works together to look at staffing, for example. And, obviously, budgets are frozen in these [customer] industries, so selling into those industries is no longer going to work. How can we shift resources to the customer base and find ways to protect customers but [also] invest more heavily to drive more business? Because through our existing customers… we did a lot of free training, we just wanted to make people feel comforted in this economic time,” Lauren said.

Lauren continued, “I think unless you have that type of super tight collaboration at the executive level, all of the GTM Ops, and this triangle of three-legged stool [then you need RevOps to help.] And so having that ability for everybody to be able to very quickly react and move and shift resources, shift strategy, shift budget, I think it's going to be more important. I think it'll be the difference between companies that succeed and companies that don't succeed.”

Jenna Hanington, VP of Revenue Operations at Experity, spoke about the efficiency discussion from a different angle for companies that had many individual siloed operations teams and technology resources. “On one hand, RevOps may reduce some of the need for duplicative resources across marketing ops, sales ops, and CS (customer success) ops, which is appealing when there are budgetary constraints caused by the current economic conditions. That said, RevOps may also be seen as a 'nice to have' at organizations that have not yet proven the concept out, which may make it harder for new RevOps teams or leaders to gain a foothold,” Jenna said. 

Predictability, especially when historical data is not helpful during new economic times, is another hallmark of RevOps that could help it thrive in this climate. Mallory Lee, Senior Director of Operations at Terminus, said, “Predictability is more important than ever with startups attempting to carry more cash and achieve smart growth. This should be 100% RevOps territory - predictability and smart growth.” 

The increase in remote work and its relation to RevOps:

Several experts discussed how the pandemic’s increase in remote work makes RevOps more important. This type of work provides more insights than analog in-person work (where much of the daily information is spoken and not captured), which requires RevOps to interpret that new additional data.

Jerry Bonura, Senior Principal at TwentyPine, an executive search firm for RevOps, said, “If teams stay remote for a long time, I think having a centralized operations and data team and center is going to be even more important, to have a central source of truth.”

Remote work’s need for centralized information was also something Richard Dunkel, Global Head of Field Enablement at Celonis, spoke on. “Things are more digital than ever. With more remote workers and distance engagement the opportunity to capture engagement metrics digital data creates a rich opportunity for multiple operational functions to come together,” Richard said.

Crissy Saunders, Co-Founder and Principal Consultant at CS2 Marketing, spoke about the two sides of the response related to RevOps helping change management with the switch to remote work, but the switch to starting a RevOps team might be too much change for companies without RevOps. It is a chicken-or-the-egg comes-first dilemma combined with limited hiring budgets for new teams at this time. “I think they can thrive right now because there's just so much of a focus on operations, especially as people are relying on so much tech and being digital and needing a lot of tools to help them do that new way of work [remotely], having the teams work closely together in a RevOps function. I think it makes sense, but I think it also can be hard to make the change at a company to [centralize into a RevOps team]... making that big change during this time might be hard to get off the ground. But it also could be the reason to do it because you're trying to bring everyone together…” Crissy said. 

The increase of subscription models and the focus on the entire customer journey:

Several people talked about how RevOps helps companies focus on the entire customer journey and experience (increasing revenue and retention of existing customers), which could help companies during economic times when new customers are more difficult to find.

Alison Elworthy, Head of RevOps at HubSpot, said, “RevOps will thrive because providing a great customer experience will never go out of style. As companies mature, they need to shift focus to scaling, not growing. I mentioned linear growth earlier -- it’s not sustainable to try to grow by simply adding more employees, and it’s where friction is born. Creating a frictionless internal operating system calls on you to do more with what you have by de-duplicating efforts, automating repeatable tasks and simplifying processes. RevOps will thrive because these actions are impactful in improving the customer experience, which is the key to increasing revenue.”

Focusing on the customer journey is a reason RevOps will thrive that Lorena Morales,  VP of Marketing at Go Nimbly, discussed as well. “We’ve been able to help clients stay in business simply by understanding their entire customer journey and where and in which stage they are leaving revenue on the table,” Lorena said.

Additional responses of why RevOps may thrive in a not-so-good economy

Related to the headcount reductions and other non-human-friendly activities that can happen in an economic crisis, several experts mentioned the rumors or company requests to replace people with automation and how humans are still needed.

Melanie Foreman, Revenue Operations Manager at Slack, said, “I think everyone in the world wants to automate [all RevOps work], but I've never seen it done. And I guess I'll wait to see it. But I think if you're an ambitious business, you're always selling differently. You're always acquiring other businesses, you're always building different structures, you're always building different products, and so no ambitious business is able to automate this job.”

Lorena Morales also spoke about the need for human relationships in these times. “I think more than ever in history, companies need what I call relationship-based processes and strategies. What I mean by that is the days when companies were product-focused, when they were able to scale based on product or sales, those days are gone… now I think companies need to stop having that mentality of focusing on delivering a great product because now the companies that are thriving are the ones that recognize that [they] missed this thing on this feature. But still, [they’re] so obsessed with customers that [they’re] willing to make changes. And [change] so fast that they have a new solution three days after. So it's not necessarily about having the best product or the perfect product; it is about connections. And people need those connections more than ever,” Lorena said.

Lorena continued, “And the thing with RevOps is that, again, it's all about being truly customer-obsessed, and finding those revenue leaks that organically happen as the company scales, let alone [the leaks that happen] in an ambiguous world like the one that we're living right now, [and deal with] uncertainty. People tend to confuse [the words ambiguous and [uncertainty]. Uncertainty is when you know your unknowns. An ambiguous world is where you don't even know your unknowns. So that makes companies harder to stay afloat.”

Sylvain Giuliani, Head of Growth at Census, spoke about several of the commonly mentioned concerns related to customer markets disappearing from budget reversals, and the perception of RevOps as a cost center and potentially losing team members. But the discussion ended with some good news. “I was proven completely wrong by the market. What we found out is actually tons of companies [did] layoffs of salespeople and marketing, but the operational and data people actually are staying on board for two reasons. [One is] to actually understand what's going on in your organization and to be able to make the right decisions layoff-wise. The second thing is actually, they rely on [RevOps] to pick up a lot of the manual tasks that were done by the [laid off] teams before, [and to find out] how can we automate… everything we have while we weather the storm,” Sylvain said.

Sylvain continued, “And then the other thing is to take this opportunity to have fewer people and less business in general, too. That is digital transformation that should have taken us five years, [but] we're going to do it in five months because we have a lot less constraint on our business from the market. So actually, those people are staying on board and if anything, they are buying tons of tools and have tons of more work than they normally have. So it's great to hear. So I think these roles are staying for now.”

The issues discussed in previous chapters about the confusion and lack of standardization in job titles in operations responsibilities, came back around in a discussion about budgets and salaries of ops people related to economic conditions. The operations people who are most likely to help the company succeed in a downturn may be the more expensive people, and when looking at where to save money, companies might only hire or retain less expensive, junior-level people. Melissa McCready, Founder and CEO at Navigate Consulting, said, “For operations people, there's this gross over-payment and gross underpayment, and there's not a lot in between. We don't have a middle class. So [companies will] hire people to do really basic stuff and pay them way too much. I see it happen. The person has three years experience and you're paying them like somebody with 10 years, that doesn't make any sense… And then the other end is, you have people who have these really crazy skill sets and have orchestrated really sophisticated systems, And [the companies think] ‘Oh, we don't want to pay any more than this.’ If you look at how engineers are paid, you have engineers that have different skill sets. They're very technical, and maybe some of them are on product, or maybe some are [working on] internal [projects], but the ones on the product that are building things out are the ones that are really making the company grow. To me, that's how the model should be for paying people in operations,” Melissa said.

Melissa continued, “If you're coming in at a company that has a trajectory to go public, or to merge, within a short period of time, like a three year runway, those operations people coming in need to be very skilled. You're not going to be hiring junior people, you should hire top-down, hire the best people first to get your team built out. People don't do that, they hire low level, and they don't hire top level in operations. So I see a lot of mistakes being made like that. At every company that I go into, I haven't seen one yet where they have a high-level operations person, and they're building the team out below that person. It's very rare. And that's just shocking. Would you hire a bunch of junior salespeople not have a head of sales? No? Would you hire a head of demand gen that was a junior person? No, but you're hiring junior operations people without a head over them? It just doesn't make sense. So I think that is a big thing that's got to get fixed. People just need to understand you can't hire like that. When I give people that analogy of 'Would you hire junior salespeople without a head of sales?' [they] never thought of it that way. Just like anything, you need to hire up your best people first and then build your team out, so that you get good people coming in. And because those best people are going to come in with their network… they're usually going to have really good people that surround them. They're going to know the vendors to work with, they're going to know the tools to work with, they're going to know people at those tool vendors, and they're going to know the people that are going to carry the success forward.” 

Crissy Saunders also talked about how this ‘doing more with less’ economy is helping people learn in more cross-functional roles, such as when sales and marketing ops are combined into one person or one team. This builds skill sets for the future leaders in RevOps. “I think from an economic standpoint, it could be to do more with fewer people. I see more and more people…doing a hybrid of [several ops roles]. And so that would be great for RevOps as a function because a lot of people coming up the ranks will know both how to support sales and marketing and customer operations,” Crissy said.

One more interesting response about how RevOps may thrive is when the revenue teams slow down, the operations people will have time to improve processes and be more strategic, if they are not fire-fighting as much. Nicole Smith, Revenue Operations Consultant at Winning By Design, said, “Obviously, coming toward the end of the year, budgets are getting finalized for 2021 and we’re seeing a big influx of RevOps roles getting posted. I don’t think that’s only the result of preparing for the following year, but organizations truly understand the value of having a central team to optimize the GTM (go-to-market) engine. With the economic slowdown, I think companies have actually had the time to evaluate their processes (or lack thereof) in lieu of trying to make time, and now it’s become more crucial because of the slowdown, to really start the new year strong and with a streamlined process.”

Why RevOps wouldn't thrive in a bad economy:

Some of the previous answers covered both sides of the debate about whether or not RevOps will thrive in a down economy, relating to the difficulty of the big change needed to centralize ops, the budgets for hiring new RevOps teams during this time, and more.

Jeff Ignacio, Head of Revenue and Growth Operations at UpKeep, talked about how gaining alignment remotely could be a challenge if it's a new skill for that RevOps team to quickly learn, which could cause RevOps to not thrive. “I think when you're working remotely like we are today, you lose this brevity and [ability to see] eye-to-eye with your stakeholders. To me, the number one priority of RevOps is alignment. And because we're working in a distributed workforce, it throws in a new challenge to RevOps at a time when RevOps is very nascent for many industries. I think high-tech, healthcare, and finance, are sectors that thrive on speed. And you [also] have industries that are moving more slowly. The fact [is that] sales operations is still making its way to those corners of the earth. And they're slowly replacing those job titles we saw 10-12 years ago, sales planners and skills analysts, those roles are starting to to get consumed by sales operations. I would think what [could] make RevOps unsuccessful in the current economic climate is that we lose the ability to do our number one thing, which is alignment,” Jeff said. On the other hand, RevOps could be the people who help people learn and gain remote alignment, especially if they or the company has worked remotely in the past, which would be a related reason why RevOps could be more needed and thrive.

The perception of operations as a cost center or support function would also contribute to reasons RevOps may not thrive in an economic crisis. Several experts discussed this concern, including Jonathan Fianu, Head of Revenue Operations at ComplyAdvantage. “How it won't thrive is if it just remains the support function because then it's adding very little value,” Jonathan said.

Adam Tesan, CRO of Chargebee, also spoke about this unfortunate perception of RevOps as a non-quota-carrying team and being dispensable during bad economic times. “I think people may be naive enough to think that RevOps or operations is not quota carrying, it's overhead, and it's on the expense side, and therefore, something you can forgo. But I think there's a huge missed opportunity there. When people are cost-cutting…they start cutting in on what they consider non-revenue generating [resources]. I consider RevOps revenue-generating because they're on the revenue side of the house, which is why it's nice to have it there versus centralized [company-wide] ops. But I think that could cause a pause for thought, or if people are needing to cut, they'll start chopping around them on those sides,” Adam said.

Hilary Headlee, Head of Global Sales Ops and Enablement at Zoom, began on a similar train of thought as Nicole Smith, related to using this time to clear operational debt, before considering what may cause RevOps to not thrive. ”I think RevOps can be one of the best weapons that a company can have to reduce their operational debt, and to bring more value to the business because less can be more in the spirit of uniting and simplifying to execute. However, I really worry about companies moving to a RevOps model, thinking they can just starve out the operations teams from headcount. And that's probably my biggest concern because anyone you talk to, it seems that no matter where they're at, they're feeling overwhelmed. They've either been hit with unprecedented demand, or their business has taken a couple of steps backward, and they just feel overwhelmed. And I remember there were times {when I was handed additional responsibilities and I asked if] I get a headcount or two to support that. They said nope, you just have to do more with the same or more with less. And those are the situations I worry about because as a RevOps leader or personnel, you're not being set up to succeed in that. And so that's what I worry about is that [RevOps is] seen as a cost-cutting measure… if a company doesn't approach it well, it's kind of a burn for the operations teams,” Hilary said.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the future of RevOps may depend on whether it can thrive in the economic turbulence that occurred near the beginning of its adoption journey at the early-adopter companies in 2020-2021, and perhaps again in 2025 and future down cycles. As you can see from the examples above, many of the reasons it could thrive are similar to the reasons it may not thrive, with the common book-wide theme about increasing the understanding of operations and getting rid of the cost-center perception as a truly necessary action to survive in this type of recession climate.

Ending this section on a positive note,  Leore Spira, Head of Revenue Operations of Syte, said, “I feel that now we will have more opportunities for RevOps. And I think this will help us raise awareness of the importance of this position, even if it's still a hands-on position, because then more opportunities will be opened. I think as long as we keep growing, companies will understand that this is not just a hands-on position.”

Other questions that will be answered in this chapter (and blogs):

• • Where do you see RevOps headed in the next year? Next 5 years?
  • What is RevOps content that do you wish existed?

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